Ještě to neskončilo - Ze života jednoho českého písničkáře – Veit Vladimír (2016)

Vladimír Veit, in his book aptly subtitled From the Life of a Czech Songwriter, offers the reader a collage of his song lyrics and memories of childhood, youth, and his own beginnings as a songwriter. As a member of the loose association Šafrán, he experienced its birth, peak years, and downfall, orchestrated by the communist police. He modestly and unemotionally describes his years spent in exile in Vienna, where he went after signing Charter 77. The book concludes with stories from the 1990s, when he dedicated himself to publishing his own work in the era of emerging capitalism. The mosaic of texts is complemented by rich period documentation, discography, and commentaries from Veit's colleagues and friends. Vladimír Veit belongs to the first generation of our urban songwriters, influenced especially by the poetry of the beatniks, Donovan, and Bob Dylan, who began to perform publicly in the second half of the 1960s. As a fragile lyricist and an excellent composer of melodic songs, he was often overshadowed by his more famous and expressively confident colleagues Vladimír Merta, Vlastimil Třešňák, and Jaroslav Hutka. Probably only connoisseurs know that Veit is the author of the music for many essential songs from Hutka's repertoire. However, he is perhaps best known for his extraordinary and urgent musical interpretations of a diverse palette of authors from our and world poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries.