– Your brother Valery is incredibly lucky - you write songs for him, you don’t need to buy them.
“It’s not him who’s lucky, but me, that I have such a brother.” Who would need my songs if he didn’t perform them like that? Here, in fact, those who are lucky still need to think about it.
– How did it happen that you became a producer?
– At the time when I started studying music, such a profession had never been heard of. At first, when I was six years old, I just felt that I really loved music. At the children's screening in the cinema, the film “Oginsky's Polonaise” was shown. I heard this wonderful melody - and something immediately turned over in my brain. I begged my mother to buy me a violin and give it to me. music school. And on entrance exam I was told that I was practically mediocre, I had no hearing, no voice, no rhythm. But they still took the violin - there was simply no competition for this department, and there were few boys.
- Did you send your brother to the music school too?
- Yes, as a matter of fact, they gave it for company with me - not to say that he really wanted it. But they took him to the piano as a more talented person than me.
And we both did terribly in public school. I only got A's in subjects that interested me, such as chemistry. The rest are dead threes. Valera has the same thing.
Best of the day
– Is it really possible that you get C grades in physical education?
“Physical education in our school was taught simply - we threw a ball for 45 minutes and ran. They gave high fives to almost everyone who came. But my brother and I went in for sports on our own. I am involved in athletics, swimming and basketball. Valera - everyone. We grew up in the workers' village of BNZ (Batumi Oil Refinery), in Georgia near Batumi. And so that we don't get caught bad company, Mom decided to keep us busy with something. And so from morning to night we went to all the circles that were possible.
- How about misbehaving and tearing up the drain in the neighbor’s garden?
- Picking the neighbor's plums is all a trifle! We made explosive mixtures from lime and set fire to barns. They blew up the carbide. They did terrible things. As children, we were so, you know, hopeless. Mom and Dad thought with horror about our future. Oddly enough, some kind of rebirth occurred when we entered the shipbuilding institute. We moved to study in Nikolaev. First I entered, a year later Valera did. At the institute we somehow sharply wised up.
“I had to pay for the rotation of the video”
– Were you interested in girls during your studies?
- Not really. There was no time for that. We were consumed with creativity and career dreams. We rehearsed a lot - five times a week, for four hours. Then I wrote a lot of songs.
- Was it while studying at shipbuilding?
- And in my third year I got into amateur performances, into the ensemble. And from then on, it just started. It turned out that I have hearing, and what not!.. (Laughs.) After all, in childhood I was a somewhat inhibited child, phlegmatic. And then he opened up.
– Sometimes the knowledge gained in childhood and adolescence interferes with choosing a future path. A person knows so much that he cannot decide. Did this bother you?
– There was some period. But life happened in such a way that we went into music. At the end of the 80s we had just graduated from college. Valera studied in graduate school and defended his dissertation in shipbuilding. And I worked at the department at the same institute... Terrible inflation, poverty scientific workers and pushed us to finally abandon the scientific environment and still choose what we liked - music.
– Who produced the first team?
– Kim Breitburg. He comes from Nikolaev, and our institute ensemble in Nikolaev was famous. Kim came to the rehearsal and listened to our first album, which we recorded on a household tape recorder. The album was really good, as I understand now. Then Kim invited us to join the “Dialogue” group - Valera sang, and I played the keyboard and wrote songs. The album was published in Germany.
– It turns out that Breitburg helped you as fellow countrymen?
– No, more like people who surprised him. He saw in us a perspective both for his group and in general. True, then “Dialogue” fell apart, and we were left out of work.
– If I’m not mistaken, it was Evgeny Fridlyand who brought Valery Meladze to Moscow?
– Evgeniy produced “Dialogue” when we worked in the group. Then, when the group broke up, he began producing Bravo. And for several years we tried to promote our songs on our own. In the early 90s, we ourselves came from Nikolaev to Moscow. We borrowed money, found an apartment, and shot our first video, “Don’t disturb my soul, violin.” They put it on television for their own money. After that we were noticed. And in 1995 our first album was released. And that's when real popularity came.
– Why, then, did you decide to take on the project? VIA Gra»?
– Because at some point I thought that I needed to somehow expand the palette. I decided to try purely producing activities. We gathered girls, pretty much any number of them. At first I had fun this way.
