You see, I was playing a 7-string guitar. You've had Zhenya Larychev here, right? It was together with him that we came to Ivanov-Kramskoi - we were little boys back then and we were playing a duet. Ivanov-Kramskoi listened to us, then he summoned me and said: "Here's my phone number, call me tomorrow - I will accept you to the conservatory (music academy)". Note, there were no 7-string guitar classes anywhere at the time. He continued: "I will talk to Ghildels about this and tell you more". I think, Ghildels was the head of the department back then. I replied, "Alexander Mihailovich, I only have 9 grades of music school, I didn't proceed to the 10th grade and dropped out. I was thinking of going to a musical college, maybe" He called the school immediately and they accepted me back to the 10th grade. And under the influence of senior people (I was just a boy)... they were saying: "How can you drop the 7-string guitar playing?", this led to that... the time passed by... but long story short - I've found myself in the army. And in the army I switched to a 6-string guitar. There was a contest for participating in a festival in Leningrad, it was the year 1957. Nobody got the first place at that contest (and there were domra players, accordion players, ensembles, etc.) - myself, I won the 2nd prize. Then, I returned from the army back to Moscow - I've had to, due to illness - so, I've skipped the festival. And I was looking for a job (you have to work somewhere). And a job was not easy to find back then. But I've joined a quartet. There was a fairly famous one, a good one - Tikhonov's quartet. And ours was just behind them. They took me to play guitar, but I've had to use a pick there. To my luck, though, Zhemchuzhniy had heard us play and he needed a 7-string guitarist badly. The one that was playing with him was going to retire or something. Anyway, he had a vacancy for a 7-string guitarist. And when he heard me play he made an offer right away. He was asking the other band members: "Folks, for Lord's sake, I need him". They found another guy who would play with a pick for them - Mukhin came to replace me. And I've stayed with Zhemchuzhniy for 7 years after that. As a result, I got back to a 7 string guitar and stayed with it thereafter.
