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BB Gabor
Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery) / Moscow Drug Club - 7"
Anthem - 1980
Michael Panontin
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"Nyet nyet Soviet, Soviet jewellery
I say no no no no no no no no no - they shouted 'Yes!'
And snapped the Soviet jewellery around my wrists."
BB Gabor's 'Nyet Nyet Soviet', a song about being interrogated and handcuffed by the KGB, came out a full twenty-four years after his family were forced to flee Hungary "one step ahead of the Russian tanks". Which is surprising given that the young Gabor (ne Gabor Hegedus) was just eight years old when they arrived in London (UK) and by most accounts had a fairly typical childhood there. He attended a private Catholic school in Ealing, where he sang as a soloist during mass. Like most kids his age, his interest shifted to pop music when the Beatles appeared. And then an obsession with soul music, Motown in particular, led him to dream of living in Detroit.
Except that the cheapest charter flight was to Toronto, and so the Ontario metropolis became an accidental destiny of sorts for the young emigre.
"He arrived in Toronto in 1972 at the age of 24," his brother Istvan, who came to Canada along with Gabor, told PopMatters. "After living briefly with me, he lived in the Bay and Bloor area. It's at this point that his musical contacts began to blossom. So by early 1973, he was playing with several bands and at some point he formed his own."
That central location no doubt exposed the young singer to a number of themes that would work their way into his music: conspicuous consumption in upscale Yorkville, sleaze and violence along Yonge Street, and talk of that failed revolution in the coffee houses and restaurants in the nearby Little Budapest neighbourhood.
'Nyet Nyet Soviet' came out in 1980 on the Anthem label. The record's percolating Eastern rhythms, its scything guitar chords and those robotic chants of "Nyet, nyet Soviet" made it a minor hit across the Toronto area, thanks in part to CFNY-FM, at the time one of the most new wave-friendly radio stations on the continent. It was equally popular out in Vancouver, where it climbed to the #10 spot on CKLG.
Despite a similar theme on the record's flip, the highly political 'Moscow Drug Club', Gabor denied that he was some sort of one-trick anti-communist crusader. "I'm not a gimmick merchant," he bristled when asked by the Ottawa Journal's Evelyn Erskine. What he was, he admitted, was a "permanent outsider", satirizing both Eastern oppression and Western freedom in equal doses (the follow-up single, 'Metropolitan Life', was a brilliant example of the latter).
Gabor may have been relatively free of Soviet baggage, but he wasn't without his own demons.
"BB was emotionally unpredictable," his bassist Tom Griffiths later revealed. "He would go from overconfident and gregarious to completely withdrawn and unable to perform. Sometimes in the same show." Another bassist, Gary Justice, echoed that observation. "Gabor was a very intelligent and interesting man. Very present and intuitive, [but] something was troubling him deep down inside."
After a couple of albums, his 1980 debut and Girls of the Future the following year, Gabor headed out to Vancouver but had difficulty extending his success. He recorded some demos with Todd Rundgren in 1985, but they were never released. He returned to Toronto, but in January 1990 he was found dead in his apartment, the result of a suicide, police concluded.
'Nyet Nyet Soviet' is pretty well forgotten these days. But after Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it is especially relevant. As is much of Gabor's music. "His song messages were insightful," Justice wrote. "He pointed to the manipulation of the masses and wanted us to resist."
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