“Every generation has its own Harry Potter. For me, it is RD Burman,” says music composer Pallavi Prakash, who has been collecting Rahul Dev Burman’s (known as RD Burman) albums ever since he was a teenager. He takes us back to the time when gramophones dominated the entertainment space. “Every time a new RD Burman album came, I used to run to the nearby music shop to buy the record. The records were sold in three categories — two-song record, four-song record and the entire album,” he says, “The price is determined by the number of songs. For a standard play, which is a two-song record, it must have costed about ₹6.” Prakash, though, decided to stop taking into account the number of records after it crossed the 1,000-mark. “All these are still playable,” he says proudly, displaying his collection of records that are in 78, 45 and 33 1/3 rotational speed in revolutions per minute (rpm).
The year was 1969. A bunch of teenagers gathered outside a local theatre in Coimbatore to catch the first show of Aradhana . Among them was Pallavi Prakash. “I was mesmerised by its songs. So much so that I used to watch it multiple times just to listen to the songs,” he smiles. Aradhana wasn’t composed by RD Burman, but his father SD Burman. But the orchestration was done by RD Burman.
Aradhana introduced us to a new era of music, remarks Prakash, who says that RD Burman was instrumental in inciting interest in music — the reason why he left the job at HMV, the gramophone recording company, which was considered a matter of pride back then. Prakash grew up in a time when the audience was warming up to superstars such as MG Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, Jaishankar and Gemini Ganesan.
- RD Burman has worked in two Tamil films such as Poo Mazhai Pozhiyuthu and Ulagam Pirandhadhu Enakkaga. Tamil filmmakers chose to remake some of his works here.
- MS Viswanathan initially refused to compose for Naalai Namadhe , a remake of the iconic Yaadon Ki Baaraat . He eventually agreed and the film was a blockbuster.
Back in the day, music meant listening to MS Viswanathan and KV Mahadevan’s songs. “There was no alternative here. Of course, you can say that Ilaiyaraaja brought in a whiff of fresh air to Tamil music,” he says, adding that the musical landscape in Tamil Nadu changed when Aradhana released, running close to 60 weeks in the then Little Anand Theatre near Thousand Lights.
Why RD matters
“His style and influence of western music brought a freshness to his tunes, which wasn’t the case before. Like AR Rahman after Roja , it was RD Burman for us,” says Prakash. He observes that RD was heavily influenced by western music, but the songs weren’t shameless rip-offs.
“There have been songs for which he had taken ideas from nursery rhymes,” he laughs, “Today, most of the remakes are RD’s songs. Even today, if you listen to his songs, he makes you forget about this mad world.”
The knowledge Prakash gained from listening to SD Burman, Madhan Mohan, Shankar Jai Kishan and RD Burman came handy, when he met RD at his residence in Mumbai. It was a surreal experience meeting RD Burman, recalls Prakash. At that time, RD was occupied with back-to-back films like Love Story and Rocky . But he was so impressed by Prakash that he introduced him to Lata Mangeshkar saying, “Dekho, mera bada fan aagaya.” That meeting marked the beginning of a friendship that continued for years. “Whenever we hung out, RD used to say that he needed to do ‘homework’ and would leave early. I never understood that. But later, I found out that he listened to a lot of western music.”
Prakash wanted to work in films, but he wasn’t fortunate with finding the “right” script. He, however, has composed over 3,000 independent songs across genres and worked with stalwarts ranging from TM Soundararajan and P Susheela to SP Balasubrahmanyam and LR Eswari.
Ask him if had showed his work to RD Burman, he says, “I somehow lost in touch with him.” That’s a grouse that he still nurses.
