Josef Štágr

"Pragokoncert sent me to various TV shows. So I was filming. I was also on a 14-day tour all over Bulgaria with singers from all the Eastern Bloc countries. I toured the whole of Bulgaria, the twelve biggest Bulgarian cities. I saw the sea for the first time, in Golden Sands, unfortunately it was in January. Or I was shooting for the TV in Katowice, in Warsaw, in Dresden. I even went to Berlin to sing a song in German because of that, and when I arrived in Dresden, I already had letters from my fans in my dressing room. In the beginning it was so interesting, but there was someone missing, a manager. And there were good managers back then, but they already had their own people, who would say, 'Look! This could be something! Let’s make him famous!' And that was for example Honza Obrda, whom I met personally after many years, and František Janeček, what more can I say. The first one was, I think, Mr. Spurný, who helped Karel Gott a lot. Ivan Hope, Hanuš Bunzel, he was a great manager, sensational. These were impeccable guys and they knew how to make someone famous, if they took care of someone, because they had connections. The labels were just few, there was one radio, one television and two record labels."

"At that time, the Central Committee of the Socialist Youth Union ensemble called Plameny with soloists Jiří Štědron, Matysová, Vrtichová and a backing brass band, an excellent band, by the way, already existed. When I heard them in 1972, when they were guests at the competition in Jihlava, well, I totally loved them, because of their high level of professionalism. But it used to be looked down on, the Socialist Youth Union. I think that the ensemble was created basically because after 1968, in 1969, a new Youth Union was formed here. And a lot of artists, of course, wanted nothing to do with it. But who organized cultural events in a lot of cities? Well, the youth, the unionists. Or the company club of the local big factory. But gradually the unionists got all these clubs and houses of culture and organized these events. So I think that at first maybe the ensemble should have fulfilled that function, so that they could have somebody at their events. And step by step, all our top artists figured out that the ones who were going to hire them were in many cases those local Youth Union groups."