The Bug

I have no idea when it bit me.

Perhaps it was the very first time I heard Led Zeppelin IV. A lifetime ago in Shillong, as a wide-eyed 14-year-old, I sat in my classmate Imran Haque’s living room one afternoon after school as he blasted Rock & Roll on his father's expensive stereo, shaking the very foundations of his wood-framed home. Or listening to Bob Marley’s Kaya for the first time at Bobby Marbaniang’s place. (Bobby went on to play blues harp in Mojo, a legendary band from that town and later in life, strangely enough, a ministership in the state government!)

Or maybe it was a dozen years later in Bombay, singing the last song with my band, The Crosswinds, at the St. Xavier’s College quadrangle just after we announced our parting of ways.

Or even later still, in a dingy little studio somewhere in Colaba, in south Bombay, as I incredulously watched a little Apple Macintosh computer faithfully play back note for note what my friend and teacher Ramu Narayan had just played on his Casio CZ5000 keyboard… mistakes and all.

Somewhere between the rock and the technology, I was bitten. Hard.

I was going to be a musician... a published musician. I was going to write and produce my own songs.

I could sing. I could write. I could drum and play a bit of guitar. Had no idea about keyboards. Oh… and I had no money to buy equipment. But those were piddling details that weren’t going to stop me.

I had watched Ramu long enough to know that if you held three notes down together on a keyboard, it made a chord. Throw a string of those combinations together, and you have a song structure. Write lyrics. Mix well with drums, bass and other assorted sounds and viola… you have song, no?

Well… not really.

******

In 1990, I got myself a 286 IBM clone cobbled together in a dingy little first-floor store on Lamington Road for the princely sum of Rs.27,000. Borrowed. Meanwhile, Ramu bought a Yamaha FB-01 synthesizer module (promptly renamed Frodo Baggins) and Cakewalk sequencing software (version 1!) for me in the U.S. With duties, another Rs.15,000 or so. Also borrowed. For inputting, Ramu lent me his trusty old CZ, since he had gone out and got himself a whiz bang VZ1. He was making gobs of money doing ad jingles. Once in a while, he’d throw a vocal gig for a jingle my way.

We lived down the street from each other at Lokhandwala Complex in Bombay. So every few days, invited or not, I landed up at his place and watched him put music together. Looking back, I must have been a royal pain in the butt. Blind to his possible discomfort, I kept knocking on his door. And he kept letting me in. I learnt a shitload. About melodies and layering and fillers and breaks. And the technical side of sequencing. About MIDI hookups. Got to the point where I could set up Ramu’s rig - comprising his Apple SE 30, his VZ1 keyboard and three synth units, including an amazing state-of-the-art Proteus - in about six minutes flat. Blindfolded.

But I still couldn’t play the keyboard.

*****

Back in my own apartment, I slowly put to use whatever I learnt from Ramu. I started writing and sequencing. Already the seeds for a song had been planted in my mind by the story of a friend’s sister-in-law, a deaf and mute lady who had been burnt to death for inadequate dowry. The lyrics for that one poured out in one angry rush.

And yet the song itself took me about six months to get to the point where I felt it was complete. I knew what it should sound like. But not having the knowledge base, I was having a hard time achieving that sound. I was learning through trial and error. On a good day, I got a whole section done. On others, I spent the entire night tweaking two notes. Only to erase in the morning what I had done the night before. It was frustrating as hell. The same notes… over and over and over again. The same verse, looped, playing relentlessly as we ate dinner, Chandana my wife (at the time) and I. Me listening intently for that one note I was missing… that one elusive note that would complete the sound. Chandana, getting increasingly glassy-eyed, trying desperately to tune the song out. In the end, I had the song called Brides, which became the title track on my album called Brides and Bandits, released by HMV in 1994.

A lot more happened to Brides along the way. I played the demo to bass guru Storms. Right off the bat he said he would play on it. So did guitar god Derek Julien. And then there was Chandana’s Hindustani classical vocal bit at the beginning and end of the song.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

*****

After I got Brides up to a demo’able state, it got a little easier. Braced by the knowledge that I could do it, I started writing more and more. Some nights I’d start after dinner and go straight through till six or seven in the morning, even though I had to get to my day job as copy editor in Business India magazine. I finished at least one song on the album, Light and Shade, in a single sitting like that. From raw idea to finished song, complete with lyrics and backing track. And there were others, like Bandits, which took longer. I had the lyrics, but was struggling with the backing track. Finally, in frustration, I played the unfinished track to Derek in the studio one evening. The following Sunday, he came over in the afternoon with his sequencing gear – he uses a guitar for inputting, which I found intriguing – and we finished the song before we went to sleep that night. It was late and, yes, we were drunk by then. But the song was complete. Derek’s input in that song is still one of my favourite parts of the album.

