Karel Svoboda & Karel Gott – We have to take some delight in our life/The most successful singer in the history of our pop music and his leading composer contemplate their hits and children. Their cooperation started with the smashing hit Lady Carneval some forty years ago. As they both say there is an umbilical cord between them. A few days ago Karel Gott won his 31st Golden Nightingale award and he and Karel Svoboda will soon have in common moiré than just their music. Svoboda has a six-month-old son and Gott will become a father in a couple of months.

You have already planned your concerts until the end of 2006. Will you have to slow down your working tempo once you become a father?

Gott: I will have to; otherwise I’d be an irresponsible father-adventurer. I will choose my projects carefully instead of filling up my calendar with performances. I will also think it twice whether I should go on so many foreign tours. Moscow, New York, Tokyo...

* Karel Svoboda has a six-month-old son Jakub. Has he slowed down too?

Svoboda: On the contrary, the son has made me double my tempo. Kuba (Jakub) fills me with energy. Unlike Karel I have a great advantage because I can work from home. He has to go out to see his fans who, in turn, want to see a good performance. I cannot imagine Karel slowing down.
Gott: As I said, I’ll take things easy. I will give my soon-to-be-born child what I did not give to my two daughters. I was their parent but not a father. It was responsible of me to bring them presents but I did not bring them up. That was owing to my job.

* Even John Lennon once said that he had missed the childhood of his first son as he had just been in the prime of his musical career with the Beatles. He fully devoted his time only to his second son.

Svoboda: That’s the way it is. If someone is number one in his field, his family always pays for it. Karel’s daughters were brought up by their mothers. Otherwise, Karel Gott could not be Karel Gott who traveled the country, Europe and world. My first son is 25 now. He left for America and I did not lead him by his hand either. When he was born I was in Hamburg.

* So, John Lennon was right.

Svoboda: Sure. A young person is full of energy and feels immortal. Today, Karel and I know something about life and we realize that a child coming at our age is a special gift. Without my child, I’d be nothing but an aged playboy or I’d drink myself to death.

* How do your friends and fans respond to the happy news?

Gott: They‘re surprised and they congratulate me. Nobody has asked me yet whether I went mad. Naturally, a wedding issue presents itself too. But I do not want to comment on things about which I have not decided yet.

* In TV programs you often get unusual gifts – plush toys and plastic feeding bottles. What further steps are you taking yourself?

Gott: I am very serious about the situation and I have already vacated one room. I sold my collection of art deco furniture, impressionist and expressionist paintings and I am replacing them with Ant Ferda and Mickey Mouse posters.

The surreal story of Lady Carneval

* When did your two meet for the first time?

Gott: I think that somebody introduced us in the Vltava coffee bar. Maybe, it was the leader of the orchestra with which I sang then. Karel played world hits he liked but he did not offer anything of his own.
Svoboda: I remember that time clearly. First time I saw you when you came to sing in Vltava as a guest. Being a medical student I needed an extra income so I played with Ota Rendl, a band master from Kladno. It was my first job. I also remember that you brought me a score with some awful triplets. They made my hands hurt and even shake.

* Originally, you were rivals competing for the favor of fans. Karel Svoboda played and composed music for the Mefisto band that competed with the Apollo Theater whose small band was conducted by Ladislav Štaidl.

Gott: We were well aware of each other’s existence but our cooperation did not start until making the song Lady Carneval in 1968.
Svoboda: To be precise, before I started to work with Karel I cooperated with lyricist Jirka Štaidl. He was the one who told me that Gott was going to sing at the Rio festival and needed a hit that would be in tune with local temperament. It was in the fall of 1967.

* That must have been a tempting offer.

Svoboda: Extraordinarily tempting. We were poor, self-conscious boys. Only the mere idea of going to Rio...
Gott: We were so exhilarated that Karel forgot to send me the score.
Svoboda: The truth was otherwise. We lied to you when we said the score had been finished. You kept on ringing us up, asking when it would be ready.

* The creation of Lady Carneval is connected with many legends. It is said to have been written in an hour, in a night...

Svoboda: Jirka Štaidl and I bought a big bottle of Fernet liquor and brought ourselves into a state in which we believed that the world was at our feet. We saw ourselves on board a plane to Ria. But we did not have any music or lyrics idea.
Gott: I called them again at 9 a.m. next morning...
Svoboda: But you did not have the faintest idea that it was only one hour before you came that Jirka came up with the phrase Lady Carneval. I held on to the theme and the song was ready in twenty minutes. It still remains the most quickly composed song in my life.

* Could we take it as a recipe for a successful hit?

Gott: Most hits are results of spontaneous explosions of ideas.
Svoboda: Wait a minute, it’s not that easy. A hit can be ‘constructed’ but you are right in that that spontaneous ideas are always somewhat better.

* Do these old evergreens still belong to your present-day repertoire?

