Singer David Koller leaves Lucia: I survived 2000 parties

I caught you at a press conference dealing with investment guitars. By the way, how many tools do you have at home?

And you know I don’t even know? I have a lot of guitars, mainly acoustic, but there are also electric ones. And sometimes I buy a more expensive one and hope that I will use it in the studio and that its sound will inspire me to come up with some new idea. Because even an instrument can help write a song.

And is it true that the more expensive the better?

Not at all. The fact that something is expensive does not mean that it will bring you that good idea, even a guitar for a few crowns can do that. But I’m more of a non-guitar player than a guitar player.

True, you are mainly a drummer. But you probably only have one drum at home, right?

I don’t fit a lot of them at home, I keep those instruments more in the studio and I have more of those kits, even a few old instruments from the sixties, they were Slingerland or Ludwig brands, and it just plays differently than the modern expensive drums. When you put them next to each other, it might sound funny, but in the recording you can really feel the dirt of the sixties.

Are you one of those drummers who throw mallets to the fans at concerts?

When someone waves at me that they want them, I throw them to them. But you really have to throw them at that particular person, not spin them or throw them so that someone doesn’t leave the concert without an eye. (laughter)

And have you ever forgotten a tool somewhere?

Lešek Semelka and I once played in Tábor’s theater, which stands by the square. Well, halfway somewhere in Czech Siberia, we thought to ourselves: “Hey, didn’t we leave the synthesizer on the ramp?” We came back and he was standing there covered in snow. (laughs) I didn’t expect that at all.

So hopefully nothing like that will happen to you when you do a concert with the Kollerband at the beginning of December in Prague’s Karlín Forum. Was this band the reason for leaving Lucia? That you can only concentrate on her?

I wouldn’t say it like that, we are always working on it so that our band, which goes by my name, somehow grows and we don’t stay in one place. I just needed to clean myself up a bit. I was sitting on a lot of chairs, so I wasn’t looking forward to the job. That’s why I thought it would be better if I cut back.

Is it also age? Would you handle “more chairs” better in your 20s than now in your 60s?

It’s certainly possible. I don’t get into any big analyses. I just wanted to relax my hands a bit. I felt like the pure energy I was putting into it wasn’t really coming back. This is how it can end at any moment in any band. A person may have more ideas of what he could do, and if it somehow hinders him or doesn’t make him happy, or he goes there like a job that he doesn’t enjoy, then it’s just good to end it.

You said somewhere that you had been trying to make this decision for a year. Why so long?

Maybe you think something can be changed, and it can’t be changed, so you just end it. Have you dated someone for forty years? You don’t even have that yet, you see. (laughter)

So are relationships in bands comparable to relationships with women?

To some extent yes. But we don’t have children together. That’s an advantage.

According to the press statement, children and family were another reason for leaving Lucia. You have four children, do you think you haven’t devoted as much attention to some of them because of your career as you want to devote to the youngest, four-year-old David, now?

I think one does what one can. The fact is that the work fulfills me a lot and I give it enough, so it’s probably more of a question for my partners, you have to ask them. (laughter)

But I’m asking you. Do you want to do something different with your youngest than with the older ones?

I don’t look back much, I’ve never experienced it in retrospect. A person does what he can, it is not always the best, because at that given moment not only the child but also the connections in the family have an influence on education.

With your eldest, thirty-seven-year-old son Adam, you played together in Lucia and Kollerband. Does it help the relationship between father and son?

I think that’s fantastic. How many times during a concert do I realize that this is actually my child, and I’m almost moved by it. He does a lot on himself and I can call him anytime if I need to poke something.

Does he look up to you as a musician?

I’m a hundred years old and I’ve been making music for a long time, which can lead to some excessive respect for my person, which I immediately detect. And I think that’s one of the things that you have to be careful about. I don’t want to have some aura of untouchability around me. On the contrary, I want it to provoke others to tell me what they think, and because of that it could go forward.

Why do you say you are a hundred?

Because it’s such a nice round number. (laughter)

Are you feeling a hundred?

But no, I feel fine.

And you look good. I suppose it’s not free, but you have to maintain your physique, right?

Yeah. My wife’s friend and I go to a gym where there are no exercise machines, but we work out with our own bodies. It will be a year that I have been going to exercise two or three times a week, and I think it has helped me a lot.

Has the musician’s lifestyle affected your health?

Anything you do against him will rub off on you. Once you get into this concert euphoria, your head and body are pumped up and you just can’t jump into bed and go to sleep. And I played thousands of concerts, maybe four or five thousand, and even if I went to celebrate half of them afterwards, two thousand parties are definitely enough, which will definitely affect my health. But I’m here, so I survived. (laughter)

Are you holding back today?

