Beginnings - Leonid & Friends (Chicago cover)

How a group of guys from Moscow became an internationally renowned Chicago tribute band.

Leonid Vorobyev says he loved the music of Chicago since the first time he heard the band as a teenager in Russia more than 40 years ago. A choir conductor by training, he’d also played in a handful of casual rock bands and spent 25 years as a recording studio sound engineer, too.

So four years ago when Vorobyev approached 60, the age of retirement in Russia, he decided to celebrate by bringing together all the art and craft he’d worked so hard to master and make the best cover of a Chicago song he possibly could.

“I decided to make a gift to myself,” Vorobyev said soon after he and the other 10 members of Leonid & Friends arrived in Los Angeles in advance of their official debut shows in the United States. “I decided to get together my very, very skilled professional musician friends and record one song, ‘Brand New Love Affair.’

“During the session one guy suggested to make a video, a simple studio video,” says Vorobyev, now 64. “I said, ‘OK, great,’ and we made it without any expectations. Honestly, I thought we will not be very good accepted by American Chicago fans.

“But two weeks later it was already on Chicago’s official website. We decided maybe one more, and now it looks like we cannot stop because our fans don’t let us stop it.”

After a preview show in New York City earlier this week Leonid & Friends makes its official U.S. debut with a trio of shows this weekend at The Village studios, the legendary Los Angeles recording studio where artists such as Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Lady Gaga and many more have made albums. More shows are set for Chicago, Dallas and Clearwater, Fla., this month.

“There’s two top comments that are coming from Facebook in hundreds and thousands over the last year,” says Roman Vorobyev, Leonid Vorobyev’s 28-year-old son and the band’s manager. “No. 1 is how true it is to the original, and dare you say it, better than the original. I’m not trying to say we are, but the comments come through.

“And the second thing is, the fans see that the band is having so much fun playing this music,” he says. “This whole project started not because they tried to do some smart marketing move or there’s an audience for this or whatever. No, it’s just because they had fun playing this music, and that’s why it’s so authentic.”

Even members of Chicago have become fans. Founding drummer Danny Seraphine contacted them early on to say how much he enjoyed their recordings and videos of songs he and his Chicago band mates created. Seraphine is expected to sit in for a few songs at The Village this weekend. Robert Lamm, Chicago’s founding keyboardist, stopped by the studios on Thursday to meet the Russian and Ukrainian musicians before coming back over the weekend for a show.

All of which leaves Leonid Vorobyev and his friends — none of whom has ever seen Chicago live, the band never touring in Russia — delighted and amazed at how this crazy experiment has turned out.

It was the early 1970s and Vorobyev was 18 or 19 and living in his hometown of Chita in Siberia when he first heard the music of Chicago. Western music in general and rock ‘n’ roll in particular was not all that easy to find in the then-Soviet Union, so when he met a drummer from Moscow after a concert one night, and was invited to stop by that band’s hotel the next morning and bring a tape recorder to bootleg the Muscovite’s precious stash of rock albums, he jumped.

“Of course I went to their hotel, 8 a.m. next day, and whole day through the night we recorded his tape to mine: Chicago, Grand Funk Railroad, all kinds of things. My head was spinning but I was so happy.”

He sings a few bars of the music from those first songs, tracks such as “Questions 67 and 68” from the band’s 1969 debut, “Chicago Transit Authority,” then “25 or 6 to 4” from “Chicago II,” the follow-up that arrived later that same year.

“Brand New Love Affair,” the song Vorobyev picked for his 60th birthday present, did arrive until “Chicago VIII” in 1975, and while it wasn’t originally as big of a hit for Chicago as songs such as “Make Me Smile” or “Saturday In the Park,” he says he’s always loved it for the way the musical imagery changes as it unfolds.

“For me, many Chicago songs look like fairy tales,” he says. “You turn one page and you see another picture. You turn another page, you see more picture. Very colorful.

“For ‘Brand New Love Affair,’ it started with a lyrical ballad, and bam, everything changed. It’s my feelings of the song.”

Vorobyev transcribed and arranged the parts for the band to play on that song and all that followed, painstakingly listening to the original records to pull out the drums and bass, guitars and keyboards, horns and harmonies.

The band was originally only a studio project until Roman Vorobyev joined as manager, and even then they only played once a month or so given that one member lives in Kiev, Ukraine, while the others are all in or near Moscow.

Leonid Vorobyev says he doesn’t really know why fans in the United States and elsewhere in the world have embraced his band so heartily, but laughs happily at the fact that they do. More than 125,000 follow them on Facebook. On the band’s YouTube channel more then 1.2 million have viewed “25 or 6 to 4,” with many other Chicago songs in the mid six figures. And the band’s two albums of Chicago songs, aptly titled “Chicagovich” and “Chicagovich II,” have mostly received raves from fans on Amazon, CD Baby, Google Play and iTunes.

“I think I do what I did all my life — with the same effort, with the same love, with the same passion,” he says. “And this time this occurred. Very fantastic things, like magic maybe.”

As for how it happened, Vorobyev says it might all go back to the rebellious roots of rock ‘n’ roll.

“I have an idea about if you’re not afraid to break the rules you have a chance,” Vorobyev says. “Because we break all the rules of show business in Russia, you know.

“To be a cover band, it’s not very good,” he says. “To sing in English in Russia, it’s not so very good. To go out on the stage after 60? Wow!

“We break every rule. In result we make our dreams come true.”

https://www.dailynews.com/2019/01/11/how-a-group-of-guys-from-moscow-became-an-internationally-renowned-chicago-