By Barbara Davies
THEY WERE once a picture of schoolgirl innocence, their young heads filled with thoughts of horse riding, piano lessons and games of tennis.
But they grew up to be ruthlessly ambitious, their craving for stardom so great that they were even prepared to pose as sex-crazed lesbians in a desperate bid to make it to the top of the charts.
Yulia Volkova, 17, and 18-year-old Lena Katina - better known as the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. - have transformed themselves into one of the most provocative music acts ever and are poised to snatch the UK chart's No 1 spot this weekend with their first English single, All The Things She Said.
Dressed in provocatively skimpy school uniforms, the pair wrap their arms around each other, kiss and belt out songs filled with pubescent lesbian love angst.
But the question on everyone's lips is... are the two girls from Moscow really lesbians?
It is rubbish, says Yulia's grandparents Elizaveta and Victor.
Speaking from her wooden dacha in Petrovskoye near Moscow, Elizaveta Volkova says that on a recent visit, Yulia brought her boyfriend to stay.
"He's so tall and respectful, a businessman and he drove a Mercedes," she says proudly. She says Yulia confided in her: "He's the only person I can communicate properly with."
In fact Yulia met her first boyfriend in her grandparents' village where she used to spend her summer holidays.
Neighbours recall how she and a local boy called Anton Khrulev used to walk around arm-in-arm or holding hands.
"The whole village knew they were in love," said one.
Former Wham! producer Simon Napier-Bell also throws light on the sapphic lifestyle the girls claim to aspire to.
Napier-Bell produces Russian boy band Smash, whose members Vlad Topalov and Sergei Lazarev once sang with Yulia and Lena in their former band The Fidgets. The four still meet regularly, and according to Napier-Bell: "The girls are not as close as the videos show. They're not lesbians."
And he doesn't rule out past relationships between Yulia and Lena and their former band members.
"They're very close," he says. "They still see each other all the time."
And the final spanner in the t.A.T.u. publicity wheel is the fact that at the end of last year they were photo-graphed in a Moscow nightclub - with their boyfriends.
Yulia later admitted the relationships: "Yes, they are our boyfriends. They are ordinary guys with normal orientations. Sorry but that's all we can say about them."
Lena has since split up with her man. She says: "Since December 29 2002, I haven't been having a relationship. Something happened. We're apart for the moment."
Their new single, translated into English from their Russian hit, sold more than 20,000 copies when it was released in Britain on Monday and the steamy video which accompanies it shows the girls sharing passionate clinches in the rain.
Their overtly sexual performances have helped make them the first Eastern Bloc group to sell more than a million albums in Europe.
The publicity machine surrounding the girls is unquestionably ferocious - much is made of their claim to have been lovers in their early teens. Even the band's name, t.A.T.u., translates as "This one loves that one" in Russian.
Their management is happy to leak details of how the girls insist on a double bed in their hotel room, but will not confirm or deny their sexual orientation. Yulia and Lena - perfectly aware of the marketing power of controversy - try to remain as mysterious as possible about the subject, veering from one extreme to the other.
"Everybody thinks we are lesbians," says Lena. "But we just love each other."
Later she adds: "In the past year we became so close and now feel something more than just friendship for each other."
"Maybe it's just an act," teases Yulia. "Or maybe it's love between two girls." On another occasion, Yulia claims: "Yes we did sleep together. I mean, we had a sexual experience.
Lena adds: "You know, it's emotions, sometimes they come and you can't resist. We are so close you wouldn't believe. Do you want to hear that we are f*****g every night? Of course we do.
"It has been love for a very long time. We have been together about four or five years. We work together and we sleep together."
BUT as their childhood photographs suggest, the girls from t.A.T.u may not be quite as naughty as their managers would like us to think.
Flame-haired Elena Sergeivna Katina, the daughter of successful musician and songwriter Sergei Katin, grew up in Moscow with her father, her mother Inessa - who owns a clothing store - and two elder sisters.
Yulia Olegovna Volkova, a dark-eyed cropped brunette considered the wilder of the pair, is also from Moscow and was an only child born to businessman Oleg Volkov and his wife, Larissa.
Their early lives were strikingly similar: middle-class, financially comfortable and nothing if not respectable. After attending junior high school, they both studied classical piano at Moscow music school.
The girls shared a childhood passion for ballroom dancing and figure skating.
And if they like to present themselves as tearaway teenagers, they tend to keep quieter about the fact that their mothers accompany them everywhere - even on late-night trips to their favourite nightclubs in Russia's capital city.
Few fans back in Russia know that Lena is also studying for a psychology degree at Moscow State University - she intends to specialise in social psychology and later study law - or that the girls still live with their families when they are back home in Moscow. They met eight years ago when both were selected for a child pop band called Neposedi or The Fidgets. Yulia was kicked out of the band for bad behaviour - she is said to have wanted other band members to strip and touch each other during an act - and Lena followed a year later.
They were reunited at a casting for what was to become t.A.T.u. when they were both just 14. The man credited with transforming these two "nice" middle-class girls into raunchy teenage temptresses is Ivan Shapovalov, a former Russian psychologist and advertising guru.
THE 36-year-old father of one studied at a medical institute in Saratov before setting up his own practice and working as a family therapist for a couple of years.
Bored with his job, he set up his own advertising business before realising the financial potential that lay in the youth music market which, five years ago, was just beginning to emerge in post-Soviet Russia.
"I was searching for an image," he says of the inspiration behind t.A.T.u. "And then an idea came to me, to observe their relationship. You see it in all relations between girls. Lesbianism.
"I noticed that in Lena and Yulia. Perhaps it wasn't so obvious but it was my task to point it up and do it beautifully. We do not intend to shock British people. Why should Britain be shocked?
"It happens very often with girls, when a border between friendship and love evaporates. They can sleep together, kiss each other."
His game plan for the girls did not initially impress their parents.
"There were some difficulties," he admits. "Their mothers, grandmothers, were displeased, cursing me. And I told them that this was how it had to be."
Yulia says: "The first video certainly shocked them. They like our songs but they said: 'Don't you feel a bit embarrassed? The whole of Russia will see it. Aren't you ashamed?'
"We said: 'No, we're not.'"
Lena adds: "My mother told me that when my granny heard my songs she liked them and said she thought it could be fun to be a lesbian!"
Simon Napier- Bell scoffs at claims that Yulia and Lena have been manipulated.
"The girls know exactly what they are doing," he says. "They've been together for eight or nine years now. They've worked in stage, theatre - they understand the whole scene.
"They are two professionals who know exactly where they are going and what they want out of it.
"To suggest they are being manipulated is ridiculous. t.A.T.u is a brilliant collaboration, like any good act in the modern music business. They have a great producer, but the girls are in charge. What he's done is very clever and very well-manufactured."
In their unquenchable thirst for fame, Yulia and Lena, it seems, are happy to play up to the image Shapovalov has created for them.
"If I'm nice, a good girl, I won't finish first," Yulia says. "I have to be smart, be a snake, in order to be successful." Lena adds: "We've been dreaming about it. We believed that one day we'd become famous. We wanted it and we've got it. Now we simply enjoy it."
And while this ambitious streak is clearly not going to disappear quickly, the girls' long-term aims are rather more ordinary.
"If we think about life in, say, 10 years, of course we are both dreaming about having normal families and kids," says Yulia. |
