Marta Jandová (50): I know that life doesn’t have to be long!

Fifty tomorrow… Dealing with it?

I’ll be honest, it’s not pleasant. When I see my ten-year-old daughter, I think that it would be better if I were 30 and if I still had a lot ahead of me. On the other hand, fifty in this day and age? If I’m lucky, I’m only halfway there. The good thing is that I’ve enjoyed success, I’ve enjoyed the rock life, so now I’m the wise one.

What made you wiser?

It’s not like it used to be when I was little, a person at 50 was written off. Times are changing and I hope I don’t look 50, and most of all… I don’t feel 50 at all. My grandmother and grandfather were completely different in their 50s, which doesn’t mean they looked worse, but they were old people then, I don’t feel old.

Do you look back at what was?

I’m not a person who balances or likes to do it, so not really at all. Sometimes I wonder what if, but I don’t really think about it.

Do you regret something that you didn’t do until now?

Not exactly. Before I left and moved back to the Czech Republic, I received an offer from the BMG publishing house for a solo record as a singer in Germany. I had a huge hit there with one band. It was 14 years ago and they wanted to give me a contract back then. I could have asked someone to write me songs. I could have had it without a job and maybe I would have been successful. But who knows, maybe I wouldn’t be successful either. I still had my band Die Happy. Maybe the solo record would come out and I wouldn’t be sitting here with you now. I don’t know, I think it’s a terrible waste of time to think about what would have been, because you can’t get that time back anyway. Maybe he can learn from it, but I’m happy because I wanted a family, I wanted a child and I have it. Although I had no idea that I would move back to| Czech, I didn’t have that on the program, I was fine there with my band. We had a great time.

You went to Germany at 19, when you weren’t accepted to university. How long did you live there?

From 19 to 34, fifteen years, that’s a lot of life, isn’t it?

Can you imagine if your daughter Marie came to you and said she was moving?

To Germany? She knows it there, she goes there with us. She knows my first husband, is friends with his son. In the summer we were on vacation with them and lived there. Maybe it will happen, maybe not. I think that she is quite into the world, that she enjoys getting to know her, but then again, she likes to be with us. I think she will get over it soon, because we all had it, that we were happy to be with mommy and daddy in the warmth and safety of home. For example, when she’s supposed to go to camp, she doesn’t want to, and when it’s over, she’s sad that she wanted to be there longer. Of course, I would prefer to travel with her and be three blocks away if she needed me to be close to her.

Are you an anxious mom?

The bond that parents have with their children is either terrible or beautiful. Children are released into the world one day, and parents shouldn’t mess with it so much. I’ve read that we get them to tap out, direct them like an arrow that we shoot into the world one day, and then it will take care of itself that flight. We are here to give them a shoulder when they want to cry, or to rejoice with them…

How is your relationship with your daughter?

I hope very nice. He’s a bit of a teenager now, so we’ll see, but I hope he’ll want to be with us all the time. But I won’t protect her forever.

Now let’s try to go back thirty years, when you moved to Germany for love. What were you like then?

I had no children!

Not really, but you were married to the guitarist from your band Die Happy, Thorsten Mewes.

I got married so I wouldn’t be deported. We loved each other, but would we think about children? We had nothing, we were poor and I wasn’t allowed to stay in Germany – the easiest thing was to get married, so we just got married. When we started the band Die Happy, that was the only thing on my mind. Every day we thought of something new to do for the band. Of course, you have to earn some money in addition to that. I washed the dishes, we did security at concerts, we did all sorts of jobs. I used to clean so I could pay my phone, insurance, so I could occasionally buy something for myself or pay the rent. We all lived together with our guitarist’s parents. But it was great. We tried for one thing, for the band. We were always writing new songs, new lyrics, thinking about where we could play…

When did dad Petr Janda first come to see you for a check-up?

After about half a year. He was worried about me. He didn’t know where I was going, he didn’t want to let me go, so he arrived quite early. When he saw that I live in a normal family that hardly even turns on the TV, and we just play records and slowly drink one beer, he was very satisfied.

