Childhood
The musician has an interesting biography and path to fame. Andrey Klementyev, zodiac sign Taurus - ambitious, strong and creative, was born on April 30, 1974 in Ufa. Stepfather Valery Klementyev was the father according to the documents, and the biological one was Viktor Gubin (researcher at the research institute, also led the cartoonists of the Trud newspaper). This explains the change of patronymic and surname at the age of 7. The name is a tradition in the family; the nephew is also named, and the uncle is the full namesake of the performer. Mother - Svetlana Gubina, a housewife, worked as a teacher. Sister Anastasia Klementyeva (Boeva), education: economist and visual production manager.
After the officially registered marriage, the family left for Moscow. Responsibilities were divided: the father worked, and the mother devoted herself entirely to the home and children. Due to the lack of registration, they often changed apartments, and along with this, educational institutions.
Relationships with his peers did not work out, the boy developed complexes: his short height (only 166 cm) and the unpronounceable letter “P” were an excellent reason for jokes. Due to the constant change of schools, it was not possible to find friends, and after the father’s initiative to transfer his son from 2nd grade to 4th grade, his academic performance decreased. The most difficult subject was mathematics.
Natalia Vetlitskaya and 20 years of passion
When Sasha first saw the eyes of the pop diva Natalya Vetlitskaya, he said:
“How stupid!”
In the Ural dialect it means “cool”.
Mid-90s, middle of the country - Yekaterinburg. The Uralmash men are pushing back the center officers, and the other day they shot and killed local authority figure Kasintsev. A shuttle from Tagansky Row, Sasha, was telling his drunken friends about the murder, and at that moment a voice was heard from a crackling videotape:
Look into your eyes, I want to say:
I will forget you, I will not cry.
I want to know who you traded me for?
Natalya Vetlitskaya has been asking this question to the whole country for three years. But then, in October 1995, it was as if Sasha saw her for the first time.
Sasha was born in Yekaterinburg, the third capital of Russian rock. He smoked weed with the Nautilus musicians, saw the last Russian punk Burdin sober, played bass in a hundred ensembles with unpronounceable names, then went to the army, served, and returned. The girl did not wait for him, and he did not start a serious relationship for a long time. Have worked. And then he fell in love with Vetlitskaya.
Vetlitskaya’s first concert, which Sasha attended, was “Song of the Year - 1996” in Moscow. He was called there by an operator he knew, with whom he went to school together.
She was in a red dress, Sasha was in a dark suit. Vetlitskaya sang: “Everything will come back again, I won’t come back.” Sasha was embarrassed to approach her after filming.
That’s how he lived, buying cassettes and posters. Occasionally I went to concerts. His mother twisted her finger at his temple, Sasha did not confess to his friends, he thought that he would pass. Over time, he got used to it. I didn’t spend a day without her songs, I collected photographs. They even got their own place, like all lovers, a secluded nook in the Kharitonyevsky Garden. Sasha bought a bottle of vodka, took photographs, a cassette player with the album “Slave of Love” and went to the garden late at night after work. Sometimes, during the night shift, he felt the urge to get high - he would hang up the “lunch” sign, close the tent, turn on the TV and watch the video that started it all: “Look into your eyes.”
Then Sasha was arrested for drugs. They gave me three years. This was at the beginning of the 2000s. He was calm in prison. There he began to correspond with a woman from outside, because he was tired of being alone. In 2004, he was released and went to her near Voronezh. They lived for a year, Sasha had a son. Sasha decided to go home: his mother died before his release, and it was necessary to sort out the documents. I arrived and saw my old things.
- And then my heart sank. It was as if I had met her. I then thought: why, calm down. But still I decided: I’ll get the address and go to Moscow.
Sasha got the address for a thousand dollars through friends from prison. He told his wife that he lent it to his brother. And then, after a short silence, he added: “I’m leaving you.”
- Where? - asked the wife.
Sasha was embarrassed to answer.
The address turned out to be wrong - the taxi driver drove around Skotoprogonny Proezd, but never found Vetlitskaya’s mansion. Sasha returned to Yekaterinburg and threw away all the photographs and tapes. He drank for several months, then returned to his wife.
Natalya Vetlitskaya has always - both in the past and now - taken her popularity calmly: “I don’t think about popularity, the main thing is, first of all, responsibility to myself and to God... But thank God that I’m popular, it brings me some kind of income, I hope CDs and cassettes will be bought, the public will come to my concerts - they love me, I love them too.”
Now Sasha has a son and a daughter. He named her Natalya.
