Pavel Klusák on Suchý, Šlitr and the explosion that was Semafor
Prague’s Semafor theatre was the most significant arts institution in 1960s Czechoslovakia, ushering in a new era against the backdrop of a slow political thaw in the communist country. Semafor was centred on the song-writing duo of Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr and gave starts to a whole generation of enormous and enduring pop stars. Top Czech music writer Pavel Klusák explores the theatre’s great decade in his brand new book Suchý and Šlitr: Semafor 1959–1969 – and shared his insights at our studios in Vinohrady.
You’ve written this wonderful new book about Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr. How did their partnership first begin? How did they get together?
“Their story is a part of the late ‘50s, when after 1956 the atmosphere in our country, both political and social, got warmer.
“The rigid Stalinist times were over, but very freshly over, so people like Jiří Suchý – and there were very few of them – wanted to amuse themselves and play music influenced by, as they say, American rhythms: soul, rhythm and blues, early rock’n’roll, jazz, swing.
“The jazz club Reduta was one of the very few venues in Prague. Music was played mostly in cafés and hotel bars, but Jiří Suchý and the band Akord Club played, without any permission, at Reduta.
“And their long nights of dance music and very playful lyrics, because Jiří Suchý is a poet – it’s clear – brought attention.
“Students were an audience, but also actors and artists. And one night one of the comedians of that time brought Jiří Šlitr, as a composer, who saw a band playing mostly covers of American songs and songs from the world.
“So that’s the moment of meeting of people who wanted to do not local pop, not the conservative grey and somehow very correct songs of that time – they were ready to explode with something that probably was like a blueprint, or a preview, of the ‘60s.”
You say in the book that the big influence on Suchý was Voskovec and Werich, and that Šlitr was influenced by Dixieland. At the time when they started, or when they became famous, was Dixieland still a popular form of music?
“That’s probably one of the cores of the story. If you say that the Semafor theatre was a huge phenomenon of the Czechoslovak ‘60s, you would expect pop, beat, maybe early rock.
“The nation waited for a long, long time for permission to live with jazz.”
“But these people had this jazz, swing, Dixieland, post-swing band. The reason is clear. Jiří Šlitr [born 1924] was a teenager and a young man in the fascist or Nazi era, during World War II, when people could not amuse themselves freely and jazz was forbidden.
“Jiří Suchý [1931] was 19, 20 during the Stalinist era, when again jazz, as this Western influence was forbidden.
“So the nation waited for a long, long time for permission to live with jazz songs, old musical entertainment and so on.
“Abroad, Bob Dylan started of his career. The beginning of the ‘60s was the beginning of the British invasion. But these people, and the Czech and Slovak nations too, needed to – at last – enjoy this kind of music.
“That’s why when in ’56, ’57 Jiří Suchý, and then along with Šlitr, started I think the society here was like a pressure cooker, and they were the ones who hit the valve.
“The first years of the Semafor theatre was a big generation change.”
“That’s why the feedback was enormous. The whole generation remembers it. And the first years of the Semafor theatre was much more than good comedians’ work – it was a big generation change.
“I am a child of a generation of parents for whom it was the significant change not only in what songs you listened to and what jokes you laughed at – it was permission.
“It was permission to amuse yourself freely, not through ‘responsible satire’.”
They started Seamfor in 1959 and after coming through some other theatres. What’s really interesting to me is I’m not sure if there’s any kind of analogy to Semafor in the US or the UK. But if I understand it right, Semafor was a very popular theatre, where it was very hard to get tickets, but it probably entered most people’s consciousness through songs on the radio, songs from the theatre that became radio hits, and then later through movies like If a Thousand Clarinets.
“These were the early days of Czechoslovak Television. But Semafor was too risky for television. They didn’t appear frequently there.
“So there was a legend of this small theatre. And it’s true that from 1960 the institutions realised that there was no sense in refusing or repressing the Semafor theatre.
“From 1960 the institutions realised there was no sense in repressing Semafor.”
