Life Story

Life Story
11/96

There was a boy, his name was Sergei, and he was growing up in big city. His mother was a singer in the local church choir. Ever since he was little, his mother would take him with her on the choir practice, he knew all the words to all church hymns and he always sang along with the whole church congregation. His father recorded his singing the first time when Sergei was 2 years old. As he got a little older he started to play with his father’s short wave radio, searching through different stations and trying to find the music he enjoyed listening to so much. His family at that time was living in an apartment building and all the neighbors kids were playing on the apartment yard. Some of them were a little older than Sergei and some of them knew how to play guitar. Sergei always liked to listen to their playing and singing.

Sergei had one friend named Tim, a boy who was two years older, and they often listen to modern music on Tim’s father cassette player. Sergei was about 6 years old at that time. Ever since he was little, Sergei enjoyed music very much, but not the church choir music. He did like to sing some of the old church hymns, but he preferred the modern music he was listening to on the short wave radio, his friend’s tape player, and some street songs that his older friends were singing and playing on the street with a guitar. Sergei always wanted to learn how to play, but his mother didn’t want him to become a street musician like the others. His father sold the organ that was in his family for years, when he was 3 years old. Sergei was very unhappy to see that, but there was nothing he could do. There always was a guitar hanging on the family room wall, but no one in the family ever played it, no one even knew how to tune the strings. Sergei took the guitar and tried to play it many times but the strings were too tight and it was very painful for his little fingers. He was watching older boys on the street, how they play their guitars, but no one want to show him any chords because they thought he was too young, and he wouldn’t be able to understand how to play guitar.

When Sergei was about 9 years old, his older brother Peter who was 7 years older then Sergei, started taking lessons from his friend Urij, but every time Sergei was trying to sit and watch them play, they would send him away. But never the less Sergei’s desire to learn music was so strong that he started to watch and remember chords and fingers positioning of anyone who was playing guitar in his presence. Finally he figured out how to play three chords, most commonly used by his brother when he was playing guitar with Urij. Then he would wait for them to go away so he could get his hands on Peter’s guitar and practice.

Somehow Sergei found out that he could learn and play melodies on the guitar after hearing songs on the radio just ones, but he did not know all the chords that he would need to play any particular song. So one day Sergei learned a simple church hymn, using few chords that he knew at that time, and played it to Urij, his brother’s friend and guitar teacher. Urij was very impressed to find that 9 year old Sergei had been able to learn how to play guitar by himself. Urij, who was 18 years old at that time, decided to teach young Sergei, and after a few lessons even started thinking about forming an acoustic duo to perform on the upcoming Easter service at the local church. They learned three commonly known Easter hymns, where Urij and Sergei would take turns playing chords and lead improvisational parts. That was the beginning of Sergei’s lasting love to perform and listen to the big variety of musical styles. But the final turning point was when Sergei was 10 years old and his parents took him to a wedding, and there for the first time Sergei saw a modern wedding band. It was a real band with drums, bass, keyboards, singers, rhythm and lead guitars, and the music was so different from what he used to hear at the church services. It was very much like the music he was hearing on the short wave radio, the only difference was language. Unlike with music on the short wave radio, where songs were always in foreign languages which Sergei did not understand, the singers in this wedding band were singing a language he could understand.

That made him realize that he as well could become a part of a band like that, if he practiced a lot and learned how to play electric guitar. The only problem was for 10 year old Sergei to find money to buy an expensive electric guitar and amplifier with a speaker to plug the electric guitar in. The solution came pretty fast. He joined the radio club in his school where he learned how different radio parts work and with a little help from his father Sergei build his first guitar amplifier from an old tube radio. Then his brother bought him small acoustic guitar to fit Sergei’s small hands, and together they installed an electromagnetic unit so he would be able to plug his little-electric guitar into his custom made amplifier.

But Sergei did not stop there, his goal was to play a real electric guitar. So then Sergei and his friend Tim, whose father was carpenter, went to Tim’s father little shop where they would start building their first self made electric guitar. Tim was pretty good designer, and he came up with a weird guitar shape, which they later made of plywood. They attached an acoustic guitar neck to the plywood body. After attaching some self made electromagnetic pickups and strings their first guitar was done.

About the same time Sergei’s sister Vera, who was much older, got married to a man named Elmir. Even so the age difference was quite big between Sergei and Elmir, they become good friends. Elmir had a huge record and tape collection, and Sergei was always welcome to borrow any tapes or records he liked, and along with that Elmir was very knowledgeable about different styles of music and particular bands. He often explained to Sergei about the meaning of life, and which band reflected which type of life style. All that was very helpful for young Sergei to develop his own point of view in life, and his personal style of playing guitar. Then he even started writing his own songs.

Ever since Sergei was a little boy he would go to bed and before falling asleep he would imagine himself playing his guitar and singing on a huge stage full of lights. His band would play in complete sync, and he would play a slow song that he had just written and liked very much. The girl he sitting with in class, that very same girl whom he never could tell how much he liked her, would stand right in front of the stage, and as soon as he would start to sing this song he had written just for her, for the girl of his dreams, she would fall completely in love with him. And then all this endless time, all those long hours he had spent practicing scales, chords, and arpeggios on his guitar, all this time he had sped writing while all his friends had been playing on the street and laughing at him and his silly ideas, songs and dreams. All the humiliation that he had suffered from his classmates and other neighborhood kids would be worth it, if that one girl, just that one girl would understand, appreciate and love him for what he was and what he had accomplished in his life.

This dream hunted Sergei all his life, even when three years later he would join that very same band, that he saw in that wedding when he was 10 years old, even so it would be an accomplishment for self taught a young boy with no formal education in music, still it would not feel like he has accomplish enough to finally be happy with himself, be at peace and give it all music dreams a rest.

