looks like: eugene hütz |
Sergey Alexander Prutko was born in Odessa, Ukraine though didn’t stay there for too long. His mother was a homemaker who found the job of staying at home and raising a child while occasionally giving piano lessons to music-loving children was much easier than getting a job somewhere in the city when she would more than likely have to be uprooted again because of her husband’s itchy feet. Though Mrs. Prutko does love her husband, she curses his need to move around constantly. The woman had lived in Kiev until she was married to him at the age of 17 and since then has never stayed in the same place for longer than 3 years at a time. They aren’t a family with a lot of money but because they move so much they are a family that is trained to live luxuriously without so much money. From town to town, country-to-country, the family never stayed in one place for too long and Sergey continued that tradition after the family moved to America and he left the home. Now as a traveling musician he is able to move about the world freely without having to uproot his home every few years. Sergey’s father, Sergey, was never able to hold a job as a teenager. His father, Sergey, would force his son to go out and get some sort of occupation from the time he was 14 and Sergey Alexander Prutko III (his grandfather was the first Sergey) couldn’t manage to keep any sort of job for more than 3 months. This was a problem that would stay throughout his entire life, though he had managed to extend the median of job time to 3 years. After he had married his youth’s sweetheart, he got a job in Odessa. The woman was pregnant with their first and only child within one year of their marriage and, of course, Sergey got a job to support his wife and future child. The problem was the soon-to-be father couldn’t keep up interest in a job for, you guessed it, more than a few months. However, for his wife he was able to keep up the job for an entire year, though just after a few months of his baby’s birth he quit. This was a particularly upsetting development and something Sergey’s wife yelled at her husband for a very long time. The family lived in a small one-bedroom apartment, something that the wife, Amelia, did not like but of course put up with as she loved her husband. They managed to live happily in Odessa for a long time, an extremely poor family that people would often give looks to whenever they come across a person that looks oddly out of place. Job after job, Sergey couldn’t hold his interest in anything and finally they moved to Kiev, another big city in Ukraine. Kiev was quite the experience for the family and Sergey IV, more affectionately referred to as Serg, and remembers it far better than he does Odessa. When he was five years old the family moved to Kiev and they lived there for four happy years. Serg met many other children in various daycare programs, schools and apartment buildings that his family lived in. No matter where they went his mother always insisted that they bring her piano. The thing was old, a dark stained piano that had worn out keys and constantly needing tuning because its strings were so incredibly old. Serg would spend most of his time sitting next to his mother on the piano bench, watching her play and then eventually learning how to play it himself. She was a great teacher and he was an eager student-for the four years they lived in Kiev Serg was learning how to play piano. His mother was not the only musical one in the family; Sergey was fluent in the language of guitar and as soon as his son picked up the piano he started teaching him how to play more instruments. This was something that the entire family had in common: music. Eventually Sergey’s itchy feet would disease the rest of the family though that was a virus that would take nearly a decade for the other two Prutko’s to catch. After they spent four years in Kiev (Amelia was sure the family would be staying there for the rest of their lives, but she underestimated her husband’s need to move around) the family uprooted once more to a smaller town in Ukraine, then another, then another, moving through five different cities in the span of four years. Not until Amelia came to her husband and told him that the moving around was starting to take its toll on their son did he finally slow down, though gave a small fight before he finally bowed to her wishes. They made a final move to Italy-well, as final as Sergey could possibly do, anyway. They lived in Italy for three years and while Amelia was upset when her husband made them move back to Ukraine, not because of the location but because they were being uprooted once again. They made their way back to Odessa by train, a 16-year-old Serg leaning against his mother as he slept. They would only live in Odessa for one year before his father picked up their things once more and they made their way far across the Atlantic Ocean. They settled in Chicago, Illinois with distant relatives. The Prutko family adjusted well in America, surprisingly. Amelia was worried that her husband wouldn’t like it in the country and that they would have to spend a lot of money to get back to Ukraine, where she knew her husband would feel much more comfortable. The fact that he had adjusted to America and liked the people, as well as a job he got working at a clock shop, and for one more year they stayed in Chicago. Serg absolutely loved it in the country. He mixed into the school systems quite well and was very popular amongst his fellow high schoolers. They were all eager to help him with his English and to hear all about what it was like overseas in a country completely different from their own. In America Serg had his first girlfriend and was influenced by punk rock. Serg didn’t stay in Chicago for