They started out from the Transylvanian town of Gheorgheni (Gyergyószentmiklós, pop. 17,000) in 2013 and in 2020 all tickets for their Budapest concert for 10,000 were sold out months in advance. Despite the ‘impudent’ youth of Norbert and László Bagossy, founders of the five-member Bagossy Brothers Company – along with Szilárd Bartis, Zsombor Kozma and Attila Tatár – they live their success story with remarkable wisdom.
Do you get on well together as brothers?
Norbert: “Very well would be a more precise formulation although Laci certainly remembers times when I didn’t let him play on the computer because as the older one, the keyboard was mine. In my defence, at 14 the two-year age gap appeared a lot but before or after this, we did virtually everything together.”
László: “We also started playing music together. I always looked up to Norbi and, with a slight delay, copied his hobbies. Roller-skating, too, in which he made it to the ‘escape from the backflip’ trick, and then quit while he was still ahead… Then we checked out dancing but even then he was not attracted to simple ballroom but rather break dance.”
When did music come into the picture?
Norbert: “I must have been around 15. To start off we tried to play familiar solos on acoustic guitar by ear. We were mainly influenced by English language music from the 2000s, from Linkin Park to Britney Spears.”
László: “Then a friend showed us how to play chords and a new world opened up. We learnt eight or so a day from the internet, our fingers were all blistered but we felt we had to do it! We also went to a guitar class with philosophy teacher László György, where Bob Dylan, Bryan Adams and R.E.M. songs were played. This kind of musical upbringing defined our tastes”
What sort of kids were you?
Norbert: “As soon as we learnt to walk, we left home at sunrise and only returned home at sunset.”
László: “Whatever we started, we gave it 120%. At the beginning we were thinking of a band, we wanted to be international stars. With our own songs, calculatingly. When we got our first guitar from our mother and her sibling, Norbi also acquired a drum set. We installed them in the first floor apartment and to the delight of the neighbours we started rehearsing. We knew even then that I would be the bass guitarist, even though at the time we didn’t have a bass guitar.”
Norbert: “And even then we were writing our own songs at a time when we couldn’t play the music of other bands properly!”
László: “The first song Norbi wrote was titled Big Adventure. It was about life being a great journey.”
Hungaricum laude 