Milan Hlavsa

“It was some kind of a full stop. We’d been living in the mistaken conviction that The Velvet Underground had an ‘underground’ agenda – as we had – and rejected the mainstream. We later learned this was far from the case. We had it in our heads that their ‘underground outlook’ was, in a way, supporting our lives in the underground under socialism.”

On January 5, 2001, Hlavsa died of lung cancer. He was 49 years old.

Lou Reed traveled to Prague in April 1990 to interview Czech president Vaclav Havel. Later that night, Reed was taken to a club where a band Pulnoc was playing. Reed joined them on stage where they performed for Havel and 300 of his friends.

Following their release from prison, the PPU would continue to perform discreetly until the government permitted them to play publicly in 1988.

In 1988, the Czech government ended its 18-year-old policy of suppressing the PPU and allowed them to perform publicly. Unfortunately, the band split up soon afterwards. Hlavsa formed a new group called Půlnoc (which means "midnight" in Czech). The band included PPU keyboardist Josef Janíček and violist Jiří Kabeš. Půlnoc released City of Hysteria in the United States on Arista Records in 1991. In 1997, at Havel's suggestion, Hlavsa reunited with the other Plastic People of the Universe and performed a series of concerts to mark the 20th anniversary of Charter 77, the Czech declaration of human rights. In 1999, the PPU performed at the White House along with Lou Reed.

In 1970, two years after the Plastic People of the Universe were formed, the government stripped them of their professional license. Without this, they were unable to play legally. To circumvent the system, the members of the PPU took jobs working in the forest. They continued to perform despite minor skirmishes with the police. That year, the PPU were members of a festival that promoted "druhá kultura", or second culture. The communist regime denounced the festival, arrested the members of the PPU, and tried them on various charges. Three members were jailed, and a former member (Canadian Paul Wilson) was deported. Hlavsa, the founding member, was the only one who escaped without a sentence.

In 1967, a friend of Hlavsa's introduced him to the music of The Velvet Underground. They would prove to be a tremendous influence, along with the music of Frank Zappa. At the time, Hlavsa was in a band known as The Primitives. In 1968, Hlavsa abandoned The Primitives and joined with Michal Jernek, Jiří Števich and Josef Brabec to form the Plastic People of the Universe.

Milan "Mejla" Hlavsa (Prague, March 6, 1951 – January 5, 2001) was the founder, chief songwriter, and original bassist of the Czech band Plastic People of the Universe, which was part of the inspiration for the anti-establishment movement Charter 77.

Milan Hlavsa was born on March 6, 1951 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. His father was employed as a bank clerk. Hlavsa himself labored as a butcher's apprentice before he founded the Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) in 1968. Due to oppression by Czechoslovakia's communist regime, access to Western music was limited. Native Czechs maintained a link to the Western music world by obtaining albums from friends and family abroad. This is how a young Hlavsa developed an affinity for American rock and roll. He was also a part of the movement called máničky.