Among people close to the world of Russian rock music, there is a strong opinion that Alexander Kutikov deserves a more impressive solo career in his composer and vocal abilities. He could achieve more by using all his potential for personal success, and not for collective creativity in the composition, albeit a cult, but a group.
Kutikov has one answer: “Machine” is his native home, “engine drivers” are his family, and he is engaged in personal projects no less than others.
Bugler from the Patriarchal
He is one of the most devoted fans of Moscow Spartak. Alexander Kutikov jokes that the love of football and middle name is all that he inherited from his father. Viktor Petukhov, in addition to Spartak, played for Wings of the Soviets from Kuibyshev. But instead of him, having left the family early, the main man in the family was his maternal grandfather - Naum Moiseevich Kutikov, who lived the difficult life of a nomenclature worker of the Stalin and Khrushchev times.
Alexander Kutikov was born on April 13, 1952 in Moscow near the Patriarch's Ponds. His mother danced in a gypsy ensemble and, obviously, endowed her son with musicality and artistry at the genetic level. The childhood of the future rocker was a typical Soviet-pioneer one with a formally organized school life in the morning and a hectic courtyard life until night, where a strong character and strong fists were a tangible advantage. Boxing lessons helped Sasha maintain authority among friends from the Patriarchs, and classes in a musical school in the wind instrument class made life easier at school and a pioneer camp - there was no better mountaineer.
Finding landmarks
At the age of 14, he first heard from a friend hitherto unfamiliar music - it was The Beatles. One of the compositions of Norwegian Wood so impressed Kutikov that soon the desire to make such music became decisive for him for his whole subsequent life. There was an incentive for mastering the guitar, which was helped by classes at a music school.
To begin his career, Alexander Kutikov chose a specialty in the region’s kindred music - a sound engineer. Soon he became one of the youngest sound professionals at the State Television and Radio Broadcasting. Among those whom he recorded during broadcasts and in the studio were many pop stars of that time: Karel Gott, Helena Vondrachkova, “Singing Guitars”, etc. People with common interests are always drawn to each other, and soon Kutikov finds himself in the midst of those who were involved in the birth of Russian rock.
Birth of "MV"
Later, Kutikov half-seriously said that the desire to learn how to play the bass guitar arose from two circumstances. The first - there are fewer bass strings, the second - an acute shortage of cool bass players in all groups that have arisen since the late sixties throughout Moscow. He quickly became known as a master of bass. Therefore, when the young Andrei Makarevich was looking for a replacement for a guitarist who had left for the army, Kutikov came in handy. They made friends with Andrei since his studies at the architectural institute, so he joined the team painlessly, introducing a major rock and roll spirit into it.
Alexander Kutikov, whose biography has been associated with the “Time Machine” since 1971, left the group several times in order to be its permanent member since 1979. The first departure was caused by a conflict with one of the co-founders of the group, Sergei Kavagoe, because of which, in the year 79, MV had to be recreated anew. In 1975, Kutikov left the group to officially get a job - he was invited to the Tula Philharmonic, otherwise he would face a sentence for parasitism.
"Leap summer"
After the first departure from MV, Kutikov played in the group created by Chris Kelmi and A. Sitkovetsky from the “wreckage” of the teams “Airport” and “Sadko”. The time spent in Leap Summer turned out to be useful for the musician. He gained valuable experience working with high-class musicians, once again appreciated the significance of the poetic component of rock: according to his recommendation, the texts for some compositions of VL were written by the famous poetess Margarita Pushkina. In the group, he met drummer Valery Efremov, who became his long-time associate in the "Machine".
The peak of this creative union was a scandalous victory at the 1974 rock festival in Tallinn, where the “Time Machine” also participated. Then, contrary to the pressure of ideological organs, the group became a laureate. But the two bears in the same den were cramped, and Leap Summer broke up at the Rock Studio and Autograph, and Kutikov and Efremov, together with Makarevich, became the nucleus of the revived Time Machine.
New turn
Andrei Makarevich and Alexander Kutikov, whose photos were present on all MV discs and posters, began to work together again. For more than four decades, the composition of the group has been shuffled many times, but as Alexander says: “These are all our people!” For all this time he made a significant contribution to the collective creative process. Kutikov is a full-fledged co-author of many compositions with which the “Machine” is personified. He composed music for such hits as “Turn”, “Race”, “For those who are at sea”, “Music under the snow”, “Night”, “Good day”, “He plays at the funeral”, “If if we were an adult. ” According to connoisseurs, only the unique Kutikovsky vocals gives the performance of these songs genuine authenticity.
Like other participants of the “Time Machine”, Alexander Kutikov also accumulates his own musical material. The discography of his solo albums began in 1990 with the disc "Dancing on the Roof" and has seven albums. Among them are “Shop of Miracles” (1996), “The Best. Time Machine ”(2002), “ Demons of Love ”(2009). In 2014, a new stage in the solo work of the musician began. He began to actively collaborate with people who had previously helped him record solo discs. Soon the album "Alexander Kutikov and the group" Nuance "was released.