- That is, you decided that from any beautiful girl can you make a star?
- No. I just wanted to see if I could make a “product” from any “available material” that would reach the mass public. Well, what happened exceeded all my expectations. It turned out that I am capable of such things. Well, here we go...
“We fed our parents breakfast for a long time”
– What family are you from? Who are the parents?
– They are far from music. Engineers. And my grandmother was actually the secretary of the city committee, my grandfather was one of the managers of the oil refinery in Batumi.
– How did your parents evaluate your creativity with Valery?
- Well, until we really became popular, they were skeptical about it. We regretted that we did not go to work in our specialty, we were not engaged in shipbuilding. And to some extent I understand them. Because we couldn’t get out for quite a long time. And so we fed them “breakfast” all the time. They said: just about, just about everything will happen. But in reality, life was very difficult. Well, in 1995 everything came true. And when they saw us on the country’s central television channels, of course, they were delighted. Now they are proud.
– Over the years of creative searches, have you experienced moments of lack of money?
– There was a state of complete lack of money from 1990 to 1994. This was exactly the moment when we tried to popularize our music. Naturally, nothing worked out for us. Since we were not in the format of that time. “Kar-Man”, Gazmanov, and simple dance music were popular. Ours was complex and melodic. Then she seemed foreign. But our time has come.
– Are your current players from the “Star Factory” good for their time?
- Quite. Here it depends on me, the producer, how I will direct them. These people should become popular not in 5 years, like us, but now.
– Why doesn’t your family move from Kyiv to join you in Moscow?
– And I also live in Kyiv. I moved there from Moscow. I lived here for two years and moved.
- Why?
– It’s impossible to work here, write songs. Busy, noisy. And my citizenship is Ukrainian.
“He named his son after his brother”
– You named your youngest son Valera. Why?
- I love my brother very much. There were no other name options. Even as a child, God knows when, I told my brother that as soon as I have a son, I will call him Valera... Valera is the banner of our entire family. Our vanguard. He became the face of the Meladze family. We have a lot different projects. I have only “Star Factory”, “VIA Gra”, something else. Sister Liana has “Uma2rman”, “Chi-Li”. Well, Valera is our first-born. He was the first to become popular. And it is present in all our projects in one way or another. With your advice and energy. I'm a behind-the-scenes person and it seems like I do everything myself. No, my brother is helping.
– Isn’t it a shame that he is the face of the family, and not you...
“He’s the face and I’m the ass?” No. I'm not offended. I have never strived for publicity. So I came to the Factory with my brother. Moreover, he set a condition for Channel One so that they would not push me out too much. Let my brother perform public functions, and I will work as always. I just love music, that's enough for me. And I don’t have the talent to attract attention to myself.
– Can I ask an indiscreet question? Tell me, Konstantin, where did you stutter?
– I have stuttered since I was two years old.
- Did someone scare you?
- Yes. This is what happened. When my mother went to give birth to Valera, I was given to a nanny. We lived on the first floor, and she on the last. Since our grandparents held leadership positions, they were busy all the time. There was no one to leave me. So they left her with her. And her family was dysfunctional. The nanny's daughter was constantly swearing and fighting with her husband. That day they fought to such an extent that they began throwing knives at each other. At that moment I woke up - and the knife almost hit me. I was very scared and fell silent. Although I started speaking very early. But after that incident I became completely numb. When mom came home from the hospital, she was shocked! A year passed, and I began to speak slowly, but with a terrible stutter. Now it’s nothing, but school years it was just terrible.
- Were you not offended?
“You know, I’m just thinking that I need to say thank you to this nanny.”
–?..
“If I hadn’t been scared, I wouldn’t have become the way I am.” I would have grown up to be a normal child, sociable, cheerful, and developing properly. And I wouldn't do music. And thanks to this incident, I became different. I didn’t communicate with anyone and began to slowly think to myself. He went into some kind of surreal world, read a lot, listened to a lot of music, wrote it already in early age. It was in this little world that he developed. Thanks to which I became a musician. If it weren't for this stress, I would be like mom, dad and everyone else.
– Are your children interested in music?
