Leonid Vorobyev on Pursuing Your Dreams at any Age
the theme we have for
tedx dupree park is seating greatness
and it’s about wonderful things that are
happening that we have with many of the
speakers
and right now you’re going to get a
chance to experience seeding greatness
in a beautiful way through music and how
music has done that in such a beautiful
way
we’re going to be talking with leonid
who is the
founder of leonid and friends and he is
a person
that really emulates what it means to
see greatness and he is joining us right
now
from a studio over in moscow russia and
he’s accompanied by roman
laden as well leonard vorabev we’re so
glad to have you here with us today
dobro prajalabat welcome sir
hello terry thank you for
inviting us to take part in tedx it’s a
big honor
well we are really glad to have you here
because what you have done is nothing
short of amazing i mean as i look at
what you’ve done just before we went on
here i went over and checked out youtube
and your videos where you emulate the
wonderful bands like
earth wind and fire ides of march the
beatles and particularly
chicago because those of you watching
this listen to this
as of right now i looked over there
saturday in the park you remember that
chicago song
1.7 million views we look at does
anybody really know what time it is
3.2 million views so far one of my
favorite songs
25 or 6 to 4 4 million views
and coming in at 7.3 million
september by yep that’s right earth wind
and fire
and this ban emulates it so what i want
to do leonid
is want to talk to you about this how
you got the band started
what gave you the idea to do that and
also
why chicago is the band we’re glad you
did it and why that all came about
okay well it’s it all started on my
60th birthday which was already six
years ago
i was jogging in the park and recalling
people
usually saying oh when i retire i will
finally do what i love fishing or
gardening or some
other hobby well i’ve been dedicated to
music all my life and
this is my biggest passion so i didn’t
want to change that
but i still wanted to celebrate this
mark in a special way
i have remembered the song that we used
to play in a band when i was young a
trek from
one of my favorite events chicago called
brand new love affair
but we didn’t have a proper breath
section at that time
so i thought it would be cool to record
it
properly now i called my friends who are
all
highly skilled professional musicians
and i knew they
would not refuse me a favor because i
had them many times before
we got together filmed a simple studio
video as we were playing
i put it up on youtube with no
expectation at all
it was merely a gift to myself i was
even ready that american audience
especially chicago fans will
you know scorn us like those russians
who do they think they are but little
that i knew a few weeks later it was
already on chicago’s official website
and we were getting waves of
acknowledgements
and lots of positive comments and as
the saying goes the rest is history
well you’ve done a marvelous job with
that and we just love it those of us i
grew up listening to chicago
and just loved what we’ve done there but
i understand also i want to go even
deeper here
on something that’s going to be of help
to people you looked at the songs
and you not and brought in others who
didn’t necessarily speak english
and you emulated what they do almost
perfectly i mean it sounds
exactly like chicago i was listening to
growing up on that and so
how did you reverse engineer that and
how could we use some of those
principles in our own lives
to reverse engineer good practices
okay for that i have to back to the time
uh when i was growing up in a little
town in siberia behind the
iron curtain you know back in the 60s
and in the beginning of 70s there was no
such
thing as electric guitar available in
stores in the soviet union
you could find it only in some official
places
and the only way to get a guitar like
that was
do it yourself at that point i found a
popular science magazine for teenagers
that explain how to make an electric
guitar with
all drawings and sketches one important
detail was to have an electronic pickup
and they suggested to get one from an
old telephone headset
but i didn’t have any old telephones so
i looked
around on the streets and i found that
all the telephone booths
were missing handsets funnier that they
were
cut off and that seemed like
the whole town has read that magazine
before i did
and right and right after school i
entered
the polytechnic college and not because
my parents insisted but because
i knew that there was a full music set
at the college available including real
electric guitars
drums and some sound equipment like
amplifiers and so on
during the whole first year i tried to
reach those instruments
but the senior undergrads didn’t let me
so i found unoccupied instruments
at the railroad depot outside the town
and the guys who played there before had
to go to army
and the instruments became available the
guy in charge there
asked me do you have a band and i
confidently say
confidently say of course but actually
yeah he said that i have two months to
get ready to perform a real big show uh
all i could find at that point was
for guys who barely played play any
instruments
and i began to make something that
resembles a band out of them
during the next two months every morning
i left home for the university
but actually i took two transfers by bus
to go outside the town to my rehearsal
base
and during the day i was transcribing
songs breaking apart
all instrumental powers by year in the
evening my guys would come in
and i showed each one of them what to
play and sing and how to do
it and step by step
i mastered all the instrumental
instruments in the band
of voices in in harmonies and uh
my guys started sound like real bad
well you can imagine what happened when
my mother
found out from a professor at the
college that i was absent for months
oh yeah after all i did transfer myself
from the polytechnic college to the
university of culture where i started to
become a quiet conductor and now i
realize
that every skill that i have learned and
developed in my life
proved useful when i started to
transcribe and produce chicago music
because i had to take apart every
instrument voice and harmony in order to
recreate it
as a whole so i would say
do not throw away any skill that you
have learned
in any area because it still has a
meaning
and you never know where it’s going to
take you
i love that style of adapting and
reverse engineering and doing a lot of
us can use that in our lives
all of us can implement it in some form
and i think that’s brilliant
my next question i want to shift over to
you roman because you get a chance to
work with this wonderful guy who’s your
father
but also abandon you touring around the
united states touring around the world
what’s it really like being with him
we’re going put put him outside
for just a minute there tell us what
it’s really like being with them
on the band well in short uh i’m a very
lucky guy
to be a son of a rock star wow you know
yeah but also because um he’s my best
friend
and i owed him all the support he gave
me including
great taste of music that he instilled
in me
