Tatu leave slums behind ("The Sun" - UK)Time of publication: 11.02.2003 |
By KATY WEITZ
in Moscow
TEENAGE pop duo Tatu have become rich and famous beyond their wildest dreams – by pretending to be lesbians.
The girls, at No1 with All The Things She Said, are only too happy to play up to the image created by their seedy svengali Ivan Shapovalov.
It is hardly surprising — Shapovalov’s sleazy ideas have brought singers Lena Katina and Julia Volkova a Ј3.5million fortune from worldwide sales.
And one look at the Moscow slums where the girls grew up is enough to understand why faking lesbianism must seem a small price to pay to escape.
Yesterday we revealed how Shapovalov created Tatu because of his own interest in sex with underage girls.
We told how, far from being lesbians, 17-year-old Julia and Lena, 18, have boyfriends but are forced to fake raunchy behaviour because of a contract they were tricked into signing.
Now, for the first time, The Sun can reveal the girls’ tough childhoods.
Julia, the only child of Oleg and Larissa Volkova, has worked as a singer since the age of ten to help boost the family’s finances.
Her mum was and still is a chronic diabetic who rarely leaves their tiny, run-down flat in the outskirts of the Russian capital. And Oleg, a small-time businessman fallen on hard times, had no qualms about sending his child off to work at such a young age.
The family live in what is jokingly referred to in Russian as a “Kruschoba” — a slum flat built by former Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev in the Sixties to house the workers.
They were cheap and badly made even then but now the decay and dilapidation has to be seen to be believed.
The five-storey flats north west of the city centre are covered in cracked, peeling plaster, graffiti and rusting iron bars.
Bare light bulbs expose grim, dirty entrances where abandoned, rusted cars lie covered in the snow and old gas stoves litter the corridors.
The couple refused to speak to The Sun when we visited. But two of Julia’s former teachers from Moscow Music School No62 were happy to chat about their infamous pupil.
Lydia Pilipenko, 59, who taught Julia for eight years from when she was six, said: “Julia always had great musical ability — she was a brilliant piano player with an unusual emotional maturity which came out when she played.
“She was also a beautiful girl and attracted a lot of male attention. Julia was active and energetic and fanatical about music.
“We are very proud of her but we are also sad that she has had to fake this lesbian image to get attention for her music. It wasn’t us who taught her that.”
Natalia Makarova, 55, the school’s musical director, said: “We don’t like the fact it’s so sexy but we hope she turns back to proper, classical music in a couple of years.
“We know she had to work because her mother was ill — they were not wealthy — but hopefully she won’t be with Tatu forever.
“Of course all girls want to be rich and famous but we hope this will lead to better things.”
Lena Katina also comes from a disadvantaged upbringing. She is the third daughter of struggling musician Sergei Katina and his wife Inessa but spent much of her childhood living with her grandmother.
According to Elena Pindzhoyan, who runs the theatre troupe Fidget to which both girls belonged, the family home was not a happy one.
Elena, 32, said: “I know Lena didn’t like staying with her parents much so she was always with her grandmother. But she was quite shy and wouldn’t talk much about her life.”
In the Fidget troupe of 80 children, aged three to 14, the girls learned how to sing, dance and act and frequently put on stage performances.
Elena says: “Julia was a funny, joyful girl. She was quite loud and boisterous — a typical young girl in many ways but she seemed very insecure.
“She would plaster her face with layers of make-up. It was obscene. We would beg her to take it off – after all, she was just a child.
“And her parents hated her wearing it too so she would leave home with a clean face then pile on kilos of make-up on the bus here.
“Lena was her complete opposite — she was calm and tender. More philosophical than Julia. They knew each other but they weren’t great friends.
“They were picked for the group because they looked good together and not because they were lesbians. That is just an image.”
Now the girls are raking in the cash as worldwide sales of their album, 200 km/h In The Wrong Lane, soar above five million.
Last week they became the first Russian act to top the UK singles charts.
But it is obvious that Tatu are not bothered about what people think of their image.
A clue to how they really feel about their image slipped out at a recent press conference.
Julia screamed: “Buy our album! Tell people not to buy pirate copies of our music. We need the money.”
The dank, grimy stairwell smells like a sewer and water drips constantly. It is no wonder the Moscow mayor has vowed to have all the Kruschobas knocked down. But Oleg and Larissa still live there, despite their daughter’s new-found wealth — and so does Julia when she is in Moscow.
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