“The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and many others who took up the baton of madness from Presley were very popular, hundreds of thousands were invested to keep their reputation from fading”

“The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and many others who took up the baton of madness from Presley were very popular, hundreds of thousands were invested to keep their reputation from fading. And yet none of them lasted long.”

An amusing note in Sovetskaya kultura by Tatyana Kvardakova. Tatyana Vladimirovna Kvardakova, incidentally still a very beautiful and interesting woman, was the daughter-in-law of Yury Andropov and wrote in the Central Committee's newspaper, among other things, about Western musicians. Curiously, she began to publish under her husband's surname only after her father-in-law's death, in order to give her husband emotional support during a difficult period of his life. As Kvardakova herself recalls, information about popular performers from around the world could be slipped in under the heading “Such Is Their Life”, accompanied by criticism. Though at times that criticism was rather clumsy, as in this note, or in the case of a piece on Pink Floyd, about which the head of the international department, Lednev, asked her: “Tanya, were you at their concert?” “Of course not.” “Pity! If you had been, you wouldn't have written such crap!”