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Ra-Ra-Rasputin — The Song They Couldn’t Kill
What do Milli Vanilli and the Russian Revolution have in common?
“This term, boys, we will be studying Russian history,’ said Mr Watts. “Before we embark on the syllabus, I’ll let you into a secret. The only things you will remember from this course are Catherine the Great and Rasputin. So let’s start with them.”
That marked my introduction, aged 15, to the world of Czarist intrigue surrounding the legendary Mad Monk, courtesy of one of the very few staff at the school who in any way resembled Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets’ Society.
And he turned out to have an unlikely ally in cementing Rasputin’s name in our memories in the form of the German-based Caribbean Eurodisco ensemble Boney M.
Oddly enough, my first encounter with their music had come via another teacher at the school some six or seven years earlier. Mr Franklin was a God-bothering traditionalist from the other end of the pedagogical spectrum, and had taken a shine to Boney M precisely because of that Christian zeal (which he did not preach with Rasputin’s ‘ecstasy and fire’, but rather dogma and dishwater).
Perhaps the closest we ever saw to excitement in his eyes was when he played their hit By the Rivers of Babylon to a bewildered huddle of primary…