– They are still small. While they watch us on TV, they dance and sing along. I have not yet discerned any special desire for music in them. The eldest Alice is 7, the middle Lia is 3, and the youngest Valera is 2.
– Don’t your brother’s children study music?
Where does THIS UNIVERSE come from in you?
Nadezhda Miroslavskaya 27.04.2010 11:51:06
Kontantin, where does THIS UNIVERSE come from in you? Not conquered, not admired - dissolved in it: only in this element is it possible for me real life- everything in it is familiar and lived-in, and if something new appears, it will happen to me tomorrow. Which radiant angel brings you stories and music?
AdvertisingProducer Konstantin Meladze, well-known in Ukraine and Russia, has never given such frank interviews. Yes, he didn’t say a word about his connection or “only work” with Vera Brezhneva in “Alone with Everyone,” but he told many secrets.
It is known that Konstantin Meladze has stuttered since childhood. And he also has problems with his eyes. However, now it’s difficult to say, looking at such a successful man and creative genius in every sense, why he became... like this!
Konstantin Meladze, in response to Yulia Menshova’s direct question about stuttering, replied that the reason for this was the birth of Valera, his younger brother. There was stress in the family, but before the birth of his youngest, Kostya was very talkative. Only after some time did he begin to speak again, but slowly and stuttering.
“I began to withdraw more into myself, because it was difficult to communicate with my peers... I was silent more, listened to music, composed!” Konstantin Meladze told Yulia Menshova.
The frank conversation between Meladze and Menshova did not avoid the hype around his divorce from his wife Yana. The couple has three children, one of whom is autistic...
Konstantin Meladze told why he stutters: Singer ALEKSEEV, because of Konstantin Meladze, could not get to his first musical project
The performer of the song “Drunk Sun” Nikita Alekseev gave frank interview before his big solo concert in Moscow. The 24-year-old musician told how he managed to break into show business.
Two years ago, singer Nikita Alekseev, who performs under the pseudonym ALEKSEEV, gained popularity. His track “Drunk Sun” was loved by many listeners and entered the top 100 of the world Shazam chart. The musician is only 24 years old, but tomorrow he will give his first big concert in Moscow. solo concert. He did not manage to break into show business right away. He spoke about his failures and love for music in a recent interview.
Alekseev did not hide the fact that he began singing at the age of 10, and a few years later he and his friends began performing in small venues and for classmates. At that time he began to receive his first royalties. The singer admitted that he does not have an academic music education, but he does not exclude the possibility that he will still receive it later. According to Nikita, for the first time he tried to get on music project and take his place on the stage at the age of 18, but he was prevented by Konstantin Meladze. “For some reason he asked if I served in the army, I answered that no, and that’s where we said goodbye,” the artist said, but noted that then he was not ready to participate in television project and now I’m even glad that he was refused.
Konstantin Meladze told why he stutters: Konstantin Meladze told why he stutters: Vera Brezhneva published the first shot from her wedding with Konstantin Meladze
Photos from the wedding of Vera Brezhneva and Konstantin Meladze appeared on the Internet several times. Although the couple themselves did not show any pictures from their holiday.
By the way, Konstantin and Vera have very little joint photos which they show to the public. So this is a very rare shot, not just because it’s a wedding shot, but also because celebrities rarely publish photos together.
Konstantin Meladze told why he stutters: An unexpected scandal has surfaced in the family of Konstantin Meladze
Konstantin Meladze, although public figure, but always tried to hide his personal life. Proof of this was that the producer carefully hid his stormy romantic relationship with Vera Brezhneva.. ex-wife Meladze - Yana Summ in one of her interviews said that she noticed the double life of her husband while she was pregnant with her son. True, then she resigned herself to the current situation for the sake of the child.
1. Konstantin Meladze found salvation from stuttering in music.“I was awkward at school, I stuttered badly, just as I still do now. Only now it doesn’t bother me, but in those years, of course, stuttering brought me a lot of problems, troubles and complexes. Maybe that's why I partly went into some kind of parallel world: into music, and then into poetry. And this world seemed more pleasant to me, there is no need to communicate, talk, just listen and play. Over time, I stopped caring about stuttering, but I’m still comfortable in my world.”
