U.S. Hard Rock Ready to Roll in the U.S.S.R.

The massive official name of the Saturday-Sunday rock spectacular at 75,000-capacity Lenin Stadium here is the Moscow Music Peace Festival.

But several of the organizers and musicians have another name for the most ambitious Western rock event ever staged in a country where the American-bred music was once denounced as bourgeois decadence.

Their name: the Russian Woodstock.

Alex Belov, lead guitarist for the Soviet rock band Gorky Park, likes the ring of the term. But Belov, whose band will be on the bill with such Western acts as Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue, believes that the connection with Woodstock is more than simply a convenient media term on a weekend that happens to be the 20th anniversary of that landmark U.S. rock event.

Belov says the Moscow concerts may come to represent the same revolutionary turning point in this country’s rock development as those three days and nights on Max Yasgur’s farm had on rock in Upstate New York.

Despite occasional appearances here over the last 10 years by such mainstream pop-rock figures as Elton John and Billy Joel, Soviet officials have been reluctant to open the door to Western acts, especially the rebellious, high-energy “bad boys” who compose much of this weekend’s lineup.

Belov, 31, said the government has also discouraged the development of Soviet bands by “forbidding” any group that was deemed unacceptable for any of a number of reasons, including themes.

But all that has changed greatly in the age of glasnost , the guitarist said Thursday as his band walked in a light drizzle from the Ukrainia Hotel to the van for the ride to the stadium for an afternoon sound check. Not only are there signs of greater flexibility in allowing foreign bands to play here, but Soviet bands are also being given increasing freedom.

Boris Grebenshikov, a veteran singer-songwriter who has been called the Bob Dylan of the Soviet Union, has recently made an album produced by British rocker Dave Stewart for Columbia Records and is now on a U.S. tour.

Belov’s Gorky Park, a harder-rocking group whose sound has been likened to that of ‘60s power trio Cream, is something of a Soviet supergroup, formed two years ago by the leading musicians from several competing bands.

The group has spent much of the last six months in the United States and Canada recording an album due soon from PolyGram Records. Belov said that most Soviet bands are “too inexperienced” to mount a serious challenge against Western groups, but feels the loosening of restrictions will change that. Seeing Western bands this weekend should inspire more young Soviets to start dreaming their own rock dreams--a difficult, nearly impossible dream for many until now.

“In many ways, our music scene is just beginning because it was held back for so long,” said Belov, who was once in a band that was declared “forbidden.” But he added proudly: “There has been a new government attitude the last three years and this concert should give our bands confidence and inspiration.”

Doc McGhee, who manages several of the bands on the weekend bill including Bon Jovi and Motley Crue, also likes the “Russian Woodstock” image, but for different reasons. McGhee, 38, hopes that the shows’ anti-drug message will erase much of the Woodstock legacy of permissive drug use.

“The musical aspect of Woodstock was very important, but there were some sad consequences of the social aspects,” he said.

“The message many people came away from Woodstock with was that drugs were OK, even a necessary part of the rock ‘n’ roll experience. A lot of lives have been lost because of that over the last 20 years, and we are trying in these concerts to say that drugs don’t have to be part of rock. You can still have fun and you can still be rebellious without drugs--and the bonus is you will have a better chance of living.”

McGhee said the concerts are designed to raise money for and promote the goals of the Make a Difference Foundation, which he started last year with a $250,000 contribution.

The goal is to raise between $6 million and $10 million from the festival and such related events as a pay-per-view telecast in the United States (5 to 9 p.m. Sunday in Southern California), a syndicated radio broadcast (on KQLZ-FM (100.3) in Los Angeles) and an album. Rather than simply featuring songs from the festival, the album will feature new studio versions of songs by artists who were drug casualties.

Tickets for the shows were $15 to $22--high by local concert standards, some teen-age rock fans said Thursday. But, they quickly added, “there has never been anything like this,” so it is difficult to compare. At any rate, the shows are sold out and dozens of fans hung around the hotel most of the day, taking photos of the musicians and getting autographs.

McGhee, who has offices in Los Angeles and New York, started the Make a Difference Foundation last year as part of a community service provision on probation given him after he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to “aiding and abetting” in the distribution of an estimated 40,000 pounds of marijuana in 1982.

