After more than three decades of a successful career, Zdravko Čolić can boast of several million records sold, several thousand concerts in front of packed halls, halls and stadiums, several dozen evergreen hits. In this sense, his biography is rich, but by no means unique: there are others in the white world who have been singing for years, recording records and selling out concerts. However, what those White World faces can't even dream about are the accompanying details that make Čolić a man also known as "the Čola legend".
During his 35 years of being on stage, Čolić didn't get drunk, didn't start using drugs, didn't gamble away everything he acquired, didn't flaunt cars, mansions and all kinds of rich man's miracles. Even though he was set up that way, and the audience that grew up listening to his songs quarreled with each other and spent the nineties fighting, Čolić managed something incredible: he did not side with any side, he did not appear at any political forum, he did not pose with a rifle, he did not make music about nation and blood. Also, there were no stories about stolen songs, unpaid copyrights, collaborators who were deprived of royalties, there were no rumors in the newspapers - none of the things that followed everyone who set foot on the Yugoslav stage. Thanks to all that, today nobody even tries to touch him: he released another record in December, his tours are sold out, the audience loves him in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Australia. Immaculate and silent, Chola simply lives and sings.
CAREER: Although as a kid in Sarajevo he had several recitals and sports performances in front of the audience, Zdravko Čolić's first public appearance is considered to be his performance at the amateur singer competition in Bijela, on the Montenegrin coast, when he won second prize as a 17-year-old. A year later, in 1969, he became the singer of the group Abasadori, which was his first official engagement. After that, he sang in the Korni group for a while, and in 1972 he performed as a soloist for the first time - at the festival "Your hit of the season" in Sarajevo, he won the third prize with a song by Kemal Monten Last night launched Ball tu, which was originally intended for Josipa Lisac. Then there are festivals, hits (Gori fire, Called sam je Emili, April u Belgrade), performance at Eurovision, signing a contract for a German record company. "I recorded four singles for them, two in German and two in English." In addition to others, I also recorded my domestic successes Hug me i Extend next. Even today, I sometimes wonder why I didn't continue my career abroad. But it was a different time then. I would have to live in Munich or somewhere else, and we had a lot of tours, concerts... There was work," he said later.
And indeed, there was too much work for him: in 1975, he released an album Ti i ja, and the sales are such that a compilation of hit singles is released in the same year Zdravko Colic. Soon after, Čolić goes on a Yugoslav tour, and the journalist Petar Janjatović is in the book YU rock enciklopedija gave perhaps the best description of the hysteria he caused: "After the Belgrade concert, the measure of the electricity that is created around him becomes clearer. During an autograph signing at Jugoton's store in Belgrade, a cordon of girls lose their heads and break windows trying to get closer to him." The next album, How you come closer closer, with hits I sing. during the day, I sing at night, The head luda, Hug me, One winter sa Kristina... it broke all records: in the first two weeks, 50.000 copies were sold, and in the next few months, a whole 700.000. Apparently, if you consider the 1999 reprint of that release, the album How you come closer closer it sold more than a million copies.
On the Yugoslav tour in 1978, the famous Lokice already performed with Čolić, so it's no wonder that those spectacles were called "Traveling Earthquake": naked dancers, a handsome singer dressed like a world star, loads of hits... all of that could really shake the troubled South. The concerts were sold out, an incredible 70.000 people gathered at Belgrade's Maracana, and in a survey by the youth magazine "Zdravo" 1670 young people (out of a total of 2100 surveyed) said that their favorite public figure was precisely Čola. Fascinated by the hysteria caused by Čolić, the representative of the already mentioned German record company tried to renew the contract from 1974, but Čolić remained true to himself: instead of pursuing a world career, he joined the army. During the eighties, he recorded albums Cause of thebes (400.000 copies), Malo turn it up radio (310.000) What mi you work (220.000) Ti si mi u blood (200.000), which included songs that during the nineties, and today, are a sure recipe for the success of all parties.