Hobbies
The boy grew up intellectual and inquisitive, played chess in high school, was fond of football and played for the youth team. I planned to connect the future with this, but I received a serious injury - a broken leg and had to say goodbye to the sport.
He helped his father, drew cartoons and took them to the Krokodil magazine, earning little money (the publishing house even doubted that the drawings were made by a boy and not a professional artist). Another hobby was poetry; he perfectly read other people's poems and wrote his own.
The beginning of a creative journey
I tried myself in journalism for the program “Up to 16 and older”, and took an amateur interview with the leader and soloist of the group “Time Machine” A. Makarevich. The attempt was considered unsuccessful and this career direction also had to be abandoned.
The young man decided to express himself with the help of music; this was another long-time dream. The realization was hindered by a speech defect, which, thanks to a special technique and regular classes, resolved at the age of 13. And the young man wrote his first song, “The Boy is a Tramp,” when he turned 14.
In 1989, “I’m a Homeless Man” was released with socio-political songs to the accompaniment of a guitar. After graduating from school, he entered the Gnessin College and was expelled for systematic absenteeism. To this day he has no musical education.
At the age of 18, another album “Ave Maria” was born with some song arrangements.
Material for the next disc, “The Prince and the Princess,” was written in 1992, but was not released.
Debut performance in 1994 (competition “Golden Autumn of Slavutich”), after which he met L. Agutin. He helped with the recording of the debut album “The Boy Is a Tramp” in 1995.
Andrei Gubin immediately became very popular on our stage, and nationwide fame came to him.
Dzhigurda and Shmit
Misha Kashtankin Photo from personal archive
Misha Kashtankin asks me about the nickname Shmit:
- I can’t understand why Dzhigurda sometimes yells and reads like mantras?
I don't know what to answer him. I wanted to ask him about this myself. Misha is 24 years old and is a big fan of Dzhigurda. Loves his poems and songs. Misha likes films with him less. It’s about love, and Kashtankin likes it “like on NTV”: shooting, chasing - a detective story, in short.
There is no work in the village of Syntul, Kasimovsky district, Ryazan region. To earn money is just to “take the bride price.” Either dig up a garden, then fix something, then steal - hand over wires, some metal.
“I don’t do anything special,” says Misha. - Sometimes you just want to drink.
This is how they drink in the village. Some holiday comes, the men gather and start drinking. Misha prefers port wine and triple cologne. Most people drink moonshine. A holiday is good, but not necessary.
On Kashtankin’s VK wall are Dzhigurda’s poems, and in the audio recordings are his songs. Misha likes to listen to them when he drinks.
“Sometimes I listen or read these texts and understand: if God exists, then here he is,” says Kashtankin.
When he goes on a drinking binge - for about two weeks once a month - he tries to yell more, like Dzhigurda. He yells because he wants to be like him, but there are no other ways to do this: he doesn’t respect tattoos, and long hair in his native village might be misunderstood.
Nikita Dzhigurda is philosophical about fans:
“Everything about fans is an illusion,” he told Snob. — During “Love in Russian,” I was in favor, and then, when litigation with the inheritance began, a huge army of fans fled. I knew before that love is illusory, so it didn’t come as a blow to me. Even among close people there were those who ran away. The apostles left Christ - what can I say? And the pleasant fact is that among this company of liars there were, not many, about twenty of the most devoted people of different ages, from 13-year-olds to pensioners, who supported me.
Misha Kashtankin Photo from personal archive
Misha just came out of a two-week drinking binge. He can no longer talk to me: the doctors came to install an IV. He only manages to say goodbye: “Glory to Rus'!”
Finest hour
1998 - the second album “Only You” was released, hits were heard on all radio stations, discos, and prestigious music awards.
In 1999, he went abroad to Canada at the invitation of Western producers to work on compositions in two languages: Russian and English. However, he quickly returned to Russia; he did not like the embodiment of other people’s ideas and the loss of individual style. During this period, only one song was recorded: “I Dream of You.”
In 2000, another disc, “It Was, But It’s Gone,” was released, unfortunately, poorly promoted. There were few commercially successful tracks during this period (“He Doesn’t Love You,” “Soft Paws”).
The album “Always with You” was released 2 years later. The singer approached the work very responsibly, carefully selected the material, and the work was named the best project of 2002.
From 2001 to 2014, several greatest hits collections were released.
In 2004 he received the title of Honored Artist.
The latest compositions are “Lena” (2007) and the unfinished “Tenderness” (2009).