2. Loves applause.“The first time I wrote a song was for my brother, it was in 1978. We sang it at the institute. After the performance on stage, we began to collect our instruments, and suddenly we heard a roar and a scream. I didn’t immediately realize that I liked the song. We had to perform it four times as an encore. That's how I heard the first applause. I liked them, and I wanted to hear them always.”
3. Konstantin Meladze does not consider himself handsome.“When I was called “The Most handsome man Ukraine" according to Viva! magazine, I thought it was some kind of mistake. To be honest, this is the most unexpected reward in my life. But since this happened, it seems to me that they chose me not so much according to my external data, but rather according to the work that makes a favorable impression on people. Thank God, I don’t consider myself handsome!”
4. Konstantin Meladze is sure that a woman’s attractiveness is in her mind.“If a woman is smart, then she cannot be ugly. Smart woman, without even putting in much effort, somehow attracts a man to her so much that he falls in love with her. Girls look like models, with ideal proportions and regular facial features (with the help of plastic surgeons) attract men less and less every year. When there’s emptiness inside, it’s like a fake candy: you unwrap the beautiful wrapper, but there’s no candy inside.”
5. Avoids housework.“I never had the desire to do anything around the house: neither take out the trash, nor hammer in a nail. No, I sometimes hammered a nail, but without much pleasure. True, then it was necessary to do repairs. My brother Valera is a jack of all trades, just like my dad. In this sense, I am absolutely mediocre.”
6. From his youth he was a mentor to his brother.“I came to Nikolaev from Batumi, where you can’t really go for a walk, because in Georgia you’re not supposed to go for a walk. And here there is freedom, I’m 18 years old, there’s no mom or dad, there are at least 100 girls on each floor of the dorm. And away we go... And then my parents sent Valera to me, as to my older brother. They knew that if he went somewhere on his own, without me, that would be it... Valera went to college, settled in a dormitory, and then left one evening, and I didn’t see him for eight months. He was as handsome as he is now - fashionable, handsome, with long hair. The girls saw him, he saw them, and that’s it.”
7. Doesn't know how many songs he wrote.“I didn’t count my songs. In general, I try not to analyze what I do. After all, they say: “If you think about how you breathe, you can suffocate.” I don’t engage in soul-searching and analyze the quantity and quality of my songs. I don’t even know how to write music, much less lyrics. Every time a song comes out that's really good, I listen to it after a while and think, “What does this have to do with me?”
8. Konstantin Meladze is prone to depression.“I am a depressed person, and have been since childhood, so my midlife crisis probably began when I was ten years old and continues to this day. And therefore, among the permanent depressions, I never noticed this crisis. I have a crisis every other day. Well, what can you do, that’s my character.”
9. Never has fun.“Believe me, there are such people - and I am one of them. When good mood“I smile at most.”
10. Doesn't sell his songs.“I write them only for my artists. But I can give you a song.”
“She is the sexiest and most beautiful! I never tire of admiring her!” - it was difficult to expect such enthusiastic frankness from Konstantin Meladze.
But he could not speak openly about his love for Vera Brezhneva for many years. Now it's time to catch up...
They have been married for two years now. “I got married grandly!” - Konstantin smiles. His Italian wedding to Vera Brezhneva in October 2015 was supposed to be a secret - just like a long relationship.
The friends at the wedding turned out to be truly devoted - not a single photo was leaked on social networks. Vera's last name let us down. Local journalists, seeing her name on the marriage list, decided that she was a relative of the Soviet Secretary General. And they trumpeted the wedding to the whole world.
“Happiness loves silence,” the singer wrote that day on her Instagram. She firmly adheres to this principle - she does not give any comments about her marriage to Meladze to this day. But Konstantin - always so reserved and even slightly phlegmatic - seemed to have been replaced.
“I wrote my best songs specifically for Vera,” the composer admits. - With her arrival at VIA Gro, I began to write completely different songs, more spiritual, sublime, filled with feelings and music... You can say she is my muse!
“I MISSED A LOT OF THINGS”
Meladze was far from being an ardent young man when he married Vera. She is 33, he is 52. A man, wise with experience and gray-haired, behind whose back long marriage, and in the luggage - a measured life, established principles and habits. But Vera managed to change everything.
