Video: Legends of the 1980s: the Electroclub group, or the history of a commercial experiment by composer David Tukhmanov
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Today it is difficult to imagine how on the same stage, as part of one collective, they could perform Irina Allegrova, Igor Talkov and Viktor Saltykov … Each of them later embarked on a solo career, but in the 1980s. they performed with group "Electroclub" and were very popular. This project was largely experimental - both for the artistic director, composer David Tukhmanov, and for the participants. But the project turned out to be successful: the songs "Chistye Prudy", "Horses in Apples", "Dark Horse" are still remembered by everyone.
In the mid-1980s, David Tukhmanov was a well-known composer throughout the union, the author of the music of the famous songs "These eyes are opposite", "How wonderful this world is", "Victory Day", etc. He always liked to experiment with different musical styles and directions - he wrote songs for the rock group "Moscow" and Nikolai Noskov. Once Tukhmanov heard the Moscow Lights group and decided that he could offer an interesting repertoire to her soloist Irina Allegrova.
He wrote songs for the new project quickly enough - it was a kind of experiment, combining pop music, romances and dance music with techno elements. Tukhmanov perceived this project as exclusively commercial, designed for a mass audience. Another soloist was invited to the team - Igor Talkov became him. He also suggested changing the name of the group to a more modern one. This is how the Electroclub appeared in 1986.
The group began touring throughout the Union. It was then that a song appeared that became Igor Talkov's calling card - "Chistye Prudy". In 1987 Allegrova and Talkov with the song "Three Letters" received the second prize at the all-Union competition of young performers "Golden Tuning Fork". But it seemed to Tukhmanov that Electroclub, despite the new repertoire, still looks and sounds somewhat old-fashioned. Soon Talkov left the group and took up a solo career, and was replaced by the soloist Igor Saltykov, who had previously performed as part of the Forum group.
For "Electroclub-2" Tukhmanov wrote two more modern-sounding albums. The group on tour gathered stadiums, the songs "Horses in apples", "You do not marry him", "Dark horse" sang the whole audience. Saltykov also performed songs at concerts that the listeners already knew well from his performances with the Forum - White Night and Ostrovok. The tour was uninterrupted and stormy. Viktor Saltykov later recalled: “We were young then. They loved to show off. For example, we could have a drink on tour, get on all fours and have the whole team arrange a game of little trains."
All the soloists of "Electroclub" were very charismatic and could not put up with the second roles. In addition, their views often diverged from Tukhmanov's ideas about what the group should be. For him, it was an exclusively commercial project, and he quickly lost interest in it - after the Electroclub, in his opinion, had exhausted itself. The soloists, in turn, were dissatisfied with the fact that creativity was subordinated to the tasks of commercial success.
When Allegrova offered to include several songs by Igor Nikolaev in her repertoire, Tukhmanov flatly refused. She wanted to sing more lyric songs, and in 1990 she left the group and parted with her husband, musical director and bass-guitarist of "Electroclub" Vladimir Dubovitsky. The very first songs "Wanderer" and "Toy", written by Nikolaev, became hits and marked the beginning of her successful solo career.
Later Allegrova admitted: “The first year of working with the“Electroclub”I was like“with the group”, the second - the“soul of the team”, and on the third - I left, like a cat that walks by itself. She left because she did not want to be led by the viewer, to sing what is not interesting to me, but interesting to the public. And yet I am grateful to "Electroclub" and all those who worked there for the fact that this period became a transitional period for me."
Viktor Saltykov was prompted to leave the Electroclub by his wife, Irina Saltykova: “She constantly hammered into my head that you can perform alone. She said: "How much more will you feed everyone ?! They pay 12-15 thousand for the whole group for the concert. Allegrova will sing her four songs and leave, everyone will ride on you. However, for some reason, on tour, she lives in a suite, and you - No. For 5-7 thousand you can easily perform even one "". But after he started performing solo, his career began to decline.
But Igor Talkov, who was assigned the role of the second soloist and arranger in "Electroclub", in his solo career hoped to realize himself as a composer and songwriter. But his creative takeoff suddenly ended on a tragic note: the mystery of the death of Igor Talkov.
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