He never said to you: Martha, come back, I will help you, I will give you money?

He didn’t say that. We are the same in this. Either you want it and you go for it yourself, without help, if you don’t stand up for it. And I didn’t want any help.

Is he proud that you followed in his footsteps? Originally, you didn’t even want to hear about singing and planned to study languages.

He’s very proud, he tells me. But he also talks similar to Marek Ztracený, that I have more to do, that I don’t do much… But family is more important to me. For a long time, I wanted to become a mother, and when I was a little girl, I went on tour, I had her with me everywhere… But we never know when it might end. Now I may be talking a bit like a 50-year-old, like an old lady, but life just doesn’t have to be that long.

Do you remember when you were the happiest in those fifty years?

Certainly when my daughter was born. That was one of those moments that fills you up. I got, po| what I longed for is then the happiest person. I know, now they say that children don’t want anything anymore, they don’t really enjoy anything. I remember that Maruska was three years old and she really wanted a fin for swimming because my sister, her aunt, had one. When she found it under the tree at Christmas, she didn’t even unwrap it. She cried and hugged the half-wrapped gift and I think she experienced the feeling of absolute happiness for the first time. It was a feeling of happiness for me when I held her in my arms for the first time. And I experience that happiness all the time, because it is wonderful. Of course, she’s my baby, so she’s the most amazing to me. But I was also happy at the moment when the information reached us that our third album with Die Happy is very high in the charts. I was absolutely happy. It’s just that when you succeed in something that you’ve wanted for a long time, then you have the greatest feeling of happiness.

Now that you’re a mom yourself, do you think more about your own, who died when you were seventeen?

I think, but less and less. I thought about her the most when Maruška was little. I thought to myself: Mom, you would like her so much. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like. That mom would be a great grandma. Rate (husband Miroslav Verner, note cars) she doesn’t have a mom either, but we thought they would get along. Damage. And that’s just life, that’s why it’s stupid to always balance, it’s important to be happy or to do something for it.

You are simply an optimist!

I am an absolute optimist. I hate being sad. I cry, then maybe feel a little sorry. I tell myself how my mother left me, how my brother died, that a guy left me… But that was a long time ago. There’s no need to wallow in it and fumble around all the time.

You were never really angry with the world, didn’t you say to yourself, why me? Why don’t I have a mom, why did brother Petr leave?

Probably not, he’s not to blame. If I cry like this, I have a thousand ways to go. And I enjoy that, because there are so many possibilities in life. Is that why you flew to America when mom died? Was that also one of the ways? My mom more or less sent me there. I brought the student exchange application from school with the idea that I could go to America for a year. Mom was already in a bad way and knew that it was possible that she would die. So she sent me and I went.

Weren’t you worried about her? Didn’t you think you’d rather stay at home?

I knew I had to leave. I thought that at least there would be new beginnings. I enjoy sucking something from my finger and sitting on something, inventing and organizing, that’s mine. I lived with an American family for a year, went to high school there, although my grades were not recognized, but I simply experienced what it was like from another side, from another country, which was a completely different world for us at the time. What surprised you the most? I was in New York state, up north on Lake Ontario, I went to Catholic school there.

What? A rocker at a Catholic school?

I liked rock music, but I went there because the lady I lived with taught there, so it was the easiest. She got me into a school that normally cost about $1200 a year, I didn’t have to pay that. There were nuns, we had a priest as the main teacher. For me, those people were different and I enjoyed getting to know the new life. The one that I knew from the movies, that they were already driving cars there at the age of sixteen. I wasn’t in California by the sea, so it wasn’t that perfect (Laughs), but still the different houses, different cars, supermarkets, everywhere the soft drinks, pizza, TV programs… For me, looking back, 1992 was a great year, it was easier to overcome everything.

Did you know any English before you went there?

