i realized that i was in the presence of somebody very important and that i was just this silly girl from los angeles very naive. and that he was the real rocker said that that moment changed my whole life and correct me if i'm wrong but i think you were twenty four years old at the time cali girl in drab soviet reach was a feeling in oxymoron of sorts but and even bigger paradox was how this doll soviet reality was able to produce something that was so free spirited and so genuine as the leningrad proxy how do you yourself explain that phenomena you know it was incredible and of course our first three and half days was in moscow where we didn't know anybody so we were on the usual tours with the group and we looked around and even though there were some interesting things the same basis because the two own things it looked very cold people didn't look happy they were wearing dark colors they were all rushing through the streets and i thought wow this is this this is not a great place you know i would never come back again what i found out later when i

went to leningrad and met bourse is that behind closed doors russian people were exactly like people all over the world and they were full of color and they were full of expression and full of creativity i was in off by the whole art scene the arts and the music scene in leningrad because nobody in america was aware this could possibly be happening in russia we were so afraid of the soviet union at that time and that's why it just opened my eyes and that's what led to me deciding that i needed to bring this music and photos and videos of these bands to the u.s. to open up the eyes of all of the other people in united states because it really was something we we were not aware at all that was taking place there now rock musicians all over the world are pretty rowdy bunch i wonder how they react to you and your interest in them you know i think there were europeans that had come in and had met. for so he had met foreigners but i think what was different was with

me is after i met boris on that first trip and was taken by all of it and i said i'm going to come back what can i do can i bring your equipment i think that he and seven. kind of had a feeling of course she says she's going to come back but she's not going to because i think many people before me westerners came in and said the same thing that they wanted to come back i think what surprised boris said everybody else is that i did come back and i kept coming back and i kept coming back every three months and i kept bringing them equipment and and that's why i got the nickname back then is the tractor the american tractor because i think they were amazed at how i could get things done that when i became passionate about something and had an idea i would make it happen from what i remember at least in the late soviet years america was strongly romanticized in russia it was literally perceived as the as a land of freedom so much so that. if another famous leningrad musician wrote the song

goodbye america about parting ways with those youthful your dreams i wonder if you ever felt that you were in some way an unofficial ambassador for the mystical america you know what's interesting it wasn't so much the rockers because again i think they got from from the black market or other places they got music articles everything from the west but i think what was interesting was that the average russian people that i would meet through them would all say oh oh we want to be like american had that romantic wish to be free like america and i was telling them then in the eighty's you guys don't understand the price americans pay to be free and i would explain to them that most americans had a thirty year mortgage because you would try to buy a house or a thirty year mortgage that would basically make you in handcuffs because if you have a mortgage where you have to pay for thirty years it means you have to make money so i was trying to. deflate that romantic vision because it wasn't so perfect i

mean america is amazing and it's a free country but we do pay a high price for that freedom what i saw in russia even though they didn't have a lot of freedoms in one sense because they didn't have all of the financial burdens of paying every month for an apartment or a house and paying a lot of money for the electricity and for the water they they felt like to me it felt like they had more time to do what interests them on the creative side every other person i met in leningrad whether they they weren't one of the main musicians was an artist or was a poet everybody seemed to have some time to spend on on their creative outlet and i think a lot of times in america back then even now we're so focused on our jobs to make money to pay the bills that we don't have time for i guess what you could call a hobby if people have artistic hobbies that they would like to do you know like everything in the world there's good and bad about everything and being in the

soviet union showed me a lot of things that was great about where i live in america and it showed me a lot of things that i wish would be different in fact sometimes they were in the two streams and i got boy the perfect life must be some kind of country that was sort of in the middle of the way america and russia was well you know it's easy to remend to size a country that you have never visited and in fact in the song that i mentioned goodbye america bridge road and nine hundred eighty five fifteen just want a year after your first visit to the soviet union he speaks if the. have been there and we have sort of started growing out of our old genes simply because you know our youth was coming into contact with reality and as i was researching for this program you know i was struck by one for a doc sicko thought and i wonder if it's actually true but it seemed to me that for you a very rare person but still for you that. daal soviet reality was also to some extent