so um when i joined in as the manager
i felt it was my duty to help my father
make his you know this dream come true
and at the same time i can
hang out with some awesome musicians and
listen to my favorite music
right yes well they really are awesome
as we look at what they’re doing and how
they’re doing it
and a matter of fact for those of you
watching this you want to go over to
youtube
and type in uh leonid and by the way the
way we spell that is l-e-o-n-i-d
pronounced leo need in russian and you
want to type that in leo need
and friends put that and get ready to
smile because you’re going to enjoy it
we go through that and do it and so as
we look at it
also lenny i want to come back to you
and say you know as we look at what’s
going on you are looking at retirement
and a lot of people today on our
generation you are just a
couple years ahead of me so we’re both
in that age where we’re looking at the
retirement and some people think oh
i’m just going to relax and kick back
and all that what are your thoughts
on retirement and the idea of seeding
greatness
at any age in life okay
well first of all i’ve never
disconnected from people who
over the years kept me busy demanded
something from me
or motivated me and just kept my hands
full
even though they used to be pain in the
butt once you retire
they become your saving grace and they
will
keep you from going stale and just
slowly fade away you know
i also try to stay away from people who
tell me that i should rest more
that i have earned it and should take it
easy
in my opinion work is a game with
purpose
and leisure is again without purpose
second of all once you retire you are
probably no longer tied up
with formal job obligations and other
people’s viewpoints so you are free to
do things your way
and it’s a big freedom to have because
you can finally trust yourself with what
you feel is right
and now not listen to anybody
else now it’s your privilege in my case
with leonid and france
i broke many rules as singing in english
and russia
has no prospects same with performing
the music of chicago that is not widely
known here
and at last going on stage when you are
60 is nonsense
but you care about it and focus on
producing a product that
i will be satisfied with first of all
i love that i think that’s really
important yeah i think that’s
extraordinarily important i want to
build on top of that
to get some advice from you what would
you say a person
who’s watching this and needs to learn
about how to adapt you’ve done that
you’ve adapted you
improvise and you keep changing what
advice would you give to people
that are thinking that they would like
to do that but haven’t done it yet
okay i once read a story about
uh an english lady her name is mary
hopson
who at the age of 56 started to learn
russian
then she she then traveled and lived in
russia for a while to study and practice
it profoundly
now she is in her 94
and she makes her own translation of
famous russian authors like alexander
pushkin and gribaldo and she won
several medals as a best translator this
is a great example of how to prolong
your mental activity
and clarity of your mind by always
developing new skills
and never stop learning something new
i love it i think that’s really
important well as a final question
i’d like to ask you as we look at what
you’ve done you started a new business
at the age of 60 and you’ve become a
worldwide sensation that we listen to i
listen to it regularly the music you
have
it’s just marvelous what would you say
to people
that are watching this that say okay i’d
like to do something and how can they be
successful how can they get out at
whatever age they might be what would
you say is they’re looking into the
camera right now
looking at and watching you as you’re
saying
what they can do and how they can become
the person that they want to be
oh well first of all thank you for such
acknowledgements
it still seems a bit hard to conceive
what we have accomplished
in my experience everything worthwhile
that i have achieved in life
i did so despite all the odds and not by
virtue of circumstance
growing up in behind the iron curtain i
couldn’t simply buy rock jazz or pop
records in stores
i had to make my own guitar in order to
play overcoming the
resistance resistance from my parents
who did not approve of my music career
and wanted to see me as an
engineer and just going against the
whole community system that didn’t let
me do what i wanted to do
and it always seems it’s never the right
time to start something new
and today it’s especially true with what
is going on around the world
but the moment you give up your purpose
you become
half a life you know i have buried my
own purpose
of creating a dream band when i was
about 25
because it seemed like life demanded
something else more relevant at that
time and the
people told me not to keep my head in
the clouds
and at some point about it and it turns
out that i was wrong
when i reached 60 it was simply a
decision to revive that purpose
with no expectation attached as i could
finally afford it but
the truth of the matter i could have
afforded it
years earlier so it’s never too late to
revive your purposes
and your passion for something and i
really think it is
the best way to revive yourself and live
to the fullest
absolutely i also want to say that i am
blessed to have friends
who are extraordinary musicians and who
share this journey with me
this would not have been possible
without them yeah
it’s not for no i called the band
learning than friends
and our big achievement is that
all the friends we now have around the
globe
yes again for having us here well we
appreciate it and really appreciate what
you are doing both of you
uh leonid and uh roman we appreciate you
spasiba bolshoi
thank you very much for what you have
done yeah terry i would like to just
add a couple more words for myself you
know um
probably the most amazing thing i could
tell you of course how it
is an incredible adventure to travel and
perform and
and so forth and how the shows work but
the connection we have
with our fans is phenomenal it’s a
friendship and love
that we get is overwhelming you know
it’s our extended family now
so we try to give back as much as
possible
we try to treat everybody as our
personal friend as a special guest
anywhere we go and we hope to be you
know um
as kind of like ambassadors of peace
yeah you know
coming from the other side of the planet
and music really serves us as
the universal language i love the way
you say that because that’s what you’re
doing you’re uniting the world with zero
politics but it’s just
people getting together around the world
sharing great music
good times and being together thank you
both for what you’re doing and please
tell the band we said thank you to them
as well
thank you terry thank you and for those
of you watching this think about this
think about how you can implement that
kind of courage that kind of
uh inspiration to get going and be
creative
work yes things are going to be hard at
times look what he had to go through
but now look where he has and it doesn’t
matter what age you are
that is the message that is really about
seating greatness
i’m terry brock and thank you for
joining us for this
you