In the period from 1984 to 1988, Čolić temporarily took a break from singing and devoted himself to private business - in Slovenia, he started the private publishing house Kamarad with Goran Bregović. After that break, he recorded an album Zdravko Colic, which sold 200.000 copies, and an album in 1990 Da ti I say what mi je. He spent the war years in Belgrade and performed mainly abroad, but thanks to the already widespread "pirates" and the fact that new generations began to discover him, it cannot be said that he was not on stage. Therefore, it is not surprising that the album The last one i First, which was released in 1994, and on which Čola's biggest hits were collected, is considered one of the best sellers in the then FRY.
After a long break, in 1997, a new album is finally released Kad bi my Ball, and the increasingly heated political situation does not prevent Čolić from embarking on a mini-Yugoslav tour, nor the audience from showing him once again how they haven't forgotten him: that season is remembered for the sold-out concert in Budva, nine concerts in the Sava Center and a full house in Pristina. The tenth album Organ was released at the end of 2000 in a (sold out) circulation of half a million copies - the album was declared the album of the year, the song Organ for the hit of the year, Čola became the "personality of the year", and the tour that rocked all the major cities of the former Yugoslavia ended on June 30, 2001 with a concert in Belgrade. On that occasion, 80.000 people gathered at Maracana, and according to some data, as many as four million people watched the concert live on TV. At the end of 2003, the album was released Magic, after which Čola again toured the entire former SFRY, many American, European and Canadian cities and once again knocked Belgrade off its feet - in October 2005, it filled the Belgrade Arena twice in a row. Finally, on December 11, 2006, the album was released Homeland, whose promotion is yet to begin.
CLEAN KAO SUZA: From the very beginning of his career, Chola was considered a nice guy. He built his career in parallel with his studies in economics, at the same time he passed exams and won at festivals, thus fulfilling his parents' wishes. "It was important to my parents that I finish university and have bread in my hands.... I remember how, when I was having a graduation party, the late Davorin Popović, while the others brought whiskey, flowers, candies and chocolates, brought me a loaf of bread wrapped in cellophane with a rose and said: 'Here you are, now you are your own man'. It was important to my parents, because college is a visa for the future," he said recently in an interview for the magazine "Story".
In addition to his studies, Chola had other qualities that made him an exemplary young man. There was no ostentatiousness with Chola, there was no walking of singers and starlets, there was no ostentatiousness so typical of the stars that would appear later. He kindly answered the calls of journalists, patiently signed autographs, and collected positive points even from those who were stingy with kind words. In the book Better the past journalist Petar Luković cites the words of Lev Kreft, former chairman of the Commission for Culture of the Presidency of the Union of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia, who told "Večernje Novosti" in 1978: "However, in our country, 'stars' do not appear in the most banal form." The audience is also looking for a positive social character from them. We should not identify them with Western role models, our stars are ours. Čolić is the ideal hero of our young people. I have his records. I like them." Illustrating the way Čolić was viewed by journalists, Luković also quotes parts of Gordana Brajović's text published in "TV Novosti" in 1972: "When I recently met him in Split, his face radiated endless boyish innocence. And health. In every sense. There's also a smile that's a bit of his defense, so you can't read in him either a mature man or a naive young man."
During his long career, Čolić justified those initial impressions with every move he made. He donated the entire income from the concert at the Maracana in 1978 to the Association of the Blind, participated in countless humanitarian actions, did not engage in pop intrigue, and to this day has not said a bad word about any of his colleagues. Among the numerous stories about Chola's character and work, perhaps the most illustrative are those recalled by his former fellow citizens. A former Sarajevo resident still claims today that, at the time of his greatest fame, Čolić (in increasingly tight plush pants and a bright red silk shirt) helped his mother sweep the carpet and that he was rewarded with chocolate for that service - the woman only in the evening, watching some TV show, realized who helped her. In his town, and beyond, Chola is also remembered for his gallantry: "No one ever got a drink from Brega, and when the Chola legend entered a tavern, it was known that no one should take out their wallet anymore," says a witness of those times.