We have a new keyboardist Martin Kroupa Kryštof in the band, he has been playing with us for a year. He’s twenty-eight and I can’t keep up with him because I wouldn’t be here for long. (laughter)

So are you also looking at life insurance?

A doctor recently told me: “You don’t eat in the evening, so I wouldn’t want to be at your parties.” By which she was showing me that I was exaggerating, because a person who studied to help people wouldn’t make fun of you. Even this might make me not eat the fridge after the concert.

And have you always been able to keep alcohol under control?

I always had indicators that could tell me that things were no longer good with the poison that is alcohol. This means that a person may drink more than he would like, or he is not able to enjoy the next day because he is sick. At that moment, it’s good to realize that you’re overdoing it, and to take a break for maybe half, three quarters of a year, so that the body can get back together.

Your doctor told you she doesn’t want to be at your parties. But hundreds of thousands of female fans would give anything to be at least one. What do you think it is?

When I was ten, I also had various posters of bands or singers around my bed, maybe they were gods for me then.

A lot of those girls have no problem sleeping with musicians, and I always wonder if they do it to have an unusual experience, or maybe they hope that the musician will start dating them. Why do you think they do this?

The adoration itself can play a negative role there. But nowadays, I’m not in danger anymore, and I’m already a hundred. (laughter)

But you weren’t always a hundred and the girls were chasing you. So how did you use it?

So the parties were different, but we definitely didn’t abuse it. Just because someone wants to party with you doesn’t mean you have to have kids together, that’s not the point. Sure, there was a party in a pub, or maybe even a hotel, but it doesn’t have to be a red library right away. But it can. But it can. (laughter)

Anyway, with your departure, fans of both sexes will miss you after playing your joint concerts in the summer. Do you think they will resent their favorite band, or will they go to Lucia without Koller?

Everyone is replaceable. I will keep my fingers crossed for the boys and I hope they will too.

Will you still be friends?

Friends… We used to go on vacation together, with the whole band we went to Thailand, Costa Rica, Michal and I went to the mountains together, various sporting events and concerts, I went to concerts in Hungary or Germany with Robert. But after all these years, I think the possibilities of those relationships have been exhausted. We all have our own lives and it’s enough to see each other at rehearsals, at a concert, but even that may have run out, I don’t know. So now it will be different again. That’s life and change is life.

Lucie somehow disintegrated a total of three times…

…and all the best until the third.

Did you get together for money last time? Or did you just want to try again?

I wouldn’t say that, there were quite a few more interesting offers before, and we didn’t use them. Money didn’t play a role in that, rather there was a time when we thought: Why not try it and do a tour? And then we thought: Why not make another record?

But you don’t end music when you leave Lucia, even though you could slowly retire, right?

I’ve been retired for a long time, but I still play. I don’t know if they’ll take me off the stage one day, but if it’s not embarrassing, I’ll be happy to play.

You also have young musicians in the band Kollerband. Does it help that you don’t notice the age so much?

Sure. Young people have more energy, I can steal some from them, but then again, if they are interested, I can pass on my experience to them. But it all takes place on an intuitive level.

Have you ever had enough of this industry?

Not the music, but rather the surroundings. Until I was thirty, I lived in communism, that is, socialism with a human face. It was a rather disgusting time, this system annoyed me and the bands were such cells of social resistance against the establishment, because the people in the band had the same aversion to the system of those communist whistleblowers. I think that it remained in us, and even people who didn’t experience it at the time certainly know that what we live in is the most beautiful thing that could happen to us. I think we live in a really good time and place.

Lucie started in 1985, but you were also in other bands before that. Did you have to go before committees where they approved your songs?

They had to, and you couldn’t hide much in the lyrics. Once, it was in 1989, we were playing on some days, I don’t know if it was the Days of the Red Right or the Days of the Czechoslovak Radio, and they turned us off in the middle of a song because they thought we were playing a text that should be banned .

Did they turn off your speakers?

No, just the live broadcast, we actually finished it only for the people who were then in the hall in the Park of Culture (today’s Exhibition Center in Prague’s Holešovice, editor’s note), none of us had any idea that we were no longer going live. But the commissions were not the only tests, we also passed the so-called political conviction tests.

What did they ask you there?

So on purpose: Who was most responsible for the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, comrade?

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. But that’s not what you said then, I suppose.

He said. But they replied: “You are mistaken, comrade, it was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at the head of the Great October Socialist Revolution.” I stood up for Masaryk and they threw me out of there. But this is the first time I’ve tried it. Then I said that of course it was Mr. Lenin.

So you went against yourself to play?

You had to tell such a politic and idiot what he wanted to hear. And then we could play.

Do you have any regrets during your time as a musician?

So I think that a person can do things differently, sometimes they can be wrong, sometimes they can do something wrong, but we are only human.

Lucia group in 1991

Author: Blesk – Zbyněk Pecák, archive