“Tell me, why is it that people don’t respect me?” Anu Malik seems genuinely pained as he asks the question. “Why do people act surprised when they find that I have composed a good song? What is it? Is it the way I dress? Is it the way I talk? Is it because I still don’t act like a big music director?”
I grope for an answer. We are sitting in the coffee shop of Bombay’s ITC Maratha and Anu is supplementing his clear chicken soup (“I am trying to lose weight”) with many bread rolls as he speaks.
He does, indeed, seem far removed from the image of a senior composer, which after so many years in the business, I guess he is. He is wearing a waistcoat over jeans, speaking in that characteristic rapid fire way and --- every five minutes or so --- breaking into song (complete with rhythmic thumps in the table) as he remembers the big hits that have marked his career.
“It’s never been easy for me, you know”, he says. “It’s just struggle, struggle, struggle. Just when I think that things have settled down, something goes wrong. And I have to start all over again.”
And then, there’s the problem with the media. “Just because of one song – that Macarena thing --- which I admit was a mistake and I should not have done it, they keep calling me a plagiarist. Every time they hear a good tune by me they say ‘I wonder where he copied it from?’ Is this fair? I can give you a list of songs that every Indian music director has copied. You know, pop songs from the West and even tracks by Indonesian bands. So why single one out for that one song?”
I listen as Anu agonizes. But the truth is I don’t know either why he has an image problem. I’ve known him now for ten years and have no doubt that he is one of the best composers in the business. As the cliché goes, he has the music in him. Ask him to compose a tune and he will do it on demand. Nine times out of ten, the tune will be excellent.
But I see his point. These days he is probably best known for his appearances on such hit shows as Indian Idol and more recently Entertainment Ke Liye Kuchch Bhi Karega, and there aren’t that many producers waiting at his door.
He does have one of the year’s biggest films coming up next month though: Kambakht Ishq with Kareena, Akshay and Sylvester Stallone. And if that film is a hit (the music is already doing well) then it could be the comeback he needs.
But then Anu Malik is no stranger to being down. And being up again.
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Anu Malik’s father Sardar Malik was one of the best composers of his generation. But because he was a retiring sort of person, he never found the sustained success he deserved. Anu’s mama --- his mother’s brother ---- was the lyricist Hasrat Jaipuri.
So, Anu grew up in a musical family but nobody bothered to teach him very much. He seems to have learnt the harmonium on his own and there was no network of contacts to help him get started.
“By the time I was 17 or 18,” he recalls, “I knew that I wanted to be a music director. But I also knew that nobody was going to help me. I would have to do it myself.”
The story of his early days is the story of many struggling young music directors in the 1970s. He would find out from the security guard at Tardeo’s Air Conditioned Market where the big producers sat and then turn up unannounced at their doors, offering of play them his tunes. Because he could not afford much more than public transport, he would lug his harmonium along with him on trains and buses, ignoring the stares he would draw.
He got a few contracts but his real break when he was able to persuade FC Mehra’s Eagle Films to sign him up. Anu’s advantage over other composers was that he also wrote words. So he could sit and write hooks for potential hit songs at his home and then burst into unsuspecting producer’s offices in full song.
No producer was safe from Anu and his singing harmonium. He remembers how he had to get Eagle’s Umesh Mehra to hear one of his songs. When nothing else worked, he chased Mehra into a public toilet and then, when Mehra’s hands were occupied, began singing to him.
Fortunately, Umesh Mehra liked the song – if not the venue for the song sitting --- and he signed Anu up.
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When we look at today’s music industry with its music TV channels, FM radio stations, talent contests and young singers, we sometimes forget how different things were in the Seventies and the Eighties.
In those days, the music business was a closed shop. Two female singers, the Mangeshkar sisters, sang nearly every song of consequence, punishing composers who dared give breaks to new talent. The only male playback singer of note was Kishore Kumar, who had taken over from Mohammed Rafi whose star had dimmed.
Music directors ran their own little cartel. The big shots of that era were Lakshmikant-Pyarelal, followed by RD Burman, Kalyanji-Anandji and a few others. There were only two music labels in the Seventies, there was no MTV, no satellite TV at all, and AIR was the only radio network.
