Leonid Bely is well known to fans of the Soviet stage in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a singer, instrumentalist, composer. His work in the vocal-instrumental ensemble "Nadezhda" was especially striking. Leonid Bely lived only 44 years - an untimely death cut short the earthly path of a talented musician and a good kind person.
The beginning of the biography
Unfortunately, very little is known about the life of Leonid Bely. Leonid Nikolaevich is a native Muscovite, was born on December 24, 1955.
Since childhood, the boy was passionate about music - he played the guitar and piano, sang songs and even tried to compose music. Leonid was an intelligent, kind and romantic young man, did not drink alcohol and did not smoke. With age, he developed and developed a beautiful deep voice.
VIA "Hope"
After leaving school, Leonid Bely was drafted into the army. He demobilized in 1976, and soon received an invitation from Mikhail Vladimirovich Plotkin (Misha Plotkin) - the founder and permanent leader of the vocal-instrumental ensemble "Nadezhda" - to become the vocalist of the group instead of Igor Ivanov, who had left the band. Plotkin liked the similarity of the voices of Bely and Ivanov, and also attracted the personal qualities of the young man.
In the group, Bely performed songs such as "You invented yourself", "I don't care now" and many others. He sang some compositions in a duet with Lyudmila Shabina, vocalist of VIA "Nadezhda" - for example, the song "I Love You". Particularly worth noting is the performance of the famous song "Tenderness" by the duet Shabina - Bely, written by composer Alexandra Pakhmutova and poets Nikolai Dobronravov and Sergei Grebennikov.
In the ensemble "Nadezhda" Leonid Bely worked until 1978. He was not only a vocalist, but also tried his hand as a keyboardist, drummer, bass player, mastered the block flute. Together with the ensemble, he went on tour a lot, often visited Kazakhstan and other Union republics.
Many members of the collective, for example, Evgeny Pechenov or the same Lyudmila Shabina, remember the musician very warmly, speak of him as a benevolent and gentle person who could not even cheat so that it remained invisible.
Nickname "Lenny"
In the pop music circles of the Soviet Union, Leonid Bely was known as "Lenny". The origin of this pseudonym, or nickname, has an interesting history. Leonid appreciated and admired the work of Lenny White of the American group "Return to Forever"; black Lenny White played drums in the band. Translated from English "white" means "white", that is, the musicians have the same surnames. Therefore, Leonid Bely and began to be called "Lenny".
After "Nadezhda"
Work in VIA "Nadezhda" gave the musician a good start into the world of Russian pop music. After leaving the group, Leonid after a while began working with the famous singer Galina Alekseevna Nenasheva - he sang a duet with her and even performed solo numbers in her concert programs.
In addition, Lenny also collaborated with vocal and instrumental ensembles "Kinematograf", "Merry Guys" and others. Together with his wife Margarita, Leonid Bely created several of his own rock bands, where they sang together: "Light", "Video" and "Youth of the Planet". These groups were not particularly popular.
In the early 1990s, Leonid Bely, unexpectedly for everyone, became interested in religion, which led to a complete change in the musician's style and image. Pop songs and rock compositions were replaced by church chants in his own original arrangement and with instrumental accompaniment: "The Sorrow of the Virgin", "Come, Holy Soul" and others. Moreover, these compositions have a very complex shape and duration - from half an hour to one and a half hours.
Religion and the performance of spiritual chants became the meaning of the musician's life until his death. And death, unfortunately, came very early: on April 26, 2000, Leonid Nikolaevich Bely died after a heart attack, which led to a cessation of the heart.
Personal life
Leonid Nikolaevich's wife's name is Margarita Belaya; there is no information about where, when and how the couple met. It is known that Margarita was educated at a music school, and later at the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University named after Lomonosov.
In the 1970s and 80s, she and her husband Lenny were a "rocker", sang, played keyboards and percussion instruments in bands created together with him. After the sudden death of her husband, Margarita began to engage in journalism and music criticism, as well as writing, was a correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper. Today she works as the head of the literary department at the ApARTe Moscow Drama Theater.
Margarita devotes a significant part of her work to events and people from a past life, and in particular to her husband Leonid Bely, who died early. So, in 2009, her novel "Longing for a Diamond for an Elf Cutter" was published, which is dedicated to the untimely deceased rock musicians, and one of the main characters of this novel is just her ex-husband. "Longing for a Diamond" is a fantasy story about love and music, with many innuendos, hints, allusions, with references to Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other creative discoveries.
And in 2014, Margarita Belaya wrote the libretto and verses of the songs of the rock opera “Door for the Prince. Rock'n'roll mystery”, again turning to rock and everything that surrounds it: fame, ups and downs, weaknesses and their overcoming, wealth and poverty. The music for the future performance was composed by young Latvian composers Kristaps Sudmalis, Emil Dreiblats, Ainar Virga, Viktor Box, Edgar Silaceps and others. The opera is dedicated to foreign and domestic famous rock musicians John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Sid Barrett, Alexander Bashlachev, Leonid Bely - this is not a complete list. Initially, a CD was released with recordings of the songs of this rock opera. And in 2016 the play “The Door for the Prince. Rock'n'roll Mystery was staged at the ApARTe Theater. Margarita Belaya paid tribute to the memory of her husband - a wonderful musician and person Leonid Bely.
