Conversation on the train

Design and First Version

According to the memoirs of Andrei Makarevich , the idea of ​​the song appeared during his trip by train from the city of Gagarin in 1983 ^{[1] [2]} . There is no information about the destination of this trip in open sources, but the musician mentioned that its duration was about three hours ^[3] . As Makarevich recalled, “it was hot” ^[3] , two men were sitting at the window - “people were driving with mushrooms, drinking, arguing about life. I <...> quietly eavesdropped ” ^[1] . “Looking at them,” Makarevich composed a song-story about a conversation in a train - “all in my head” ^[3] . Thus, according to the author, the song was “copied absolutely from nature” ^[3] , in its text “everything is absolutely true, perhaps, except for Taganrog . Taganrog added for rhyme ” ^[1] . In the same 1983, the song was included in the concert program "Time Machines". One of the first concert performances of the song took place in September during the group’s performance in the Primorsky Regional Philharmonic in Vladivostok ^[4] . The session musician - violinist Sergey Ryzhenko also took part in the concert. The part of the violin gave the song a sound close to the country style, which distinguished this performance from the studio versions prepared later.

The first studio recording of “Talking on the Train” was made in early 1984 while working on a series of songs called “ Aliens Among Strangers ”. Later, in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, A. Makarevich called this cycle “the first real magneto- album” compiled by the band’s musicians themselves, and not by numerous illegal publishers ^[5] . The recording was made in the studio of the IM Astakhov House of Culture in Moscow and was unauthorized: songs were recorded in the evening and at night ^{[6] [7]} . The sound engineer was Vladimir Shirkin, who worked at that time with Muslim Magomayev . The arrangement of the song “Conversation on the Train” prepared for this recording did not actually change in the future. In particular, on the last chords of the song, keyboardist Alexander Zaitsev recorded a separate part on the synthesizer , imitating an artistic whistle, which was later repeated both in concert performances and in the studio version of the song for the album “ Rivers and Bridges ” ^{[Comm. 2]} . The phonogram of “Conversation on the Train” from the album “Aliens Among Strangers” was not released by the group until 1993, almost ten years after it was recorded, as part of the album-collection “Best Songs” Time Machines “1979-1985” , released by “ Sintez Records . "

Start Over Movie Version

Beginning in 1983, for three years the musicians of “Time Machine” took part in the filming of the musical drama film “ Start Again ” directed by Alexander Stefanovich ^{[8] [9]} . A. Makarevich played the main role in the film - the young bard Nikolai Kovalev. For the soundtrack of the film, the authors selected several songs and musical themes composed by Makarevich and Alexander Kutikov , including the song “Conversation on the Train”. The soundtrack was recorded in 1985 at the Mosfilm studio under the guidance of the Soviet composer and sound engineer Viktor Babushkin . According to A. Makarevich, they refused to record the part on the synthesizer simulating a whistle in this version of the arrangement “Talk on the Train” - instead, they recorded the “live” whistle of one of the staff engineers of Mosfilm Vladimir Vinogradov ^{[3] [Comm. 3]} .

Work on recording the soundtrack of the film was carried out after the adoption in May 1985 of the highest authorities of the USSR legislative acts aimed at overcoming drunkenness and alcoholism - the so-called "anti-alcohol campaign . " The list of activities of this campaign also included the censorship of works of literature, music, theater and cinema, which affected, among other things, the film “Begin Again”, which was in production. So, at the request of the editors, the text of the first couplet of “Talking on the Train” was amended by the editors of the film and completely eliminating references to alcohol topics ^[10] . As director A. Stefanovich later recalled: “They thought it better to remove the topic of drinking from sin” ^[10] .

