Novikov, Alexander Vasilievich (singer)

Childhood and Youth

Born October 31, 1953 on the island of Iturup, Kuril archipelago , in the village of Burevestnik . Father is a military pilot, mother is a housewife. For the first 2 years of his life, Novikov lived with his family on Sakhalin , then he lived for some time in the Latvian village of Vainode , then ten years in the city of Frunze , and in 1969 Novikov moved to the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) , where he continues to live and work for the present time.

Sasha Novikov grew up a very smart boy. However, he studied poorly at school, did not observe discipline, and already in the 4-5th grade Novikov was expelled from the ranks of pioneers ^[1] . In everyday life, the future musician was an open anti - Soviet .

Novikov also showed his temperamental character in boxing and sambo classes ^[2] .

Passion for music to the young Alexander Novikov came in 1967, impressed by watching the film "Vertical" with the participation of Vladimir Vysotsky , who performed 5 of his songs in the film ^[3] . As a student of UPI , he acted as part of the institute VIA "Polymer". He was expelled from the institute for performing the song “ The Beatles ” at one of the institute’s events.

In 1971 he received his first term for a fight at a restaurant. Novikov and his friend stood up for the waitress when one of the visitors refused to pay and used physical force against her. The man himself then went to the hospital, and the waitress got his watch, which Novikov and a friend, taking it from the pocket of an unconscious opponent, gave it to her. Novikov was given a suspended sentence of one year with mandatory involvement in labor (popularly called “chemistry”), during which he built the Public Life Center in Nizhny Tagil ^{[4] [5]} .

In 1980, he created the Rock Polygon band, where he performed as a soloist, guitarist and songwriter. The songs were performed in the styles of rock and roll , reggae and a new wave with elements of punk rock , hard rock and psychedelic rock . The texts were distinguished by the spirit of philharmonic. The group recorded two albums of the same name in 1983 (with the official release on CD , the year was mistakenly indicated as 1981 ) and 1984 .

In 1981, he founded the Novik Records recording studio, where not only Novikov’s albums were recorded, but also many Sverdlovsk musicians — in the future, Chayf , Agatha Christie , Nautilus Pompilius and others.

In 1984, Novikov sharply departed from rock music and on May 3 recorded the famous album " Take me, cabman ." The recordings were attended by musicians of the "Rock training ground", including Alexei Khomenko and Vladimir Elizarov . The album broke all records of popularity and the scale of replication.

Arrest

On October 5, 1984, Novikov was arrested, and in 1985, by the verdict of the Sverdlovsk court, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison - under Art. 93-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. Officially - in connection with the manufacture and sale of fake electromusical equipment. However, in his interviews, A. Novikov repeatedly noted that he was imprisoned precisely for the album “Take me, a cabman”, referring to a case that began with the document “Examination of the songs of Alexander Novikov,” which contained reviews of each song from the album “Carry me, the cabman. ” Based on the results of this examination, it was decided that:

“The author of the above songs needs, if not psychiatric, then prison isolation for sure” ^[6]

The examination was conducted by composer Yevgeny Rodygin , a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR , a member of the editorial committee of the Ural magazine Vadim Ocheretin , and a representative of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR Viktor Nikolayevich Olyunin.

In the camp, Alexander Vasilievich wrote most of his best poems, including “Workbench lyrics”, “I procured pain and salt for my wounds ...”, “Guitar and barrel organ”, “We will not see you soon ...”, “Gypsy”, “ Four teeth ”,“ Wife ”,“ The night through the star rammed ... ”and others. Also, even in the SIZO cell, Novikov created the play-fable Komarilla, in which, in a comic form, the whole picture of the court is presented, and under the masks of animals the real people involved in the poet’s “case” are shown.

Subsequently, in 2012, an autobiographical book, Notes of the Criminal Bard, was published, covering the period of Alexander Novikov’s life spent in the camp.

Release and Further Events

In 1990, by a decree of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of February 27, Novikov was released on probation ^[7] , and in 1992 the Supreme Court of Russia quashed the sentence for lack of corpus delicti ^[8] .

