Fast confession – Janek Ledecký: He has eighteen guitars at home!

You recently had the premiere of Iago. What was it like? Did it meet your expectations?

I was lucky to be able to enjoy the premiere for that brainchild which experienced a difficult birth for the second time, because the first time was a year ago in Bratislava, followed by the premiere here of the Czech production at the Hybernia Theatre in September. It was wonderful, it met all my expectations, all of the ideas I had about it. Mainly all those ideas I had about how Shakespeare would be received by the audience. The only thing that bothered me about that was how long it took until I got it to that point. Because I really enjoy writing those things and thinking them up, then rehearsing them and finally performing them, but what I don’t enjoy is all of the production activities that are part and parcel of it all. And if I don’t like doing things, then I think I do them badly and you can tell that from the result. (laughs)

I expected you to sound enthusiastic, but you don’t come across like that at all to me. It is true that I read a review of it where they wrote that there was a lack of emotion there.

That was a review in the Právo daily. That was the only terrible review we got. Reviews are the subjective opinion of the reviewer which is influenced by a lot of factors. For me, it is a good sign that a review like that came from Právo of all places because I got a similar review from them in 1999 about Hamlet. They wrote the same thing there, that the weakest link in Hamlet is the music and the only thing worth listening to is the song “All my life I’m diggin’ graves” and only because the Tesařík brothers wrote it themselves. That is of course rubbish, I was involved in writing that too. In a certain sort of superstitious way, it seems to me that a bad review in Právo is the best ticket to the world stage.

You filled some of the roles in Iago with performers from Your Face Sounds Familiar … was that a good idea?

The people who are chosen to take part in Your Face must, according to the rules, be able to sing a little and are more or less famous, well-known people who the audience is aware of. That means they are professionals in the field and I must say that anyone who plucks up the courage to enter Your Face and go through all of those rounds couldn’t be better equipped for work in musicals. One example is Milan Peroutka. The fact that I alternate with Petr Vondráček is a bit of cheap shot at the audience because Iago is the only character whose role is performed by a person of the opposite character to who he really is, so the requirement for Iago is that he is a charmer who has until then played only good guys so the audience believes the things he says. That is where the joke lies and at the same time, that was the most important issue we dealt with together with the American director Robert Johanson with whom I wrote the musical. I mean wanting to ensure that the audience would take the bait and no stop rooting for Iago. This is to say that he is the guide to the whole performance and the connection between the audience and the plot. He discloses to them in advance what is going to happen. So before the audience realises, they are drawn into it and become part of that story. It is easy to root for him in the first half because he is amusing. Passion and emotion blossom thanks to him. Things are always fun, but in the second half, the body count starts to rise. And we added an extra two corpses there as compared to Shakespeare’s original Othello.

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There are never enough corpses.

Exactly. We were curious to see what the audience would think. Whether they would continue to sympathise with Iago when there are so many dead people stacking up behind him. Luckily the audience is so wonderfully spoilt that it works right until the very end. And wonderfully.

Can you imagine not performing in it?

I would be sad if I didn’t. To be honest, this is so far the greatest pleasure I have ever experienced in theatre. That bastard. He is such a great villain, Shakespeare’s most entertaining bad guy. Compared to him, Macbeth or Richard III are complete amateurs. In addition to that, Iago is really funny. You really have fun with him.

You reference certain problems in the world today in the musical in a light-hearted manner. Could you provide some specifics for those of us who have not seen it yet?

No, no. Come and see for yourself. I can’t even give you any hints.

In that case, one question immediately springs to mind. What do you think about what is happening on our political scene…?

I don’t think it is the end of the world. Society is set up in such a way that it will continue to function despite those crises and things will always depend most on how each person puts their own house in order. That is the way things are and that is the way things have always been.

Is your house in order?

Well I have started a bit… it is not completely sorted, but the groundwork has been laid. Don’t overestimate democracy. It was already limping when they invented it. Socrates was able to choose whether to be banished or put to death. That’s a great choice, isn’t it? And he was sentenced to that in an absolutely democratic manner by the citizens of Athens. The ones he fought side-by-side with in the Peloponnesian War. Great, isn’t it? And the last time in our national memory, we also elected a communist government in democratic elections in 1946. Don’t overestimate democracy … Nobody has come up with anything better so far, but it’s not really all that great, is it. (laughs)

You have been known as a musician for years and years, but you in fact studied law.

I am always reminded of that, for example at the doctor, or the dentist as I have that written in my personal ID card. They are really surprised by that. The nurse always comes out, looks at me and says: Come on then doctor. And I look behind me to see if there is a doctor sitting there, but she is talking to me. But then it comes in handy if the police stop me. They ask: Doctor Ledecký, do you know why we stopped you? Other than that, it is quite useless to me.

I meant whether you remember any of that, if for example you are still able to take advantage of that knowledge when drawing up a contract. A lot of people don’t know their rights.

