1975 was the year the blockbuster film Sholay was released –
I had finished school and joined College to master Electrical Engineering just
the previous year. The music was already all over the radio waves. Radio Ceylon
had been playing a couple of tracks and interestingly, the LP’s and EP’s which came
out not only covered its enchanting music, but also dialogs. We had a regular
song LP and an EP with bits of the background music, the songs and the classic
villainous dialogs of the ominous Gabbar Singh. But what was new about the
whole thing was that it was all in stereo. Playing them in the ‘record player’ upstairs
at home and at full blast during vacations was something the three of us (my
brother, cousin and myself) kept at, irritating all and sundry. But it was fun,
and an experience which still brings out the chuckles when we meet and
reminiscence.
Can you believe it, that was the time when we used to sport
headbands (the owner of the ladies fancy store at Sultanpet must have been
mystified about boys being keen about those fancy nylon headbands all of a
sudden) wearing them at all times, even when we went to the temple. Old women would
ask us why we were sporting such outlandish contraptions over an even sillier
looking step cut which was the fashion those days, and we had to go to
Coimbatore to get those cuts! And I agree looking at those photos today, it
does look gross, to say the least. I don’t remember what triggered it all, but
lots of youngsters followed the attire of bell and elephant bottoms, fancy
colored shirts with those dog collars and some sported the headband.
But I should not digress and stray away from the topic which is about all
that new sound we heard and enjoyed, the stereo music of Sholay, created by the
one and only man who advanced change, Panchamda or Rahul Dev Burman. All the
innovations and experimentations, the adjustments, jugads and difficulties are
a stuff of the legends in the Bollywood music circles, and so let’s also try
and get to know some of it. I can assure you, it is stimulating stuff and thinking
about it, for a person to experiment like RD did, it took a lot of guts!
An Indianised dacoit curry Western, that is how the movie is
classified, Sholay was set around the real life exploits of a dacoit Gabbar of Gwalior.
The script writers were the dynamic duo of Salim Javed, Ramesh Sippy the
producer, Amjad Khan made his debut while Sanjeev Kumar, Amitab, Jaya, Hema and
Dharmendra starred. After the movie came out in 70mm, also something new, each
person had a favorite. While most noticed the entry of Gabbar and his very
unique dialog delivery, accentuated by the background set by RD, others rooted
for Sanjeev Kumar or Dharm or Amitabh.
As the movie shooting chugged along, and as many of you know, the heroes
and the heroines of the film got romantically involved with each other, replete
with a triangle as Sanjeev – Haribhai who very much in love with Hema, watched
in horror as Hema and Dharam came closer and closer.
Time to go behind the scenes and check out how the soundman RD
was progressing. While the story writers and the director wove a four line
basic plot around many inspirational movies like Butch Cassidy & the
Sundance kid, the magnificent seven, Seven Samurai and many others, planning a
shoot around Ramanagaram near Bangalore, the choice of MD or music director was
none other than the man at his peak, RD Burman. A string of hits testified to
the success, Amar Prem, Aap ki kasam, Yadon Ki Barat, Hare Rama Hare Krishna,
Kati Patang, Namak Haram, Aradhana, establishing him as a hit creator not only
with westernized tunes, but also classic desi tunes such as those in Amar Prem
and Kati Patang.
RD heard the story line at Sippy’s house with Salim-Javed in
tow, as well as details on the song situations. And the tune for Koi Haseena
jab was the first to be created, with Anand Bakshi writing out the lyrics
later. Most of the songs which were written for the film were recorded at
Rajkamal studios, and a full orchestra with 60-70 musicians was the norm. RD’s assistants
Manori and Basu arranged the songs, went through many rehearsals and finally it
was RD’s task to come in and finish it off, balancing the song. The music had
been sold in advance to the new entrant Polydor for Rs 5 lakhs, again something
new, straying away from the powerful stalwart HMV (perhaps a catalyst for this
was the family relationship, Sippy was married to the sister of Polydor India
owner Shashi Patel). It was a challenge for Polydor as they had to sell at
least 100,000 records to break even on the Sholay royalty deal.