Music
Andrei Gubin began his musical career thanks to his father. At a young age, he bought the future musician his first guitar, with which the boy began to compose his first works. In 1986, the guy wrote the song “Tramp Boy,” which he performed on the youth television program “Up to Sixteen and Over.” Andrey came to the show quite by accident; editor-in-chief Tamara Pavlichenko heard his guitar playing and invited the musician to her program.
Andrey Gubin in his youth
In his youth, Andrei was seriously inspired by the spirit of freethinking and mainly tried to write political songs. Because of his worldview and views, he often had discussions with teachers, which subsequently negatively affected grades in some subjects. At one time, Andrei even got excited about the idea of becoming a journalist. However, an unsuccessful interview with Russian stage star Andrei Makarevich forced the guy to abandon this dream.
Somehow graduating from school with several bad marks in his certificate, one of which was for behavior, Andrei entered the Gnessin School. Studying turned out to be tedious and boring for the young artist, and he soon abandoned education.
Andrey Gubin in his youth
By that time, the father of the future singer, Viktor Viktorovich, had established a business in Moscow, became vice-president of the commodity trading exchange and the owner of several recording studios. Such an improvement in the living conditions of the Gubin family allowed Andrei to start his career in music and focus on creativity.
The artist published his first album, “I’m a Homeless Man,” in 1989 in a limited edition of two hundred copies. The main theme of the album was the housing problems that the artist experienced in his youth due to his mother’s lack of Moscow registration. Following this, two more unofficial albums of the artist were released: “Ave Maria” and “Prince and Princess”. Now these records are considered a real rarity among fans of Gubin’s work.
Andrey Gubin and Leonid Agutin
But Andrey’s performance at the “Slavutich-94” song contest brought real fame and popularity to Andrey. There, the talented artist was noticed by singer and composer Leonid Agutin, who offered the guy help in recording the album. This sentence became key in Andrei’s musical biography. Gubin and Agutin changed the arrangement and went to record in a studio in Tver.
In 1996, Gubin’s first professional album was released under the same name “Tramp Boy”. The popularity of the young singer skyrocketed, he became an idol of youth and acquired a huge crowd of fans who literally followed on the heels of the artist during the filming of videos and concerts.
Two years later, Gubin pleased fans with a new record called “Only You.” Since 1998, he went on tour in support of his new concert program, including on the tour not only the cities of Russia, but also Ukraine and Belarus. The success of the second album in many ways surpassed the success of the artist's debut album. Almost all the songs became hits and occupied leading positions in Russian charts for a long time. The name of Andrei Gubin was on everyone’s lips, his concerts attracted full houses.
Despite his growing popularity, Andrei Gubin continued to feel complex about his appearance, according to numerous articles. The young man was constantly embarrassed by his short height (166 cm), but the love of the public gradually helped the young man cope with his complexes. But his colleagues on the stage did not support Andrei much. Anton Zatsepin even performed the song “Only Gubin is shorter” by Igor Nikolaev, which caused the singer’s indignation.
Andrei Gubin tried to conquer the West
In 1999, Andrei went to Canada to record an English-language album, the goal of which was to conquer Western audiences. However, the recording of the record did not work out; distant Canada seemed too calm and boring for the artist to write new material. Without recording a single English-language song, Gubin returned to Russia, where he immediately recorded the song “I Dream of You.” The composition, like all the singer’s works, instantly soared to the top positions of the charts, reminding listeners of the talented singer.
In 2000, Andrei’s third album, “It Was, But It’s Gone,” was released. Listeners received Gubin's new work extremely warmly, which could not be said about music critics. They called several songs from the disc frankly weak and passable, which seriously hurt the singer. He worked on his next album for two years, occasionally releasing new songs. Obsessed with perfection, he canceled the release of one of the songs and its video, considering that they were not yet ready enough.
Andrey Gubin was an idol of youth
In 2002, the fourth studio album “Always with You” was released, which became very successful and popular, like the singer’s previous works. Andrey continued to release videos and new songs, but two years later he published not a new album, but only a collection of his best compositions called “Time of the Romantics.”
Andrey recorded several songs in collaboration with other musicians. In 2003, the track “I’m Always with You” and a video for it were released, recorded together with Olga Orlova. In 2004, the composition “Those Who Love” appeared, which Gubin performed together with the group “Kraski”.
Also, since 2004, he began writing songs for other Russian performers and began producing. Andrey became the author of the popular song “La-la-la,” which opened the way for the solo work of singer Zhanna Friske. Gubin also became the producer of the aspiring singer Yulia Beretta and the “Pay Attention” group.