“Yes, one of the first Semafor plays was forbidden, Taková ztráta krve [1960], Such a Loss of Blood, because it really had a political image, or content.
“But the songs themselves were cheeky but innocent. So when one of first songs was released as a single, Včera neděle byla [Yesterday Was Sunday], a very simple song sung by the 18-year-old singer Pavlína Filipovská, it became the most sold single in Czechoslovakia for 22 years, because people were amazed that Semafor was not half-forbidden any more, but was becoming…”
Mainstream?
“Not just mainstream but also a signal of change – that more things are allowed.”
As for Suchý and Šlitr as songwriters, how did they collaborate? Was it simply that Šlitr did the music and Suchý did the lyrics? Did they both do both? Did they write together or separately?
“People say, and it’s probably true, that Jiří Šlitr, the composer, was the more ambitious of the two. Jiří Šlitr proposed at the end of the ‘50s to do a private contract to collaborate just together: Suchý and Šlitr would not collaborate as songwriters with other people.
“That’s probably why they knew each other more and more, better and better. And for some time they had a rule: every week a new song.
“So it means that quite quickly they had an amazing large repertoire. And if somebody were to ask why so many of the songs were really good, really interesting, it’s hard to say.
“It’s the same magic why Leonard Cohen is a genius. It’s very hard to analyse it.”
One thing that struck me listening to some of the songs: Is the main charm coming from the lyrics? For me the music is fine, it’s catchy, but it seems to me that the charm may lie mainly in the lyrics.
“People who experienced it personally say that the main charm was on the stage.
“All the people were young, and Jiří Suchý belonged to the first generation of actors who did not act, who were there as themselves, as a songwriter and a writer who writes plays but the people were there on stage for their own personalities.
“This strange mix of theatre and authentic personal expression was quite strong at that time, and it was very hard to analyse it for theatre critics, for example.
“So yes, the lyrics, and yes, Jiří Šlitr maybe in his first period wanted to belong to the genres of ballads and rhythm and blues and so on. But as he got a little older, his music went more and more individual.”
But were the Semafor shows in the style of musicals? Or were they plays with musical interludes?
“Basically, they had two kinds of production. Things that were more or less concerts, concerts with some conceptual story that went around it, like Zuzana je sama doma, Zuzana is Home Alone.
“And then they had theatre plays. But after the banned theatre play I think Suchý wanted to be careful, so they returned to plays, and very cruel plays, political plays, at the end of the ‘60s, when it was safer again.”
Semafor wasn’t just about these two guys of course. Many of the performers who were part of the group or who performed with Semafor were, or became, the biggest stars of the 1960s in this country.
“Not just the 1960s. I can’t understand how they picked so many big stars of Czech pop music: Karel Gott, the biggest one, Eva Pilarová, Waldemar Matuška, all these names are famous to not just the Czech but the Czechoslovak audience. Also Hana Hegerová, a singer of chansons.
“And at that time they were able to understand these personalities and to write for Karel Gott something that was made for him, and so on and so on.
“They realised that it’s important not to be political, but at different times it would be mistake to stay the same.”
“I would like to make one short point. Suchý and Šlitr in their beginnings were very apolitical, but they needed to do it, because the spirit of the time asked for it.
“During a few years they realised that society had changed and the Semafor of the end of the ‘60s was very political. Also in film, in collaboration with the writer Josef Škvorecký and the Oscar-awarded Jiří Menzel and so on.
“So they realised that it’s important not to be political, but at different times it would be mistake to stay the same. And they knew how to change. That’s one of the great stories of Semafor for me.”
Getting back to the members of the company and people like Karel Gott. Was it seen as a springboard to success? If you were an aspiring singer in 1964 or something, were you thinking, If I can get into Semafor, I can be the next big star?
“Definitely. I think that mostly in the first half of the ‘60s Semafor worked as this springboard.
“And that is the reason why the young Miloš Forman, as his first movie, took his own camera and without any commission to shoot…”
Audition.
“Audition, yes, because he knew that this is the moment when a new generation appears – not just a generation of artists and singers, but of young people who want to take part.”