Some may remember the haunting title theme, think back and
you will hear the guitar tune strummed by Bhupinder Singh and Kesri Lord in
your mind. This kept you hooked as the camera moves into the jungle through a
dirt track with the French horn taking over, as the two men on the horse clip
along showing viewers the hilly terrain of Ramgarh and takes you to the village
and as the tune gets along, now the tune perks up with drums violins other and instruments
join in and then, bits (I think) of the familiar Ennico Moricone ‘for a few
dollars more’ whistling by Manohari Singh clips in.
Or recall the scene which introduces us to the villain in
Amjad Khan, the ‘Are O’ Sambha, Kitne admi’ the scene, you will hear that
creepy background wail made with a cello
by Vasudeo Chakravarty which was later associated with all other Gabbar scenes.
Sholay’s music unlike most blockbuster musicals was in reality not just about
the songs in the film, but its great background score which took over a month
to compose, using specially constructed
devices to make screeches and groans. The BGM became such a hit, so also the
dialogs as time went by, so much so that Polydor set up stalls in larger
theaters to sell dialog and BGM discs. Soon the dialogs were burned into our
memories, and the sounds still remain there in the heads of the people of that
generation. Over 500,000 records were sold eventually, five times the breakeven
plan. Polydor actually won a platinum disc for the sale of the 'Sholay' records
in two years, the first time such a disc has been awarded in the 75- year-old
history of the Indian record industry and this was what established Polydor as
a proper competitor to HMV.
In retrospect, one could ask how it would have been if
Gabbar hummed a few lines in Sholay, and another would answer that Mehbooba Mehbooba
would have been right with him lip-synching to that number, but the fact is
that villains such as Gabbar are just not allowed to do such things in Hindi
movies, as Anna Morcom was told by Bollywood bigwigs. Villains lose their
fierceness if they were associated with music, they said, and were quite emphatic
about it. So it was pictured as a gypsy song, and many of you would remember
the famous Panchamda number as well as Helen’s dance in the film. The brainwave
of using an inspired tune for Mehbooba did not actually come from RD, it was a
suggestion by Sippy’s wife Geeta who had heard the Demi Russo number while
visiting his brother Ajit at London. Panchamda agreed and decided to sing it
himself (the original plan was it seems, to have Asha sing it) to match a right
voice to the raunchy tune. RD had the Iranian santoor played by Shiv Kumar
Sharma following on after the sounds of air blown into half-filled beer bottles
matching the swing of Helen’s ample hips(it was perhaps changed later by
Mangesh Desai when it was mixed at London, with a Rubab, as a recent report
states)
Making it all stereo was what that made it a daunting
proposition. The six-track sound, which was a difficult proposition technically
at that time in India was the very thing which transformed the music scene in
Indian films, forever and set the trends for big budget films thereafter. I
still recall that coin toss, and the many sounds from that film, stuff we never
noticed in a film until then (barring the train whistle at the ends of the
Pakeezah song). One should also note here that Sholay was not the first 70mm
movie or one using the six track stereo, but it was a Raj Kapoor movie shot 7
years earlier called ‘Around the World’ about an Indian who travels around the
world with just 8 dollars.
Nobody has analyzed the music in the Sholay song ‘yeh dosti’
and how it fits its video better than Anna Morcom. A synthesizer was used in a
film for the first time. Kesri Lord plays it as Jai and Viru spot a village
girl during the second interlude of the Yeh Dosti song. Morcom explains it so
beautifully – In interlude 2, trouble
appears in the form of a pretty woman, and the music changes abruptly to a
repetitive phrase built around two tritones played in a rough synthesizer sound
as she smiles flirtatiously at them.
This phrase used the tritone to signify the potential threat to their
friendship, and indeed, Jai and Veeru start arguing over her. …Jai and Veeru now
toss a coin, which lands on its side, indicating that neither will have her,
and they are meant to stick together. The woman sees that nothing is to be
gained from either of these two and scuttles off in fast motion, to the
strumming of high piano string glissandos…Jai and Veeru lose control of their
vehicle, which starts to skid around, as this happens, violins begin to play
fast and chromatic ‘dizzy’ phrases.
Her analysis continues on, but you can I hope, understand
how music gets set in a song (listen to the song on youtube and visualize, but
focusing on the music as you watch) and the visual sequence, and how it all
comes out on screen, just the way you want it and now you can visualize the
role and work a music director has!! If you did not know, it took 21 days to
shoot this one song.
