My mother came to Bratislava from London, and why should women always do it (laughs)?
Kateřina – Catherine…I met her and we fell in love and that’s how I ended up here. It’s not my case that I had to come to Prague for work. “I feel at home here because my wife is from Prague – this is the reason why I’m here. But many of them say they don’t feel at home here. I have met many Slovaks who live in Prague, basically, it seems to me, for work – the work opportunities are better here than in Slovakia. There will always be Czech music and Slovak music, simply because it’s sung in these languages.” “But even now it’s very difficult for the Arctic Monkeys to sing in Slovak or Czech (laughs) – we have to do it. Only now do we have all the bands – when a record or a CD by Coldplay or Arctic Monkeys is out you can buy it here too. “The thing is there were no English bands, no records from America, so it was easier for us to be successful during the ‘70s and ‘80s. You released your first album in 1979 and you’re still having hits all these years later – what is the secret of your success? “But when the ‘70s started things changed politically in Czechoslovakia and it was harder to get gigs.” Then we played in the V Club in Bratislava…It was the end of the ‘60s and we were even able to travel to Switzerland – I remember playing in Gstaad…the demand was to play songs like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and things like that, so we developed there.” We were able to play seven songs and we were already successful. Tell us more about your beginnings in music and your first band – was it hard to get gigs? Did it take you long to get good? We played the actual words…The Bee Gees had a hit Massachusetts and I sang it properly and all the girls were crying – I wasn’t even 16.” I was 15 when I joined a band, because I could speak English. You were a teenager in the ‘60s – were you seen as relatively cool because you could speak English or perhaps even sing in English? Let’s say 10 minutes in English and then another 10 minutes in Slovak, because I didn’t even realise which language I was speaking (laughs).” Half of the sentence was in English and then it was in Slovak there were funny combinations.īut at home did you speak Slovak or English? You probably understand how it is when you speak in a combination like ‘I would like to buy kilo chleba’ – that’s what my mother always said.
“Well, she started to speak Slovak but it was always very funny. What language did you speak at home, given that your mother was English and didn’t speak perfect Slovak? It was a short letter…the whole story is there.” Miro Žbirka in 1988, photo: CTK“I think she found it difficult, but she never showed it…I only found a letter, maybe half a year ago, a letter she tried to send to the BBC when she was really, really old.
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