Due to difficult events in his life, the singer experienced a long creative crisis. In 2008, he published a collection of his songs, which included only one new composition, “Lena,” which was not particularly popular. The collection also includes tracks that have long been known and loved by fans: “Liza”, “Night”, “Winter-Cold”, “My Darling is Far Away”, “Tramp Boy”, “Dancing”, “Girls Like Stars” and other hits performer.
In 2008, the DVD album “The best” was released, which also did not contain new compositions. In 2009, Andrei’s unfinished song “Tenderness” hit the Internet.
Cooperation
Andrey Gubin managed to work:
- Working on writing the single “La-la-la” for Zhanna Friske’s solo career.
- Produced by singer Julia Beretta, group "Pay Attention"..
- Sound producer Mike Mironenko.
- In collaboration with Olga Orlova, the composition “I am always with you” was born.
- Performing the song “Those Who Love” together with the lead singer of the “Kraski” team.
- Singing with Alexandra Balakireva a song from her repertoire “The Time of the Romantics”.
The death of his parents, his father in 2007 and his mother in 2012, greatly affected the musician, and a creative crisis ensued.
Girls
The young ladies were ready to do anything just to earn the attention of their idol. They waited for hours for the artist after the performance in any weather, giving flowers and gifts. Andrei, of course, paid attention to fans, but did not have frequent and long-term affairs with them. We parted easily and on a friendly note. In his words: “I could fall in love for one day.”
There were few serious relationships. Her first love was Elizaveta Sautina, the song “Liza” is dedicated to her. The romance lasted only a year, the singer began to tour actively, and the girl moved to Switzerland. Some fans consider this a beautiful legend. In the video, the beloved was played by the daughter of I. Starygina, the relationship with whom did not work out; the shy young man did not dare to get close.
Another lover is dancer, former lead singer of the group “Caramelki” Lyudmila Kobevko; the couple separated after 1.5 years of civil marriage.
Today, little is known about the presence of a permanent life partner. In the studio of Lera Kudryavtseva’s show “Secret for a Million,” the performer said that he has a partner, but they do not live together. The artist still does not have an official wife.
About the personal life of Andrey Gubin
As soon as the singer gained popularity, crowds of enthusiastic fans immediately appeared - this is natural. In the footage of old filming you can see how hundreds of girls are running after Andrei, and he is hiding in a ring of powerful guards - it couldn’t have been any other way, they would have torn him into souvenirs!
Fact: no one accused Gubin of depraved behavior either then or now; he tried to stay away from annoying fans and was not popular for personal reasons. In one of his first interviews, when asked about relationships with women, he said, embarrassed: “Actually, I don’t just want a relationship, but a family and children.”
The famous “Liza,” according to the singer, was dedicated to his first girlfriend, with whom he was truly in love, it was a certain Elizaveta Sautina. According to the artist, they met by chance on the subway, but met very rarely due to Andrei’s busy schedule, and then the girl could not stand the relationship “in fits and starts” and stopped going on dates herself. As is known from Gubin’s stories, she went to the USA and got married there.
In the photo is Lyusya Kobevko https://vk.com/id11290808
The singer loved Lyudmila Kobevko (soloist of “Caramels”) very much, they were together for a year and a half. We parted (in his words) “with terrible scenes and scandals.” Then for six months he could not even look at women - the breakup had such a strong effect on his psyche.
Andrey Gubin and Yulia Beretta
He is credited with an affair with Julia Beretta, but he does not refuse this. However, in the program “Secret for a Million” he told presenter Lera that for more than six months after meeting Yulia they had no personal relationship, and only then they began to meet closely. They broke up (as Gubin said in the same program) because of obsessive fans and because of their constant calls demanding dates: Yulia was very jealous and suspected Andrei of cheating on her with fans. Leroy also invited a certain young man to the program who claimed that Andrei Gubin was his father. Despite the almost photographic resemblance, genetic analysis showed the absence of family ties between the artist and this guy.
Now Andrey Gubin is not dating anyone. He does not hide the facts of his turbulent relationships with his ex-girlfriends, and he tries to bear the fact that at the moment he does not have a life partner stoically. He likes to quote the words of the athlete Salnikov: “All successes are important if there is someone at whose feet you can throw laurels.” Fame and money, according to the singer, are not needed by him now, because the woman he loves is not nearby. “I realized that I was happy only when I fell in love. They say about me: and then the tramp boy began to have a black streak... And I didn’t even have a white streak! So, stripes... When I met Lyusya, or met Lisa..."