Mira Žbirka’s life milestones: A promising football player and a dream recording in Abbey Road

After a difficult journey, Šimon Žbirka went to a pub to order a drink that would lead him to better thoughts. He sat down at the counter, reached for the glass in front of him, and when he tossed it in, the pretty girl sitting next to him alerted him that the glass belonged to her. He apologized to him in broken English. This resulted in a pleasant long conversation and an invitation to a meeting. It was love and marriage.

Brethren

After the end of World War II, the Žbirks settled in Bratislava. Even before that, in 1944, their eldest son Jason was born. In 1948 another son Anton was born and four years after him Miroslav.

“Jason, whom we called Jasey, was my role model. He was convincing, handsome, tall, dark-haired, memorable. He worked in several rock and roll bands, where he sang. He was the first of our family to appear as a musician on the television screen, “said Miro.

According to him, his brother was fascinated by Elvis Presley, but then the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came and his fascination changed.

“He was bothering his mother by rewriting the lyrics. His main interest was reading, he studied at the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava. It was his studies, together with his constant reading (in his mother’s opinion, note), that caused a state of mind that resulted in skepticism, which in February 1969 led him to voluntarily leave life. He was twenty-five. I still don’t know why he did it, “said the singer.

Footballer

As a boy, he felt like he could have a pretty good time playing football, playing outside with his friends every day. The famous hockey striker Jožo Golonka, who lived in their house, also confirmed to him several times that it looked promising with his sport. He also thought for a moment that he would be a crane operator or a journalist. But in the end, the music won.

“The first person I thought I could sing was my father. He once said that I could go to art school, which amused my brothers. “Whenever I tried a chord afterwards, whenever I messed up something, one of them remarked – it’s suitable for art school,” he recalled with a smile.

The first success

In 1977, as a co-founder of the Modus group, together with Ján Lehotský and Marika Gombitová, he won the Golden Bratislava Lyre for the song Smile. Four years later, however, Modus left and, with his colleague Lac Lučenič, founded the band Limit, with which he embarked on a solo career. In 1982, he won the Golden Bratislava Lyre with Limit for the song Nechodí, and thus attracted the talent scout Klaus Baumgart. Thanks to him, his songs were also performed in Germany – Denisa became successful, the song Biely kvet was even sung in French.

Gotta’s humiliation

The year 1982 brought Mir Žbirek the Golden Nightingale. “It simply came to our notice then. It couldn’t occur to me either, because in this competition the winner of the men’s category was clear in advance – Karel Gott. Only with the exception of 1967, when Waldemar Matuška won. At that time, music editor Jirka Vejvoda called me and asked me for an interview. I put it off, he insisted, I didn’t understand such impatience. At the time, I had no reason to be overly confident, “Miro said.

He added a story that beautifully depicts his attitude at the time: “Before the concert in a Czech town, the organizer came to the locker room and asked anxiously: Guys, Žbirka should be here by now. Which one is it? ”

Rhytmick

The musician’s fame rose, spewing hit after hit. In the 1990s, the moderation of the Rhytmick television music chart also helped him gain popularity. “Rhythmmick was a session in which there were a lot of foreign clips that I had to comment on. I took it. Foreign music videos were very rare for us at the time, we could only see them on Austrian television before, when we were lucky enough to catch her signal. It was filmed in the Netherlands, where they had a license for the show, and it was very strange. I talked to people who didn’t understand a word, “recalled a musician called Mecca.

Jobs at Abbey Road

His biggest dream came years after his wife Katka, who arranged for him to record the album Miro – and later his Double Album was created there – in the London studio Abbey Road, where The Beatles left their mark. “Thanks to their impulse, I wrote Atlantis or the Ballad about wild birds, which do not resemble the main songs of Lennon and McCartney at all. But it was the two of them who, in a way, challenged me to do so. I am grateful to them for that. So in my life, I could not move in a place that is more decisive for me than Abbey Road, from where the ideas of the Beatles and their energies were sent all over the world, “he told Deník Žbirka.

Bronchi, children and women

The holder of many music awards succumbed to repeated pneumonia. As a child, his parents took him to a sanatorium in the High Tatras because he had problems with bronchitis. He spent several months there, and it was overwhelming for him to explain that he needed to really recover.

“I survived, I should be grateful to my parents for their radical solution. I need a bronchus to sing and who knows if I wouldn’t have a problem without that treatment, “he confided in the book. With his first wife Helga he had a daughter Denisa, with his second wife Kateřina a daughter Linda and a son, the musician David, who lives in London. They were thinking about a joint project. Unfortunately, its implementation will no longer take place.

Miro Žbirka and his guests in the Den

At the end of the summer, Miro Žbirka presented the third series of his talk show Den Meky Žbirka at a joint press conference of the Czech Television cultural station. It has appeared on screens since the spring of 2019, a total of twenty-seven episodes and two live specials have been broadcast. Viewers will see the last two editions on Sunday, November 14 at 9:10 pm and a week later at 9:15 pm on ČT art.

Doupě remains the last show in which the singer and moderator Meka Žbirka participated. He accompanied the show, which combined concerts with interviews not only with musicians in an intimate space, for two and a half years. This year’s guests of the show were, for example, Miroslav Donutil, Ondřej Gregor Brzobohatý, Dagmar Pecková, Lenka Dusilová or Marek Eben.

ČT art will present the last two episodes this and next Sunday. The first guests are Hana Zagorová and Štefan Margita, in the final part they visited the Ewa Farn’s Den with Karel Šíp.

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