That’s why I’m using these
simple, one-pickup guitars, like
a vintage Music Master, and
recently I bought a ’ 57 Fender
Esquire. I like them light, simple, and thick sounding. We
usually do our guitar shopping
in the United States, because in
Russia it’s very expensive and
there aren’t that many. There
are brand-new guitars, but
not a good variety. So, every
time we come to the States,
we go into vintage shops, like
Norman’s place [Norman’s Rare
Guitars in Tarzana, California]
or True Tone [in Santa Monica]
or West L.A. Music, or
Chicago Music Exchange—
Yuri likes them a lot. He
thinks we really need a good
Gibson ES-335 in our arsenal,
but for some reason we can’t
find the right one. We used to
play a Gibson ES- 135—live
and especially on the first few
albums—but then I opted for
lightweight guitars.
Quite the opposite, Yuri tries
lots of stuff. He used to like
Gibsons a lot—Les Pauls—but
then he suddenly switched to
Telecasters. That’s his whole
thing now. He likes all those
vintage guitars and sounds, but
he’s not a vintage freak. He
always tries to see the difference between good, well-built
modern guitars and the old
ones. Usually the vintage guitars
have some unique tones and
appearance, but mostly they
wouldn’t really work universally.
We’re trying not to carry lots
of stuff with us—we can’t really
afford to waste money on extra
luggage—so we carry the most
universal kind of guitars that
will suit any need. When we’re
on tour, we have only three or
four guitars with us.
On eBay you can buy Soviet-era guitars from companies
like Kavkaz, Aelita (Borisov),
Ural, and Rostov. Did you
ever play any of those?
Lagutenko: Yeah. Those guitars
look good on the wall, but you
can’t really play them—we tried!
People chase these vintage-instrument revivals, but y’know
… they may produce one good
sound, but they can’t hold their
tune—and they’re definitely not
built by [actual guitar luthiers].
You guys have been a big deal
in Russia for a long time.
How does it feel to be sort of
starting over in America?
Lagutenko: It’s a great challenge, but we hardly separate
what we’re doing now from
what we do in Russia. Since
the first release, we didn’t really
enjoy any financial success
over there. Records in Russia
have always been pirated—you
would never get a cent out of
official sales. We simply went
on tour since day one, and we’re
still doing over a hundred shows
a year, which is a pretty hectic
timetable because it’s really difficult to travel in Russia: It’s
quite big, and roads are not as
great as they are in Europe or
the States, so you have to fly
everywhere. It consumes a lot
of time. The great thing about
nonstop touring is that I’m
pretty sure our band can play
anywhere, on anything.
You guys got screwed and
didn’t make any money on
your first album from the mid
’90s because the label went
bankrupt. But you’re saying
you still don’t make money off
record sales over there?
Lagutenko: Yeah. Physical
[album] sales really mean nothing these days: By the time the
market started to stabilize and
the government started to do
something about intellectual
property [theft], we’d already
lost the market for physical
album sales. With what’s happening online now, everyone
knows it’s not that kind of
money. It’s kind of just, “Okay,
