I don't actually know much about Vysotsky, except that he seems like he would be exactly the sort of musician I'd love, and it makes me sad that he doesn't seem to be very accessible to English-only speakers. (..Hence the attempting to translate stuff in language I don't know.)

I would still love Russian help! If I e-mailed you my rough, trying-to-be-literal translation and a link to the original lyrics, could you point out any places where I was outright wrong? (I'm not too worried about subtle shades of meaning since I'm going to try to re-do it to make it rhyme eventually.)