The legions of female fans, the glorious comeback and the stroke: the life story of the trailblazer Zvika Pick

Zvika Pick did not only provide the soundtrack of our lives, but was a pioneer who went ahead of the Israeli musical camp.

Watch clips of the prominent stations in his career, starting with "Hair" that made him a local star, through the hits of the seventies, the comeback with the hat themes and the Eurovision, to the reality shows with his participation

Walla!

culture

08/14/2022

Sunday, August 14, 2022, 4:56 p.m

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For the first time in front of an audience since she had a stroke, Zvika Pick appears in front of an audience, at the press conference for the festival (stills: Reuven Castro, video: Sagi Ben Noon)

In some ways Zvika Peak had no choice but to become Zvika Peak.

His mother was the scion of a family of musicians: his grandfather ran a conservatory, his uncle was a music professor, and Zvika himself was revealed to be a gifted musical talent at the age of 5. Although he grew up on the lap of classical music, in his youth he was drawn to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

The result was joining as a keyboard player in the Fat and Thin band, a rhythm band founded by Uzi Fox and was the first of this genre to record songs in Hebrew.

Pick was also part of the Chocolat trio, which besides him also included Gabi Shoshan and Shuki Levy, and was the first to record the song "Oli on the beach", which later became a hit performed by Yoram Gaon.

Tzvika Peak burst into local consciousness in 1970.

Along with the same Gabi Shoshan, Pick was one of several local artists who participated in the local adaptation of "Hair" and later became stars in the sky of the Israeli singer.

Ehud Manor translated the play and its songs into Hebrew, Shoshan played Berger, Pick was his friend Claude, and besides them, Margalit Tsanani, Tsadi Sraffati and Mike Brandt also played in the musical.

The scene of the actors' complete nudity and the religious protest against the play did not prevent "Hair" from becoming a huge hit - perhaps even the other way around.

Although it was shown all over the country for less than a year, it received hundreds of performances and according to the producers was watched by an audience of hundreds of thousands.

Pick leveraged the success in favor of a dizzying solo career in the seventies, with songs most of which he composed himself.

She started with "Two Apples" in 1971, leading up to her debut album "This is My Way" which was released a year later, and also included "There is no country for love" and the theme song, all of which became hits.

Between 1973 and 1975 he released a new album every year, which included, among others, the eternal hits "The Automatic Dancer", "Between the Fingers" (originally composed by Ruthi Navon) and "I love you Leah".

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Peak's greatest success up to that time came with the album "Kaleidoscope" from 1977, which, among other things, included the huge hit "Love at the End of the Summer", and paved his way to the title of singer of the year in the Kol Israel parade for the year 1977. As part of the parade, Peak was asked to compose Natan Yonatan's song, "Nesaf Tishrei", which itself became a huge hit and topped the annual parade a year later, once again earns Pick the title of singer of the year.

The song was included in Pick's next album, "Music" from 1978, which was not only the most successful of the singer's albums, but in Israel in general until then.

In fact, no fewer than three songs from it were weaker than the top five in the annual parade of 2017. Besides "Nasef Tishrei" there were also "Mary Lou" in second place and "Not Me", according to Alexander Penn's "Not Me He Is the Man". For them, the album opened with the theme song, also known as "Ma'ala Ma'ala", and remains one of Peak's best-known hits. According to reports from the record company CBS, the album sold 40,000 copies in the first two months after its release, and 100,000 in the first year.

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The tremendous success turned Peak into a star of magnitudes previously unknown in Israel, including legions of screaming female fans who followed him, police barriers that cut through the crowd eager for the concerts and bodyguards who protected him the rest of the time.

His success went beyond the borders of the country and he conquered the Israeli audience abroad as well, which led to performances in some of the most prestigious venues in the world.

Throughout his career, Pick also composed songs for other artists, many of which became huge hits in their own right. Among other things, he composed the soundtrack for the movie "Schlager" of the pale tracker, from which grew the "Flower Song" performed by Ofra Haza. He also composed the soundtrack of the movie "Dizengoff 99", which also included the hit "Legor Aito" by Ricky Gal, as well as "Dem Ham" by Sherry.

After the great success in the seventies came Peak's low years as a vocalist, with albums that did not receive good sales and a listening ear among the radio and the audience.

Even during these years Peak continued to deliver huge hits to other artists.

Among other things, he composed "A Thousand Kisses" by Yoram Gaon, "Yad Vaid" and "Gabriel" by Ofra Haza.

Also, even in this faltering period, we still produced songs that became hits, including "The soap cried a lot" which he composed for the 1981 Children's Song Festival to the words of Marin Yelan Shetaklis, and "Lila Lila" which participated in the pre-Eurovision 1986.

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In 1991 Peak came back to consciousness as a member of the Hat Bearers band, and performed with them in rock versions of some of his greatest hits.

Pick's horn continued to rise throughout the decade with another participation in pre-Eurovision and a song that again reached seventh place - "Artic Creative" in 1993.

A year later he joined Dana International for the first time when he composed for her the big hit "I can't do without you", and four years later he composed for her what would become his biggest world hit, "Diva", the 1998 Eurovision winner.

This was the opening chord for a real renewed take-off in Pick's career.

He continued to write music for Eurovision in the years that followed.

In 2002 he composed "Light a Candle" for Sharit Hadad, and a year later he composed the song that represented Ukraine in the competition, "Hasta La Vista" - both had very little success in the competition.

In 2002, the musical "Mary Lou", based on his songs, premiered at the stage theater.

Throughout the decade Peake continued to stand out in the compositions he contributed to other artists.

Among other things, he wrote the music for the opening of the telenovela "The Game of Life" performed by Ricky Gal and the huge hit "The Heart" by Maya Buskila.

In 2005 Peak devoted himself a little more to a television career: he began serving as a judge in the third season of "A Star Is Born", and even composed the audition song - "Sometimes Dreams Come True".

In the same year, the Bip channel also began broadcasting the reality series "The Maestro" which followed Pick in his private life, including his family: his partner Shira Manor, his mother and his daughters Sharona and Daniela, who had already tried their hand at a pop career in those years, 13 years before the latter would marry one, Quentin Tarantino .

Peek's private life has always generated interest in the gossip sections, due to his great success.

Until 1995 he was married for twenty years to Mirit Shem Or, who wrote most of his songs.

Lemanor, who is 36 years his junior, he married in 2004, and the two separated in 2021.

Despite the brain event he suffered in 2018, which forced him to relearn how to speak, Pick returned to the stages as part of Festigal 2019, a significant part of which was dedicated to a string of his hits and concluded a magnificent and one-time career, which was invaluable to Israeli culture.

In the last months he worked on a new show with hits of all time, but unfortunately - he will no longer fulfill this dream.

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