Zdeněk Holeček

"During the [underground] festival in [Český] Brod they made this inscription in white paint on the cemetery wall condemning our glorious socialist establishment. It was a scam. The very next day I was at Barťák [for questioning at the StB office in Bartolomějská street], I thought I was really going to jail. They said I did it. I said: 'You're crazy, just imagine me going all the way from Prague with a bucket and a brush!' So they would beat me and put mw in a chair where Vašek Havlů and all those dissidents who meant something were sitting in front of me. That really happened. Now you're sitting there and you're supposed to turn around. They would turn you around with this lever, they had it all worked out. That's when I was getting my ass kicked, and I thought, 'Now it's all clear.' I'll never forget it, it's brutal, you're a young person and this Secret Service man is yelling at you: 'Holeček! I'm going to get you out of the Republic myself, you filth!' And he was yelling at me and then boom, I just passed away. You bastard. I thought, this is worse than the Gestapo. As my grandfather told me: when the StB [State Security] started, they were just like the Gestapo – all those coats and hats, they just took over. Stalin admired Hitler. And he was worse than Hitler, we already know that. Things got very hairy at that moment, I was afraid they would lock me up for real.”

"I could be myself among those people. There was 'Bloncek', we were all friends, but 'Skalák', he was just unreal. He's not much older than me, but even then he got his head right! I wanted to be like him, I looked upon him like some idol of sorts, I was so attracted to him. I saw him as a role model, but I didn't have the courage. He had to emigrate soon, he was forced to emigrate like a lot of people, songwriters... I always liked to think of Jarda Neduha, Extempore, Mezanin. He was such a nice chap. They used to do concerts, guitar only, like [in Prague's] Office of the Government, at this rotunda. It was just unbelievable, you couldn't breathe there, the whole place full of freaks. Jarda was like Skalák, a leading figure. He was always pushing things forward with Chadima. About five years ago he was here [in Olomouc] in Ponorka, so I invited him to my Rock Gallery and I was so happy to talk to him. He's in my head, he never goes away. He wrote a book about how he had to emigrate and how he went on a tramp in Slovakia, quite unreal. That just confirmed to me how superior he was.”