When Sergei was 12 he decided to learn how to play piano, but his parents did not have enough money to send him to a classical music school. So he started to go to church at a times when there was no service and used the church piano. Sergei transferred his knowledge of guitar playing to the piano. A couple of month later he knew enough chords and scales to back up congregational songs with the church organ at regular church services and to perform songs by himself. At the same time he was active in church and become obsessed with all the music ideas he had, all his fantasies of becoming a rock star. Sergei was listening to all kinds of rock bands and dreaming of meeting one of the leaders of one of the big name bands, tell him about his childhood dreams and prove himself a good enough guitar player to not only be part of a band but also be able to take the band to an even higher level of success.

Of course years passed by and nothing of that nature happened. But this was hard to give up childhood dream, a dream that kept him going, a dream in which he had invested so much time and energy. He was hoping to be in the right place at the right time one day and things would start to go his way. Then everything would suddenly pay off. Sergei then came up with the theory that things would start happening to him if he waited for the right number of years. He began to see a great significance in a numbers three and six, he noticed that every three years something minor happened in his life, and every six years a major event took place.

Sergei was about 11 years old when he came up with this theory and when he looked back he found all those minor and major steps in his short life. At three his grandmother had died. The first thing Sergei remembered about himself was wearing a warm white coat, walking on the snow covered yard of his house and talking to his cousins. He did not remember feeling sad for his grandmother probably because he did not understand what had happened to her. At the age of six a number of things happened at about same time. First - he was baptized in the Holy Spirit and started speaking in tongues, second – his family moved from the house he was born in, to a new apartment.  This became a strong habit because later in his life he would always play an important role in his life. At the age of twelve, Sergei started to play piano. His family relocated again but this time it was to a different city with a new school, new friends and new church where he saw the girl for the first time, and he knew right away he would marry her.

Nobody knew about Sergei’s theory, but he knew that something of great significance would happened to him, at the age of twelve because that number was special. It contains four of the three’s and two of the six’s. And things start happening right on his birthday. Sergei realized that his theory was valid and believed in it even more. At the age of fifteen Sergei founded his first band. He was lead singer and lead guitar player. That was the highest honor any rising guitar player could ever have dreamt of. He wrote his first autobiographical song-poem and, most importantly, he started to date Olga. He knew she would be his wife someday. But not even Olga believed he was serious about his future life plans. One more thing happened at the age of 15. Sergei finished his day time school education and went to work in a plant as a laze machine operator trainee while he was continuing his High School at the night school for workers.

Exactly as Sergei had expected right after his 18th birthday Sergei and Olga got married which lead to relocation and a complete change of life style. Sergei even changed his work place and profession due to an accident where he almost lost his hand. His fingers were badly cut and Sergei feared to lose his ability to play music if he continued working in such environment. He decided to become a night plumber. On call for 24 hours he was at his station with another plumber, Vladimir, the bass player from his band, and then both would have 3 days off before they had to return to another 24 hours shift. Since there were very few calls Sergei and Vladimir could spend a lot of time writing songs, unlike the job at the plant where Sergei had been the slave of his laze machine for 8 to 5 shift day after day. The pay was reasonably good as well at his new job. Sergei enjoyed working there because it afforded him enough time to practice his guitar and to write songs. As a matter of fact Sergei wrote more songs at that time then he ever had before, about 200 songs.

Time passed and by the time he was 21 years old, he already had one son, Maksim and his wife Olga was pregnant with other child. Sergei understood that the country they were living in had no place for fulfillment of his childhood dreams, nor for the dreams he had for his wife and children. He did not want them to go through the same humiliation he went through when he was going to school. Anyone would understand I am sure what it is like to be different and not like the others, to be the only child with Christian values in the whole school and neighborhood in a country where everyone is told that God does not exist, and where a man can be put to prison as a politically active criminal and enemy of the people simply for being a believer and trying to raise his children with Christian values. A child, in a country like that, is not your own but the property of the country, and you have no right to teach him anything that your country does not believe in, but instead you should move out to the free world. Sergei’s father and grandfather attempted to request permission to move out but their requests were denied and grandfather even was sentenced to 5 years prison for being pastor of a small local Pentecostal church. But when Sergei was 20 years old he asked the local government and even wrote a letter to president Gorbachev asking for his request to be granted so he and his family could move from the Soviet Union to a free world country that would accept him and his family and where his children could be raised freely and taught Christian values. The request was granted a few hours later they left the plane on the other side of the Soviet Union’s border. Even though no one knew what would happen next, it was one of the happiest days in Sergei’s family life.

Numbers still played a big role in Sergei’s life and he started to believe even more. 21 was seven times three, a very significant number. And this major change had happened on this date. Life went on and after staying eight short days in Vienna, Austria, Sergei and his family contacted the Christian organization WCC and asked to find them a country that would agree to accept them. The WCC people put them on the train to Rome, Italy where they would stay for two month awaiting the birth of the new child. After Sergei’s and Olga’s second son Aleksander was born they were contacted by WCC and told that a church in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania had agreed to sponsor them in the United States. On the August 31, 1988 they arrived in America. Life in the State was very different from the life they had in Russia, a new language, a new culture, so much to learn.

English came pretty easy for Sergei. Only a  few weeks later he was able freely communicate with his friends on the construction site where he was working as an interior painter. Soon after that he won a best performance award at the local Christian church festival, where he sang Michael W. Smith’s song “Pray for me”. He did an interview with a local TV reporter, by himself, without interpreter, just two month after he had come to the USA and he had never known any English back in Russia. Sergei still keeps the tape of his interview that he recorded later on TV.