Gott: I even sing Lady Carneval at my concerts among final pieces. But an artist cannot base his career on one hit alone, even if it conquered all charts.
Svoboda: And this is why Karel has one great advantage over other singers in the Czech Republic.
Gott: If all composers agreed not to ever write a new song for me, I could still greet them with a grin on my face. I have built my repertoire for forty years, and I never tossed any songs just because they were old.

* What has been, for nearly forty years, the source of inspiration for an accomplished composer like you?

Svoboda: I studied piano under the guidance of Professor Kejha at Prague’s conservatory. I played exacting pieces such as Rachmaninov. Classical music provides a basis but the school of life, which involved playing at bars in my case, should not be underestimated either. For two years I played jazz in Prague’s Viola where I met with Jiří alias George Mráz who has become a real star in the US, or with Jirka Stivín. That was the irreplaceable school of extemporization and musical invention.
Gott: I could sign this statement. My beginnings were also in jazz coffee bars – with Rudolf Rokl, and Luděk Hulan, to name at least some. Playing at bars hardens a musician. Such experience cannot be substitutes with contests even if it was SuperStar. Young singers who think they can skip this chapter of their career ladder are foolish. Those who had practical experience, such as Balogová or Horváth, scored points.

* Which musicians had the greatest influence on you then?

Svoboda: I’d like to mention one name: Antonín Gondolán.

* Perhaps the most accomplished Czechoslovak Romany of the 1960’s.

Svoboda: An intuitive bass guitarist without formal education but with a genetically-acquired musical talent. He used stops so unique that we had to learn them by heart. I still use his method of leading bass.

* Have you always composed songs for a specific singer or did some of your songs find its way to a singer by chance? This is said to be common in pop music.

Svoboda: It can happen but I always have a concrete person in mind. It was the same with Kubišová, Pilarová, Vondráčková, Matuška or later with Hůlka, Machálková, Bílá or Kolářová. I admit I could not work in any other way. Another thing I never did was to go from one singer to another and offer them songs. It’s not my style.
Gott: Franta Ringo Čech used to call such people ‘circulars’. Some of them can offer one singer up to several songs during an elevator ride.

Tough guys sing Bee Mája

* Lady Carneval is one of all time greatest hits in our country. Has this song of yours also been most popular abroad?

Gott: The popularity of my songs abroad conforms to the needs of my greatest market which is in German-speaking countries where Bee Mája leads the charts.
Svoboda: This song gripped the audience in other countries too. There are about forty language versions, including those in Hebrew and Yiddish.
Gott: That’s almost the same as German. But for instance, Karel’s song Mít talent, co měl Paganini was most successful in Russia where it sold six million albums.

* After all, Bee Mája was custom-made for a German children’s TV series.

Svoboda: Yes, it was perhaps the greatest coincidence in our entire professional life. Karel and I ran into each other in Germany. Without that accidental meeting the story of Bee Mája would have probably taken a different course.
Gott: We met in Munich. I did not feel like singing that day. Karel asked me where I was going and I told him I took an afternoon off and was going to have a cup of coffee. Karel said he had a short song for a children’s TV series that he wanted me to sing.
Svoboda: It was a tough job to get Karel to a studio. I convinced him by saying it was just around the corner and the recording would be over with in no time. One version and chorus and we could go home.

* The Platinum-awarded Nightingale owes you a lot then…

Svoboda: Yes, the drudgery of Munich paid back a thousand times.
Gott: But I did not expect it at all. I even remember that after the recording had been finished a lady producer asked me to sign a contract for negligible royalties. It was worded as [royalties] ‘for half and hour of singing’ or something like that. In fact, we found ourselves in a truly fabulous constellation of creative people. We happened to become a part of a project that collected a record number of various awards.

* There are rumors that up to now kids in Germany have been bringing you flowers during concerts.

Svoboda: Once Karel stopped at a motorway restaurant. All of a sudden a gang of bikers pulled in. Well, go on, Karel, it’s your story…
Gott: At first sight, they were tough guys, dressed up in leather and studs, simply thugs. I have never been on the same wave with such boys even though I quite like the Harleys. First I locked myself inside the car and I did not dare to get out until much later after they went in a pub. I told myself that they would not bother me with all the staff and guests around. They were seated around a long table and sang Bee Mája in unison. They told me that had been the song of their childhood, their hymn.

* Was there a song whose success surprised because you had not expected much of it?

Gott: In my opinion that was the case with Hey, hey baby. The song was a failure in the Czech Republic so I did not believe in it much when I introduced it abroad.
Svoboda: And in Germany all concert halls join Karel when he sings it today. The German version of the song is in perfect sync with German mentality: "One day I’d like to travel the world with pockets full of money." That’s every German’s dream.
Gott: And every Czech’s too. But then in the 1970’s it was unthinkable to present such a text. No way. Perhaps we could have sung: "One day I’d like to travel the world with pockets full of allocated foreign currency".

