From Paul Bracchi and Will Stewart in Moscow
They grabbed the headlines as they stormed the charts with their ‘lesbian’ act. Now we reveal the tawdry truth about what happened when their moment of fame was over…
They wore skimpy school uniforms. They kissed and fondled on stage, they spoke crudely, almost pornographically, about the pleasures of lesbianism. Even their name – Tatu – was explicitly sexual: the word is Russian slang fot “this girl loves that girl”.
And the more outrageous their behaviour, the more provocative their remarks, the more records they sold. Indeed, for four headline-grabbing weeks last year when their first English language single, All The Things She Said, was No. 1 in Britain, racking up more that 13 million sales worldwide, Tatu- teenage singing due Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova – were described by one critic as ‘the biggest pop sensation on the planet’.
Of course, almost everything about Tatu was an exercise in cynical manipulation and publicity seeking. In fact, their blatant brand of 'paedo-pop' was created to exploit the disturbing market in underage sex. But among the acres of column inches devoted to Tatu phenomenon, one question was never asked: what effect was it all having on Yulia and Lena themselves?
After all, they were just 14 and 15 (respectively) when they began being paraded around seedy clubs and concert halls in their native Russia performing little more than simulated sex routines to music.
That legacy of exploitation – perhaps child abuse would be more accurate – is shockingly evident today. Yulia, now 19, revealed tearfully in a recent documentary on Russian TV that she has been left feeling suicidal (‘I have such thoughts that I want to die,’ she says tearfully).
She admits that at the height of the duo’s popularity last year she felt pressurised into having an abortion – because she knew that if she kept the baby the image of Tatu would have been shattered. Lena, too, also 19, has suffered from depression and says she feels ‘disgusted’ by her sordid antics with Tatu. In fact she recently turned to religion to ‘redeem my sins’.
Could these two troubled young women really be the same precocious, sexually-charged, adolescents who gained such notoriety – particularly in Britain? It all started last February when the girls stepped off a plane from Russia at Heathrow for a promotional tour and immediately sparked controversy.
Predictably – some would say according to plan – there were calls for their records to be banned from radio stations. The duo went on Top Of The Pops (they were not allowed to embrace), but the BBC refused to screen the video featuring the Tatu girls in passionate clinches. What no one knew at the time was that the real victims were Yulia and Lena themselves. In truth, their fate is even bleaker than depicted in the Russian TV documentary.
First, they have seen little – or nothing – of the millions they made with Tatu. “The girls were never paid well,” said a Russian show business source. Even when they were enjoying international chart success, it now emerges, the duo were paid no more than $300 (Ј165) per concert.
Yulia still lives with her family in a slum flat in a five-story block in Moscow. Even by Russian standards it is particularly grim. Her mother is a chronic diabetic who rarely goes out; her father a small-time businessman who’s fallen on hard times.
Lena, the daughter of a struggling musician, finally managed to scrape together enough money to move into her own apartment in the Russian capital last month. According to friends, it is “nothing luxurious”. Indeed, there is only one room. Neither Lena or Yulia own a car.
And they are still tied to their svengali manager – Ivan Shapovalov – even though they have not performed for months and have told him they quit.
In fact, they are still under contract to his production company and could incur financial penalties if they leave. A spokesman for Shapovalov confirmed yesterday: “They will pay a lot if they ever decided to split up with Ivan.”
Shapovalov, divorced and in his late 30s, it should be pointed out, has just moved into a penthouse in a fashionable district of Moscow. He is ferried around the city in a chauffeur-driven limousine, and much of the estimated Ј3.5 million fortunes he made from Tatu – says a source who worked with him – is stashed away in offshore accounts. But, then, this is a man who enjoys a sinister reputation.
A former advertising filmmaker, he got the idea for Tatu while surfing internet porn sites back in the late 90s. The most popular, he discovered were, child porn sites. “Nine in ten are looking for underage entertainment,” he told the Mail last year. “This means there is a big interest as well as dissatisfaction – their needs are not being met.”
