Radim Hladík

Radim Hladík - a musician whose name is inextricably linked with the band Blue Effect. He was born in Prague in 1946 and already played guitar in the well-known band Komety at the age of fifteen. He got his first professional job in 1964 at the Olympik club. He entered the history of Czech big beat already in the second half of the 1960s as a member of the legendary Matadors.

They soon became the best Czech rhythm and blues band, thanks to the then East German technical equipment, from which brand they got their name. In addition to the pair of vocalists Vladimír Mišík - Karel Kahovec, the band had another big trump card in the form of Radim Hladík, who became the universally recognized king of the electric guitar and also an innovator.

When he used the so-called quacks for the first time in the Czech Republic, according to eyewitnesses, the audience was dumbfounded. Hladík, who was initially influenced by foreign models, gradually developed his own creations. After the breakup of the Matadors, he founded his group Blue Effect (later called M.efekt and Modrý efekt) in the fall of 1968, which operated until his death in 2016.