Andrey had come to Chirchik to live with his older brother, who had gotten a job here. Their parents and other siblings – it was a family with many children – lived not far from Tashkent.
The Baidibekov brothers settled in the building next to ours – that very building the construction of which had attracted us so much – in a cozy studio apartment. That was where we were celebrating Andrey’s fifteenth birthday.
I stood on the small balcony. The fearless construction worker had sat smoking, his legs dangling down somewhere around here above me. That had been about ten years ago.
Ah, how time flew. And now I was looking at the view the construction worker had seen from this balcony. I could see the crowns of trees and part of Yubileynaya beyond them. That was on the right. And on the left, I could see the hills beyond the buildings.
“Yuabov, where are you-u?!”
Sasha Lokshev didn’t actually need to yelclass="underline" the table was right at the door to the balcony. It was either music or alcohol that had such an effect on Sasha.
“I’m here,” I answered and returned to the table, which was very festive, set by our own hands.
And we had also brought the food: Vitya Yarosh brought salads, I – pilaf made by Mama, Sasha Lokshev provided wine and vodka – yes, yes, we already considered ourselves adults. Lokshev had also provided female company: he had brought along his friend Vera, a tall, shapely girl who quite conformed to our favorite characterization – “a poet’s dream.”
“Dear Andrey!” the light-haired Sasha proposed a toast, raising his glass, “Good luck, bro… To you!”
We clinked glasses and drank. It must have been our fourth drink. Our heads were spinning slightly; the music was playing and playing… Sasha picked Vera up, and they began to whirl, stomping their feet and bending over. The bright flowers on Vera’s dress flashed by. She squealed. Sasha kissed his girlfriend on the lips and, as they continued to dance, swept her away to the kitchen. Well… that could certainly be good. But we felt great without it.
Deep Purple got worked up, increasing in intensity. The guitars, the organ, the drums, the voices – all blended together, becoming an outburst. And here it came, the moment when you didn’t notice anything around you anymore. The whole of you got absorbed in the music… You were in a different world… It was so good there. You felt you also belonged in that world, along with those by whom you were enchanted, with whom you would want to be… whom you would want to be… And then it seemed to happen.
We were not at the table in Andrey Baidibekov’s apartment. We were the rock group Deep Purple. The bright rays from colored floodlights, moving and gleaming, lit us, the stage, the outdoor space where we were performing.
There was a sea of heads in front of us. That sea swayed, made noise, roared, raged like a sea in a storm. Thousands of eyes were fixed on us. We saw them and we didn’t at the same time. We heard the enthusiastic roar and we didn’t. We were working. Each of us had his favorite instrument, his role.
“Sweet child in time.” That’s what Vitya Smirnov, who was also Ian Gillan, was singing. Vitya got into his role as Ian so much that he even resembled him. Just like Ian, he shut his eyes slightly and moved his head. His long hair fell onto his face… Of course, he couldn’t reproduce his voice, but he definitely rendered his manner precisely.
“Toom-m… Toom-toom-toommm…” And that was Andrey. He played the drums, drums and cymbals, twelve of them. He manipulated his spoons no worse than Ian Paice did his drumsticks. He could also create different sounds. He could beat the rhythm so gently that it sounded like a nightingale’s trill. But he could also bang down so hard that it felt like artillery bombardment.
Now, Andrey, along with the bass guitarist Vitya Yarosh, played quietly and slowly. They played background accompaniment, which was very important. Keeping that in mind, they exchanged glances in order to play in coordination.
I listened to them with my eyes half-closed. My turn hadn’t come yet.
But here, the sounds of the percussion were getting louder and more powerful. Andrey was totally enraptured. He got a kick out of it. Andrey shook his head – up and down, up and down. And the spoons in his hands worked to the utmost, slicing the air.
Vitya Yarosh stood, his head thrown back, pressing the strings of the guitar with the fingers of his left hand. His right hand was down at his waist, and he ran the fingers of his right hand over the strings and tapped the guitar: “boom-m, boom-m, boom-m-m.”
And then Lokshev ran out of the kitchen.
So, the organist Jon Lord had heard everything. He had missed just a minute of it. Bending over the table, Sasha ran his fingers over the keys of the organ.
The singer fell silent, only the music sounded, the musicians played to the max, at the fastest tempo, with all their hearts.
And at last, the long-awaited moment had come – the guitar solo was to be played. And I was the one to play it. Richie Blackmore’s guitar was the heart of the rock band. Gentle, leisurely, clear, it usually created a special lyrical mood. But now, the guitar had to be different: it had to be lightning fast, reaching the highest notes, creating tension…
Yes, it was my turn to play. And I struck the strings. My eyes couldn’t follow my fingers, which ran over the strings so rapidly. The guitar… The air appeared to grow dense, I felt the weight of its wooden body. It seemed to me that I was the musician and the guitar at the same time. I shook my head slightly, raised my leg and jumped up and down. My eyes were half-closed. I, like all the others, didn’t need sheet music or conductor.
We felt both the music and each other. We were a unified organism.
That was all… The last chords sounded. The percussion grew silent. We stood, swaying slightly. Only now did we feel how tired we were.
Our hair and shirts were wet. Sweat was streaming down our foreheads and into our eyes. And the crowd of spectators was still making noise, roaring and screaming in front of us.
Some of them jumped, yelling, others whistled, some shook their fists, some tried to get closer to the stage, stepping on shoulders and heads. A forest of swaying hands flew up.
That was fame. And who doesn’t want fame at fifteen?
Well, it takes a lot to achieve fame.
We turned off the tape recorder. Andrey dried his wet face and waved to Yarosh – time to fill the glasses… We had a drink, sat in silence, still filled with the music.
“It would be great to go to a rock concert,” Vitya sighed.
‘Oh, yeah, to a Russian folk choir… or a Soviet pop singer, who was popular in the 50s,” Sasha giggled. “Keep on dreaming.”
We all laughed, but it wasn’t merry laughter.
There were concerts in Chirchik sometimes, but they had nothing to do with rock music. We couldn’t even dream about it. Rock music was considered a “Western plague,”, a “demoralizing influence,” and so on and so forth. They wrote about it in the newspapers, yelled about it on the radio, spoke about it in schools.
No matter how hard numerous mentors tried to turn us away from rock, it had already become a part of our lives. We were children of our time, and the times were the most powerful mentor. Rock captivated us. It became not just another infatuation but something much more important. Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin – our favorite groups were often the subject of our conversations. Those who managed to get original records were considered very lucky. But there were only a few of them. Everybody else coaxed disks out of their owners and ran to a sound studio to tape them. That one tape would be recorded over and over.
It was one of those tapes that had been recorded from the disk of the concert performance by the rock group Deep Purple that played at Andrey’s apartment today.
“It would be great to get good equipment,” I said, running my fingers over the tape recorder. “By the way, where did you get this one?”