Star, myths — and reality. The biggest pop star in Czechoslovakia was Karel Gott — and in a sense, he remains one in the Czech Republic to this day. However, his story is not a traditional tale of a musical giant. Gott's fate cannot be separated from the history of the local society and politics. In the 1960s, the young singer became one of the faces of cultural liberalization, while in the 1970s, he resonated with the era of censorship and the loss of historical memory. The later era of market and democracy dealt with his legend without questioning the shadows at its roots. Gott's fame and his star image are everything but self-evident: throughout his life, Gott remained a storyteller and a guardian of his own narrative. And thus, the story of Czechoslovakia, the music industry, negotiations in local culture, power struggles, and the strength of the media. An independent portrait of Karel Gott by music journalist Pavel Klusák tells this story with an emphasis on verified, new, and little-known facts. The book Gott penetrates the myths propagated over the years and fills in the gaps in the events surrounding Las Vegas, "training emigration," and the Anticharta. It also describes the development of domestic show business and society. The fates of Karel Gott are, after all, somewhat the history of all of us.
