Did you watch Paul McCartney at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics?
I did. Well, not in person certainly. But I did see the ceremony on TV like everyone else. (One of the great regrets of my life is that I’ve never seen McCartney live).
If you did see/hear Macca, then the truth must have dawned on you: the man can’t really sing any longer. Oh yes, he gets it right every now and then but let’s be honest: he’s too old to sing his best songs. The spirit is willing, his body is still whippet-thin and the enthusiasm shines out of his eyes.
But his voice? Oh, it just can’t keep up.
Sadly, this is true of so many singers. I saw Bette Midler on The Tonight Show and this one-time belter of great torch songs couldn’t hit the right notes either. When I last saw Elton John in concert a decade ago, he had already begun to shout out his songs. And according to Graham Nash’s autobiography (Wild Tales: highly recommended), Crosby, Stills and Nash have often turned down the volume on David Crosby’s mike and got a backing singer to fill in his parts from a dark corner of the stage.
Of course, there are those who can still sing. Mick Jagger’s voice seems in pretty good shape. Robert Plant’s voice has matured like fine wine. And I saw Tom Jones do a killer Spanish gypsy version of Delilah at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert.
But generally, age does tend to kick in. And in the case of most rock stars, a lifetime of substance abuse and excess is not exactly the best recipe for keeping the vocal chords in good condition.
Which is why, each time I hear a former rock great sing these days, I am filled with admiration for Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle.
Yes, there was a time when I found the Mangeshkar domination of the Hindi film industry faintly ridiculous. Lata Mangeshkar is now 85 and her sister Asha is 81. Twenty years ago, when they were the queens of Bollywood, they were already in their 60s. And yet, music director after music director would ask them to sing playback for stars in their early twenties. I found this a bit silly.
"By then she must already have been well into her Fifties. But her voice sounded so incredibly fresh that it was hard to guess, just by listening to the song, how old the singer was." |
I also found it strange that no matter who they were singing for their voices were always recognisable. I didn’t matter who the star singing the song on the screen was (let alone the character she was playing), all that mattered was that it was Lata or Asha on playback.
And then there was the Alvin and the Chipmunks effect. I don’t mean to be unkind but both sisters sing in very high voices, rather like the Chipmunks in my youth. But nobody seemed to notice. They wanted every heroine to sound high pitched.
For about three decades, till they voluntarily relinquished their crowns, the sisters ran Bollywood. Nobody else stood a chance. In the Sixties, when the music director Shankar (of Shankar-Jaikishan) promoted a singer called Sharda, Lata cut him dead and refused to sing for him. In the Seventies when Dev Anand and R D Burman promised Usha Uthup that she would sing Dum Maro Dum, Asha threw a fit and the song was re-recorded by Asha (whose voice was wrong for it). In the late Seventies when Raj Kapoor said something silly about Lata she refused to sing for his magnum opus Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Even as powerful a movie mogul as Kapoor had to grovel and apologise till Lata forgave him.
So as you can see, there were many reasons to be leery of the Mangeshkar monopoly.
But now, I’ve come to the conclusion that none of that really matters. What’s important is this: the sisters were geniuses.
I once went (in the Seventies) to a song recording where Lata was singing. In those days, they did not multi-track but recorded the song live. Lata arrived after the musicians had learned the song, was handed the lyrics, and then spent ten minutes listening to the tune. And then, to my utter astonishment she recorded the song – which she had never heard till she stepped into the studio 30 minutes earlier – in a flawless single take.
By then she must already have been well into her Fifties. But her voice sounded so incredibly fresh that it was hard to guess, just by listening to the song, how old the singer was. And she continued singing like this for several decades more.
It was the same with Asha. In the early years of this century I interviewed her on TV and though she was almost 70, she agreed to sing on the spot. And her singing was pitch-perfect.
So now when I see Elton John shouting on the stage, the melody having long left his voice, or I see Paul McCartney struggling to find the tune for The Long And Winding Road, I think of Asha and Lata.
They no longer bother with playback. But push them or call them on the stage for a charity function and they’ll gladly sing.
And even now, in their 80s, they’ll sing better than any ageing Western pop singer.
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