Alla be praised: Alla
Pugacheva came 15th in the Eurovision Song Contest. But can this
Russian granny fill the Hammersmith Apollo?
by Isobel Montgomery, unknown
British newspaper, 1999
Alla who? Alla Pugacheva, heroine to millions of Russians and eastern Europeans but is a total unknown to most Britons, is playing London. Her audacity is astounding: this woman who came 15th in the Eurovision Song Contest two years ago and sings only in Russian hopes to fill the Hammersmith Apollo.
It just might work. Pugacheva has sold millions of records at home and played 70,000-seater stadiums across the former Soviet Union. And tomorrow's concert will give fans a chance to wish Alla Borisovna, as she is known to Russian-speakers, a happy 50th birthday.
Pugacheva is the queen of Russian pop, indisputably glamorous and a grandmother. She rides around Moscow in a white stretch limo, puts her name to perfume and shoe brands, and this month made the cover of Russian Vogue. On her birthday, April 15, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda asked fans to lay single red roses outside her Moscow flat in deference to her 70s hit "A Million Scarlet Roses." Pugacheva joked that they should come back when she was 60.
Meanwhile, radio stations plundered her 13-disc collected works for a non-stop tribute, and a documentary produced by her third husband, singer and sex symbol Filipp Kirkorov, was screened for a second time. (In 1996 it drew record viewing figures: 85% of the population).
Even president Boris Yeltsin has toasted Pugacheva, throwing a champagne reception for her birthday. Awarding her the Order of Service to the Fatherland, Second Class, he joked: "Many of us can claim to have lived in the Pugacheva era" - a reference to a quip that geriatric leader Leonid Brezhnev would be best remembered for sharing his nationality with the flame-haired, vivacious singer whose huge voice has made her Russia's best-loved star for more than a quarter-century. Even Mikhail Gorbachev appointed her People's Artist of the USSR.
Communism has come and gone, but Pugacheva has remained. She has been likened to Barbra Streisand for her ballads, and to Shirley Bassey for her gutsy throatiness and her gay following. Her longevity and penchant for thigh-skimming skirts draw obvious comparisons to Tina Turner. Even her most devoted fans, however, would say that the time has come for Pugacheva to act with more dignity.
But the singer, who punctuates speech and songs with a gravelly laugh, refuses to compromise with age. And while many of today's teenagers see her as a dinosaur who should retire gracefully, or at least restrict stage appearances to her regular new year concerts, Pugacheva has rarely heeded advice. her whole career has been in defiance of accepted behaviour.
When she made her debut in 1965 with a song about a robot, the Soviet pop scene was strictly controlled. Klavdia Shulzhenko, voice of the postwar generation, was still singing nostalgic ballads, stirring marches and the occasional melancholic love song. A younger singer, Edita Pekha, performed the same kind of material but with a Polish lisp. Pugacheva, the gap-toothed prima donna, broke the rules less as a protest against the straightjacket of official culture than because she wanted the limelight all to herself.
By 1975, when she wowed the jury at Bulgaria's Golden Orpheus festival, Pugacheva had spent a decade playing workers' clubs, beach resorts, provincial palaces of culture and the occasional stadium. She played first with an agitprop brigade from the Yunost radio station, then with a series of bands, succeeding in upstaging them all.
At last, the men in grey suits at the ministry of culture allowed her to launch a solo career. When her first album appeared, she was a single mother living in a one-bedroomed Moscow flat, earning less than 20 roubles per concert. But however fantastic it seemed in the grey days of Brezhnev, Pugacheva knew what she wanted: a Mercedes, a good fur coat and the adoration of every Soviet citizen.
Her massive popularity - she is estimated to have sold more than 150 million records officially, plus millions of bootleg recordings - was sparked in the early seventies, when televisions appeared across the Soviet Union. Her enduring status as Russia's premier pop ambassador has been enhanced by her complicated love life and battles against weight and ageing; she is rumoured to have had liposuction, breast implants and numerous other nips and tucks at Swiss clinics.
Pugacheva has trodden a careful path, rarely directly opposing the political leadership, though when one love song was banned for its narrowly personal theme, she defiantly sang it at a Polish pop festival. Her concerts were televised during religious festivals, in a deliberate attempt to keep citizens glued to the screen and away from church. And she has been shrewd in eschewing western tastes, creating her own uniquely Russian brand of pop. When she was finally let loose on the world in 1988 - she toured the US, then North Korea, Spain, Italy, Canada, and Australia - she was reportedly disappointed that the west found her old-fashioned, even a comic parody. Now, she insists, she is beyond caring. To smooth out her backcombed hair, tone down her make-up and swap her voluminous kaftans for elegant clothes is just not Pugacheva.
Admittedly, it takes a Russian to truly appreciate her emotional ballads. But her songs, with lyrics by Russian poets, are far from banal. When the 50-year-old takes the stage at Hammersmith, the audience will be clutching red roses, ready to throw them at the feet of their idol. Undoubtedly, they will award the grandmother of Russian music a standing ovation or two.
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29 September 2000
site author: Eric Norton
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