Vladimir Vysotsky never took an official stage with his guitar. He was not put on the air; his records appeared in minuscule pressings. But tape recordings of him were copied and recopied across the whole country — and everyone knew him.
He was born in Moscow in 1938. Theater school, then the Taganka Theater under Lyubimov — it was there that he found his scale. He played Hamlet. And he wrote and sang — about the war, about the prison camps, about the mountains, about love, about the absurdity of Soviet life. The voice — hoarse, breaking — was part of the truth.
Marina Vlady, a French actress, was his third wife. Their marriage was lived across a border — through visas, through separations.
He died on 25 July 1980, during the Moscow Olympics. There were almost no official announcements — yet thousands gathered at the Vagankovo cemetery. He was forty-two.