Later Makarevich explained what arguments he considered convincing in order to change the lyrics and thereby leave it to the film. So, in particular, the chief literary editor of Mosfilm, Nina Glagoleva, in an interview with the musician drew his attention to the fact that the main idea of ​​the song “Talk on the Train” is not what “people on the train drink”, but the thesis formulated in her the last lines - “And everyone went his own way // And the train went his own way” - which “thank God they don’t remove from the song” ^[11] . In addition, according to Makarevich, by the time the film “Start Again” was released in 1986, this song “everyone already knew that way and really knew how it was sung” ^[11] , many had her tape recordings ^[3] .

Version for the album "Rivers and Bridges"

At the end of 1986, at the rehearsal base of the Setun culture center, Time Machine recorded the second, final edition of the Rivers and Bridges program. The disc became the first "numbered" album of the group, published by the All-Union Recording Studio "Melody" on vinyl in 1987. The track list of the album included, inter alia, the song “Talk on the Train”. The text of the first verse of this version was recorded with the same changes as in the version for the movie "Start Again". Thus, the only studio recording of a song with an unchanged version of the text of the first couplet remains the version recorded for the magnetic album “Aliens Among Strangers”.

The album “Rivers and Bridges” was released by almost all Melody's factories (with the exception of Tallinn , Tbilisi and Baku ), an additional print run was printed in 1988 and 1989 ^[12] . Between 1987 and mid-1988, the circulation of the plate "Rivers and Bridges" amounted to about one million copies ^[13] .

There is no information about other studio versions of the song “Conversation on the Train” recorded by the group ever in open sources. Video clips for the song were not filmed.

The key of the song is in D minor . The main harmonic sequence consists of the following chords: Dm - F - Gm - Am - Dm - B - F - Gm - C ^[14] .

The poetic size of the lyrics is a tactician with unequal stanzas (T4-3) ^[15] . The use of this poetic size, according to N. Klyuyeva, in the case of the composition “Conversation on the Train” is motivated not by the complexity of the musical basis of the song, but by the installation of the transmission of oral speech, “a real carriage conversation” ^[15] . And further it is noted that despite the fact that the phrases of both interlocutors-lyrical heroes of the song include syllabonic tonic fragments, but “the appeal to the tactician, the most free of meters , creates the feeling of a real conversation” ^[16] .

Yuri Domansky spoke of the almost complete lack of variability in the lyrics of the songs of “Time Machine” in various studio and concert versions ^[17] . In this regard, he analyzed the features of the transformation of the meaning of the text “Conversation in the train” due to changes made to it during the “anti-alcohol campaign”. The situation described in the original version of the text of the first verse, when two previously strangers drank on the train and started “arguing for no pragmatic purpose, but simply because when you drink it, it certainly“ draws to talk ”,” Domansky described as “vital” ^{[ 18]} . In the amended version, he called a similar dispute between sober people far-fetched, implausible. ^[18] The line “ When there is nothing more to drink ” was replaced, according to the researcher, “with a stamp , a verbal phrase that has long been erased and erased -“ And cereals from n they cannot be welded . ”As a result of this substitution, the meaning of the phrase“ last thing ”changed. If in the original version of the text of the first couplet, the semantics of the phrase were based on the“ fusion ”of two meanings - direct (temporary order of actions, namely,“ first drink, but only then pick a quarrel ") and portable ( idiom " the Final Problem "colloquially means" very bad, no good "), in an altered version of the direct value it was completely lost, preserved only the value" which has already become the identity phraseologism stamp " ^[19] . The second substitution in the text of the song - the phrase “ It got dark in the window ” - from the point of view of the researcher, is also a cliche ^[19] . The use of such stamps “is in no way able to revive the text, rather the other way around” ^[18] , in the end, Domansky concludes, “the whole song actually moved from the category of rock songs to the category of pop songs, that is, those based on well-known, unobtrusive listener verbal constructions ” ^[19] . However, without improving the “quality of the song”, the modified version of it, at the same time, gave the song “versatility” in terms of meaning ^[20] .

