Half a century ago – in 1972 – the head of the VIA “Merry Fellows” invited Alexander Lerman to his team. He performed songs that immediately became hits of the time: “I won’t come to you”, “When we are silent together”, “Warsaw rain”, “Love is a huge country” and many others. Then he worked in the Araks group and starred in the comedy Afonya, where he played a small role as a singer on the dance floor and sang his song Up These Stairs. Even then he decided to emigrate to the United States, which he did on New Year’s Eve 1976. He died suddenly in Newark at the age of 59 in 2011. This year, Alexander Anatolyevich could have turned 70. In memory of a colleague and friend, musician Alexander Aleshin shared his memories of him.
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“We met Sasha Lerman in 1968, when he joined my Winds of Change group,” Alyoshin began the story. -He was then 16 years old and studied at the Moscow Central Music School. I also worked with him at Merry Fellows from 1973 to 1975. And then he went to America. I lived there for a while too, but we only spoke on the phone and then off and on.
I remember him as an incredible talent and a child prodigy. Since childhood he was a polyglot, he knew many languages. And after music school he entered Moscow State University, philological department. As far as I can remember, his soul was torn between a love of music and a love of philology. He succeeded here and there. For a long time I could not decide what to choose.
Pugachev steam locomotive
– At the age of 18, Sasha entered the Rostov Conservatory in the cello class and tried to enter Moscow State University during the day, – continues the colleague. -But she stopped math and transferred the papers to Vilnius University so that they would not be taken into the army.
He was a man of very nervous organization. He once he had a breakdown when he had already entered Vilnius. He earned a nervous disease, something like psychopathy, and ended up in a special clinic. And after leaving the psychiatric hospital, he received a blank ticket. So the need to study in the capital of Lithuania disappeared.
Once I introduced Sasha to Lenochka – his first wife. She was a nurse. In 1975, their son Ilya was born.
We did a lot of tours back then, but everything felt like a routine. Monotonous and similar: girls, drinks, cities, hotels. But a trip to the GDR is different!
“Merry Fellows” was then sent to perform overseas. And Alla Pugacheva went with us like a locomotive. She has already become a laureate of international competitions and received the right to speak to foreign audiences. Alla she sang three songs and introduced us. We did well. For example, I played solo with the song “When Love Comes”.
In GDR stores they did not sell anything particularly interesting to us at that time. No guitars, no jeans, no leather jackets. But there were chic German shoes.
Russian exotic
“When Alexander emigrated to the United States, he entered Yale University there,” Aleshin continues. – Already on a judiciary. Consequently, he defended his thesis on the ancient Sanskrit language. Life itself made a choice for him what to do. Even though he in the United States he tried to earn money with music.
Organized the group Sasha and Yura. Sasha is he, and Yura is Yuri Malov, a musician from the Mosconcert, popular in Moscow rock party circles in the 70s. He left for America a little earlier than Lerman.
They toured college campuses, played on campuses, at parties. The locals stared at them as if they were Russian exotics.
But it all ended quickly. The producers weren’t interested in the guys, they didn’t offer contracts. This is Sasha’s musical career and she froze. And he was deeply committed to science.
He has taught in the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Delaware. His last American wife is also a teacher and philologist. She worked in this educational institution and knew Russian very well.
In America we had different social circles: he had an academic party, I had a musical one. Sasha, like me, lacked the ambition to become a superstar, too smart.
11 years ago, he died in his sleep of heart failure. His last wife told me about it. They have a common son, he is now 20 and then he was nine years old. Sasha went to bed, his wife watched TV and when she came to him she was no longer breathing.
Photo source: personal archive, frame
