Vladimir Vysotsky died on July 25, 1980 at 42 years. The official version of his death is a heart attack, but it is more likely that it was the result of alcohol and drug abuse. This is happening in the midst of the Olympics in Moscow.
In 1986, he was posthumously awarded the title of “merited artist”, and in 1987, a feature film and a documentary dedicated to him were released. After his death, a fund was created in the USSR for the preservation and preservation of his work. There is also an asteroid named after him.
Even then he was respected for his acting achievements, but many of his songs were banned in the USSR, as they touched on taboo subjects in the Union of his time.
Despite the banning of his songs, Vysotsky gave concerts all over Russia, also in France, the USA and other countries. He has released ten albums in Russia, and in 1987 his unreleased recordings began to be released.
Vysotsky was known for his enormous talent, but also for his strong love for women. Like most creative geniuses, he was a complex and contradictory personality. His third great passion was alcohol. Often abused it. At least twice in his life he attempted suicide, Dani Ivanov recalls in his blog.
This is what journalist Alyona Neikova writes about Vysotsky in her article entitled “Vladimir Vysotsky the (un)known star from another universe”
Those who watched his first steps in the cinema and theater did not even imagine that the young man with a hoarse voice would become a real phenomenon, would become a role model, would be perceived as an extraordinary icon. Some are even of the opinion that the first steps of the actor Vysotsky were quite uncertain. But despite the random play on the stages of third-rate theaters and the participation in episodic roles in the cinema, in the end, the magical transformation into one of the brightest stars, leaving an indelible mark in the lives of both intellectuals and ordinary people.
Of course, the "Taganka" Theater played a huge role in Vysotsky's growth as an artist. This temple of Melpomene held the gaze of the whole country, and the actors in it allowed themselves to say from the stage what was forbidden to almost everyone else. The talent of Vladimir Vysotsky began to shine precisely from the stage of “Taganka”. His unique voice is heard not only by the audience in the theater, but also by the people on the street, by the whole nation. Perhaps it was the unusual hoarseness of speech, the unchanging guitar, the sharp mind, innate intelligence and infinite charisma that were given to Vysotsky as a compensation for his absolutely unheroic and somewhat even trivial appearance.
It is an open secret that fame comes to him first because of his undeniable qualities as a bard. As a poet, author and performer, Vysotsky succeeded for decades in suggesting to the audience what he only later managed to convey as an actor from the theater stage and with his incarnations in the cinema. Although many of his colleagues tried to perform Vysotsky's songs, only he managed to do it in such a way that the sweet-sad feeling of a lump in the throat appeared from the simple truths heard.
For some today it may be strange, but at that time it was an absolute fact that there were no official recordings of Vysotsky's songs for a long time. Both lyrical and satirical texts and sheet music have been circulated illegally for years, from acquaintance to friend, from neighbor to relative, from student to colleague… His music, born from the great symbiosis of the unique hoarse voice of the bard and his guitar performances, could be heard in every home where there were tape recorders. Vysotsky's poems were passed on by word of mouth, gradually becoming folk art.
However, no one perceived Vysotsky as an ardent revolutionary or a fighter against the communist regime. He wrote his songs and performed them in that unique way, not because he wanted to prove something to someone, but because he couldn't live any other way.
And in the cinema, the image of Vladimir Vysotsky was for a long time rather mysterious than bright and definite. The viewers seemed to pay more attention to him after the movie “Vertical” (1966). In it, the 28-year-old Vysotsky has a beard and performs the cult “Song for the friend” (“Song about the other”). In each subsequent tape and on stage, he seems to be happy to change his appearance, but manages to always be himself. The image of the revolutionary Brodsky, in which Vysotsky is reincarnated, not only presents the actor as a different, multi-layered and ambiguous creator. He proves to the respectable audience that he is not just an image on the screen, but has a character, that he is not a Bolshevik mummy, but a living person.
Vysotsky is one of the few actors of that time who managed to abstract himself from the politicization of his roles. The image of the White Guard lieutenant Brusentsov in the film "Two comrades served" is also extremely impressive. (“Two comrades served”), and his transformation into the investigator Gleb Zhiglov in “The meeting place does not change” (“Mesto vestri odnosti ne nezlije”). It was after this series that it became impossible for Vysotsky to “not let go” to be photographed. Unfortunately, however, the actor managed to play only one more prominent role on the screen – of Don Juan in “Little Tragedies” of Mikhail Schweitzer. He does it in such a way that the viewers to this day can only regret that in the film, along with the sword, the actor did not take his infamous guitar. And neither the size of the tragedies, nor the modest height of Juan himself could not stop Laura and dona Ana's attraction to him. And in real life, Marina Vladi, his first wife – the actress Iza Zhukova, nor Lyudmila Abramova – the most beautiful actress of the Soviet Union, not even the other representatives of the fair sex could resist Vysotsky's endless charm.
Of course, one can speculate for a long time on the question of what else Vysotsky could have played in the cinema and in the theater, but, alas, he did not succeed. You left this world at only 42 and a half years old. The fact is, however, that his roles are probably fewer than they could be, not least because of the lack of courage in the people on whom it once depended. Vladimir himself never sought to participate at any cost in any film or production.
His boundless talent allows the actor to be himself in any role – and thus be super-convincing and unique. Precisely because of this fact, the directors forgave Vysotsky all his “flights in waking life and dreams” – the many failed performances, the alcohol, the drugs, the hubris and the arrogance. And despite all these weaknesses, delusions, ostentatiousness, leather shoes, Mercedes, women and diseases, he remained a person. At the same time – one of the brightest. Which, against the background of the deficit of these same personalities, turns Vysotsky into an even more significant and valuable figure for all time.
Vysotsky is neither a symbol nor a tribune, he is not a rebel, he is not an icon. He is the (un)known star from another universe. Without it, life would be boring and empty. And if God ever decides to speak, he will do so in Vysotsky's divine hoarse voice.