Yegor Letov

Egor Letov
Егор Летов
Egor LetovЕгор Летов
	Russian Federation
Genres	punk; post-punk; noise rock; garage rock; psychedelic rock; shoegaze; hardcore punk; noise; industrial; experimental music; avant-garde; musique concrète; plunderphonics; conceptual art;
Occupation(s)	Poet; musician; vocalist; singer-songwriter; producer; painter;
Instrument(s)	Guitar; bass guitar; drums; noises; tape loops;
Years active	1982–2008
Labels	GrOb Records [ru]; Zolotaya Dolina (on LP 1992–1994); BSA; HOR; Misteriya Zvuka; Vyrgorod;
Website	http://www.gr-oborona.ru

Igor Fedorovich "Egor" Letov (Russian: И́горь Фёдорович "Его́р" Ле́тов, IPA: [ˈiɡərʲ ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪtɕ jɪˈɡor ˈlʲetəf]; (10 September 1964 – 19 February 2008)^[1] was a Russian poet, musician, singer-songwriter, audio engineer and conceptual artist, best known as the founder and leader of the post-punk/psychedelic rock band Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Russian: Гражданская Оборона, lit. 'Civil Defense'). He was also the founder of the conceptual art avant-garde project Kommunizm and psychedelic rock outfit Egor i Opizdenevshie. Letov collaborated with singer-songwriter Yanka Dyagileva and other Siberian underground artists as a record engineer and producer.

Biography

Letov was born in

Semipalatinsk a few years before Egor's birth. From a young age, Egor and his older brother Sergey had health issues, and Yegor experienced clinical deaths

in his childhood.

After graduating from school, Egor went to live with his brother, who was a relatively successful jazz saxophonist in Moscow at the time. In Moscow, Letov learned to play some drums and bass guitar, developed contacts with Moscow underground avant-garde artists, and enrolled in a professional technical school as a builder, working as a plasterer.^{[citation needed]}

Two years later, in 1984, Letov left the technical school and returned to Omsk. At this time, he had already started writing poetry and short stories and decided to try music. Letov mostly listened to Rock in Opposition and free jazz in the early '80s, and his first recordings were amateurish garage rock using suitcases instead of drums. Later, Letov characterized these recordings as "talentless curiosity", "baby talk", and "shame and reproach". Soon he found fellow musicians and companions in Omsk, who listened to the same type of music, which was unpopular and little known in the USSR, especially in Siberia, and they started the garage rock band Posev (Russian: Посев, lit. 'sowing, crop, seeds'). The most important of these companions was Konstantin Ryabinov (better known as Kuzya UO or Kuzma), a musician and poet, who was Letov's comrade-in-arms in Grazhdanskaya Oborona up to the late 90s, and a close friend. Posev became Grazhdanskaya Oborona in November 1984.

In 1985, the dissident philosophy expressed in Letov's lyrics, as well as his popularity throughout the USSR, resulted in a KGB-initiated internment for three months in a mental hospital, where Letov was forced to take anti-psychotic drugs. On his release, he defiantly wrote a song about Lenin "rotting in his mausoleum".^[3]

Letov was a polarizing figure in the Soviet Union. He was controversial in the mid-to-late 1980s when he satirized the Soviet system and developed a gritty Siberian punk sound. After the fall of the Soviet Union, during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, Letov developed a fan base among nationalists and communists due to his strong opposition of Yeltsin's government. Letov was one of the founders and the first member of the National Bolshevik Party.^[4] He ceased contact with the party around 1999 and distanced himself from politics. In his 2007 interview with Rolling Stone Russia, Letov stated: "In fact, I have always been an anarchist—and I still am. But now I'm more into ecological aspects of contemporary anarchism, eco-anarchism, that's what I've been moving toward recently".^[5] In 1997, Letov married Natalia Chumakova, the bass guitarist of Grazhdanskaya Oborona.

Letov died of heart failure in his sleep on 19 February 2008 at his home in Omsk.^[6]^[7] He was 43 years old.

Influences

In an interview, Letov expressed that his favorite poets were

magic realism (Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez

).

In music, Letov was a big 60s

VIA bands and various folk music

as influences on Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Egor i Opizdenevshie and Kommunizm, stating, that everything he listens to is to some extent reflected in his music:

Well, I can personally say that about 80% of what I’ve composed was incited by what I’d listened to. But there doesn't have to be a direct connection. I can listen to Dylan and then, influenced by his music, write a hardcore song. So, definitely, if I didn't listen to anything, I wouldn't write anything.
— "Егор Летов: "Сейчас не имеет смысла заниматься роком" / – Гражданская Оборона – официальный сайт группы". Retrieved 2 December 2016.

Personal life

Letov's older brother is the free jazz saxophonist Sergey Letov.

In the late 1980s, Letov was close with

childfree views.^{[citation needed}

]

Letov was an active

marijuana, and psilocybin mushroom user. He also was a heavy alcohol drinker, which may have led to his premature death. He lived a rather secluded life with his wife in their khrushchevka

flat in Chkalovsky Posyolok, a working-class district in eastern Omsk, spending most of his earnings on vinyls, books, and music equipment for his home studio.

Legacy

Letov was always a controversial figure. While some considered him as a genius, others completely rejected him. Famous musical critic

misanthrope and very pretentious person, whose musical abilities were "very mediocre" (this, though, might be a reaction to Letov's attack on Troitsky in 1990 at the Alexander Bashlachev memorial concert, where he publicly accused Troitsky in "conversion of whole Soviet rock into shit").^[9]^[10] Poet Elena Fanailova stated that Letov was "really fucked up and really free artist, whose main and only mission was to experience limits of his own freedom" and "certainly large, significant author, who created his own world – which, though, works only in the context of the post-Soviet civilization".^[11] Most contemporary critics consider Letov an important person in the post-Soviet culture and one of the best Russian poets of the late 20th century, although disputes about this status are still common; while the importance of his legacy is not denied, controversy remains regarding his radical political statements. As for Letov himself, he repeatedly stated that his personal views and opinions, or even his person, should be of no interest to anyone, and that his art is the only thing that matters:^[12]

There is a certain stream of existence running through me, but what I am is something no one knows. No one should be interested in that, it's an idle curiosity. I, for example, don't care who
Dostoyevsky
was or what he thought—I'm interested in his books, but I would never give him a ring or pay him a visit.
— Yegor Letov, 2002