He may not like rap, but his name lends itself to rap lyrics. In conversation with disco king biddu who's reinventing himself as a writer
He may not like rap, but his name lends itself to rap lyrics. In conversation with disco king biddu who's reinventing himself as a writer
LOVER of Buddhist motifs, longhaired and not-on-the-job (technically anyone who's not doing their two bit for Bollywood is considered unemployed in Mumbai)u00a0 Biddu worked his hippie hipness to advantage and went on to write his autobiography. He's written it in the wry, self-deprecatory tone that he speaks in, not allowing ego to creep into his life story and make him sound like the hero that he wasn't.
Everybody wants to write a book, make a film or open a restaurant, Biddu defends himself. The 65-year-old music producer who crafted the careers of artistes such as Tina Charles (Dance little lady), Nazia Hassan (Aap jaisa koi, Disco Deewane), Carl Douglas (Kung Fu fighting), Alisha Chinai (Made in India) and top playback singers such as Shaan, wears his fame lightly.
We meet him one afternoon soon after he's done the rounds of the highbrow Jaipur Literary Festival with his autobiography also titled Made in India. "They asked me to do a reading there, but I sang two songs instead," says Biddu, laughing at himself as he mock-reads a passage from the book. He's shown up in cut-offs and a faded Tee. We're surprised when he tells us that he's brought a change of clothes along for the shoot.
"I'm methodical," he says sheepishly, taking out a frayed pair of jeans, "to show skin" and a neon green Tee that he threatens to wear at his Bengaluru gig, when we tell him he'd be blinding Mumbai audiences. 
He tells us that an autobiography was nowhere on the cards two and a half years ago when he went around to publishers to take a look at his debut novel. "All of them said, 'Yeah, yeah great we'll do this, but we'd like you to write your autobiography, which I was very reticent to do.
My wife Sue was also insistent that I write because she'd been hearing my stories at dinner parties." Biddu began work on his autobiography in March last year and finished it in September. That's quick, we tell him. "I didn't have to look for an idea. Writing is the same as music. I spent eight hours a day on writing just like I would on musicu00a0 it's the same discipline."
From the frontman of a band called The Trojans, which covered The Beatles and The Stones, Biddu rode the disco wave all through the 80s. We get into a discussion about formula and musical triggers. Biddu says, "I always compose for me. My taste in music is very pop. I don't go for art. I love commerciality and I won't hide that. I love things that I can snap my fingers to." He's also worked the rhythm ingeniously. "I used a rhythm box. If you listen to Disco deewane, Aap jaisa koi and Dance little lady you'll find a commonality in the rhythm.
I used a Latin American groove on all three. It's a very catchy, seductive rhythm and sensual because of the way the girls sang it."
When Biddu moved to England in 1967 he got hooked onto black music music that he had no access to in India, and as he puts it, "anyone who came from India was about five years behind the scene in England then."
Musically, he remembers it felt like he was competing with talent from across the world. "The Americans, the Germans, the Australians everyone came to England. I couldn't afford to sound dated. There was a lot of catching up to do," he says.
Biddu picked up the business of music quickly. "Everytime the BBC plays your song, you're getting 11 pounds. A CD is cheaper in India than abroad. Abroad it's five time more expensive. In India, you get a small fee and that's it. Made in India got Biddu about 80,000 pounds."
The clubs were not musical reference points really but to meet girls, he admits candidly. "I was only 22 then." Getting to England, recalls Biddu, was one of the greatest highs and is captured in a chapter in the book in his witty, anecdotal style. "We had no passports.
India was a very closed society. We were rockin' with Khrushchev instead of rockin with Kennedy. We were a socialist country. We had nothing foreign so I couldn't wait to get out of India to make it abroad," he says. The chapters in the book retell just how badly Biddu wanted to realise this dream, almost lost hope but managed to sail to the city of his dreams London with an adventurous detour.
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Kung Fu Fighting
Biddu's bio comes at a time when most self-respecting Foo Fighter fans have written him off, yet like the shrewd musician he is, Biddu knows how to win back that respect. Kung Fu fighting one of Biddu's biggest hits till date that Jack Black and Gnarls Barkley's Cee-Lo Green did a version of for the recently released animation blockbuster Kung Fu Pandau00a0 has a fantastic backstory.
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It started out as a B-Side sung by Carl Douglas and was recorded in 15 minutes. "When Carl first sang it to me, I must admit that it didn't set me alight," says Biddu, "I went in and added some vocal partsu00a0 the 'Oh ho ho' bits and when I played the A side to the label, they weren't impressed at all. They asked me whether that's all I had and I played them the B-Side they were blown away." Kung Fu Fighting sold a total of nine million around the world and three million in America, and became one of the biggest disco classics of all time.
Biddu promptly opened up his own publishing house Subiddu Music, also calculating that publishers make a bigger profit margin and own the rights to the recordings. He signed on Douglas and hunted down Tina Charles, then just a club singer in the outskirts of London. It was hard work, he admits. "No one came running to me. I found Tina after asking around a tiny plump girl with an amazing voice," he recalls.