Malinka, I started learning about two months before the flight, but I have always been good at languages. It was really divine. My plane missed in New York and I had to make an unplanned transfer. I wasn’t afraid at all, on the contrary, I was proud of myself for being really good. I’m glad mom sent me. I would also send Maruška, because I already have some acquaintances there, but this time is very different. Then everything was different. That’s a fact, for example, when I wanted to call home, it was terribly expensive, so I only called about three times during the whole time. When I came back, I didn’t speak Czech for maybe a year, it was difficult. I am still such that when I start speaking a language, I think in it.

Have you ever had the feeling that you will give up singing and music and do something else?

Not exactly. I’m a little naive here, I don’t really think about it, because I think, and I’ve experienced it, that a person can make a living in any way. There is and always will be work, you can usually find it if you want it. When you need to pay bills, you take any. In Germany, I thought that if things didn’t work out with the band, I would try in other cities. For example, Viva TV was in Cologne. I speak several languages ​​so it would definitely be interesting for them. Or I would go to Berlin, where MTV was, I told myself that I wouldn’t get lost.

Is it harder in the Czech Republic to make a name for yourself in show business?

It’s not, if you want, you can do it everywhere. You have to really want to. I found out that it really is possible, that if a person wants and does a lot for it and tries, then yes. You don’t have to be just a star. I think that’s the problem with a lot of young people, that they want to be a famous singer or a famous actress, and if they don’t succeed in the first year, they’re already throwing the flint in the hay. But, as the classic says, there are no small roles.

But you always played the lead in the musical.

Because I came back as a famous singer from Germany, they didn’t look at me like someone who came from the street.

Are you sure everyone knew?

Not really, but then again they could say that I’m Petr Janda’s daughter, everything is sold here.

Did that bother you?

Of course, they flaunted it. But of course I don’t mind being his daughter because he’s a wonderful person. Fortunately, I hear it a lot less now. Only occasionally someone else comes along and says: “Oh yeah, protégé child.” I tell them that I made my career abroad. And alone.

Why did you keep the artistic Jandová after the wedding and you are otherwise Marta Verner?

It is better to be Marta Verner in personal life, to be unknown. When I call somewhere or when I order something and it says Marta Verner, nobody cares about the contents of the package. But I admit that I use it in different ways. When I need someone to know, I introduce myself as Marta Jandová, and when I don’t want anyone to know, I’m Marta Verner. But mainly it was because of Maruska. We are simply Verners. I don’t show my family much, and not my daughter at all, I just separate my family from work, so I thought it was great to have Jandová at work and Verner at home.

She didn’t ask Maruška, why don’t you show her that maybe she would like to be in the newspaper with you, to go to events? Isn’t she sorry?

It has different phases. Two years ago someone told her at school that she only got an A because she was my daughter. That bothered her a lot, because she was learning and she was good at it. She said it was terrible that everyone knew her mom was the famous Janda from TV. On the other hand, now he really sometimes asks why he can’t be seen with me.

What did you say to her?

Let her wait a little longer and then, when she grows up, she will decide for herself.

When did she find out her mom was famous?

Maybe it clicked for her in the first grade, because when I started taking her to school, they looked at us and the older kids wanted to be friends with her. At first she found it very nice and told me about it. She said she bragged about me being her mom because it was interesting, but then it quickly left her, thankfully.

How will you actually celebrate?

We will be at the cottage with the family and there will be a small celebration. But we will celebrate it again during April, half of Germany will come. It will be an international celebration.

Do you have any special wishes?

Just to be healthy, Maruška was healthy, Míra, the whole family, and then I already have this world wish for peace. For bad people to go to hell, so we can live in peace. This would be fine.

If you could choose one moment in your life and go back to it, where would it be?

I would really like to buy a travel agency to the past, like it was in the movie Tomorrow I will get up and scald myself with tea with Petr Kostka. It would be really cool if a person could go back to their past, to experience something nice with their parents that they no longer have, or something in their childhood. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t move people on, they would just grieve in a way. It would be stupid if they wanted to be with their partner who died and so on. So it’s probably not a good idea. But if… then I would probably like to experience some holidays when I was little, when we were all together. Mom, Dad, Brother. Or I would like to experience the most successful moments with the band, that was also divine!