However, this incident made us fundamentally reconsider our attitude to music.
First, we decided to completely abandon public speaking. It became absolutely clear that it was impossible to play well on foreign, completely unfamiliar instruments, but I did not want to play badly.
Secondly, we decided to work on recording to fix and save for ourselves and "grateful descendants" all our musical exercises. Thirdly, we took a rather bold decision to record only "large formats" - large genre works such as rock operas or musicals. I must say that 1980 was very interesting in terms of musical discoveries. Just this year, because of the Iron Curtain, finally, the cult opera of Andrew Lloyd Webber, "Jesus Christ the Superstar", broke out of England in the USSR from us in 1970. Under the clear impression of this brilliant musical work, Alexei Rybnikov wrote his first rock opera "The Star and Death of Joaquin Murietta" in 1980 about the fate of the famous Chilean bandit, which was successfully staged by director Mark Zakharov in the Lenin Komsomol Theater - Lenkom. And, finally, in the same year, the iconic English band Pink Floyd, playing the famous psychedelic rock, hit the world with its most powerful epochal work - the album "The Wall", in which, in an absolutely surrealistic light that turns the "Wall" into almost The biblical parable, in front of the enchanted listener there is a horrifying panorama of the life of a modern Man, horrified by his hopelessness.
Surprisingly, in only six months, after listening to the stupidity of all this brilliant music, we managed to write two major musical "canvases" - a musical "The Happy Life of the Golden Klondike" based on works by Jack London and the rock opera "Jimmy the schizophrenic "- the piercing story of an American teacher - a hippie who accidentally killed a policeman and was executed in an electric chair, written under the sheer impression of Pinkfloed's" Wall "and" American tragedy "by Theodore Dreiser (genius described in Oman fate Clyde Griffiths executed electrocuted). Of course, most of the musical material was borrowed from famous rock operas, but there were also original findings, for which I am still not ashamed. I, for one, am very proud of my finale in "The Happy Life of the Golden Klondike" - in fact until this moment I have never been very fond of poetry and much more writing:
"Yes, that Klondike showed us his predatory grin,
His face is ugly like death.
Here a person loses the meaning of life,
Is he a crown of nature? No!
He is a slave of his desires and aspirations,
He is lost here in the dusk of nights,
Here begins his fall
In a world where the light of rays does not penetrate!
In a world where indifference reigns,
Where a man is at the mercy of yellow sand,
Where the thirst for gold incinerate souls,
In a world where there is a mortal struggle between good and evil! " After these words of the author, full of existential meaning, followed by a piercing, soul-taking requiem, the main theme of which I use after 30 years in my later rock opera "Spetsnaz: The Story of My Contemporary".
The last six months before graduation we worked as possessed, afraid not to have time to finish "Jimmy the schizophrenic". Especially surprised and at the same time pleased Mishan - he, with great difficulty finding time in his hard sports schedule, as a routine, went to all rehearsals, mastered his unique drum set and sometimes gave out such "tasty", intricate syncopes and virtuosic rhythmic drifts, Which he himself could not repeat in just a couple of minutes. Now, to save time on the road, Misha always came to me with a huge bunch of hockey equipment, which caused admiration and curiosity (then hockey was in special honor among the people) of all the children of our house. All the musical parts and scenes of the rock opera we recorded on my quite good for that time reel tape recorder "Saturn -201", and in order not to take precious rehearsal time, in the absence of the guys, I tried, by trial and error, to find in the room the optimal, From the point of view of acoustics, sector, where it was necessary to put microphones.
We worked like catechesis, with a fanatical gleam in our eyes, until June 1981 - my last summer in my beloved Karaganda. Suitable time for final exams was appropriate and it was necessary to finish urgently with music. Finally, "Jimmy the schizophrenic" was completely recorded, but we lacked a "grateful" listener to appreciate the merits of our titanic work. Soon a solution to this problem was found - we decided to put the speakers on the balcony and arrange, thus, our first public appearance in the courtyard of my house. So we did, and while doing so, having descended incognito down the street, from a secluded place, we began to observe with interest the reaction of the improvised auditorium to our debut. t was a beautiful June afternoon, the street was full of the people who were muffled by the heat, so the time for demonstrating the audio was chosen at the right time. And our "Jimmy the schizophrenic" burst into the whole Universe. The rock opera started very effectively - with the heartbreaking cry of Sergei Novikov: "Killed!" - and immediately, "off the bat", very dynamic, as in Chase's detectives, unfolding an exciting, almost detective story about the fate of the unfortunate hippy, who finally Was entangled in his search for the meaning of life and found peace only in the electric chair. Music produced in the