The manager said he has experimented with drugs but had sworn off them long before last year’s court action and was involved in anti-drug campaigns before the community service order.

Several musicians on the bill, including Jon Bon Jovi, Osbourne and Vince Neil of Motley Crue, have also acknowledged drug or alcohol use, but now say that it is in their past and warn young people about its dangers.

The bands landed here late Wednesday after a flight on the “Magic Bus,” a chartered 757 that left Newark, N.J., and stopped near London to pick up additional passengers. In keeping with the concerts’ theme, no alcohol was served on the plane and there was no apparent drug use.

The latter observation was confirmed--perhaps unexpectedly--when uniformed officials brought a dog on board during the 45-minute stopover in Britain. Most of the estimated 175 passengers were off the plane while the dog roamed the aisles, stopping here and there to sniff the area.

But some members of the tour party saw the dog enter the plane and, even with the drug-free policy, at least one member of the group became momentarily anxious.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, are they going to find anything?,’ ” the tour member said. “Then I realized I had flashed on the old days when a dog on a plane could have been a disaster. I guess times really do change.”

After a press conference at the airport in Moscow, the musicians were taken on a brief tour of the city, stopping only for a glimpse of giant Lenin Stadium, scene of many of the activities in the 1980 Olympic Games.

The band members--many in their unmistakable hard-rock attire--caused a flurry of interest among tourists when buses stopped to let them view the stadium from a scenic point near the facility.

Various American and European tourists who had been shooting pictures of the landscape suddenly turned and began snapping photos of the visiting musicians.

Because many of these bands don’t have as much of a profile with the non-rock audience as mass-media stars like Mick Jagger or David Bowie, the tourists scrambled about asking members of the tour party just whom they were taking pictures of.

Informed that the tall fellow with the row of tattoos was a member of Motley Crue, a woman from Indiana all but gasped. “I made my son throw away some of their posters. I couldn’t stand looking at them in his room. What are they doing here?”

Most surprised, however, were the local residents who happened to be in the area. Though punk touches--rainbow-colored hair, an occasional Mohawk, leather jackets with skull and crossbones, biker boots--can sometimes be seen here, seeing all these bands together was something of a culture shock.

“Who are these people?” one local woman asked in halting English. She didn’t show any signs of recognition of the visiting bands, but a mention of Gorky Park did cause a reaction. It wasn’t that she had heard of the Soviet band. She thought the American visitor was asking how to get to the real Gorky Park, a combination recreation area and theater zone similar to Griffith Park in Los Angeles. After a brief huddle in Russian with her husband, she started pointing directions.

Before getting back on the bus for the ride to the hotel, a member of the New Jersey-based band Skid Row band showed that even on a drug-free journey there is room for some old-fashioned rock tomfoolery. As he neared the bus, singer Sebastian Bach lowered his pants and mooned the crowd of onlookers, including a pair of Moscow policemen sitting in a parked squad car.

One woman put one hand over her eyes and pulled her young daughter away. The Moscow police? They just seemed to shake their heads in wonder.

How did this rambunctious bunch ever get into the Soviet Union? Driving force McGhee said that his stress on the anti-drug message was a key, because drug and alcohol abuse is a growing problem in the Soviet Union. The word peace in the title also made it more appealing.

Still, it wasn’t easy. McGhee made nine trips to the Soviet Union to set it up and had to deal with several government agencies. He was aided by Soviet musician Stas Namin, whose grandfather was formerly a high Communist Party official. McGhee also introduced the Soviet officials to Jon Bon Jovi, the most diplomatic and acceptable-looking member of the rock roster. McGhee didn’t detail the background of all the other acts, especially Ozzy Osbourne, who seems to attract controversy--he has been accused of everything from advocating satanism to inspiring suicide to intentionally biting the head off a dead bat (he did do the last, but it was an accident).

Some of the Western concert organizers speculated that the concerts may be another gamble by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in his continuing effort to sustain the glasnost spirit and renew the spirits of disaffected youth. They believe that Soviet officials will be watching the shows closely to see what happens when they ease up after repressing rock for so long.

“I can’t help but think what happens here this weekend is going to be pretty historic,” Jon Bon Jovi said seriously. Then, referring to the weekend’s biggest example of culture shock, he quipped, “I imagine Mr. Bush and Mr. Gorbachev are both going to be aware of who Ozzy Osbourne is.”