Julia Shigareva evaluated the song in the context of the concept of the album “Rivers and Bridges”, expressed by A. Makarevich as follows: “This is not a collection of songs, but a single work - a journey to the Country of Rivers and Bridges. Rivers separate us. Bridges help connect. ” According to Shigareva, people share, among other things, also their position in life. “By presenting two opposite beliefs to the audience, the author makes it clear that life is much more complicated than our conflicting ideas about it: “ And each went his own way // And the train went his own ” ^[21] . A similar thesis was expressed by Jakub Sadowski in the article “Railroad in Russian rock poetry of perestroika and the post-Soviet era (through the eyes of the Pole)”: the denouement of the song, in his opinion, does not confirm the correctness of any of the fellow travelers, “along with this,“ not one of the personified they are also not condemned by their positions ” ^[22] . Sadowski classified the heroes of the song - “two philosophizing passengers” - as “an enthusiast of the train and the chosen path” and as a “road pessimist” ^[22] , and suggested “wagon booze” ^[ as a pretext for intellectual and (popular) philosophical disputes ^{[ 23]} . In general, in his opinion, there are at least two possible interpretations of the metaphorical meaning of the lyrics: a purely political dialogue or a timeless dialogue, philosophical, “a dialogue of two positions on the road of life” ^[22] .

Journalist Mikhail Margolis talked about the song in the context of the broader topic of discussion between Moscow and Leningrad rock subcultures ^{[3] [Comm. 4]} . The most prominent representative of the first was Andrei Makarevich, the second - the leader of the Aquarium group Boris Grebenshchikov . According to Margolis, the difference between the subcultures was illustrated, among other things, by the example of two “cornerstone railway songs”: the composition “Railway Water” by Grebenshchikov in the Leningrad subculture and the composition “Conversation in the Train” by Makarevich in Moscow. Indicative, from his point of view, is that moment in the text of the first song the narration is conducted on behalf of the lyrical hero himself, and in the second - on behalf of some outside observer ^[3] . Dmitry Rumyantsev turned to “Talk on the Train” to illustrate the thesis of two opposing views of the world in the poetic works of Grebenshchikov and Makarevich, namely, in the life of the lyrical hero Makarevich, in his opinion, there is no love that “does not require anything in return and always forgives " ^[24] . E. Gidrevich analyzed the text of “Conversation on the Train” in comparison with the lyrics of the song “Train” by another representative of the Leningrad rock school - the leader of the Kino group Viktor Tsoi ^[25] . Despite the fact that the train is a suburban mode of transport, and in “Conversation on the Train” we are talking about a long-distance train, the common interest in both songs is the author’s interest in what passengers do while traveling. The lyrical hero Tsoi smokes alone in the vestibule , the hero of Makarevich observes the controversy of two random fellow travelers who entered into a dialogue after drinking alcohol. Thus, Gidrevich concludes, if Tsoi’s cigarette is “an occasion to go out to the vestibule, to be alone,” then Makarevich’s bottle is “an occasion to make an acquaintance” ^[25] . Interlocutors unfamiliar at the beginning of the journey as a result can tell each other that they do not trust even the closest people ^[25] . The main theses of the text of the song “Conversation on the Train” Gidrevich calls the following: “Truth is in fault”, “Truth is born in a dispute”, “Every person is right in his rightness” ^[26] . “Despite the fact that the debaters remained on their own side, the truth lies not in the subject of the dispute, but in the fact that both points of view on what life is are true, because each person’s circumstances are different” ^[26] . N. Nezhdanova cited “Conversation on the Train” as an example of a song substantiating the thesis about the antinomy of Russian rock poetry: two polar pictures of the world — two extremes — are brought together in its text, but the unity of contradictions is affirmed ^[27] .

At least one author’s commentary regarding interpretation of the lyrics is known. In 1987, in the journal Student Meridian A. Makarevich, answering reproaches for reducing the relevance of the group’s work in the second half of the 1980s, he mentioned one of the possible interpretations of the text “Conversation on the train”: “Here, we are told, - before, your songs were social ... “Isn't our“ Talk on the Train ”social and problematic? It's just that this song about the “right” and “left” outlook on life sounds from the screen and therefore does not scare anyone, it does not shock ” ^[28] .

