“I took quite a big risk with the contents of my Antidiskotéka club shows, but I was confident I was taking the risk for the sake of something important. By contrast, when we played ‘Běž domů, Ivane’ on the radio in Houpačka, it made me feel a bit like we were just showing off. I felt my radio colleagues who said I was just showing off were partly right. I discussed that with [wife] Mirka at the time. Mirka was more courageous. I wouldn’t have aired it.
In my Antidiskotékas, though, I would play not only Merta, Hutka and others but Kryl as well. At first, I coined a pseudonym for him, ‘Víťa Jasný’. Later on, I would just say his name openly. I knew from guys who’d been interrogated by the StB that the StB knew I was playing Kryl in my shows. I have no idea why they didn’t simply crack down on me over that. I guess it was easier for them to just keep an eye on me and be aware of what I was doing. They knew well, though. Not that I did Kryl at every show in every club, mind you. At times, I had this strange feeling and was scared, so I wouldn’t play Třešňák even after he’d been released. But there were shows where… For example, in Ratiškovice near Hodonín in South Moravia, they asked me to do a full show about Kryl. That was about six months before the Velvet Revolution. I said: ‘Okay, guys, I’ll do it. Remember, though: first, we won’t be able to finish the show because they’ll bust me, and second, you’ll get kicked out of school.’ Well, I did it, and nothing happened.”
“We collaborated with certain editors outside Prague. One of them was Míla Zapletal in Ostrava. He would send us recordings made at Ostrava’s radio studio every now and then; most of them never caught on even though we liked them. We would never play anything we didn’t like. Then Bratříček [the song Bratříčku, zavírej vrátka] came along and tore it all up. I invited Karel [Kryl] to Prague; he was living in Nový Jičín at the time. We sat in a pub for about two hours and discussed everything. That’s where we I got to know each other. That’s when our long-time collaboration began. Shortly after that, I came up with the idea of releasing an LP for Kryl. It was absurd because he had not released even a single before that. I was a member of the editorial board at Supraphon [music label], which means my position was quite strong, but I couldn’t push the idea through. So, I tried again at Panton. Panton’s Jan Hanuš was this pious Roman Catholic and classical music composer who had nothing to do with pop music, and he said it could be done. And he actually made it happen. So, in the spring of 1969, Kryl released an LP with a circulation of 40,000 despite having been virtually unknown before, and the circulation was even increased. Unfortunately, the record was withdrawn from the shops in the autumn, and Karel Kryl emigrated to West Germany on 9 September 1969.”
“After that, we tried to press on with Houpačka for a few weeks, but it ended in a radio scandal of sorts. We continued with Houpačka, featuring new songs. Among others, we included the song ‘Běž domů, Ivane, čeká tě Nataša’ [Go Home Ivan, Natasha is Waiting] by Jaromír Vomáčka. Nobody expected such a song to come from him; he used to write songs about little kittens and so on. I called him and he came up with several cover names [for the song ‘Běž domů, Ivane’].
It was only broadcast once. There were no reruns. Dalibor Basler, the head of music programmes, picked me up by car the very next morning. He drove me to the Radio and they reprimanded me starkly. They said: ‘We are doing our best, trying to salvage what we can, and you ruin it all.’ I said: ‘What do you mean by salvaging what you can? Smrkovský is down, and many people have been sacked.’ Of course, there was no chance we could talk our way out of that, and we didn’t. They cancelled Houpačka for good.”
“There was a debate in Prague’s Municipal Library involving various public officials, writers, even football players and others. That was at the time of Mirek Liďák’s trial. Being a cartoonist, he drew the national coat of arms with Švejk instead of the lion. It came across as an offence against the national symbol. That’s what was discussed during the debate. I said I considered it an offence against the national symbol when certain political prisoners were unjustly subjected to trials under that symbol. Of course, certain Union of Youth officials who were present at the debate noticed that; there were a lot of people in the library back then. Then they invited me to a meeting of the Central Committee of the Union of Youth; in attendance were all those officials beginning with Zavadil the Chairman… They said they wouldn’t trouble me over that. Well, they did. In a few weeks, they ordered the editor-in-chief of Mladý svět Holler to dismiss me.”
“The atmosphere was changing. It was interesting how easily we learned to lie at age ten or eleven. There were almost 40 of us in the class. I don’t remember anyone wanting to join the Pioneer and similar organisations at first. At the beginning, only a few joined in; four or five. Of course, to me it was utterly impossible. Slowly, over time, other boys started telling me: ‘Don’t be a fool; they won’t let you study this way.’ It was that simple. It wasn’t like someone or their father got imprisoned.
It was strange when, later on, a few boys… My schoolmate Jirka fled to Canada with parents. I didn’t get that; it was too much for me to grasp. There was a lot of stuff happening.
It was strange that, being just kids aged 12 or 13, it was deemed obvious that we simply had to join the Pioneer if we wanted to go on to study in high school. We would say: ‘Come on, it’s nonsense.’ It wasn’t nonsense. Unfortunately, it was precisely the case. The kids who had good grades but were not Pioneers were not admitted to schools. That’s when a different chapter in my life started.
But I’m glad it happened the way it did to this day. True, I could have learned certain subjects better, in particular technical ones, had I studied elsewhere [in grammar school]. But I was proud of myself. I knew the other kids, my friends, were envious of me not having to wear that scarf. I am aware today that it was rather child-like back then. My true political epiphany came much later. But this was important for me in the sense that you’re not supposed to lie.”
Jiří Černý was born in Prague’s Vinohrady quarter on 25 February 1936. His mother Milada owned a tailor’s studio. In his early age, he was raised by artisan locksmith Pavel Černý who Jiří believed was his father. However, his true father was his mother’s second husband Antonín Krejčí. Jiří Černý was interested in societal developments from his childhood, reading newspapers and having formed a starkly negative opinion on the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia by age twelve. He refused to join the Pioneer organisation, which is why he was banned from studying in grammar school and went to a construction high school in Zborovská Street. Having graduated in 1955, he went on to study journalism at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. While still a student, he started writing for newspapers such as Večerní Praha. He worked as the culture editor of the Mladý svět weekly in the first half of the 1960s. Having been dismissed on ideological grounds, he worked as a freelance journalist. He contributed to music magazines including Melodie, Hudba pro radost, Repertoár malé scény, Gramorevue, Hudba je hudba and Kruh. In the Czechoslovak Radio, he hosted the Dvanáct na houpačce (Twelve in a Swing) musical show, the only radio chart show at the time. He was banned from working at the Radio for ideological reasons from 1969 to 1989. In the 1970s, he hosted his own Antidiskotéka club shows in many cities and towns all over Czechoslovakia, lecturing and playing records including those by banned musicians such as Karel Kryl. Following 17 November 1989, he moderated certain protests and was involved in founding the Civic Forum. He worked as the editor-in-chief of Rock & Pop until 1992, after which he became a freelance journalist again. He wrote for Lidové noviny and worked with Czechoslovak Radio. Jiří Černý died on 17 August 2023, aged 87.