. the place where you found that freedom because the russians do not think about the later years of the soviet union in that sense but to me it seemed that you're actually found imaginative or imagine the replays where it where it where you felt alive and free was that accurate that is very accurate you know it was all about timing and when i went to the soviet union i had just had this record out in the states but we had kind of a lawsuit with the guy that put it out because there were some issues and i was at a crossroads i wasn't sure what i was going to do and i felt a little bit lost and i was inspired and so i went to the soviet union with my sister on this week trip a school trip that she was going on and i thought it would just clear my head i can come back and regroup and lo and behold everything that i saw there in leningrad with boris and then the rest of people i met changed my life so it was just the perfect time of me being young enough not really understanding it who i was not understanding life and being very naive and all of

a son i meet these people that are so inspiring i mean i think it would be similar if some young person here at that time and eighty's happened to be a friend and hang out with bob dylan or david bowie you know i was just blessed to me the artist and leningrad were just as inspiring and exciting and as these these famous western musicians so for me it was just fate now john as you said just a moment ago every time you travel to the soviet union you used to bring all sorts of musical supplies which were difficult to find in landing back then but i know that you also smuggled the records out you were absolutely key to releasing a russian rock music in the united states speech was mad with some interest but never made it big is russian rock to country specific to engage western audiences you know it was big in the sense. of the purpose we put it out for and

when it came out it was unbelievable the amount of press we got it exploded again it splode it because nobody ever thought this could possibly be behind the iron curtain the way that kenya looked the way that boris moved the way it would go the way that they saying was it was equal to any of the rock n roll going on in the united states it just was in russian so it became so big it was written in every kind of newspaper or magazine television shows morning talk shows it was everywhere so what that did which is what the purpose of the record was was it showed americans look there are people in russia that you can relate to that will just like people where you live and so it really was a success on that level i think it sold maybe fifteen or twenty thousand records which maybe in the in the big scheme isn't that many but for a record that's recorded on two track that's in the russian language it was huge

but their videos were aired on m.t.v. the videos were shown on some other t.v. programs it was just written about all over the place that i think i felt that it was very successful i was totally happy with the results now fast forward thirty five years and some of those musicians that you used to hang out that used to be monitored by the k.g.b. have now been awarded with medals for their service to their motherland we have a former k.g.b. agent as the russian president who is also such to enjoy russian rock music i wonder if you still followed russian rock. to this day what do you think about what it has become thirty five years later and do you think it would still fascinates you if you were twenty four years old today i think not in the same way and the difference is that now the world is connected we have the internet and no matter what our politicians are doing or if they're fighting or a third term. going to make some conflict between us the boxes open we people

american people russian people know what's going on in each other's countries through the internet we can see everything so it's a little bit different than it was in the eighty's but i was in russia two months ago for the first time since two thousand and four and i saw a few people i saw my first husband euro caspari and i loved what he was doing with his music and to fund the keno symphony and i hung out with boris a little bit and what i love about boris he's exactly who he was thirty years ago and all he wanted to do thirty years ago was record albums and play as much as he could and he's never wavered he's never change thirty years later he's exactly the same and the amazing thing with that with group in chicago when i met him thirty or more than thirty years ago and when i would listen to him talk about philosophy and his his views on life and it just affected me the same thing happened two months ago with my daughter we were sitting is the part when boris was talking about life

and and some of his thoughts on it and i could see my daughter just melting and taking it all in and she says mesmerized by boris today as i was thirty or so well yes he's a special someone he definitely is but i know very little about. new rock bands in russia you know i left russia in one thousand nine hundred six and back then there really wasn't the internet so i came here i had my my daughter and i really was just connected pretty much by russian all the music and it only came back a few years ago when i decided to make this archive website with all my photos and basically it started that i just had thousands of photos i had made from my russia days all over my house and in boxes and i thought you know i'm going to scan them so that i can throw them away and have them all digitally and when i started to scan them i thought wow maybe i should make a website maybe russians might like this so i did make my website site joanna sting ray dot com and when the web site came out within the first two or three weeks there were one hundred million. if a million people that went on the web site looking at all the old photos and then i

somehow missed out everybody was for that time and it was interesting but you know everything in the arts sometimes in life is so sickle call and so i think it's just natural that it's about twenty five years thirty years after the saw happened in the eighty's that that i'm not surprised by the interest being renewed well john i really have to take a short break now but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. on.

those so you will both be in the or the show must be used does. she doesn't it with the people most of this or not but what i mean. we're never going to get there was the mother. with. really a local superman coming week and she has you know this is where you. know if you're in the home of the media. only a few more of. the big one was in the middle most of them even many both of them in the film i think you most will start to get.

