Gorky Park, aka GP, is an Armenian, Soviet and American rock band, formed in 1987 by Armenian musician, composer and producer Stas Namin (Anastas Mikoyan) at his producing centre SNC.
It is the only Soviet band to have conquered the MTV and Billboard charts and become world famous. The main springboard in Gorky Park’s career was its participation in the famous Moscow Music Peace Festival organised by Stas Namin and Doc McGee at the Lenin stadium on August 12–13, 1989.
US Polygram Records released Gorky Park’s first and only studio album, titled ‘Gorky Park’, recorded entirely in English by the band’s lead vocalist Nikolai Noskov, which entered the US Billboard 200 chart and brought the band worldwide fame.
In 1990, the band broke up.
The Gorky Park band was reformed in 2022, by then the Soviet Union no longer existed and Armenia was already an independent country. The band now consists of two armenians, two russians and two americans. The band’s international line-up is currently based in Yerevan, Moscow and Los Angeles and performs worldwide as an international band.
History
In September 1986, during the first USA tour with his band The Flowers, Stas Namin got an idea to found a band aimed at western audiences. Dennis Berardi, President of the “Kramer Guitars”, and manager of Gorky Park band: “Stas Namin came up with the name “Gorky Park” in 1986 while his band “Flowers” was on tour in the USA. He told me at that time that he wanted to put together a band for the American market, and he came up with the idea of a band name similar to the famous book and film “Gorky Park”, which was told to him by Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow, whom he visited in September 1986 after a press conference at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York. Stas told me that the new band would be born on basis of the musicians working in the band Flowers. Thus, the Gorky Park band was born in the Stas Namin Centre (SNC)”
Don King, Stas Namin, Sergey Mazaev, musicians, and the band Gorky Park in Stas Namin’s studio. 1988.
At the beginning of 1987 he starts to gather musicians for this new hard-n-heavy project. Four of the five musicians, apart from the lead singer Nikolay Noskov, were at the time working in The Flowers.
In the spring of 1987, Gorky Park (GP) started its work in Stas Namin’s studio — composing songs in English, rehearsing, making demo recordings.
In the 1988, Namin arranged a concert debut for Gorky Park as a supporting band for Scorpions during their tour in Leningrad.
When Denis Berardi, president of the Kramer Guitar company, became Gorky Park’ s manager, Stas Namin agreed with Jon Bonjovi to help his band and invited the Bon Jovi band, along with their manager Doc MacGhee and the president of US Poligram Records, to his centre in Moscow. It was there that the GP group’s contract for the release of an album in the US was signed, and Stas sent the group to the USA to record at Denis Berardi’s studio in New Jersey.
The main springboard in Gorky Park’s career was its participation in the famous Moscow Music Peace Festival organised by Stas Namin and Doc McGee at the Lenin stadium on August 12–13, 1989. The band performed in front of one hundred and fifty thousand people, together with Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderella, Skid Row, Scorpions. Thanks to the TV broadcast in 59 countries, where Namin had placed the group alongside global superstars, Gorky Park became famous in the US and other countries around the world.
In August 1989, Gorky Park’s debut album of the same name was released by US Polygram Records. Its cover had the GP logo on it, created by designer Pavel Shegeryan in October 1986. It resembled the letters GP, stylized as sickle and hammer. The album reached 80th position on Billboard 200, selling over 300 thousand copies in the three weeks since its release.
The song “Bang!” by Nikolai Noskov made it to the top 15 on American MTV and stayed there for two months, reaching the third position, and reached #81 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Gorky Park the first Soviet band to break into the US national chart.
In 1990, after the festival and album release, the Stas Namin Centre sent Gorky Park to the US tour, and it turned out to be the band’s first and last tour. It was on that tour that the misunderstandings occurred among the members of the band that led to break-up.
Media 1988-1989
SPIN magazine, November 1989 (Jon Bon Jovi), “Let Freed.” Memories of Jon Bon Jovi
Stas wanted to get Gorky Park an American record deal, and the reason he approached Dennis was trust.
Through Kramer, through our manager Doc McGhee, through PolyGram, and through that trust, Gorky Park got a record deal. Richie and I had agreed to write and produce something for them, which we did, and they invited us to play Russia.
Rolling Stone magazine, February 9, 1989 (Rob Tannenbaum), “Bon Jovi in the USSR: Bon Voyage”
When Namin was in New Jersey last April, he asked Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora to help Gorky Park write some English lyrics. Jon and Richie, the creative axis of Bon Jovi, are nothing if not helpful — they’ve produced Cher, given songs to Ted Nugent, Aerosmith and Loverboy and introduced Cinderella to PolyGram execs. They agreed to help Gorky Park.
The HARD REPORT. About Dennis Berardi, manager of the band Gorky Park
If, indeed, Russian rock impresario Stas Namin hand picked the players in Gorky Park from the USSR’s biggest bands, it’s safe to say the Soviet rock scene is significantly more contemporary than we might have thought. And given the incredible cume predicted for the Make A Difference satellite broadcast in August, that could well be the key to world domination for these guys, as it should reach about 300 million worldwide.
Bon Jovi Takes Antidrug Message To USSR. 30.11.1988
Revival of the group
In August 2022, Stas Namin announced the rebirth of the band. Their first performance took place at the festival “SNC. 35 Anniversary”.
The line-up of Gorky Park includes: Oleg Izotov – lead guitar and lead vocals, Sergey Arutyunyan – lead vocals and harmonica, Marco Mendoza – bass guitar and lead vocals, Timoty Grigorovich – lead guitar and vocals, Oleg Khovrin – drums, Kenny Aronoff – drums.
Posters of the 80s
