Milan Hlavsa

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Milan Hlavsa, nicknamed Mejla, was a Czech bassist and songwriter from Prague. He was born in 1951 and was an apprentice butcher when he founded The Plastic People of the Universe in 1968, shortly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was seventeen at the time. A year earlier a friend had introduced him to the music of The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, and those two became his great models. As founder he was also the group's principal composer.

Music and breakthrough

In communist Czechoslovakia, Western music was severely restricted. In 1970 the authorities withdrew the band's professional licence. The members took jobs in forestry and carried on playing, outside the official circuit. They belonged to what was called druhá kultura, the second culture: art that existed without the permission of the state. After a festival of that movement, members were arrested and tried; three went to prison and the former member Paul Wilson was expelled from the country. Hlavsa himself escaped punishment. For Václav Havel and others, the trial was a reason to found Charter 77, the movement that called the government to account over human rights.

Influence

In 1988 the band was allowed to perform openly again, but it fell apart shortly afterwards. Hlavsa started Půlnoc, who released the album City of Hysteria in America in 1991. At Havel's suggestion he brought the Plastic People back together in 1997, for the twentieth anniversary of Charter 77. In 1999 they played at the White House, together with Lou Reed. Hlavsa died in January 2001 of lung cancer, aged 49.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1999Šílenství

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Magazine: Rock Behind the Iron Curtain^NL Magazine