long, though. His mother and father seemed to find a place that worked out for them but Serg couldn’t stay-he was the young one now and he wanted to go where they hadn’t. The young man was heavily influenced by punk rock as well as the types of music he had heard from all the places he had lived and thought the best place to take that influence was New York. He barely survived in New York City. It wasn’t long before he was completely broke (of both spirit and money) and had to rely on a fellow Russian he had met in a bar in order for room and board. This was possibly the most wonderful thing he had ever done, as it was the man he would be spending most of his time with. The man was much older than him (20 years older to be exact) and was everything Serg had hoped to be. He was a feverish musician with a love for all types of music, especially folk, rock and, oddly enough, punk. He lived in a one bedroom apartment (in which Serg slept on the couch) and kept an extremely Russian home. The two were able to speak in their native language together and eventually, after two years of living together as great friends, left for Ukraine. This was something that no one was expecting and by the time his mother found out he was out of the country she was very upset and they shared an extremely loud phone call about how he was turning out to be just like his father. Serg said he didn’t mind that. He was 21 when he first returned to Ukraine. Over three years had gone by and things were not much different, after all three years is not that much time, at least not for a city. For Serg it had seemed like centuries and he was glad to be home. The two rented a small apartment in Kiev and began working on their own style of music that they eventually included many people in. They found their other band members by frequenting bars and punk rock shows, occasionally having their own acoustic sets and asking people to join. The band had no name though by the time they had gained three more members the group of musicians dubbed themselves Zenit (a type of Ukrainian rocket during the space race in the 1960s). Zenit was only 5 members when Serg was 23 and it took five more years for them to acquire the proper amount of musicians that they required (which is eight). The band didn’t know what to consider themselves and eventually dubbed the genre they played as gypsy punk as they were a cadre of different European ethnicities playing music that was heavily inspired by old traditional gypsy music. The band didn’t take long to become popular all throughout Europe. After all, they were a very original sound and the energy they had on stage was unmatched. As their lead singer and guitarist, Serg was the craziest and was extremely active, giving off radiant energy as he played, exciting entire crowds, which would soon rave about the band to their friends. Zenit was signed quickly and soon after was touring all over Europe; they were featured in magazines, online, everywhere one could think of being promoted. The band was big, their sound was big, their number of fans was big: there was nothing small about Zenit. They never had dreams to conquer any sort of person or music, but they ended up doing so anyway. Now, at 28 years old, Serg is the lead singer and guitarist of one of Europe’s most popular bands. They are an inspiration to punk and folk artists alike and are recently breaking into mainstream American music. The face of the band is a goofy one, with a traditional Ukrainian mustache and clothing that only someone lacking perfect sanity would wear. Serg is a musician, a constantly touring one at that, and he doesn’t plan on settling in any sort of city soon; he’d tell you it’s the itchy feet. • Sergey Alexander Prutko IV was born September 3, 1980 in Odessa, Ukraine. • He is from a long line of Sergey Alexanders though unlike his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he is lovingly dubbed Serg by his mother, Amelia, and his father. • Over the course of 18 years Serg has lived in 10 cities and 3 different countries, not all of which were in Europe. • He learned guitar from his father and piano from his mother. The family shares a strong bond that is heavily based on music. • He moved to New York when he was 18 years old and within a year was completely broke, having to move in with a man he met at a show in a dingy old bar. The man was 20 years older than him but also from Russia, something that made Serg able to trust him (though it wasn’t as if he had much choice). • After two years of living with the man they both went back to Europe, living in Odessa for quite a few years. • In the city they acquired band members for their folk-punk rock (better deemed as gypsy punk) band Zenit. The total number of members is eight, though it has fluctuated in the past few years. • Serg owns no animals as he sees no point in keeping a pet. Even if he wasn’t touring constantly he would move about as he pleased and keeping an animal would just be unfair to the creature. • He has no interest in video games. The only types of media he enjoys are films, books, and music (though he doesn’t consider music a media). • Some have dubbed Serg as insane but he would say he is a perfectly sane person, just extremely expressive. • He hates clothing and takes off as much as possible whenever he can. He often is only wearing boxers and socks when he is on the tour bus/in his apartment (which is located in New York City). • Serg has no taste for the life of a celebrity but often does interviews anyway. • His favorite hobbies are writing, DJing, and, of course, playing music. There is rarely a time when Serg does not have a guitar at his side, he sees everything as an inspiration. • He loves his mustache and will only shave it off if absolutely necessary. |