Der russische Oligarch Wladimir Awetisjan, der als graue Eminenz der Wolgaregion Samara gilt, ist seit seiner Jugend zugleich ein leidenschaftlicher Rockmusiker. Noch in den Achtzigerjahren soll der heute 66 Jahre alte Awetisjan in der geschlossenen Stadt Kuibyschew, wie Samara damals hieß, als Komsomolze auf Hochzeiten Beatles-Songs gespielt haben. Seit 2010 ist er Frontman der ältesten Rock-Gruppe von Samara, D’Black Blues Orchestra, mit der er noch im vergangenen Jahr den Frauentag am 8. März mit mehreren Konzerten beging, bei denen die armenische Bluessängerin Mariam Merabowa das Willie-Dixon-Lied „I Just Wanna Make Love to You“ intonierte. Merabowa hat sich für Russlands Großinvasion in die Ukraine ausgesprochen, und Awetisjan, der ebenfalls armenische Wurzeln hat, bezeichnete den Feldzug als Folge eines Krieges des Westens gegen Russland. Mehrfach ist er mit seiner Band in Militärkrankenhäusern vor verwundeten Soldaten und Ärzten aufgetreten.
Avetisyan, a trained economist and civil engineer, made part of his career in the wild 1990s. For a long time he headed the Gasbank, which lost its license in 2018 following allegations of money laundering, and the gas transport company Samaratransgas, a subsidiary of Gazprom. In the 2000s he sat on the supervisory boards of the technology group Rosnano and the automobile investor OAT, which belongs to the technology group Rostech, to whose general director, the secret service officer and Putin confidant Sergei Chemezov, Avetisyan is said to have family ties. Russian media also remember Avetisyan's conflict with the tax police, who accused him at the turn of the millennium of transferring millions in taxes that his companies owed the state abroad via the Proton GmbH using forged bills of exchange. The Proton founder and the son of the tax police chief, who then left Samara, died in the dispute. According to the international journalist network Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Avetisyan transferred large sums of money for the education of his relatives at English private schools through a shell company of the bank Troika Dialog, which has since been taken over by Sberbank. He is said to own a family castle in the county of Surrey, south of London.
Avetisyan also collects rock music memorabilia, electric guitars, studio recordings, and records and posters of international stars, the most valuable of whose pieces he bought at auctions at Christie's, Bonhams, Omega and GottaHaveRockandRoll. At the end of last year, he opened a rock music museum in Samara with around 600 of his objects, a museum that is unique not only in Russia. For an entrance fee of 7 euros, visitors can immerse themselves in the cosmos of Anglo-American rock music between 12 and 8 p.m. with no time restrictions. Following the example of American bars, where members of the army are entitled to a free drink, uniformed soldiers, including participants in the “military special operation” in Ukraine, have free entry, explains a knowledgeable visitor who seems to have arrived in the USA.
The “House of Rock Music” (Dom Roka) is a place of ultimate escapism that invites visitors to follow the path of a pop star. The tour begins with a brave 1960s-style room with a desk, electric guitar and newspaper clippings, from which Soviet youths dreamed their way into the world of forbidden Western pop music. But the room wall opens and you enter a backstage corridor that leads past original concert posters and travel boxes for instruments and stage equipment into the make-up room, where the stars work on their image in front of illuminated mirrors. In the display table below glitter a ring by Frank Zappa, a necklace and an Egyptian lace scarf by Eric Clapton, and a belt buckle in the shape of a rhinestone-studded pistol that belonged to the star guitarist Slash from Guns N' Roses.
A kind of side chapel honors the king of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley. Next to one of the numerous televisions, whose screen the star himself smashed, you can find Elvis's portable phone from his Graceland estate, along with a phone book, which Avetisyan bought at auction. The house posted photos of visitors, who particularly liked to pose in Jimi Hendrix's gold-trimmed jacket and reddish tousled wig, on its Telegram channel “Zvezda House of Rock.”
The “Green Room” that follows, where the artists get ready for their performance, is a treasure trove of instruments. Display cabinets contain top pieces from Avetisyan's electric guitar collection, which includes seven Stratocasters that were once owned by Eric Clapton, including a Golden Sparkle and a Silver Sparkle, which designated guests can play and even jam with others under the supervision of the museum's “mediators”. Recordings of famous guitar riffs, such as those from Chuck Berry's classic “Johnny B. Goode” or the hard rock cult song “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC, invite you to experiment as a sound engineer and manipulate their sound at the mixing desk.
Finally, a mediator lets us into the illuminated main hall of the building, which conjures up a concert atmosphere with videos, guitars painted in bright colors by stars, and once again, artists' costumes. Michael Jackson's fitted red uniform jacket and David Bowie's androgynous beauty clearly contradict the image of masculinity propagated in Russia. The mediator also refers to sequences of images from John Lennon's anti-war comedy “How I Won the War” from 1967, as well as excerpts from a Woodstock documentary, including a real chunk of mud from the site of the peace movement festival in 1969, which he believes can lead rock-loving military personnel astray.