*****

In the meanwhile, I was knocking on doors to get the album released. There were only three choices ­– HMV, BMG and the upstart Crescendo (yes, the latter two companies were separate in those days). The working stiff at BMG called me in for a “meeting”. Stuck my demo into a dinky little Philips tape machine on his desk and then kept taking phone calls. And then said, thanks for coming in… we’ll be in touch... and, yeah, take the tape with you. Seems a pity to waste a perfectly good tape, he added.

Nice.

Crescendo’s Suresh Thomas was more sincere. But he couldn’t find a marketing handle on socially conscious rock. Finally I met V.T. Ravi at HMV. He said it was going to be a tough sell, but if I could get the moolah together, he’d release the album. HMV would chip in some, but nowhere near the Rs. 220,000 I could see the whole thing costing, with at least one video. But, it was a start.

MTV Asia was warming up nicely to non-Western videos. There was completely fascinating stuff emerging from around Asia and elsewhere. I distinctly remember Artistes RAP from Malaysia. Beautiful video, fantastic music. And Ofra Haza from Israel, singing in Hebrew. Hard rockers Tang Dynasty, from China. And our dear buddies Rock Machine already had Rock And Roll Renegade on air by then. It was a heady time. A time full of promise.

Slowly the quest solidified in two directions; one, find money, and two, find someone to make the video. My phone book quickly filled up with some pretty big names. Leads I got from my colleagues at Business India. Names including Prahlad Kakkar and Alyque Padamsee. Ratan Tata and Amitabh Bachchan. With both of whom, I spoke on the phone a number of times. Tata, especially, was always gracious… even replying to a letter I dared sneak in to him while he was at a meeting at the Oberoi. He took my calls when I dared to call him at home! The beautiful Tanya Godrej… always gracious too. My break came when adman Ajit Balakrishnan said he would put up Rs.50,000 if I could get two other sponsors for similar amounts. That promise was good enough for my boss Ashok Advani, publisher of Business India, who came on board with two free advertising pages in Business India publications that I could “sell”. Tata and Godrej immeidately aggred to take a page each and signed on with sponsorships totalling Rs.100,000. Balakrishnan, true his word, then signed on the dotted line for his Rs.50,000.

Still short, but good enough to start.

*****

Meanwhile, I was talking to Prahlad Kakkar and another filmmaker from New Delhi for the video of Brides. Prahlad was too busy. He worked out of a busy and cramped little office in Mahalaxmi. I spent hours sitting on the steps outside his office, waiting to have a word with him. The filmmaker from New Delhi was throwing one ultra artsy idea after another at me. I was getting nowhere in terms of the video.

That’s when I ran into Ray C, a director and anchor of The India Show produced by TV18 (now better known for its NBC tie-up). At the time, TV18 was working in partnership with Business India TV. Ray C threw heart and soul into Brides, ever since I played the song to him on someone’s car stereo one night during a chance meeting in Bangalore late in 1992. If there was a third person besides Chandana and I who truly felt what we were trying to achieve with that song, it was Ray C. He quickly roped TV18 management into the project. The storyboard he drew up knocked me off my feet. Eerily close to what I was seeing in my mind but had been unable to express, it was damned near perfect. I don’t think I had one change to suggest.

*****

Still short on cash, we toiled away in the studio through the rest of the songs. Days of amazing grace, intense pressures and stress beyond belief. Grace from the music… of seeing it come alive…watching Derek, Storms, Carl Clements, Dwight and Chandana bring my ideas to life in the studio. Listening intently to the sequenced parts I played to them, and then going in and interpreting their parts in their own styles. Each bringing in a flavour I never imagined. Sometimes it all threatened to unravel and fly away into the disparate parts… but we always managed to pull it back together.

Another bit of magic happened when Derek got his new Kramer guitar from Canada (with money he had earned so far from the album’s recordings as sessions guitarist and recording engineer). The morning after he picked it up from customs, we went in to record the guitar parts for Light and Shade. Strings up and plugs in his new baby, and plays through the solo in almost a single take. I seem to remember he was unhappy with the ending and had a few stabs at it, but most of the solo that appears on the song is that first, brilliant burst off his brand spanking new, deep blue Kramer.