Of course a fuzzy sort of legal awareness stays with you from university, you can’t do anything about that, but that is all. I never worked as a lawyer. After my exams, I went straight off on tour with Žentour.

Janek, you have been in the music business for such a long time … I can’t say that Janek Ledecký is just a singer. You do some decent business with music. How do you make money in that world?

First and foremost, you need to create something which can be sold, that means something people are willing to buy. And I am really lucky that the things I create are of interest to enough people so I don’t have to make a living in another way. I don’t have to do it as a hobby and I am my own boss. I wouldn’t exchange that freedom for anything in the world. Thanks to that, I live in my wonderful own sort of private bubble. Because I am with my family – I was lucky there, they are my best friends, then I am with the band, they are people I chose in an absolutely targeted manner not only due to the fact that they are excellent musicians, but also that they are the sort of people I can handle sitting in a car with for four hours, for example on the way to Těšín. I also meet people at concerts. If they buy tickets to hear my songs, they evidently are somewhat inclined towards me and what I do. Well, and in the theatre … I employ a lot of people there in my projects, you might find somebody there who is not so keen on me, but they at least pretend to like me because they want that job. (laughs) I live in a bubble of sympathisers and friends and I don’t often find myself outside of that.  

I would still say that it is a business just like any other. Either you are successful or not and you go bankrupt. I am lucky that I am doing very well.

What do you most like to spend your hard-earned money on?

On real estate. That is to say that things need not always go as well as they are going now, I think that real estate is a great investment. But as the Jews say, you also need something in gold and precious stones so that you can carry it and it won’t burn and then a decent bundle of cash … (laughs)

I understand that houses are great, but what about … shoes or cars?

I stopped riding motorbikes after I was knocked down a couple of times. I am afraid. I have already been knocked down by a car three times. Nothing ever happened in Prague, just a few bruises, but I said to myself that was the end of it all. So the most laddish thing I have is a Ford Mustang Cabriolet. Ester bought me that because she said that her dad is a skinflint, he wants it, but he hasn’t bought it because it isn’t practical. She was right.

Any anyway, I rate all cars by how many guitars I can fit into them.

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How many of those have you got?

About eighteen. But that is still not enough! Luckily, more guitars have been coming in recently from Jonáš. It is not all that dramatic, you have one nylon string guitar, three or four acoustics, then you need a twelve-string, not counting the mandolin and ukulele, they aren’t guitars, and then the electric ones. You have to have a Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster, a Les Paul and SG from Gibson, a hollow-body…and then a bass or two, of course.

If you are serious about guitars, you have to have those things at home. (laughs)

I wanted to talk about Hamlet too…

More than 1.3 million people the world over have already seen that, which is a miracle. And more than half of those were foreign audiences. I really do appreciate that.

Do you think you will ever manage anything like that again?

I hope so! That would make me really happy! (laughs) I am only starting to get my bearings!

When you hear the name Hamlet, everyone knows that. But when you hear the name Iago… not everyone necessarily does.

We will see. Give him time.

Janek, what about Christmas concerts. I am really looking forward to the one in Prague already …

There will be twenty-three concerts this year …

Jesus, really?

Well, I have to admit … out of all the things I do, I enjoy concerts the most. I enjoy playing live.

I understand that, but twenty-three concerts in one month?

Well… we can handle it. We have got some time off there … about three days in total.

Janek, I don’t want to be impertinent, but you are already over fifty … shouldn’t you ease up a little?

But you are being impertinent. The trick is that the people give back all that energy you send out to them, but multiplied many times over. And that is how I do it every year and it works.

What does your family have to say about that? You don’t spend much time at home then …

Well… the whole family won’t be at my Christmas concert in Prague for the fourth time this year because Ester’s competition season is starting and she wants to have her mother with her. Because mum is better than all of the coaches. As a family, we are very busy during that period. I will miss a few of Ester’s races due to the tour, but I will make up for in the new year. But hopefully we will all get together under the Christmas tree. We should manage that. Mainly due to the fact that there are no competitions on the 24th of December.

I can’t not ask about the female fans … do they write to you?

All the time. I have become a bit immune to all that over the years, I have gotten used to it. In the past, when a concert finished, you would go and sign some autographs in a book, on a card or a CD … and that was the end of it, but now things have become complicated by mobile phones with cameras. It is absolute hell. If someone wants to take a selfie with you and knows what they are doing, that is fine, quick. But people mostly give their phone to somebody else who doesn’t know how to work it, they can’t get it to work and you have two women holding you ordering the person taking the picture around and saying: Jesus, you don’t know how to do it do you, press that circle, Mr Ledecký will hold on for a moment, won’t he? But Mr Ledecký wants to already have been somewhere else ages ago after the concert.

Now it almost looks like I am complaining. I’m not. If I were to be born again, then I would want to be born as a pop star again…

Janek, thank you very much for the interview, good luck with Iago. Looking forward to the concert.