Rock to Carry Greenpeace Message to Soviet Union

Some of the West’s best rock music of the last five years will be introduced to the Soviet Union early next year by the environmental group Greenpeace to encourage greater public involvement in ecological issues here.

“We have been looking for a way to make a breakthrough in the Soviet Union, to get our message to Soviet youth particularly,” David McTaggart, chairman of Greenpeace International, said in an interview here, “and a rock album seemed a sensational way to do it.”

The two-record album, “Breakthrough,” compiled for Greenpeace and featuring 25 groups and individuals, will be the first released here with so much recent Western rock.

“Grateful Dead, U2, Bryan Adams, the Eurythmics, Sting, Sade--they may be almost legendary in the West, but they and most of the others on this album are almost unknown in the Soviet Union,” Ian Flooks, the album’s executive producer, said. “A few fans in the Soviet Union undoubtedly know about these artists and have heard their music, but this album is going to make them available to millions for the first time.

“The Soviet Union has been largely closed to Western rock. Aside from a few old songs of the Beatles, Jethro Tull and the Moody Blues, almost nothing has been released here, certainly nothing current. . . . Some of the reasons are ideological, I suppose, but others stem from the Soviet Union’s reluctance to pay royalties in hard currency.”

Among the other artists, all of whom donated the use of previously recorded songs to Greenpeace for the album, are Belinda Carlisle, INXS, Dire Straits, Talking Heads, Simple Minds, Peter Gabriel and John Cougar Mellencamp.

“Not all the songs were top hits, but they represent the best of the artists’ work,” said Flooks, a London booking agent. “And rather than something from a few of the biggest, we went for everything we could find. This album, as a result, is really a ‘Who’s Who’ of rock music, and many of the numbers are classics.”

Although many of the artists do not usually agree to participate in compiled albums such as this, they were persuaded by the opportunity to have their music heard in the Soviet Union for the first time on a broad scale, Flooks said.

Four million copies of the album will be released in February by the Soviet record company Melodiya simultaneously with its release in the West, and they are expected to sell out within a few days. Melodiya, in another innovation, is planning a Western-style promotion campaign that will bring a number of the artists to the Soviet Union.

With each album will come a booklet, prepared by Greenpeace, explaining the threats posed by various ecological problems and the worldwide need for conservation. About 10 million copies of the album will be distributed world-wide, according to Flooks.

“There is a lot of lyric content about the environment, too,” Flooks said. “This is a record of unity, of concern, of commitment. The title ‘Breakthrough’ sums it up. . . .

“Music is a truly international language that has great credibility with youth. They know that the content of these songs is not controlled by any government. And there is definitely a message for Soviet youth and for the youth of the world--pollution doesn’t respect international borders.”

Greenpeace expects to earn the equivalent of $6.8 million, according to McTaggart, and will use the money to finance environmental projects here planned in cooperation with Western groups. A similar amount will go to the International Foundation for the Survival of Humanity, a new East-West group of scientists, environmental and peace activists and former government officials.

The first project, undertaken with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, involves analysis of the impact on the atmosphere of various kinds of fuel as a step toward easing the “greenhouse effect”--a gradual warming of the world as carbon dioxide from various forms of combustion increasingly traps heat within the atmosphere--and developing joint plans to reduce the amount of that gas released in both the East and West.

“People are always talking about the threat to the world from nuclear weapons, but the problems with the atmosphere are happening now,” McTaggart said. “The Soviet Union is one of the worst polluters, and they know it, and so their cooperation on this is very important.”

A second East-West project, undertaken with the Academy of Sciences and the new foundation, will work on cleaning up the Baltic Sea, which McTaggart described as “nearly dead” as a result of pollution.

Greenpeace is also considering a project on cleaning up the Danube River, again promoting East-West cooperation on a critical environment issue.

“If you include an organization like ours with scientific institutions and people from the street, then you can get action on these problems,” McTaggart said. “Our goal is to get the Greenpeace message to 18-to-35-year-olds in the Soviet Union, something we have been trying to do for three years.

“One problem we have faced in trying to work in the Soviet Union was, first of all, how to get across our message to a mass audience and to mobilize support for environmental action. We also wanted to finance any project we undertook in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe from donations within those countries.”