* You still enjoy great popularity. Do you have to refuse some contracts?

Svoboda: One experience cured me turning down proposals: I was offered to do film music for a German series based on Exupéry’s Little Prince. It was short after the tremendous success of Bee Mája and I was so vein that I told the producer: "I’ll think it over and let you know in a week’s time." I came back one week later and felt kind of awkward as the man who had approached me with the Little Prince project did not seem to have any questions. So I started the conversation only to find out that he had commissioned that order with famous French composer Cosma. That taught me a lesson: I always agree to everything first, knowing that I can always find a way out later if necessary.
Gott: That’s the way it is. Good opportunities do not present themselves twice. It seems that some colleagues in the Czech Republic have not got used to this fact yet. One should try even those things he does think himself to be good at. And he can refuse a job if he sees for himself that he cannot handle it even though it can be too late in some cases.

Have you ever had quarrels?
* Do you think there is a theory that explains the forty years of your cooperation without any serious problems? Or was it not always so easy?

Svoboda: I could remember some quarrels. They are hard to avoid in the course of creative work.
Gott: Yes, if we were only nice to each we would look suspicious. It could give a false impression of there being quite a different kind of relationship between us.

* What is the source of the relative harmony between the two of you?

Gott: Even though we have been friends of many years we have never stopped respected each other.

We can always reach an agreement without emotional arguments. Other composers often make me fell they write music for themselves. As if they were singers.
Svoboda: Unlike me who tries to sing like Karel Gott without having his voice, especially when I am presenting him with new songs for the first time. I try to impress him. My efforts often strain my vocal chords. Moreover, we have a lot in common outside the professional field. For instance, we both have much younger partners in life.

* That’s true. Many people were surprised to learn that Ivana Macháčková was pregnant. You have been a couple for a long time and you have always been known as a confirmed bachelor.

Gott: That’s not accurate. I always take time over my relationships because I want to test everyone first. I am getting used to somebody else only too slowly and I am an observing type of man. I have gained this reputation thanks to my profession not because I’d be a playboy in heart. Svoboda: Both of us find it difficult to get acquainted with new people although the lists of our friends are long.

* Do you manage to test women cautiously even if they are voluptuous?

Gott: I am not definitely the type who asks a woman out only because of her first-glance attractiveness. The more one gets to known about a woman, the deeper their relationship can be. Then it is also the matter of guesswork. Just like music.

* There were times when your dachshund used to test people for your. It must have been faster wasn’t it?

Gott: Yes, but it applied to business partners only. When I met a new person and my dog Lumpík brought him a doll or a ball to start a game I knew everything was alright. When a person asked about the dog’s name and tried to stroke him but the dog did not do more than an enface grin, it was clear the person was not worth making any business with. But the dog was always envious of my female visitors.

Truly the last tour?

* Your attitudes to musicals are quite different. While composer Svoboda has made them his priority in recent years, singer Gott has avoided them.

Gott: Karel offered me a role a long time ago. It was in Count Monte Cristo. I was pleased with the offer. But it is well known that I do not want to be tied with theater. As soon as I get in, the train starts moving and I am not able to get out. This was the thinking behind my ‘no’s’ to tempting offers to act in Les Miserables or Three Musketeers.
Svoboda: One day we’ll have not other choice than to use a virtual Karel. Have you heard about the latest US stage hit? A virtual, 3D figure of dead Frank Sinatra accompanied with a live orchestra and chorus.

* In recent years many composers have been heard saying that the time of albums with a dozen of three-minute songs is over and the future belongs to musicals. Looking aside from royalties, why have you released a collection of old hits with new arrangements?

Gott: The idea was born when Karel celebrated his birthday – let’s not say which birthdays it was. Everybody for whom Karel ever composed a song was singing there. Svoboda: You probably meant to say all those who are still alive.
Gott: Exactly. Anyway, that night I sang a piece whose wonderful arrangement was prepared by Jiří Škorpík. You see the arranger is like a tailor who makes clothes and clothes make the man – or a song in this case. And Škorpík wrote an arrangement that was modern, sublime, and elegant. That made us to consider whether he could arrange more of the Svoboda pieces that would make a whole album. In my opinion those are true evergreens.

* Still, those songs appeal rather to an older audience. Or do you think that they may grip the young generation as well?

Gott: Definitely. The album features beautiful melodies with a sound core. I sometimes go to a disco and DJ’s play songs like Nápoj lásky číslo 10. Young people go dancing and I can see them singing the lyrics. Do you think they do it because I am there too? After all, the song was chosen by the SuperStar winner Vlasta Horváth in one competition round.

* How will the modern adjustments appeal to the orthodox fans of Karel Gott? And their numbers are still high even today.

Gott: When the Karel Gott Story album was released I did come across objections coming from my true-blue fans who prefer authentic recordings as a documentary eyewitness of their time. I understand their point but the old recordings are rather pretentious.