Recording for 70mm in multiple tracks and stereo output was
nothing less than challenging. Each sound was recorded separately at Bombay. The
Twickenham studios in London had initially sent out an engineer to Bombay who
gave the Burman team the recording advice for taping the raw sound. Every
sound, such as the tonga, the bike, was recorded and for three months Ramesh
Sippy shuttled between London and Bombay carrying the sounds to London.
They used three magnetic tape recorders linked together on
six tracks at Rajkamal studios to record these sounds. Deepan Chatterji, RD’s
recording assistant, explains that it was a full orchestra playing in one go,
with everything being recorded on the six tracks. As one of the tracks was the
monitor (the mono being listened to) the other tracks composed the five track
mono which was compiled and remixed to Stereo at London. The eerie Gabbar BG
sound we talked about earlier was picked up by a contact microphone stuck on
Vasudev’s cello and looped. Bhanu Gupta, RD Burman’s trusted musical hand
explains “There were four sectional mikes for guitar, bass, drums and side
rhythm sections. The singers had individual mikes. The balancing took ages.
Once the balance was Okayed, we were supposed to maintain the volume. If
someone moved a bit away from the mike or started tapping his feet, the
recording had to be started all over again. Interestingly the fight and gun
sounds were replaced with the popular ‘dishum dishum and dishkyon’ sounds at
London, since Indian audiences liked it.
Bhanu Gupta adds an interesting aside about the music
popularity, about him being stooped by a traffic policemen and being let off
when he tells him that he was the Sholay (There is a poignant scene where
Amitabh plays the mouth organ as Jaya the widow looks on from the Thakur house)
harmonica player!
RD did have a setback though after Sholay and due to various
reasons, RD’s enthusiasm slacked post Sholay perhaps even plagued by the
plagiarism accusations about Mehbooba. Bengali’s incensed with the song even
spread a rumor that Sachin Dev Burman, his father, had a fatal stroke listening
to mehbooba. But well, today that cult song is one of the fondest memories from
that great movie and one which continues to be remixed. It is ironic and life
is strange, for it was only because of a 4 month CMA (Cine musicians
association) strike in Bombay that Burman and team obtained all the leisure
time to work out the details of the Sholay music!!
More than the vendetta in the film’s story line, there was
another brewing in the background. Due to a tiff between a Delhi bureaucrat and
the Sippy’s, the 70mm print being readied at London did not get the required import
approvals in time and was seized by the high commission officials. Sippy used
his connections with Rajni Patel and VC Shukla to push the bureaucrat who still
managed to stall the print for some time and the premiere had to be done on the
14th Aug with a 35mm print at Minerva Bombay (the print arrived later
that evening). But apart from the technicians, nobody in the theatre realized what
had happened. Only four 70mm prints of Sholay were released initially - one for
Delhi, one for Uttar Pradesh and two for Bombay. The same 70mm print was
screened at Plaza and Liberty in Delhi, which had different show timings so
that the film could be taken back and forth between the two halls in a car.
But the film took a while to catch on, and was panned
initially. K L Amladi, the critic with India Today, wrote that the film was a
"dead ember" and added that "thematically, it's a gravely flawed
attempt." As the picture hit the screens, it did not drum up any crowd
enthusiasm initially and after a number of days rose up to the heights off and
remained there for ages, as the numero-uno in Bollywood …
Lata Jha in Live mint explains about its continued impact - It was the film’s 25th anniversary in the year 2000 and Sholay was
declared as the “Film of the Millennium" by BBC India. Bombay’s Minerva
re-released the classic and the theatre was as expected, jam-packed. “I
couldn’t hear a single dialogue," Sippy recalls of that show. “The
audience kept anticipating each word, delightfully showing off what they knew.
It was frustrating but so euphoric."
References
Sholay - the making of a classic – Anupama Chopra
Hindi film songs and the cinemas – Anna Morcom
Behind the curtain – Gregory D Booth
RD Burman – the man and the music Anirudha Bhattacharjee and
Balajee Vittal
Sholay’s background score ( link )
When Melody was Queen - Part 1 From the soundtrack
When Melody was Queen - Making the song
When Melody was Queen - As music changed - The magic of RD Burman
pic - wikimedia
