Tamas Barta - victim of a drugs ring?

It was 26 years ago that Tamas Barta, singer-guitarist in the band Locomotiv GT, died in Los Angeles. Many consider him to be the greatest ever Hungarian guitarist. He died from a bullet to his head under circumstances that remain a mystery.

Barta, Frenreisz, Laux and Presser in 1972 © www.passzio.hu

Youth Magazine polled professional musicians in 1970, asking who were the greatest rock stars in Hungary. Tamas Barta, born in 1948, was the greatest guitarist, they concluded. It was this vote that led to Locomotiv GT being formed at the beginning of 1971. The keyboardist was Gabor Presser, the bass guitarist was Karoly Frenreisz, and the drummer was Jozsef Laux. All had come top in the poll for their own instruments.

In 1962, Barta started his studies at an electrical engineering technical school, where he was a classmate of Mikos Fenyo. As Fenyo told hvg.hu, both were kicked out in 1964 for non-attendance. One teacher remembers that three-quarters of their time was devoted to rock'n'roll and the rest to girls. They didn't meet for a year, until Barta turned up at a rehearsal for Syconor, Fenyo's band of the time.

He borrowed the guitar and began playing, impressing the rest of the band enough that they took him on immediately. Fenyo says Barta learned his instrument by himself in just one year - in 1964, he hadn't been able to play at all. Admittedly, he already had basic musical knowledge - he had studied the violin.

Barta stayed with Syconor until 1967. Later, he did his military service, frequently performing alongside Syriusz. He started playing with Fenyo again from 1969. He joined Hungaria and played in that band's first album, Concert on Mars, which was released in 1970. He then joined LGT.

The LGT in Budapest © www.passzio.hu

Why did he leave an existing, moderately successful band to join a new one, making a leap into the unknown? The rock music of this period was no longer three-chord rock'n'roll, but a mixture of progressive and hard rock. Deep Purple and Jethro Tull were formed in 1968, Emerson, Lake and Palmer in 1970 , but even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were playing completely different music in 1969 compared to five years before. This change hit Hungary as well, though a little later on.

Compare Illes in 1966 with the same band in 1971, for example. It's natural that Barta - who had the talent not to follow but to reshape Hungarian rock music - simply found himself in a supergroup. Karoly Frenreisz says: "He could make full use of his progressive guitar skills in LGT."

Tamas Barta was first-class not just as a guitarist but also as a composer. Several of the 20 LGT songs he wrote became huge hits and continue to be among the band's most popular songs.

Karoly Frenreisz left LGT in 1973. There was one problem with Tamas Somlo, the new saxophonist-guitarist-singer. He couldn't play bass guitar. Somlo told hvg.hu that he sat every day from 11 to 4 in the afternoon in Barta's Izabella utca flat and learned to play the bass guitar. At the beginning, he played the easier bass lines and Barta played the more difficult ones: "It's not hard to play the bass if you're a good guitarist," he said.