He assembled a team of songwriters and producers and began auditioning young girls to join a new group to meet that need. Yulia and Lena were chosen from 500 hopefuls and Tatu launched.
Only now, however, is the extent of Shapovalov pernicious influence over his ‘proteges’ becoming known. He has always denied, for example, seducing Yulia shortly after she wae selected. But former Tatu song writer Elena Kiper, 28, says the unsavoury rumours are true.
“From the word go Ivan told me he wanted to have sex with Yulia,” she said. “He told me he s*****d her on their second meeting. They did it in the back of his car. Yulia was just a young girl from a poor background looking for fame and fortune and Ivan convinced her that was how she could get it.”
The age of consent in Russia is 14, but, even so, Yulia’s family would have been horrified if what Elena Kiper says is true. Both families insist they were deceived by Shapavlov about his plans for Tatu. “I remember how Yulia’s mum tried like crazy to find a gap in the law so that she could cancel the contract or at least get it changed,” says a family friend. Nevertheless, most parents – rich or poor – would surely have removed their children from Shapovalov as soon as they discovered what his real motives were, regardless of the consequences – financial or otherwise.
So Yulia and Lena’s childhood effectively ended the day they signed on the dotted line in 1999. They had entered - albeit, unwittingly – into a modern day Faustian pact. They would pretend to be lesbians, and milk it for all it was worth, in return for 'fame and fortune'. Is it any wonder they have became damaged young adults?
Indeed, during their for-native adolescent years they were effectively forced to live a lie. Boyfriends, in particular, had to be kept strictly secret.
Tatu’s image – one which had been used to sell millions of records – came close to being exposed last year in the most tragic of circumstances. Shortly before Yulia’s 18th birthday she was admitted to a Moscow clinic. Her management hushed up the real reason for the visit. We now know, however, that she was there to have an abortion. She first suspected she might be pregnant, she reveals, when she began ‘eating like a horse’. “I just ate and ate. Then I started feeling dizzy so I took a pregnancy test. I told my mum about it, I had to. I couldn’t hide it from her.” Yulia also came to another decision. “I realised I had a job and a career,” she said. “So when God gives you a chance why not take it. But there was a baby inside me, a little baby. And it was there, and then it was no longer there. That was so hard. I just cried and cried.”
So what was her manager’s response? Yulia was rushed off to Prauge on tour within days. Yulia – who does not reveal the name of the father – today talks of her bitter regrets of joining Tatu. “You don’t think at the beginning that what you are doing is bad,” she says, “but after time passes you think ‘what a fool I have been. Why did I do it?’”
So an abortion, ‘paedo-pop’, an alleged sordid encounter with her manager in the back of a car. Should we really be surprised that Yulia admits feeling suicidal?
Lena had also been through a personal crisis. “I felt do bad about it (being in Tatu) for a long time. I realise that the time would come to pay for everything you’ve done in your life. And I now want to redeem my sins. I go to church all the time. I tell the priest everything about Tatu. And he tries to help me. He blesses me.” Tellingly, she adds: “I feel I am absolutely talentless… I am leaving showbusiness.”
Indeed, Lena is now hoping to go to college to study law. After joining Tatu the girls did become famous – or imfanous – but the fortune never materialised and they have been left psychologically scared. How they and their parents now wish they could turn back the clock.
Of course, there can be few such odious figures as Ivan Shapovalov, who must shoulder most of the blame for what happened to Yulia and Lena (ominously, he is now lauching another band).
But their record label – part of the giant Universal music group- and concert promoters in Britain and elsewhere were also prepared to do business with this man and the message he was so keen to promote. Perhaps, in the end, this is the most damning indictment of the Tatu story.
Source: Daily Mail, UK
Transcription by Med Debz
Typos fixed by katbeidar for TatySite.net
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