A music director could only hope to break into this closed shop if he had the backing of a major producer. And even then, the big producers would come under pressure to drop successful composers outside the cartel and to return to the established names. So Anu did a few films but he was far from the big time.
That only happened when he met Manmohan Desai, the most successful director of the decade from the mid Seventies to the mid-Eighties. Desai had make his name with a series of pictures starring Amitabh Bachchan, then the industry’s reigning superstar and music directors vied to work with him.
Anu pushed his way forward and made Desai hear his tunes. Desai liked them and said that they would talk again after he finished Coolie.
But that took longer than anyone had expected. Amitabh was seriously injured during the shooting of Coolie and Desai suspended all work – which included listening to Anu’s songs.
Then, one day, out of the blue, Desai called. Would Anu please come to Chandivali studios? Anu rushed to the studio to find that there was already a huge crowd. It was the day Amitabh Bachchan was returning to work after his accident.
Anu waited till Bachchan gave his shot. Then Desai called him to the star’s dressing room. “Ok Anu”, he said. “Play us your songs.”
And Anu played. He sang. He talked. And he hummed. He knew that this could be his big break. After a couple of hours during which Bachchan remained entirely poker-faced, they asked Anu to leave the room.
A few minutes later, they called him back.
“Congratulations” Desai told him. “You are doing the music for Mard, my next movie.”
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Mard was a superhit and Anu had arrived. He became the favoured director for Manmohan Desai’s movies and because he was attached to the industry’s biggest star and biggest banner, his stock rose through the ceiling. He developed a collaborative relationship with Bachchan, getting him to lend his voice (and some of the tune) for Toofan’s Don’t Worry Be Happy (not, Anu wants you to know, a knock-off of the Bobby McFerrin hit but a completely original song.)
All went well till Desai and Bachchan delivered the total stinker, Ganga, Jamunaa Saraswati, perhaps the worst film of Amitabh Bachchan’s career. The movie was a disaster, sinking like a stone and Anu Malik was associated with its failure.
Manmohan Desai never made a great film again and Anu’s links with the banner now counted for nothing. Worse still, from his point of view was that the industry was undergoing one of its periodic generational changes. Bachchan himself seemed ill-suited to the roles he was still playing and a new breed of stars (Salman Khan, Aamir Khan etc.) emerged as did a new breed of composers. The old closed shop was dead; the music business was opening up. But even in the midst of this expansion, nobody had any time for Anu Malik.
“It is a funny thing and you will not believe it”, says Anu as he bites into another bread roll, “but in this business you can go from being a big shot to being a nobody overnight.”
The offers dried up. He was considered to be too old-fashioned for the new generation and even as he coped with his father’s illness, he found that no money was coming in.
So Anu Malik went back to scratch. He made the rounds of producers’ offices, he took his harmonium with him, he tried to break into such new camps as Gulshan Kumar’s T-Series (they told him to go away; they wore very happy with Nadeem-Sharvan) and he listened to lectures from filmmakers.
Mahesh Bhatt told him that he was like a scooterwallah who had held on to Manmohan Desai’s truck and been carried along by its momentum. But now, said Bhatt, the truck had stalled and Anu had fallen flat on his face.
All Bhatt would offer him was a TV film. “Can you imagine that! I had given music for Amitabh Bachchan films and now I was being asked to write songs for TV movies!” Anu Malik still seems shocked by the memory. “But I had no money and no choice so I agreed.”
The movie sank without a trace and Anu was back where he had started.
Anu knew Ratan Jain of Venus Music and when Jain invited him to the Juhu Centaur for a party to celebrate the jubilee of a movie, he went along at least partly because he had nothing else to do.
Jain took him aside at the party and told him that he had a project in mind. The film would be called Khiladi, would be directed by Abbas-Mustaan, would star Tanuja’s daughter Kajol (who was just starting out) and an actor from the TV serial Fauji called Shah Rukh Khan.
It was not a big project but at least it was something. So Anu grabbed it.
