One particular of the largest names in Russian rock tunes — most likely the biggest of all — is now shown as a “foreign agent” in his homeland, a designation that taints Boris Grebenshikov as an anti-patriot, even a traitor. The cost fulfills with an amused shrug. “Ah, I’m usually on a listing!” he states, laughing. “In the ’70s I was on a list of forbidden people today. In the ’80s I was there. It’s all suitable.”
Grebenshikov, 69, is well-known all over the Russian-talking planet as the chief of the band Aquarium. They pioneered the rock scene that emerged in the USSR in the 1970s. Originally a semi-clandestine model of western hippy tunes, primarily prog and people-rock, acts these as Aquarium captured preferred creativeness in the 1980s as harbingers of a new Russia. They ended up like the pied pipers of perestroika. But Grebenshikov has fallen foul of officialdom after once again with the return of authoritarianism.
The ministry of justice in Moscow declared him a international agent in June for speaking “in international international locations for the function of providing financial aid to Ukraine” and for criticising Russia’s war against its neighbour. Previously centered in St Petersburg, Grebenshikov has not been to Russia for a lot more than a calendar year and a 50 %. Potential clients for doing so are remote. “It could be a little bit dangerous,” he concedes.
Since 2019, he has lived in London with his spouse, Irina. He speaks in English on a movie call from his flat in Earl’s Court (an in-human being meeting experienced to be cancelled just after I caught Covid). Contrary to his grandee status, Grebenshikov has a warm and casual way. His is a face of laughter traces relatively than frown strains, while there are moments when his characteristics reduce their brightness and purchase a graver look.
1 these kinds of occasion comes as he talks about the war in Ukraine. He has several pals there. “They never fully grasp why they’re staying bombed,” he claims. “I imagine it is not even a grave injustice, it is an insult to humanity. A war with no any reason at all.”
His new project Heal the Sky is increasing cash for Ukraine’s greatest children’s hospital. It’s a compilation of songs by western musicians, which includes Jackson Browne, Marianne Faithfull and Richard Thompson. Grebenshikov helps make appearances much too, such as a monitor with Dave Stewart, Stevie Nicks and Ukrainian singer Serhii Babkin.
BG, as he’s regarded to followers, has curated the compilation, due for release later this month on Bandcamp. A variety of its participants are identified to him personally: in 1989 he teamed up with Stewart, previously of the Eurythmics, to make an English-language album. In their new joint range “War Song”, Grebenshikov sings, in Russian: “The working day will arrive, and the war will turn into a aspiration/And in the sky the light will return/But it is just in which my dwelling the moment was/It’s no more time there.”
The traces had been influenced by pictures of bombed buildings, which includes a friend’s childhood house in Kherson. “This is not a property any additional, it’s a hole. I have viewed total theatres be wrecked in Ukraine — we played in them,” he claims emphatically. “I know these places incredibly nicely.”
Prior to the war Grebenshikov frequently toured Ukraine, equally as a solo performer and with Aquarium. “The reaction to our band in Ukraine was even extra welcoming and loving than in Russia at times. It was just remarkable,” he recollects. But he can not see himself actively playing there now. “Half of Ukrainians believe, ‘Oh, a very good Russian is a lifeless Russian.’ I’m receiving a great deal of mail like this.”
Other celebrated Russian musicians have also lifted their voices in opposition to the war. The pop singer Alla Pugacheva, amid Russia’s best-promoting artists ever, now dwelling in Israel, dared the authorities to increase her to the “foreign agents” registry very last calendar year when she spoke up from the invasion. Other individuals, however, have either stored their heads down, or are actively collaborating with the Kremlin and its “Z”-themed propaganda.
The past Aquarium concert in Russia took position in St Petersburg the night time right before the invasion in February 2022. “Some folks in my band, in Aquarium, they all of a sudden grew to become Z patriots,” Grebenshikov states. “It’s like participating in Woodstock and indicating, ‘Yeah! Get rid of and rape the Vietnamese!’ Anything that does not go nicely jointly. I’m sorry for these men and women. What else can I say? Some persons consider, some individuals do not.”
He has because retired the team and is currently touring as BG+. London is his base, but he insists that he doesn’t live there as an émigré or exile.
“Actually, no. I desire to are living and perform in London due to the fact it fits me a great deal a lot more than being in St Petersburg. I’ve been doing work in this article because 1988,” he states. Born in the yr Stalin died, he invested a long time not able to leave Russia. “For more than fifty percent of my life I was at the rear of a wall, and then abruptly I could go away. So it is my option.”
When I interviewed Grebenshikov in 2015, he experienced not too long ago been denounced as a fascist sympathiser by a professional-Kremlin television channel for actively playing a gain gig on behalf of Ukrainian refugee youngsters. Still he didn’t want to be witnessed as a political determine. “I’m not getting a stand, I’m hoping to behave normally,” he instructed me back then.
On currently being reminded of this, he replies: “Well, it appears that I was rather clever in 2015. Getting in my position, it’s extremely effortless to create topical tunes. Hundreds of countless numbers of people today, probably hundreds of thousands, will react to it quickly and go, ‘I’m with you’ or ‘I’m in opposition to you.’ But the music are inclined to fade away incredibly promptly. I never like that! I want my tunes to continue to be!”
He is celebrated for his allusive, metaphysical crafting model. The notion of home turns up frequently in his work, not only as a location of shelter and id but also oppressiveness, someplace to escape from.
“At the moment, the state that I was born in and the nation that I like is” — he pauses — “in a incredibly sad, tragic position. Tens of millions and tens of millions of persons are scared to believe, concerned to discuss out. We all know that silence is like cancer. It eats you from in and kills you. And that’s what is occurring. So I’m pondering not only of strategies to enable Ukrainians but Russians as effectively, for the reason that they are in a awful placement.”
He cites Socrates’ concept of eudaemonia, which he interprets as currently being in superior spirit. “That implies when you stay your life being aware of that you did everything you could and everything that you truly feel is correct. Which is what Aquarium and I have been accomplishing for the previous 50-moreover many years. In a region exactly where you are unable to have faith in terms, you can’t rely on anything at all, we were being wanting to build the way of existence which is legitimate. This is what residence is.”