Return of the composer
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Veteran music composer Pyarelal is back with some mellifluous numbers in "Mr. Gharib" releasing shortly.
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Raj Kapoor would listen to some 30 tunes and select one. He would show me how his heroine would walk, and ask me to compose beats accordingly.
Photo: The Hindu Archives
NOSTALGIC Pyarelal doesn't promise his trademark classical tunes in "Mr. Gharib" but these would be musical, he assures us.
Do those mellifluous songs like "Roshan tumhi se duniya" from "Parasmani", "Hum Bane Tum Bane" from "Ek Dooje Ke Liye", "Salaam-e-ishq" from "Suhaag", "Zindagi ki na toote ladi" from "Kranti" and "Palkon Ki Chaaon Mein", etc., ring a bell? All these have one thing in common; their composers - Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Laxmikant died in 1998. The last music piece we heard from the duo was the not-so-famous "Deewana Mastana" in 1991. After that Pyarelal seemed to have taken a hiatus from the film industry. Only to be back this year in "Mr. Garib" directed by a debutant Sanjay Kumar and produced by Manoj Kumar.
The belief that Pyarelal cocooned himself after his companion's death is wrong. The truth is, the duo almost stopped getting offers from 1991 onwards. Admits Pyarelal, albeit in good humour, "We did too many films at a time. In 1991, 19 of our films got released one after the other. It was a case of quantity over quality. Frankly, these productions were bad. We stopped getting offers. I had no option but to reserve myself. I am a bit superstitious too. My pandit ji told me seeing my horoscope that Saturn would block my path. Mujhe sadhe saati lagegi (seven years of ill-luck), which proved true. I did some T.V serials and five concerts in six years to run my kitchen."
Mixed bag
For him "Mr. Garib" is "an excuse to make a comeback". He has scored music for six songs penned by Sameer in the film. "Two of them are duets, two romantic, one sad and one a college type number," and all of them, he assures us, are melodious. "Fortunately, I have been given ample space to create music. You would love the song `Tumne kabhi suna hai alfaaz bolte hain, khamosh rah ke kuch saaz bolte hain', sung by Sonu Nigam."
For a composer like him, recalling the good old music is but inevitable. Not that he is critical of the present crop of musicians; he prefers film directors like Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand any day. "Raj Kapoor would listen to some 30 tunes and select one out of them. He would show me how his heroine would walk, and ask me to compose beats accordingly. He demonstrated Zeenat Aman's saunter in `Satyam Shivam Sundaram' to me. Today producers/directors have lesser vision. They are satisfied very fast." Similarly, there was no effort to make a song `conversational' by inducing unnecessary elements in them. He cites an example, "S. P. Balasubramanium wasn't good at Hindi. So when we were recording the `Hum Bane Tum Bane' song, at one place he faltered in his Hindi and Lata Mangeshkar couldn't help laughing. We retained that laughter in the song and it turned out so beautiful."
Not only would directors/producers come to the music directors' place, but singers too, would stand up out of respect for them. Now all these gestures, Pyarelal laments, are a thing of the past. But, he doesn't mind some actors singing, anyway.
"If they have it in them, we should give them a chance. I made Amitabh sing `Chal chal mere bhai' and it was a hit. Not that today's music is bad, but it is fast. And the road to fame that the likes of Himesh Reshmmaiya, have taken is wrong. It has brought mediocrity into music."
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