And then there was the late night On the Sidewalk/Shanta Kaaram session. Chandana was seven months pregnant, tired and having difficulty with the breath control demanded by classical singing. Derek was the recording engineer on the session. Chandana went into the booth and improvised the part. After her take, silence in the studio… everyone sat back stunned by what she had just sung. Pure magic. One take. I said something about trying another one. Derek says, no way. And there it is, as it was on the first take. And, some months later, one night in my living room, that part brought a certain heavy metal rocker to tears after he heard the song for the first time.

*****

The stress was all money-related. Money was not coming in as fast as it was going out. Everybody had to be paid and not all the sponsors paid up together. So it was a struggle. It got so bad once that the studio owner called my office and threatened to speak to Ashok Advani. Despite my efforts to keep things quiet, he heard about it and called me into his office late in the evening to find out what was going on. After I explained, he called his brother Kumar at home and asked him to send Rs.18,000 over to the office. Then he had someone drive me over to the studio owner’s home (it was past 10 p.m.) to hand over the cash so she would stop harassing me.

Today, when I read all the bad press about Ashok Advani, it saddens me. I, for one, see him a very different light.

And then there was the mysterious Navneet Kathuria, a 30-something-year-old New Yorker who was visiting India for the first time after his parents took him to the U.S. at age seven or so. He started talking to me on a local train one afternoon. A few days later, he came by to see me at Business India because he wanted to see an Indian magazine office. A few days later still, we met for drinks during a break in recording and one thing leads to another, and he landed up in the studio. We played him some of the music that was getting close to final mixdowns. And then the phone rings and I spend the next 20 minutes fending off the irate studio owner for late payments. So Navneet asks me about how we were financing the album. Though sponsorships, I say. "Could individuals be sponsors?" he asks. Normally, it would be companies, I say. "There is no law against it, is there?" Navneet asks. "Can I put up some money?" Chandana and I think about it for about 2 seconds and say, yes! Navneet pledged the equivalent of Rs.50,000 right there on the spot!

What did he want out of it? Nothing, apparently. Not till date, and it’s been about 10 years now.

Like they say, good things do happen.

That took my total sponsorships to Rs.200,000. HMV came in with the rest to meet my original budget of Rs.220,000. (But like all things, by the time it was all over, we were over budget by almost Rs.50,000. But that’s another story.)

*****

Somewhere in this heady mix were the Bombay riots.

Driving through streets with burnt and gutted taxicabs sitting on the sides. Smashed shop windows. Debris from rioting mobs… rocks, metal pipes, torn clothing and rubber bathroom slippers. Blood smears on foot paths and walls.

Not having a car of our own, and with all the gear we had to transport back and forth between Seven Bungalows (where we lived) and Fort (where the studio was located), we used cabs. The cab drivers were all Muslim, and we’re Hindus, but they drove us there and back without any questions or hesitation if we insisted on risking life and limb… AND the expensive equipment. Sometimes, if they picked up any buzz on the streets about something brewing, they’d come by our apartment to tell us about it. If it sounded bad enough, we took their advice to stay indoors. It was better to pay the studio a penalty for missing the booking.

*****

The day came when the last track was mixed down. The video shoot for Brides was done. The video tape was in Hong Kong with Channel V and MTV. The DAT tape was with HMV in Calcutta. Life moved into a whirlwind of photoshoots, interviews, seeing my mug in the press every few days. Getting ready for the big launch. Very exciting stuff, but trying to keep cool through it all.

HMV threw a lavish launch party at a cool suburban club. Unbelievably, just when we thought interest would now subside, the media noise ratchetted up a few notches.

And then the waiting started… for the video to finally go on air.

Nervous to the point of feeling physically ill as I wait for Danny McGill to introduce Brides on the evening it gets aired for the first time. I’ve seen that video a hundred times during editing and yet, when it played on air that first time, I couldn’t hear the song. All I heard was a roaring in my ear. And I couldn’t really see the video, for my vision was obscured by an intense pressure in my head that was distorting everything around me. Like a high from some insane, unheard of drug. A cocktail of intense pride and limb-jellying relief. Of the joy of accomplishment and the sadness of the end.

And the end, it truly was. Except I didn’t know it at the time.