welcome back to worlds apart with john astin gray an american musician and a prominent speaker of the sylvia to rock scene in the nine hundred eighty s. john i know that there were long periods. during which you did not visit russia i think it was twelve or maybe even twenty years at a time that you stayed away from this country was there any particular reason for that you know when i left russia i came back to los angeles and i had my daughter and i kind of became a full time mother and again things had changed you know i was lucky that i lived through russia really three three different periods i was there under communism i was there through glass dos and i was there and capitalism and communism was really interesting for me because it was kind of you know close but behind closed doors

there were parties and all this interesting happening you know the favorite time was when the russian people seen the happiest because nothing has changed much except for they could speak more freely and say things but then the last period was capitalism and that was a difficult time in the ninety's with capitalism it was it was kind of crazy so when i left russia i refocused my life on being a mother and because there wasn't internet and we weren't connected the way we are today. it just felt like like it was over you know many of my close friends had died obviously victor soy had died and it was just the right time for me to come back to los angeles and then i went on with my life and just for a lot of years i didn't think very often about rush i mean i did get calls two or three times a year to do interviews certainly around victor birthday was death or about my days so i was connected here and there and i would get phone calls from some of my friends unfortunately they would call me to tell me somebody else had passed away which was very sad every time i had. an insecure seven gakkel call me on the phone

i would shake because i was afraid when i picked it up they were going to tell me somebody else passed away and i didn't you know that was just a very hard thing to deal with but you know it just happened that that that periods happen in life and then it's over and you move on and i think there's still a lot of allure in the brokers lifestyle that sense of freedom spontaneity the lack of commitment the lack of league ations excitement i wonder if you if you miss any of that do you angry people who still leave like. you know i do and do that a little bit because again i live a very good life life in los angeles and i have a nice house and i have a car and i can get nice food but i have three different jobs to do that and it's not as a musician it's very tough to make money and make a living as a musician in the states so i do miss that side of just waking up and you know looking at your and saying what do you want to do i don't know what do you want to do why don't we go see if somebody is there and they don't have

a phone so you go and just knock on the door and see if somebody is there and they let you in and they they start making some food they pull down acoustic guitar and everybody starts playing you know the whole world of too soft is is you know is a fun one it's fun to spend your days too soft but i also enjoy you know using my brain and doing work and making good money so it's a balance but yes i do sometimes miss the freedom of being with my friends at that time again i think. i think rock and roll are still have that kind of lifestyle but even today would be different than the eighty's you know i was i was part of this time that i don't think could ever be repeated john and i think there is a lot of nostalgia for that period in russia it's evident in the number of films and documentaries released or being still being produced about a period of time what do you thing makes the russians dwell on those years so much well i think it's the personality as to who the people were first of all i mean

these geniuses cough syrup you curl can coast to kinship. you know victor toy they were amazing people and amazing artists and i think the fact that they did everything there did they did and their music even though they couldn't make money there there's something that feels good about that it was so pure and i think that's what people miss is the pureness of it you know now everybody makes money off their music you know there's not really underground bands because there doesn't need to be everybody can try to go and do it but the fact that at that period they were so creative and so inspiring at a time that they couldn't be on t.v. they couldn't do big tours and they couldn't make money i think again it comes down to the pureness of who they were as people and as artists listen i'm not for some time i am so lucky that i got to be there at that time and live through it with those incredible people now i'm sure you've heard that this new movie directed by

carroll said every city every new of cold lives or summer about those years when you got a lot of flack from people who actually lived through that period for example from barry is a good bench you go for not depicting the protagonist relationships that live styles accurately and i think that raises a very interesting question about artistic freedom when an artist is making a movie about another arses how accurate. how detailed he should be do you have any answer any ideas and you know it's a complicated answer most of all because i have not seen the movie but when i was in leningrad two months ago they kept asking me about that when i was being interviewed wanted to know they were trying to show me a little piece of the film you know for me. again films aren't always accurate they're based on so that's ok i would say without seeing the film so i can't comment exactly on on the summer film but for me i think the most important thing

is that when they're portraying somebody that is known and especially somebody that that's not alive life victor choice to me it's important to stay at least to the character of who victor was you know if i saw a film that was based on victor but it wasn't a real story and they were trade victor for being some not nice guy or doing bad things that would really be off because he was not like that at all you know he was so sweet and so genuine so to me portraying any of the people that are famous i think it's important to at least keep the aura of who they were of i don't know if you would agree with that but to me personally it's very unique in channeling both the discontent with the reality and a certain appreciation of live at it is you know the little pleasures the little treasures of life there's a lot of tenderness i think a lot of dignity as opposed to solve depreciation in his lyrics and i wonder if you