The very next day after his arrival in Sverdlovsk, the bard sat down in a music studio to work on songs, most of which he composed in prison. The work resulted in the albums “In Yekaterinburg”, which was recorded in three weeks, and “The Necklace of Magadan” ^[9] . After liberation, or rather creative meetings, Novikov gave his first concerts in May in the culture house of the village of Verkh-Neyvinsky ( Sverdlovsk Region ), and from May 25 to 27, the bard gave his first “big” concerts in the Sverdlovsk Sports Palace ^{[ 10]} .

Immediately after this was followed by a tour of the cities of the USSR. At the very beginning of 1991 Novikov gave his first concerts in Moscow, and immediately at the Estrada Theater ^[11] . These sold-out performances were recorded on film and included in the documentary film "Gop-stop show."

Novikov spent most of his first large fees on business development and charity. So, Novikov transferred all funds from one of the concerts at the Estrada Theater to the construction of the future Yekaterinburg Church on the Blood ^[12] . Already in the late 90s, for this temple, he, along with the Ural master Nikolai Pyatkov, also developed models of 7 bells and cast them at his own expense. All bells have bas-reliefs of members of the royal family and the names of each of them: the largest of them is called "Nicholas II" , the smallest - "Tsarevich Alexei" . A little later it turned out that the temple itself was supposed to be huge, and the cast bells were small. Therefore, in 2000 Novikov handed them over to the man’s monastery on Ganina Pit , where the bodies of the royal family were dumped ^[13] .

In the 90s, Novikov at different times owned several stores in Yekaterinburg, a collective farm, a company for the transportation of goods from the UAE , an airline, and also a plant for dipiber stones (there are only two such plants around the world, in Canada and Yekaterinburg) ^{[14] [15] [ 16]} .

In August 1991, he opposed the GKChP ^[17] .

In 1993, became the producer of singer Natalia Sturm . Over 4 years of collaboration with her, Novikov wrote material for her two albums, one of which is Natalia ’s main hit , School Romance . The self-titled clip was actively broadcast on Russian television channels. The success of Natalia Sturm was greatly facilitated by a fictional article in the newspaper “ Speed-Info ” that Alexander Novikov won the singer in cards ^[16] .

In parallel with business, production and charity work, Novikov continued to record his new songs and shoot videos for some of them. In 1993, Novikov and director Kirill Kotelnikov shot a unique video for the song " Chansonette ", in which the real image was combined with a drawn one, without using computer technology ^[18] . The clip was rather actively shown on Russian television channels.

Despite this, Novikov even then sharply criticized the then position of domestic show business. He condemned the degradation of Russian pop music, the low taste of performers and their authors, the dominance of homosexuality , the clanish and nepotism of show business itself, and also called the "shameful" practice of television workers to take money from performers for scrolling through clips. As a result of this, the bard fell into the unspoken lists of “persons unwanted to show”, but this only added popularity and interest to the personality of Alexander Novikov from ordinary citizens ^[19] .

In 1994, together with Kirill Kotelnikov, he shot a documentary about the group “ Boney M. ” and its creator Frank Farian “Oh, this Farian!” (“Oh, this Farian!”). The shooting took place in Luxembourg and Germany, the film includes unique interviews by Farian and materials from his personal archive. However, the film was never shown on Russian television ^[20] .

January 24, 1998 took part in a gala concert in honor of the 60th anniversary of Vladimir Vysotsky , held at the Olimpiysky sports complex . Among the three dozen artists Novikov is one of the few who had the honor to perform two songs of the legendary artist-performer at once: “Song about the informer” and “Big Karetny” . The famous writer Fedor Razzakov in the book “Vladimir Vysotsky. Of course, I’ll be back ... ”noted:

The idea of ​​a [concert] was initially doomed to failure. It’s one thing to sing “Old songs about the main thing”, and quite another - Vysotsky’s songs. Therefore, only two or three performers (Alexander Novikov, Lesopoval , Lyube ) managed, if not to approach the author’s version, then at least not spoil it. All other participants in the concert did not cope with this.

On June 16, 2003, Alexander Novikov was awarded the highest church award - the Order of the Holy Prince Prince Daniel of Moscow for his services to the construction of the Church on the Blood in Yekaterinburg , for which he also cast bells. Since 2004, President of the 400th Anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty Foundation in the Urals.