I finally raised my head from the keyboard and... More precisely, I didn’t even lift it myself, but rather Vera lifted me by the hair and said: “Well, there are still a lot of interesting things,” says Konstantin. - Before Vera, I honestly didn’t care what I looked like. I didn’t care where I rested or whether I rested at all, what I ate, and so on.
I missed a lot, a lot of things, I was maniacally passionate about my work. And I probably would have missed everything completely if Vera had not given me this kick and awakened in me an interest in a life other than just the studio and music.
Meladze has always been a workaholic. Work, work and work again - everything else is on a residual basis, including family. He got married for the first time late, he was already over 30. However, neither his beautiful wife Yana nor his three children could pull him into life. He existed in some kind of his own world - sounds, meanings, images.
Sitting in the studio from morning to evening, I did not have time to feel the full importance of having children,” Meladze regrets. - I was always in a hurry to get somewhere, all I had in my head was self-realization and a bunch of all sorts of projects, there were more and more of them.
Konstantin put all his strength and emotions into his songs. There were no longer any left for loved ones.
“I WAS NEVER WORSE AS A HUSBAND”
But his heart trembled at the sight of Vera. An ordinary girl who came to the VIA Gra casting.
We did a video test, which left me absolutely delighted because she was exact copy Brigitte Bardot in her youth, recalls Meladze. - A year later she was already an absolute star.
Vera simply did not remain a student for long. Pretty soon she became Konstantin’s beloved woman.
“I hid my affair with Vera from my wife for more than 10 years,” he admits. - As a husband, I was worse than ever...
But Konstantin was not going to change anything - he says: he is one of those men who do not leave until they are kicked in the ass. Yana endured for a long time. And when she began to hear rumors about her husband’s affair on the side, and when she received reliable evidence of infidelity after seeing a text message on his phone.
That time was incredibly difficult: their little son was diagnosed with autism, and Yana already felt like she was being shot, rushing about in search of doctors. She decided to save the family, tried to understand and forgive. But after several years of torment, she finally filed for divorce.
By that time, Vera had also filed for divorce from her second husband, businessman Mikhail Kiperman. Nothing else stopped her and Konstantin from being together.
"IN SEVENTH HEAVEN WITH HER"
However, the lovers did not dare to come out of the “underground” for a long time. We lived together in Kyiv for two years, sharing a room while on tour. And they categorically denied that they were together.
This is base nonsense, a sick and meager fantasy of people! “We have a high and very warm relationship, we are just old friends,” Meladze was very plausibly indignant.
When the secret became clear, he finally relaxed. And he began to enjoy relationships that were not spoiled by lies. Meladze straightened his shoulders: he is the husband of the sexiest and most desirable woman in show business. We must comply: today Konstantin looks different - younger and more cheerful.
Now control has been taken over me,” Meladze smiles. - If it weren’t for my wife, I would still be wearing just a T-shirt. Previously, it used to be that I wore the same thing for 5-7 years - T-shirts and baggy jeans.
He is surprised at himself: Faith has spun him like a whirlwind. Gatherings with friends, going out with children into nature, to the cinema - even before, all this was a waste of time, but now it’s a joy.
My eyes opened, I began to see the world around us, began to slowly crawl out of the submarine. If earlier, in order to feel happiness, I needed, for example, to see a crowded hall or my song on the first line of the hit parade, now this feeling arises out of the blue. We were recently on vacation in Italy. Vera is sitting next to me, the sun is shining, some music is playing... And that’s it, I understand that I am in seventh heaven!
– Your brother Valery is incredibly lucky - you write songs for him, you don’t need to buy them.
“It’s not him who’s lucky, but me, that I have such a brother.” Who would need my songs if he didn’t perform them like that? Here, in fact, those who are lucky still need to think about it.
– How did it happen that you became a producer?
– At the time when I started studying music, such a profession had never been heard of. At first, when I was six years old, I just felt that I really loved music. At the children's screening in the cinema, the film “Oginsky's Polonaise” was shown. I heard this wonderful melody - and something immediately turned over in my brain. I begged my mother to buy me a violin and send me to a music school. And at the entrance exam they told me that I was practically mediocre, I had no hearing, no voice, no rhythm. But they still took the violin - there was simply no competition for this department, and there were few boys.