agree with that and how do you think that it was possible to both create see clive and love it seem to live a you know he was victor was different than the other musicians that i hung out with there was something different about him and i'm not sure why he didn't understand but he was brilliant you know some of the other musicians circuit knew he was a genius and it wasn't egotistical it was like a fact he knew what they know what in some sense forests in the eighty's you. he knew that people thought he was a deity and that he had these special talents and for me victor i don't think he really understood how great his songs were and i think sometimes he was almost a little embarrassed and for victor he was the type that you know we'd be in the pop mechanics concert we'd both be on stage with all the other musicians and he would look across the street stage and we could me and smile as if he was saying hey joe isn't this great how cool we get to be part of this pop mechanics era he still always had that little boy in him that was amazed that he got to do all these

things and i think that's why victor's music. you know that many so many people can relate to his music because it came from somebody who was in some sense simple not a bad way simple in a good way but by what you're saying he really i think he felt happy and grateful in life and what in the years i spent with him he was very easygoing i never saw him get angry or have some you know big important issues he had to deal with he was very he was very happy go lucky and enjoyed life to the fullest and i think the songs just came out of him i don't think he was doing anything on purpose to try to write songs that would affect people this way or that way i think it was just how he felt one thing in general about the musicians that i dealt with in the eighty's and i think when all of the press came out on red wave all the press of course the question at the end of the interview sort of the all want to move here now do they all want to come and i said no they're very tied to russia and mother earth and

russia so again i did not feel like the musicians i knew in the eighty's were unhappy being in russia and that they wanted to leave but i found the opposite i thought they were very happy in russia i think they would have loved if they could have made money off their music and could have toured and could have had better equipment but i never found this angriness that they hated living in russia i think they were very proud and very tied to their russian blood let me ask you specifically about that because victor sort soyuz widely credited for capturing the desire for change in the soviet union and i think that's maybe why he's he and his personality his music you are experiencing a second comeback in modern day russia but the way the call was expressed in his lyrics i thought was very culturally russian because his most famous song was we are awaiting change rather than we are the change which would be

a seam i think for many western musicians and i wonder well whether you agree with the russians are indeed more. massive him in a way of waiting for the change to be delivered to them rather than being the agents of change well first of all i want to bring up that it is not clear that victor wrote that song we're waiting of the change that he meant politically and concrete specific things you know i think i think could be that was almost a spiritual change and i think again what was different from the music in the eighty's and forced prince cops music you know it was poetry that you could read things through the line but nothing was concrete nothing was saying we don't like you know this rule in the soviet union we don't like this this is the way it is to us you want this it was more about awakening people and making people feel and making people think you know i think the music in the eighty's in leningrad to me was much different than say pussy riot because to me pussy riot is a blatant

a conscious decision to to make a specific statements about things that they don't like that they want to change and to also shock people it's a very different you know i believe that victor and boris and kosta kinship really roll from the soul and from the heart and i don't think they ever thought well gee i don't like this this thing in russia so i'm going to try to write a song that maybe that inspired people to change it i don't i don't think it came from that concrete place i think it came in a deeper more spiritual place so again i don't think i'd say there passive but i think there are. different i am most felt in some ways they were deeper because maybe of how they had to put up with life back then you know what i mean well john i do know what you mean living in this country after all but we have to leave it there i know that you're writing a book or rather two books on the theory of good luck and thank you very much for

coming i encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and hope to see you again same. place same time here and all the part.

that come to call russia no one's ever no one has ever had a country never even heard about most school. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat someone i would speak. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london.

for a life. you know the slogan still give out food for the. but you don't really feel like a human being in that. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me in. his pocket. with lawmakers manufactured in sentenced him to the public well. when the ruling classes protect themselves. with the famous

merry go round with the one percent. going all middle of the room sick. welcome to the crystal ball edition of crosstalk what can we expect in the new year

we have a great lineup of guests telling us they. are. this week's top stories here on our genes are national a probe was launched in alabama into a pro-democratic group that faked more than a thousand russian social media to discredit a republican candidate. protesters take to the streets for a seventh consecutive weekend in cities across france. and the freedom of information act which has helped expose high level corruption in the u.s. comes under pressure authorities want to get the right to reject requests they think are burdensome.