During his lifetime, Yura Shatunov appreciated the performance of SHAMANa

In an exclusive interview with Russian TV Week, director Alexander Igudin explained why, when working on a tribute to the memory of Yuri Shatunov in Crocus, there was no choice as to who would perform Gray Night – it was immediately clear that it would be SHAMAN.

The question of which artists and why they were invited to perform Yura Shatunov’s songs at the concert dedicated to the artist’s 50th anniversary still triggers fans of the idol. Serious debates arose between those who are in favor of Yura’s songs living on, going to the people, being performed as covers, and those who are categorically against performing them by any artists other than Yura Shatunov himself. Thus, under the video from the concert “Yura Was Here”, the most comments came from SHAMANa, who sang the legendary “Gray Night”. The artist took the stage wearing a sweatshirt with a photo of Yura Shatunov and in an interview with me, he admittedthat he dreamed of this image in a dream on the eve of the concert. It turned out that the connection between Yaroslav Dronov (SHAMAN) and Yura’s songs is not at all accidental!

The director of the tribute concert and almost all of Yura Shatunov’s videos, Alexander Igudin, noted that SHAMAN made a cover of “Grey Night” during Shatunov’s lifetime. Having met Igudin at the anniversary of Viktor Drobysh, the singer asked the director to show Yura a video recording of his performance. “I showed the video to Yura, he smiled so much and said: “If the song is already folk, let him sing – he sings great!” recalls Alexander Igudin. So, during his lifetime, Yura approved and appreciated how SHAMAN sang “Grey Night”. Therefore, neither the artist’s family nor the director had any doubts that Yaroslav should perform this song at the tribute. “I hope I didn’t spoil it,” SHAMAN said modestly from the stage, and in return received the support of Yura Shatunov’s fans, who came to honor the memory of their idol. “SHAMAN had a dream to perform “Gray Night” on stage for a long time and Yura, one might say, blessed him for this,” – Igudin added in an interview.

All this without cuts can now be seen on MUZ TV: the TV channel will show the full version of the three-hour tribute “Yura Was Here” April 30 at 19-00.