Cooperators were doing excellent business on the posters with Zhenya Belousov.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
Let’s imagine that Zhenya Belousov celebrates his 60th birthday as a lively and vigorous person. Today he would appear on countless retro TV shows like “Tonight”, sit on the jury of “The Voice of Children”, star in commercials like Dima Malikov, and perhaps get involved in various scandals with divorces or divorces (in the sense of fraudulent, like Larisa Dolina). But he was destined to die at the age of 32 – a long and painful death.
In March 1997, he was taken to Sklif with pancreatitis, where he suddenly suffered a stroke. Then the word “aneurysm” was heard. Apparently, all the brain problems were associated with an episode in childhood, when he, a nine-year-old boy, was hit by a car (after which he suffered terrible headaches all his life). Belousov spent two months in the hospital, becoming increasingly weak, and on June 2 he died. A very dark end for a very lively person, who enthusiastically performed light and silly songs in the style of “Today the girls can’t stop, the girls want to dance.”
FEAR OF GOING ON STAGE
He was born on September 10, 1964 in the Kharkov region, but lived there for only two months – his father was a military man and his family moved to Kursk. At school he was a hooligan and somehow even ended up in the police, and when asked “What is your last name?” he shamelessly mentioned the name of one of the most respected teachers (there was a commotion at school when they called and reported that the teacher had caused trouble and was in the department). He was obsessed with music, and when a friend from college told him that the school had bought good equipment, he dropped out of school and went to a vocational school – just to play. I studied to be a repairman, although I had no intention of becoming one. He became a bass player, and his talent in this area was obvious.
One day Zhenya and his team performed in a restaurant, and there he was heard by the manager Bari Alibasova. She brought him to Moscow, Alibasov listened to him and brought him to his VIA “Integral”. And then he strongly suggested that I devote myself to vocals.
Surprisingly, Belousov was terrified of performing in front of the public as a singer. Even thinking about it, he was covered in sweat, and when he first went on stage to sing, he completely fell into a stupor. According to Alibasov, he had the gait of a robot, his arms and legs did not straighten, he was hunched over, he was beaten with a beater, he barely sang in a halting voice, and at the end of the performance he fell down. In a passionate embrace with a girl from the backing dancer on stage (this was what Bari Karimovich intended), he simply could not get up, he literally had to be carried in her arms… And this stage horror stayed with him for a long time.
“WE NEED ONE MORE VOUNDEN SONG”
Of course, it was not Alibasov who made Zhenya famous, but the composer Viktor Dorokhin and his wife, the poetess Lyubov Voropaeva. They met when Belousov came to them and asked them to compose a song for him. Voropaeva at first did not like it (“arrogant, sweet”), and Dorokhin felt that the guy could become a star. And he asked his wife to write something “more vulgar”. He correctly calculated that this particular song would enjoy maximum success among the general public. Voropaeva refused for a long time, and when her husband finally pushed her, she grabbed a piece of paper, went into the kitchen and in 15 minutes wrote “My blue-eyed girl”. The husband was delighted and immediately composed music, and Belousov immediately replied: “We will tear everyone apart!”
And they broke it. The Central Television of the USSR, however, refused to show it, but the song was played on the radio, sold on cassettes and became a huge hit. Like “Such a Short Summer” and “Night Taxi”. These songs were enough for Belousov, according to the results of the popular vote, to become the winner of the TASS hit parade in 1989 in the category “Best Soloist” (the best soloist was Pugacheva, and the group was “Tender May”). “Girl” was named the best song in that hit parade, “Night Taxi” took second place. “White Roses” from “Tender May” took fourth place…
Belousov (far right) began his career in the rock band Integral. But he became famous as a pop singer.
Photo: www.youtube.com.
However, Voropaeva later admitted that she contributed greatly to these results. No, I didn’t pay. Back then, “newspapers printed special coupons that you had to cut out, write the name of your favorite artist on and send your vote on a postcard. I bought thousands of these postcards, I found out in the editorial office when a new issue of the newspaper came out, and at dawn Dorokhin and I went to the kiosk and bought the entire print run. And then these coupons were cut out and pasted on postcards, there were hundreds, sometimes thousands of them. We spent days filling out these forms with different letters, recruiting acquaintances and musicians, and sometimes Zhenya joined us in her free time on tour under my supervision, and then at night we sent these bags in different boxes so that the postcards had different stamps…”
Voropaeva and Dorokhin became practically father and mother to Belousov. They promoted him with all their might, fought his stage fright as best they could, and launched stories about him (when in 1990 it turned out that Zhenya’s stories about his life were partly lies, Komsomolskaya Pravda published an angry article about it). Once, when Zhenya fell asleep backstage in his concert costume, Dorokhin woke him up with a slap: not only do you sleep, but you can’t eat or smoke in what you put on for the public – the costume is sacred!
There is no need to even mention the money that Zhenya collected for concerts (at which she most often performed with the soundtrack) – not just in shovels, but in the most literal sense of the word in bags, above the stadiums roaring with ecstasy. But in 1991, the successful collaboration failed – Zhenya turned to Igor Matvienko, who wrote several more hits for her. And then a gradual decline in popularity began.
He himself often appeared irritated and sad. In an interview in the mid-1990s he said: “I sing what is expected of me with my cup. But this is not at all what I like to listen to. For example, my favourite band, Level 42, will probably cause nothing but irritation among my fans.” And in another: “I have a lot of internal problems. I am tired of everything. The domestic scene is a big cesspool that you have to somehow put up with, in which you have to get along.”
“GIRLS ARE MORE VILE THAN PEOPLE”
Zhenya’s love interests were legendary. They say that he lost his virginity at the age of 14 to a pioneer leader, and a couple of years later he spoke out in the spirit of “A day without a woman is a day lost.” His most famous partner was Natalya Vetlitskaya, with whom he frivolously entered into a marriage that lasted only nine days: Natalya left him for another man, notifying him with a note. Belousov was very worried and for a long time, for him it was almost a tragedy (they say that he once blurted out the phrase: “The difference between girls and people is that girls are meaner.”). In addition, by that time he already had a son with Elena Khudik, whom he had known since childhood. She became his wife, but not the last: he ended his days in the company of Elena Savina.
She was always with him in the hospital. I remembered that I once asked him: “Zhen, are you uncomfortable? Should I go?” And he nodded, not wanting her to see him so weak. “The next day, Zhenya became conscious again. I told him: “Wait, you will get over it,” and in response I received a negative gesture. I knew he was going to die…”
MOST FAMOUS SONGS
“My blue-eyed girl”
“What a short summer”
“Night taxi”
“Golden Domes”
“Girl-girl”
“Wait for me after the concert”
“Alyoshka”
“Party night”
“Hair cloud”
“Dunya-Dunyasha”
“In the afternoon at the bank”
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