Having heard on the radio or from the window of a passing car a drawn-out “only the battery of our village has love ...”, it is safe to say that this is a group of “Beetles”. The composition of this team has changed several times, so most people don’t even know what the performers of a permanent hit about a tanker and his unhappy love look like, but they know the lyrics from cover to cover.
Light unobtrusive melodies and simple words are easily perceived by ear, which makes it possible to quickly win the hearts of song lovers of this genre. In this article we will find out how the composition of the Beetles group has changed, and the photo of the participants will finally make it possible to recognize the characters in person.
The story of the inimitable band
The emergence of this collective once again proves that karma still controls everything: four people from different cities came to Moscow and miraculously met, forming a colorful musical ensemble. The world might not have seen the Beetles, if not for the persistence of the leader and his tireless craving for creativity.
Indeed, at the very dawn of his career, back in 1991, during one of the auditions, a certain music producer openly told him: "Nobody will listen to such nonsense in Moscow." Such a sentence did not upset Valery (the frontman of the team), who continued to distribute his album Okroshka to all available studios, hoping for continued cooperation.
As you know, whoever wants it will succeed. Valera met the drummer of the Bravo band, which at that time was quite in demand. With his submission, Zhukov begins to collaborate with Eugene Havtan, creating lyrics for the upcoming Bravo album (At the Crossroads of Spring) and simultaneously working on his second album, which was never released (Walk to the Moon).
After a short break, the restless Valery gathered another group and began recording a new disc. The fate of the villain again decided to play a trick on Zhukov: the financial crisis struck, and most of the music studios went bankrupt, no one wanted to collaborate with the eccentric group Zhukov, and the photo of the soloist appeared on the pages of newspapers and magazines as often as the snow in July on the Black coast seas.
And yet, as you know, the universe takes with one hand, and gives with the other. Studio "Monolith" still decided to release the album "Beetles". This was the well-known “Battery”. From that moment, musicians began to be invited to concerts, to sign cooperation contracts. Valery's dream came true - he became famous.
What genre can be attributed to the work of "Beetles"?
All the members of the Beetles group unanimously claim that their style direction can be attributed to alternative rock, although they themselves call it gum rock. Those who are familiar with the work of the guys unanimously agree with this definition, although some argue that the style of the group is closer to bard rock. It remains a mystery why creativity of this kind is becoming popular? Is it a peculiarity of the mentality of Russian-speaking people or a love of rural color?
Considering that some creations are flavored with specific phrases, word-phrases and even obscene expressions, it seems that this is why an explosive mixture of metaphors, slang words and paronyms easily penetrates the listener's consciousness, deeply taking root there.
The current composition (with photo)
The Beetles group at this stage looks like this:
- The permanent leader from the beginning is Valery Zhukov is the lead singer and author of most of the songs.
- Alexander Dolgikh is the backing vocalist of the group and performs the parts on the button accordion.
- Alexander Bodrov played guitar for two years in the famous “Affectionate May”, according to him, only because of good earnings, and when the group broke up, he worked part time in various unremarkable bands.
- Alexander Labarsky is the band’s bass player and also part-time backing vocalist.
- Alexey Lobov plays the drums.
This ensemble was finally formed in 2000 and has not changed since then. Is it possible to hope that the composition has finally become stable and there will no longer be any substitutions?
Members of the group who left it at different times
At different stages of the formation of "Beetles" as a collective, such musicians as:
- Vadim Ermolaev was the bassist of the group at the beginning of her career, but left in 1999, taking a look at the promised big profits of the Bi-2 group, which invited him to her.
- Alexey Grachev replaced the place of Ermolaev, and before Zhukov he collaborated with the Africa group, which broke up in 1998.
- Roman Voitenko was a drummer in "Africa" ​​before Grachev appeared in it, and after that they went over to Zhukov together. He was one of the most intelligent participants.
The most famous hits
Over the entire period of existence, the collective has created not too many works, but most of them really became folk hits. The most famous of them is “Battery”. The Beetles group aired it in the fall of 1999, releasing the album of the same name. The song instantly won the hearts of ordinary inhabitants by its melancholic note and the simplicity of the musical line.
Her rival in popularity is the song “Attraction” from the same album, which was subsequently made an entertaining remix in collaboration with performers from “Disco Crash”. It is also worth noting the nostalgic ballad "Bolt in the Gadget", which in 2003 became the unspoken hit of all unhappy lovers.
A separate word should be noted the hit “Tankist” - the work saw the world in 2000 and in an instant conquered radio spaces along with another creation - the song “Komariki”, performed with Professor Komarovsky for a long time rotated on many radio stations in Russia.
The most famous creations with profanity are “The Lord of the Rings” and “Yoghurts”, both pseudo-hits do not have a special deep meaning or an interesting melodic series, but for some unknown reasons the simple people liked it. Because of a mat so close to the working class? This is still a mystery.
Discography
All the compositions of the group "Beetles" from 1999 to 2018 recorded only four albums.
- "Battery" - 1999.
- “Friend of a Friend” - year of creation 2002.
- In 2004, two albums were created at once: “Bolt in the Gadget” and a collection of remixes on songs of past years “On the Kryzhopol Turn”.
Given that almost twenty years have passed, this weighs almost nothing in music circles, despite the fact that some of the pieces are still in demand on radio or thematic gatherings, such as “Disco of the 90s” or “OUR Invasion”.
Does the team have clips?
Despite the specific style of performance and presentation of his work, the composition of the Beetles group has several video clips, which are also quite unusual, as for the musical elite:
- "Battery";
- "Yoghurts";
- "Masha" ("Friend of a friend");
- "Tooth".
All of them are almost similar in the manner of presentation of the material, so they have not received wide publicity. You can add a clip to the “Attraction” remix with “Disco Crash” here, but the musicians from the group “Beetles” do not appear in this clip.
A few words about the leader
Up to the fifth grade Viktor Zhukov, the soloist of the Zhuki group, was an excellent pupil, as evidenced by the constant inclusion in the list of the best students of the school. Due to the fact that parents had to constantly move from place to place, Valera was given a difficult constant period of adaptation and by the end of school marks had slipped to triples.
Zhukov did not have a complete musical education, although there was an attempt: he entered the Abakan musical school, but literally a year later he was expelled for not attending some disciplines (physics in particular). According to the singer, it was not interesting there, he realized that he would not be taught anything sensible there, since they could not even determine what kind of voice he had: baritone or tenor. The first poems were written at the age of fourteen, literally a couple of years later the guitar was mastered.
The song "Tanker" is to some extent truly autobiographical: his mother is a teacher and his father is a pianist. Maybe that's why Valera so eagerly fulfills her creation. After all, words come from the heart?
Valery Zhukov is the owner of a small plot of only seven hectares on the moon, which he acquired during his former glory in 2000 for 99 dollars. Married a second time, has a son Roma from his first marriage. By the way, his second wife is currently the producer of the team, but as you can see from the activity among the stars, it is not very effective.
The last creation of the group
The ensemble performed its first solo performance in Moscow in 2000, on April 2, in the KZ Olympic Village. Since then, throughout the entire life of the group, the Beetles and the soloist-songwriter have created not too much creative material, and the most recent song is “Out of Love”, written in 2011. Since then, at infrequent concerts, the team has performed previously created hits and familiar motives.