The specifics of perceiving the problems of the song “Conversation on the Train” by representatives of the official Soviet culture is shown in one of the scenes of the movie “Start Again”. So, according to the plot, wanting to be enrolled in the state philharmonic society , the hero of Makarevich performs this composition at a meeting of the artistic council . After which some of its members either refuse to express their opinion about the song, or are limited to low-content tautological statements. One of the members of the artistic council expresses “deep misunderstanding” ^{[29] of the} meaning of the song and cites its author as an example of the popular song “Komarovo” at that time, in which, from her point of view, “everything is clear”: “... I did not understand anything . Honestly, nothing. Who is going? Where is going? You say that this is a song about the train. Well, take an example from your friends: what is your friend Kholodkov singing about [A friend of the main character and a popular pop artist ]? “For a week, until the second I’ll leave for Komarovo” - and everything is clear: who is going and where he is going. And here is the result - he goes to an international competition. ” Official criticism accused the group of unwillingness (inability) to talk about current problems and avoiding them through “substituting open conversation with a metaphor” and an indirect narrative: “you have to save some passengers in an old dialogue on some train” ^[30] .

Journalist and radio host Mikhail Kozyrev emphasized the fact of the song’s wide popularity and popularity: “It’s universal, it’s in the subcortex - in this country you say: “ Carriage disputes are the last thing ” , and any person will answer you: “ When there is nothing more to drink ” . This is an absolute national treasure. This <...> is a song that has always been played on trains, when traveling to student construction teams, and so on ” ^[3] . Kozyrev himself gave an example from his own youth, during which, together with his school friend, they often played “Talking on the Train” on the guitar, Kozyrev was supposed to make a whistle at the end of the song, in connection with which he called it “a manual on artistic whistling” ^{[31 ]} . According to the actor Leonid Yarmolnik , in the song “Conversation on the Train” “there is a process <...>, there really is a knock of wheels, and the story is told, <...> there is some kind of character <...>, there is a feeling absolutely kindred, terribly understandable ” ^[3] .

Rokkult.ru columnist Dmitry Glukhov called the song “a wonderful philosophical parable ” ^[32] and placed it in second place in the collection of “12 rock songs about trains and the railway,” noting that the discussion of two random travel companions on the train “had long been divided into quotes, and many still argue about whether we are drivers or passengers in this life, and whether we go everywhere or only “where the path is paved” ^[32] .

In 2004, during a performance at the Rossiya State Concert Hall, together with Andrei Makarevich, the song was performed by Alexei Kortnev ^[33] , and in 2011 he presented his own version of “Talking on the Train” on the recording of the TV show “Property of the Republic” . In 2014, in one of the issues of the One to One! »The song was spoofed by Alena Sviridova ^[34] .

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Literature

• Makarevich A.V. The place where the light. - M .: Eksmo-Press, 2005 .-- 480 p.
• Dodolev E. Time machines. - M .: Olma Media Group, 2014 .-- 400 p.
• Domansky Yu.V. Variability in song lyrics by Andrey Makarevich // Russian rock poetry: text and context. - Yekaterinburg, Tver, 2010. - No. 11. - S. 69-77.
• Klyueva N. Metric repertoire of the "Moscow School" of rock poetry // Russian rock poetry: text and context. - Tver, 2007. - No. 9. - S. 186—194.
• Shigareva Yu. V. Time Travel // Russian rock poetry: text and context. - Tver, 2000. - No. 3. - S. 27–33.
• Sadowski J. Railway in Russian rock poetry of perestroika and post-Soviet time (through the eyes of a Pole) // Russian rock poetry: text and context. - Tver, 2000. - No. 4. - S. 29—35.
• Gidrevich E. A. The theme of the railway in the poetry of Russian rock // Russian rock poetry: text and context. - Tver, 2011. - No. 12. - S. 263—271.