Jaroslav Hutka

“I think Palach helped it a lot and it was because of him that the normalization was postponed by half a year. It was a shock for everybody… The way I experienced it then was like I felt I was the next to go. Today, I can no longer imagine it. But then it was a logical response to the absurd situation, it was understandable but horrible. People were shaken and the communists, I think, were terrified for a moment. I think there was still freedom until the summer [1969], including open borders, new newspaper and the freedom of broadcast both on radio and TV. I think it worked until summer. I had great business with Blue Effect in the spring, they invited me to support them. They were a new band and could not play a whole gig. It was interesting travelling to big stages where people arrived to listen to rock music and suddenly they saw a hippie idiot telling them to listen to serious stuff and think about matters related to the occupation. I always won the audience since the atmosphere was special indeed.”

“There was this big wall, a large window… the window led to the first floor which was covered by snow and there was a steep staircase going down. And it was empty. Suddenly, many people arrived. I can’t remember with whom I arranged my arrival on a particular day, particular hour. Perhaps Hanzl or someone from the Na Zábradlí theatre. They said they would organise a demonstration on the airport. I thought it bizarre – so far from Prague and to organise a demonstration under Bolshevism… but the demonstration was there. They received false rumours that I had left already, fortunately they did not believe it. Then it dawned on them that they could get by the staircase to the large window from the international space. Many people gathered there, they smiled at me. I couldn’t hear anything so they took out little papers and wrote messages on them, like ‘Hello, Jarda. How are you?’ What can you say, it was full of joy. I was still behind the iron, or rather a glass curtain and there were there. And there was this touching, almost symbolic moment when someone wrote on a piece of paper: ‘Jarda, play.’ It was strange, it was like a fish out of an aquarium. I took my guitar, because I simply could not refuse to play for those people, who pushed against the glass. It was all shot by the Dutch TV, that was nice. So I played the song Náměšť. And I saw that the people sang behind the glass with me but they could not hear me. I stopped singing for a while. And they sang in a crowd so you could hear it behind the glass, and I heard they were exactly at the same word, the same stanza as me – they read my lips. Or perhaps in that special moment there was a different way of communication at work there. It was simply amazing.”