Thanks to all that, Chola was and remained completely uninteresting in the gossip column. The biggest "scandal" in his career happened at the end of the 1980s, when he was caught illegally buying foreign currency in Ohrid, an activity that all Yugoslavs engaged in at that time. The punishment was a fine, and the whole thing was quickly forgotten. Everything else that could be counted as his "stains" is actually the product of the envy of his colleagues who, unable to invent anything smarter, persistently spread stories about Chola liking "fat and moustached women" or that he doesn't like women at all. As it happens in life, so-and-so Chola is now happily married, has two daughters, if he wanted to and now he could "choose who he wants", while those who scolded him back then were left to beg for a stall in some village home of culture...
ZA SVA TIME: One of the brightest elements of Čolić's career is the fact that he never interfered in what was not his job - Tito's era, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the wars and the time of Slobodan Milošević, he survived clean, unlike many of his colleagues, untainted by political, national or any other engagement. During the wars, he did not perform in the country, he did not support any side, he did not lament over the sacred Serbian/Croatian/Bosniak heritage. Even what he agreed to due to historical circumstances, he did not try to erase from his biography. Asked if he would sing the song again Dude Tito, mi ti se we swear, laconically replied: “I don't plan to sing it, but I'm not ashamed of any of my songs. If the audience asks, I might even sing it. Why not? I loved Tito and I had a good time in his time. To this day, I have a picture with him and I keep it proudly. In the picture are Tito, me, poodles and Lokice." As for recent times, he is most often criticized for recording for BK Sound, but even in that arrangement, Chola behaved like a gentleman: there were no sleazy performances at BK parties, nor whining since it was announced that the fee paid by Bogoljub K. to his daughter for her album was incomparably higher than the fee paid to Zdravko Čolić.
The only concessions Chola made to current circumstances were on the musical front, which sometimes worked to his advantage, and sometimes to the detriment of his audience. While not disputing Čolić's singing talent, critics occasionally had complaints about the musical quality of his albums. Despite the enviable circulation, the album Malo turn it up radio it was met with misunderstanding by critics who were confused by the somewhat "harder", "rockier" sound. A similar thing happened with the next record What mi you work. Released at the time of one of the strongest populist offensives, it carried a rather avant-garde "electronic" note for that time and was not greeted with euphoria as expected. Finally, in order to somewhat satisfy the ruling taste, Čolić is on the album Ti si mi u blood included some more audience-friendly tracks (in that sense, it was remembered Ruska). The audience "received it", but not the critics - from then until today, the main complaint against Čolić will be precisely those folk motifs, which Čolić explains with the thesis that he is "after all a folk singer", and the critics with the thesis that the entire domestic music is "populated". .
Criticisms, of course, are not without basis. Even an untrained ear can easily notice the essential difference between Chola's early and somewhat more recent works, between the hits that marked the seventies and those recorded in the nineties and later. However, that is not the reason for "writing off" Zdravko Čolić. No matter how hard he tries to please the audience and "the people", no matter how much he uses ethnic matrices, Chola always remains his own thanks to his voice and style. Above all, it is a pleasure to hear him, whatever he sings; it is a pleasure to read interviews in which no dark secrets and gossip are revealed; it is a pleasure to know that such a star still exists.
Each new Chola album is an opportunity to recall his past work, to return with unsurpassed hits and a more or less sentimental trip to some better times. In addition, his appearance is a real refreshment for the brain suffering from what surrounds him and what awaits him on every TV channel. Among the powerful tsets, leontines and joksimovics, who pride themselves on their voice, stature or status, Chola still remains untouchable. Namely, there is no musical academy or production that will extract Chola's vocal bravado from them; there is no evening school that will teach them to behave as Chola behaved in his prime; there is no magazine that will ever make them the stars that Chola was and remains...
After all, what else is there to talk about? It's enough to hear it again Sub-lengths, return to One winter sa Kristina, relax with Extend next or Ti si Ball… Anyone who still has the ability to shudder with beauty or delight will understand everything.
