T he Beatles were just getting popular. Elvis Presley and Cliff Richards topped the charts. Meanwhile, somewhere in the residential halls of Madras Christian College, a bunch of boys, practised chords and drums until the wee hours of the night, giving shape to a band, which even today, almost five decades later — long after the death of Elvis and most of The Beatles — continues to perform. Almost all of them are in their 60s, an age that is a contrast to their spirit that continues to be what it was when they were young men performing as The Mustangs, at their first big gig at the YMCA grounds in 1965.
Hearts laden with excitement and pride, they belted out some high-octane numbers (‘Wooly Bully’, ‘Black is Black’, ‘Escape’, ‘Happy Together’) before a crowd that largely included their parents and friends, then. Today, the excitement is a notch higher, as most of them would be performing for their grandchildren, and some 300-odd friends who know them as the rock stars of MCC.
Inside a studio in Kodambakkam, the band ends an afternoon practice hour with ‘Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones, and Haroon Mohamed, the bass player, is surrounded by his wife, daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters, and the boyfriend of the elder one, who have flown down from Melbourne specially to watch him perform. After a lunch of sandwiches, the band gathers to narrate a nostalgic tale, the setting of which shifts among the three residential halls — St. Thomas, Bishop Heber and Selaiyur — of MCC. In 1963, Mohamed, a student of Physics, resident of St. Thomas Hall and part of a band called Thunderbirds, came to know about The Silhouettes, “which had George Cherian on the lead guitar, Paddy (Anand Padmanabhan) on drums, Derek Norris on saxophone and vocals, and one other guy. They used to play very cool music,” he recalls. Cool music, by definition, was those by the then popular bands such as The Shadows and The Ventures.
Fast forwarding to a few months... all of them were at a party on Pantheon Road. “I felt a little out of place because there were girls, smoke and drinks; but there was also some nice music coming from inside the hall. I walked up the steps, and there they were… The Silhouettes.” So Mohamed and Cherian decided to get their bands together and began performing in college shows and public stages. “And before we knew it, we started being the band of choice among college groups. We were a bunch of clean-cut guys; and I think that’s why the girls liked us,” says Mohamed, with a smile. “The Broadway Times, thanks to George’s friends there, invited us for a show. We went for a music knockout and won it — both the judge’s competition and popular vote,” recalls Mohammed. That’s when a young gentleman named S.P. Jamal from Poppat Jamal and Sons music store, which was popular with records, heard them and decided to connect them with the director of EMI Records (a British music label) in Calcutta to cut a record. Following that, the band also came out with an extended playlist, after which they split in 1968, scattered across the globe for work — Australia, Singapore, Africa, and so on.
Forty years later, a casual conversation among Mohamed, his wife and Cherian led to the band’s revival in 2010. The trio tracked down the rest of the members; all of them, surprised at first, gave a positive nod to the idea of a show again.
“I never thought I would play with my band again. I had even formed my own Mustang band back in Perth,” says Norris with a laugh. They played for two consecutive years (2010 and 2011) and then went AWOL (absent without leave) for five years, before getting back for tonight’s show. Every time they diverge, much changes in their lives, and in the lives of their friends who make a majority of the audience. “...some of them have lost their partners, some of them have had strokes, and one person is in dialysis as we speak. Three or four people can hardly walk. But they have taken the trouble to come to see us perform,” says Mohamed. “We are old, and probably next time we would come with walking sticks. But one thing you can bet on is we will rock. We are here to stay,” he says.
The playlist for tonight (6.30 p.m. onwards) at Green Meadows Resort (ECR) includes a mix of classics such as ‘Baker Street’ and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ besides other rock and roll classics.
For tickets, log onto eventjini.com.