June 24, 2010 appointed artistic director of the Ural variety theater . Having become the artistic director of the theater, Novikov first banned the play “The Blue Puppy”, in which he noticed signs of pedophilia propaganda.

On October 28, 2010, Alexander Novikov's new album was released on poems by poets of the Silver Age , in the recording of which Maxim Pokrovsky took part, performing, along with Novikov, a song on verses by Sasha Cherny “Tararam”. Alexander Vasilievich described the result of his work on the creation of this album:

The record “Pineapples in Champagne” is a gallery of bizarre and unique jewelry of the Silver Age poetry. I made each of them a musical frame. Five years of fine jewelry work ^[21]

Member of the annual National Chanson Award of the Year in the Kremlin .

In 2011, before the elections to the State Duma , Alexander Novikov handed over to Yekaterinburg for distribution to the well-known blogger Alexei Navalny a clip-parody “GOLO ... SUY!” ^[22] .

Since 2014, she has been a member of the jury of the TV program Three Chords ^[23] and has performed on her stage several times.

In December 2016, Novikov was charged under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code ( fraud on an especially large scale). December 23 sent by the court for two months under house arrest . According to the investigation, Novikov and the former Deputy Minister of Economics of the Sverdlovsk Region Mikhail Shilimanov collected about 150 million rubles from the shareholders of the construction of the cottage village “Queens Bay” in Yekaterinburg, and then transferred this money to their accounts. The construction of the village was stopped, law enforcement officers estimated the amount of damage at 35 million 627 thousand rubles ^[24] .

On July 30, 2018, the Department of State Housing and Construction Supervision of the Sverdlovsk Region signed a conclusion on the compliance of the constructed facility with the requirements of technical regulations. On September 7, 2018, the Ministry of Construction of the Sverdlovsk Region issued a permit for the commissioning of houses of PZHSK “Queens Bay”. From this moment, the shareholders got the opportunity to receive their apartments and issue a certificate of ownership.

On July 17, 2019, the Office of the Investigative Committee for the Sverdlovsk Region, due to the lack of corpus delicti, stopped the criminal prosecution of Alexander Novikov, who was accused of embezzlement of shares in the Queens Bay residential complex ^[25] .

Awards (Chanson of the Year)

Most Famous Songs

Discography

Magnetic Albums

• 1983 - Rock Proving Ground (Alexander Novikov and the Rock Proving Ground group) (previously not officially published; in 2008, it was included in the collection “Alexander Novikov. MP3 Series” with design errors and a shortened version)
• 1983 - Take me, cabman (the sound of songs in the 1983 album is slower than in the 1984 album) (11 songs)
• 1984 - Rock Proving Ground II (Alexander Novikov and the Rock Proving Ground Group)
• 1984 - Take me, cabman (original name “East Street”) (18 songs)
• 1990 - Second concert after liberation (not officially published)
• 1990 - I am in Yekaterinburg (Alexander Novikov and the group "Engels's Grandchildren") (album)

Vinyl records

• 1991 - Take me, cabman (Alexander Novikov and the Hipish band) (9 songs)
• 1993 - Necklace of Magadan
• 1993 - Urban novel (recorded in 1992)
• 1993 - In a provincial restaurant ( Alexander Novikov, “Grandchildren of Engels”, “Hipish” ) (some songs have already sounded in the magnetic album “ I'm in Yekaterinburg”, and the rest of the songs have already been recorded in 1992)

Number Albums

Live albums

Collections

Books

• In his youth, he wore a tattoo in the form of the letters “N. S. ”(Sasha Novikov). ^[26]
• A. Novikov wrote the song “On East Street” (the album “Urban Romance”) in 1985, when he spent 30 days in solitary confinement. ^[27]
• In Yekaterinburg A. Novikov lived in an apartment on Vostochnaya Street, in building No. 62.
• A. Novikov considers his best song “Remember, girl? ..”. ^[27]
• Height 196 cm ^[28]

• Official site of Alexander Novikov
• Biography of Alexander Novikov on the site "Radio Chanson"
• Poems by Alexander Novikov in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• Unofficial Forum of Alexander Novikov