t.A.T.u. – girl Yulya was wooing a SMASH! singer ("Express Gazeta" - Russia)Time of publication: 31.05.2003 |
The group t.A.T.u. has not been giving out any new hits for a long time now but instead has kept the public interest up by all possibilities for scandals. If in Europe, where this project is known to the audience for a relatively short time and all stunts given by the girls and their producer Ivan Shapovalov still cause some scandals, in Russia – t.A.T.u. has significantly lost their popularity. It’s gone so far that their Moscow Fan Club has tumbled down.
"One year ago, we had a solid organisation, we could easily gather up to 500 persons for any action," said its ex-leader Alexandr Bondarev bitterly, sharing a bottle of vodka with us. "Everything started when, at 17, I got freaked out by their song “Ya Soshla S Uma” and began to look for other t.A.T.u. fans on the internet. I created my own unofficial site. To draw attention to the site I pulled news that Lena Katina got killed by a road-roller in Miami. On the site’s forum I met Vova Nasenkov from Naberezhny Chelny. He was wanted by the federal police then for an assault. Later he turned himself in and got out after two months in jail. Vova said that he knew well t.A.T.u.’s concert manager Leonid Dzynik. After one of the gigs, he got into the manager’s car and shamelessly declared that he was following him. Leonid tried to push Vova out of the car. So they got to know each other.
"The idea of establishing a fan club was met positively and we started to gather people. Thus we got Dima, called Kabanches – a professional boxer who liked the group Leningrad and frequently played on the site padonki.ru. Later on Sahsa Prokofyev (Kon’), who was a fan of the soccer team CSKA and group Rammstein, joined us too."
Naked on stage
- What could be in common between all those people and group t.A.T.u.?
"They simply were attracted by a possibility of having a good time. Do you remember, for example, that famous naked orgy during the concert in Park Avenue Disco? It was me who caused it. That day I got drunk at work and after I went to that gig being absolutely “out”. Backstage I had fell asleep in the dressing room. Bright flashes woke me up. It was when Yulia got photographed topless. Right here t.A.T.u. dancers were undressing. I got confused and thought that they were trying to steal my staff. With in a matter of seconds, I flushed them with a bunch of c-words and pushed out of the room. The door lead directly to the stage and a hall full of audience. Later on, all newspapers wrote that the gig culminated in a naked orgy."
- Didn’t your being drunk all the time confuse the t.A.T.u. girls?
"Sure it did! Especially when at one gig in Podolsk an absolutely drunk Vova Nasenkov smashed a pregnant young lady who was among the audience. He suffered a lawsuit on this matter. Though he managed to get clean out of it with some “extra donation” help, no one invited him to the gigs anymore, even the rest of the fan-club members started to receive a cooler attitude towards them. 'We don’t want to have such a fan-club,' bubbled t.A.T.u. all the time. 'It’s simply a gang of drunkards!' I remember when after a gig in Bryansk we sat in a restaurant with t.A.T.u. I turned towards Lena Katina who sat at the table next to us and asked her to pass me some water to drink with vodka. 'Here! Choke on it, you drunk!' shouted Lena and threw the bottle of water right to my head. It was all when we had a pretty good relation – much different from a one I had with Volkova.
"Once, Vova and Kon’ were sitting in Yulia’s staircase and when they ran short on soft drinks to vodka, they decided to ask Yulia to give them some water. The appearance of those two in her doorway, made Yulia let her dog loose. But the dog got beaten up by Kon’. Soon Katina showed up to visit Yulia. Vova and Kon’ tried to make her accompany them to enter Yulia’s place again. Then Yulia borrowed Lena’s pepper-spray and gave them a shot. They had to retreat but leaving the area, in a fit of anger -- they beat up two neighbours of Yulia’s.
"Then Volkova got visited by Anton, called Dvizhok. 'Yulya, I love you,' howled he at her door. She called after Pasha, who was accompanying her all the time. Pasha threw Anton out of the house threatening to put Anton in a car trunk, take to the woods and kill him there."
- Who is that Pasha? Where did he come from?
"God knows! I saw him for the first time last spring at one of the gigs in Park Avenue Disco. It looks like Yulia met him in club Champion at Voykovkaya. She’s been often there with her friends. A leader of the St.Petersburg’s official fan club Galvatron, who frequently followed Yulia to different places, told us this. Before that Yulia was attracted to Serguey Lazarev from group SMASH! She’s been crying over him being not responding to her feelings for him in a mutual way. I remember, during a tour to Perm, Yulia got all hysterical about it. She was yelling that she didn’t want to live any more. The girls from their dance group tried to comfort her. Probably Yulia got to know that Serguey was more interested in boys."
- Did Lena Katina have any relations with the opposite sex?
"You know, Lena is a romantic person. For her, it’s spiritual aspect that counts, not the sexual one. That’s why people she was socialising with were intelligent and smart. For instance, there was a guy with a nice Casper who met Lena during one a tour to St. Petersburg. As usual we were collecting some money for booze and pulled him a t.A.T.u. poster in return. We thought he was some scarecrow from nowhere. Imagine our surprise when we discovered after some time that he was frequently seeing Lena and even gave her a $600 cellular phone for a gift. They continued to see each other for some time later on."
- Why did the fanclub collapse then?
"It was caused by the lack of support from t.A.T.u. I told them that we needed to support fans by giving out t.A.T.u. official photos, t-shirts and skirts. For a group with a million-dollar budget it was nothing. Instead, I had to fight begging for every single piece. At least Lena Kiper supported our activity but when she was replaced by Beata Ardeeva, everything died out. I gave Beata 10 alternatives on further development of our fanclub. She chose the most stupid one which was included as a joke: 'Ivan Shapovalov closes the official fan club.' It was the last drop."
Source: Express Gazeta, Russia
Translation by TatySite.net.
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