You mention Forman, Menzel and Škvorecký. Others were also involved with Semafor in different ways, including Vaculík, Havel – it really was a kind of who’s who of this country.
“Yes, it was. You can see pictures from the theatre in the early years and the audience is this who’s who: Miloš Forman with his wife [Věra Křesadlová], young actors, poets and so on.
“I was surprised when I saw Václav Havel’s texts. Havel was one of the very first who understood that these people are not bad actors but good authors, or how to put it.
“He wasn’t into the musical, but Václav Havel understood that the humour of Semafor is partly absurd, and that was his thing, of course.”
Jiří Šlitr died of gas poisoning around Christmas 1969. He was only 45. You say that in 1969, the year after the Soviet invasion, Semafor was still doing pretty well. But could have Semafor have continued into the ‘70s if he had lived? Or was the writing on the wall?
“That’s the question, of course. Jiří Suchý, as a lyricist and poet and writer was dependent on the Czech language.
“But Jiří Šlitr had two jobs: he was a visual artist too, and a composer. They are international.
“That’s why some people say that Jiří Šlitr was prepared to go abroad and work abroad. He was very affected and depressed by the fact of the occupation and probably if Jiří Šlitr went abroad it would be the end of the Semafor – not because Jiří Suchý would stay alone here, but because the powers that were would shut it.”
You say also that Suchý actually was abroad at the time of the Soviet invasion. Also both of them had in June 1968 signed the Two Thousand Words, which was a kind of statement written by Vaculík expressing support for the political thaw – and that was a kind of a risky move for them, I guess?
“During the Prague Spring in ’68 they did not consider it as a risky move. But after the occupation it was a maximum risky moment and they didn’t know about their futures.
“There were rumours that people who had signed the Two Thousand Words would be sent to the Siberian camps, or something like that.
“Menzel also was convinced that it would have very bad consequences for them.
“So Suchý stayed with his relatives, in England or wherever, for a short time to understand how it would be in Czechoslovakia after August ’68.”
Your book is Semafor 1959–1969. Is there some parallel with The Beatles, in the fact that you had a 10-year run in which they achieved a hell of a lot – and then it ended.
“I think it’s obvious that at the end of the ‘60s many things went to their end. But I can’t explain it rationally.
“Of course there were large geopolitical factors, but maybe things sometimes are in a kind of synchronicity and that’s it.
“I can’t explain it and maybe I don’t want to. It’s also a thing of dreams, poetry and secrets.”
And maybe we should also consider ourselves lucky that we had 10 years of The Beatles or 10 years of Semafor.
“Yes.”
One thing you also mention in the book – it’s a kind of side issue – is that Czechoslovak Radio had over 200 shows presented by Jiří Suchý recorded in the ‘60s that were not preserved.
“It probably says something about the atmosphere of the normalisation years.
“Some persons at the Radio who wanted to make themselves safe ordered the erasing of a part of the archive from the ‘60s. And at that time very few people complained.
“Also Jiří Suchý wasn’t considered this huge, classic creative person like today, when he’s 93 and alive and kicking, if I can put it that way.
“We didn’t lose the texts – the texts are in the book – but yes, it was erased.”
As you say, Jiří Suchý is still on the go and that’s wonderful. Do you know him well?
“I’ve met him repeatedly as a journalist. And during the work on the book he helped me a lot. He shared his photographic archive with me – thank you, fantastic!
“He had some answers for me. He also told me some private stuff that is not for the book, so I was blessed with his trust.”
It’s so many decades later. Many generations still love these songs, still love all this stuff. What’s the secret of its longevity, do you think?
“When the story of Suchý and Šlitr was new, Semafor was a very unifying story and legend and way of entertainment in our country.
“People are grateful if something can unite them with many people.
“I think that today my book is both for the conservative part of our society and for progressive and liberal people, and also young people who are interested in the history of our pop culture.
“But both conservative and progressive. It probably says, You can enjoy the world, you can life as if all wars were over, and it’s not ignoring the toxic view. It’s hope.”