Nazia Hassan
If it hadn't been for Feroz Khan's persuasive powers, Nazia Hassan and Biddu would have never made history. Comfortably settled in London, Bollywood success didn't mean much to Biddu. His Hindi till date is atrocious. He admits in the book that he didn't understand a word of what the song from Qurbani meant.
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"After Aap jaisa koi nobody came running to my door to do a film," he says. Two years later, HMV approached him to do Disco Deewane. The track Disco deewane, from the 1981 album of the same name that made pop superstars of the Pakistani brother-sister act Nazia and Zoheb Hassan, would have never existed if Biddu hadn't hit upon the title. The album was finished and Biddu had sent it to the label. "HMV was hoping to sell 25,000 copies of a non-film album which was a rare thing in those days (1981).
Religious music did well but there was no pop music. They called me in London from Dum Dum studios in Calcutta and the secretary read out a list of titles 'Disco Hungama,' 'Disco Thrill' and there was another title, which was something 'Deewane.' I loved that word. It just rolls off the tongue I thought and came up with Disco Deewane." Biddu adds, "It was such a great title that it had to have a song.
I put the phone down and picked up the guitar and I swear the whole song came in just three minutes." When Biddu sent the final song to Dum Dum studios, the label decided to print one lakh copies because "the vibe in the Calcutta office about the song was fantastic." HMV ended up selling three million copies of the LP.
Nazia and her brother turned down live shows, which gave them a limited shelf life, Biddu explains. "Longevity comes with live shows and I told them that fans needed to see them. Especially her, she was good-looking as was Zoheb. You can't keep selling records without live performances. And then of course she had cancer and her voice started getting weak. She had cancer for a long time, longer than most people are awareu00a0she had cancer for three years and the second time it came back it was worse."
Who made who? Nazia made Biddu or vice versa? "Any success isn't because of one person. When it comes to Nazia, her voice was different enough. The success of Aap jaisa koi was not because of Nazia. The audience didn't know who it was. It was a great song for that time because it was very different. Eventually, it became a bigger song because it had Zeenat Aman performing it so as far as people are concerned Zeenat was singing it. But for Disco deewane, it was the song, the arrangement and the singer," says Biddu.
Eighteen months after Disco Deewane, the music producer decided to turn film producer casting the one-hit wonder Kumar Gaurav in a disaster film called Star because his mum told him that Gaurav resembled him. "I'd written the story which was along the lines of Saturday Night Fever.
It was fast paced and funny. I made the mistake of choosing an art film director (Vinod Pandey). I knew nothing about Hindi films. I met this guy and he wore blue jeans and I thought, 'He's wearing blue jeans so he must be all right.' But I had made a lot of mistakes as well. The buck stops with me."
Biddu's got some funnies lined up for this one too. "Anything that could go wrong we did. The hero gets bashed up and loses his girl to his brother. That never happens in Bollywood." Biddu's first meeting with the hero of his debut is also amusing. "Kumar Gaurav was coming to London to promote his film Love Story.
The plan was to meet him at Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch. We'd never met. I was dressed in blue jeans, leather jacket, cowboy hat and boots. I saw this person standing in the corner dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots, leather jeans and a hat. We were dressed identically without ever having met, and there was a passing resemblance. It was quite uncanny and we struck up a friendship."
Made in India
The Alisha Chinai track was, for Biddu, a means of putting something back into the country. "I was working with this Pakistani group called Vital Signs. They were incredibly patriotic. It was always Pakistan this, Pakistan that. The sun shone out of Pakistan's (pauses)u2026 head.
I felt we Indians never feel that wayu00a0 we're always Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali. We never said we were Indian. Unless there was a war." Not one to tell a story colourlessly, Biddu quickly shifts from patriotism and points out how the title and the melody struck him when he was walking his dog. "When I sat down at my synthesisers I knew it was going to be a monster."
Coming up
"My novel is much fatter, twice the size of the autobiography and set in 1951. It's like a British Raj kind of story set in a tea plantation owned by an Englishman. It's got romance, bigotry, mysticism, rape, murder sounds like a bl**dy Hindi movie doesn't it?" he asks, breaking into a guffaw. And he's onto his third book. "It'll be out and out funny." He's done with the books and the film and says there was a restaurant on his list too. "I was looking for premises. I might do it yet. It'll be an American diner," says Biddu looking ahead at the future, not like the bitter old music veterans that we're used to, but as a more experienced avatar of the shrewd producer we know.
Made in India launches on February 10 at Landmark and 12 at Blue Frog, Mumbai
Disco Hall of Fame
Biddu's top Disco
numbers include
Billie Jeanu00a0- Michael Jackson
Saturday Night Fever (the entire soundtrack) Bee Gees
You're my first, my last, my everything
Barry White
I will surviveu00a0Gloria Gaynor
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