- Did you send your brother to the music school too?
- Yes, as a matter of fact, they gave it for company with me - not to say that he really wanted it. But they took him to the piano as a more talented person than me.
And we both did terribly in public school. I only got A's in subjects that interested me, such as chemistry. The rest are dead threes. Valera has the same thing.
– Is it really possible that you get C grades in physical education?
“Physical education in our school was taught simply - we threw a ball for 45 minutes and ran. They gave high fives to almost everyone who came. But my brother and I went in for sports on our own. I am involved in athletics, swimming and basketball. Valera - everyone. We grew up in the workers' village of BNZ (Batumi Oil Refinery), in Georgia near Batumi. And so that we would not fall into bad company, my mother decided to keep us busy with something. And so from morning to night we went to all the circles that were possible.
- How about misbehaving and tearing up the drain in the neighbor’s garden?
- Picking the neighbor's plums is all a trifle! We made explosive mixtures from lime and set fire to barns. They blew up the carbide. They did terrible things. As children, we were so, you know, hopeless. Mom and Dad thought with horror about our future. Oddly enough, some kind of rebirth occurred when we entered the shipbuilding institute. We moved to study in Nikolaev. First I entered, a year later Valera did. At the institute we somehow sharply wised up.
– Were you interested in girls during your studies?
- Not really. There was no time for that. We were consumed with creativity and career dreams. We rehearsed a lot - five times a week, for four hours. Then I wrote a lot of songs.
- Was it while studying at shipbuilding?
– And in my third year I got involved in amateur performances, in an ensemble. And from then on, it just started. It turned out that I have hearing, and what not!.. (Laughs.) After all, in childhood I was a somewhat inhibited child, phlegmatic. And then he opened up.
– Sometimes the knowledge gained in childhood and adolescence interferes with choosing a future path. A person knows so much that he cannot decide. Did this bother you?
– There was some period. But life happened in such a way that we went into music. At the end of the 80s we had just graduated from college. Valera studied in graduate school and defended his dissertation in shipbuilding. And I worked at the department at the same institute... Terrible inflation, the poverty of scientific workers pushed us to finally leave the scientific environment and still choose what we liked - music.
– Who produced the first team?
– Kim Breitburg. He comes from Nikolaev, and our institute ensemble in Nikolaev was famous. Kim came to the rehearsal and listened to our first album, which we recorded on a household tape recorder. The album was really good, as I understand now. Then Kim invited us to join the “Dialogue” group - Valera sang, and I played the keyboard and wrote songs. The album was published in Germany.
– It turns out that Breitburg helped you as fellow countrymen?
– No, more like people who surprised him. He saw in us a perspective both for his group and in general. True, then “Dialogue” fell apart, and we were left out of work.
– If I’m not mistaken, it was Evgeny Fridlyand who brought Valery Meladze to Moscow?
– Evgeniy produced “Dialogue” when we worked in the group. Then, when the group broke up, he began producing Bravo. And for several years we tried to promote our songs on our own. In the early 90s, we ourselves came from Nikolaev to Moscow. We borrowed money, found an apartment, and shot our first video, “Don’t disturb my soul, violin.” They put it on television for their own money. After that we were noticed. And in 1995 our first album was released. And that's when real popularity came.
– Why, then, did you decide to take on the VIA Gra project?
– Because at some point I thought that I needed to somehow expand the palette. I decided to try purely producing activities. We gathered girls, pretty much any number of them. At first I had fun this way.
– So you decided that any beautiful girl can be made a star?
- No. I just wanted to see if I could make a “product” from any “available material” that would reach the mass public. Well, what happened exceeded all my expectations. It turned out that I am capable of such things. Well, here we go...
– What family are you from? Who are the parents?
– They are far from music. Engineers. And my grandmother was actually the secretary of the city committee, my grandfather was one of the managers of the oil refinery in Batumi.
– How did your parents evaluate your creativity with Valery?
- Well, until we really became popular, they were skeptical about it. We regretted that we did not go to work in our specialty, we were not engaged in shipbuilding. And to some extent I understand them. Because we couldn’t get out for quite a long time. And so we fed them “breakfast” all the time. They said: just about, just about everything will happen. But in reality, life was very difficult. Well, in 1995 everything came true. And when they saw us on the country’s central television channels, of course, they were delighted. Now they are proud.