A few months later, Ratan Jain called him. They had changed the name, he said. Khiladi was out. They were calling it Baazigar.
Anu protested. It was a very unmusical title, he said. How was he expected to compose a song featuring the word “Baazigar”?
Nobody paid any attention to his protests.
Then, one day, when he was walking on the beach, the hook came to him, words and all. He rushed to Ratan Jain’s house and sang it to him. Jain called Abbas-Mustaan. They like it too. A studio was booked, Anu hired a huge string section (70 violins alone!), a chorus and Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik.
Everybody turned up for the recording and they ran through the song. The producer said he was happy. So did the singers.
But Anu seemed downcast.
“It doesn’t sound right,” he said. “I need to change the song.”
In the music business, you do not change things in the studio. Arrangers have written out the orchestra parts for 115 instruments. They are not thrilled by the prospect of having to rewrite them. Plus, there’s the overtime factor. The morning shift ends at 1 pm. If the orchestra and chorus have to stay beyond one, then thousands of rupees (more, actually considering how vast the orchestra on this recording was) will have to be paid out as overtime.
But Anu would not listen. The problem with the song, he said, was that it began with the hook. He needed to put a verse before you got to the hook. And while everyone stood around, he rewrote the song and re-recorded it.
He shocked his producers during the recording of “Yeh kaali kaali ankhein” as well. They turned up at the studio to find Anu sitting with an arranger and a synthesizer. He was doing to lay down the song electronically he told them. Only later did he overlay other musical instruments.
Both songs became huge hits, showing two sides of Anu Malik, the man who could do an electronic dance number and the guy who liked massive string sections.
That year, Anu won the Filmfare Award for Baazigar, over Laxmikant-Pyarelal who had Choli ke peechchey in contention.
Accepting the award he said, “This has been twenty years in coming.”
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That would be a nice place to end our story. But nothing in Anu’s life is that smooth. After a few good years and some great songs (Sandese aate hain from Border for instance) his career went into another decline. Yet another crop of music directors (AR Rehman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy etc.) emerged and Anu began to seem like a throwback to an earlier era.
Despite the successes (he released an album of English songs, Baz Luhrman picked up Chuma Chuma from China Gate for the soundtrack of Moulin Rouge etc.), he continued to be regarded as a marginal figure who had been left behind in time.
Needless controversies (had he really harassed Alisha Chinai? Not really, considering they are buddies now) dogged his career and as he points out, he was unfairly tagged as the industry’s only plagiarist. (“I should have said no to the producer when he asked me to do that Macarena song. It was my mistake. By why pick on me?” etc.)
There were big breaks. He did terrific songs for Main Hoon Na and basked in the adulation when the film became a superhit. But director Farah Khan did not repeat him for her next movie. (“I don’t know why. It makes no sense. But I will never ask her. I am not like that.”)
It was TV that came to his rescue. When the call came to be a judge on Indian Idol, it was his daughter who told him that she had seen Pop Idol and knew that he could be India’s answer to Simon Cowell. He took the job and resurrected his public profile.
But, to be honest, there aren’t that many films any longer.
Loyal producers like JP Datta and Sajid Nadiadwalla (who has made Kambakht Ishq) continue to sign him up but the rest are all in search of the Next Big Thing. Do they really want to sign up a man who had big hits in the 1980s? Shouldn’t they go for somebody more contemporary?
Anu doesn’t mind that. He knows that people who break down the walls --- as his generation did when the industry was a closed shop --- are swept aside by the next wave. And though at 48, he has years to go, he is older than many of the new directors.
That’s not what worries him.
It’s the respect question that keeps him awake at nights. “Just tell me: what is it? Why don’t people give me the respect I deserve?” he asks, tossing aside his bread roll.
I honestly don’t know. In my view, he’s a musical genius, a man who can pluck tunes out of the air. And the fact that he’s still around 30 years after writing his first score should be a testament to his talent.
But respect? That’s a tough one.
“I think it is the way I talk and the way I dress”, he says sadly.
“But what to do? That’s who I am.”
(Picture courtesy Hindustan Times)