– Over the years of creative searches, have you experienced moments of lack of money?
– There was a state of complete lack of money from 1990 to 1994. This was exactly the moment when we tried to popularize our music. Naturally, nothing worked out for us. Since we were not in the format of that time. “Kar-Man”, Gazmanov, and simple dance music were popular. Ours was complex and melodic. Then she seemed foreign. But our time has come.
– Are your current players from the “Star Factory” good for their time?
- Quite. Here it depends on me, the producer, how I will direct them. These people should become popular not in 5 years, like us, but now.
– Why doesn’t your family move from Kyiv to join you in Moscow?
– And I also live in Kyiv. I moved there from Moscow. I lived here for two years and moved.
- Why?
– It’s impossible to work here, write songs. Busy, noisy. And my citizenship is Ukrainian.
– You named your youngest son Valera. Why?
- I love my brother very much. There were no other name options. Even as a child, God knows when, I told my brother that as soon as I have a son, I will call him Valera... Valera is the banner of our entire family. Our vanguard. He became the face of the Meladze family. We have many different projects. I have only “Star Factory”, “VIA Gra”, something else. Sister Liana has “Uma2rman”, “Chi-Li”.
Well, Valera is our first-born. He was the first to become popular. And it is present in all our projects in one way or another. With your advice and energy. I'm a behind-the-scenes person and it seems like I do everything myself. No, my brother is helping.
– Isn’t it a shame that he is the face of the family, and not you...
“He’s the face and I’m the ass?” No. I'm not offended. I have never strived for publicity. So I came to the Factory with my brother. Moreover, he set a condition for Channel One so that they would not push me out too much. Let my brother perform public functions, and I will work as always. I just love music, that's enough for me. And I don’t have the talent to attract attention to myself.
– Can I ask an indiscreet question? Tell me, Konstantin, where did you stutter?
– I have stuttered since I was two years old.
- Did someone scare you?
- Yes. This is what happened. When my mother went to give birth to Valera, I was given to a nanny. We lived on the first floor, and she on the last. Since our grandparents held leadership positions, they were busy all the time. There was no one to leave me. So they left her with her. And her family was dysfunctional. The nanny's daughter was constantly swearing and fighting with her husband. That day they fought to such an extent that they began throwing knives at each other. At that moment I woke up - and the knife almost hit me.
I was very scared and fell silent. Although I started speaking very early. But after that incident I became completely numb. When mom came home from the hospital, she was shocked! A year passed, and I began to speak slowly, but with a terrible stutter. Now it’s nothing, but in my school years it was just terrible.
- Were you not offended?
“You know, I’m just thinking that I need to say thank you to this nanny.”
–?..
“If I hadn’t been scared, I wouldn’t have become the way I am.” I would have grown up to be a normal child, sociable, cheerful, and developing properly. And I wouldn't do music. And thanks to this incident, I became different. I didn’t communicate with anyone and began to slowly think to myself. He went into some kind of surreal world, read a lot, listened to a lot of music, wrote it at an early age. It was in this little world that he developed. Thanks to which I became a musician. If it weren't for this stress, I would be like mom, dad and everyone else.
– Are your children interested in music?
– They are still small. While they watch us on TV, they dance and sing along. I have not yet discerned any special desire for music in them. The eldest Alice is 7, the middle Lia is 3, and the youngest Valera is 2.
– Don’t your brother’s children study music?
- No. He doesn’t put pressure on his daughters either. The fact that my brother and I play music is an exception in our family. Despite the fact that everyone in Georgia sings well, our relatives do not have outstanding abilities.
– What does your wife do?
- Children, housekeeping. She is not involved in show business, or indeed in any business. That's the beauty of it. I wouldn't want her to love me for my songs.
Opinion of a colleague, Joseph Prigozhin:
– I consider Konstantin Meladze one of the most talented musicians and producers in the post-Soviet space. We have known both Valera and Kostya for a long time and have always kept in touch. Sometimes I even had a desire to work together, to collaborate, but somehow I couldn’t muster up the impudence and courage, and Kostya was busy with other projects.