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Background Music - the best that’s stayed with me

We all have this supreme list of songs and soundtracks from and around Bollywood. But there’s yet to be a collection of the best background scores from Bollywood… and why would that no be in existence yet? Probably because, the Hindi film industry never really focussed on creating signature tunes for the background. And the only person I can remember who did create memory etching background signature tunes was none other than the big boss - R.D. Burman.

What prompted this post was a reviewing of the movie “No Country for Old Men”, and the discussion that followed after watching it. The discussion was how the movie had absolutely no background music. None. And yet it held the viewer so tightly from start to end.

Of course as is usual, the talk moved to the blatant misuse of background music, to forcefully elevate the intensity, that may be missing in a scene. Black, Sanjay Bhansali’s movie, I felt made ample use of the background score to keep the movie away from the label “arty”. There lay a heavy misuse of the score. Watch Black, minus the volume and you’ll know what I mean.

But besides the background music, there’s the Background Signature Tune, that stays throughout the movie, and you come out humming the tune, for days, weeks, and most probably years. Unfortunately until the late nineties, background music was not given much important, leave alone the Signature Tunes, not until A.R. Rahman revived it by bringing in separate tracks of background scores in his soundtrack albums.

This post focusses on Signature - Background Scores, that I could remember while writing this post. Normally I would have spent a few days on collecting the list. But with the drain of energy on Bed bug removal, Marriage Preps, To-Be-Biwi’s constant bottom kicking and now trying to squeeze every lazy moment I can get to flop on the sofa… here’s a few that have stayed with me, and can be heard in my car or when I let my guard down after a few beers and let the guests listen to them on the Bose.

List is in no particular order…

1. Teesri Manzil - (R.D. Burman)

The bg for this one is one of the first I can remember very clearly. It first registered in my ears (even though I had watched this movie many times before)… around the age of 14, when in those days you would take a list of your favorite songs, go to the neighbor or the store who would make a cassette compilation of that list for 15 or 20 bucks. When I got my cassette back, I found that the guy had added Teesri Manzil’s bg signature tune in the end as there was ample space.

And I thank him for that. The ability to immediately create images in your head, and emotions going all twister in your chest, is the mark a highly impacting bg tune. Teesri Manzil’s evokes that. That rich suspense laced tune still makes the hair stand out.

2. Arjun (R.D. Burman)

When Arjun Malvankar gets angry, his cold eyes show the storm brewing behind them. The camera goes click click click. Taking Arjun Malvankar’s shot from near, mid and far distance and repeating that loop. Bam Bam Bam….

But the killer is R.D. Boss’s background tune. The low volume beat of drums, and the signature tune begins (what was it played on?). O BOY!!! The first Signature Background Score that I fell in love with. That tune is repeated in movies even today.

The other track was the “HA HA”… it’s played during the scene when Paresh Rawal’s men carrying swords in a crowded street filled with black umbrellas and pouring rain, are chasing Arjun’s best friend. That “HA… HA” has been copied again and again and again… and if you didn’t know the origins of that tune are from this movie… now you know.

3. Thiruda Thiruda (A.R. Rahman)

If you haven’t heard the background score for the Tamil movie Thiruda Thiruda, you need to drop everything you have now, right now and rush to find it anywhere you can and listen to it.

And I can bet you that you will be mesmerized. The background track on the album encompasses all phases the movie moves through. For the love of God, the visuals of Mr. oz jumping from the hill on to the train are flashed by my brain even today. Notwithstanding that the first time I heard it I was in my early twenties… today it’s the late thirties… but the freshness of those visuals and stunts oz performs in his head each time the finger hits play on Thiruda Thiruda’s background score… breathless!!! The soundtrack was released in Hindi titled “Chor Chor”.

Something to pop your eyeballs out of the sockets: Ram Gopal Varma wrote the story and Mani Ratnam directed it.

4. Sholay (R.D. Burman)

They say R.D. Boss trapped the sound of water to create the background score for Gabbar Singh. I don’t doubt it one bit. It’s only R.D. Boss who could have done such. No other. Except perhaps A.R. Rahman, but these days he’s too entrapped in electronica.

And of course the signature tune. The whistle as the opening titles flow in and when the end credits roll out. The Boss was the best and still is.

5. Jalwa (Anand Chitragupth)

For all the crap he’s done post Jalwa, Pankaj Parasher will always remain the only one yet in Bollywood who did a blatant copy of Beverly Hills Cop, turned it into Jalwa, and yet managed to grip me start to finish. The end product was much polished, sharp edged and the hooks to suck one in… and one of those hooks was the background tune…

Check out when the opening titles roll in. The background music starts and the words JALWA flow in from the edges as if on a flywheel towards the center. O Boy!!!

6. Beverly Hills Cop

The score has so much energy, it can make you jump out of bed, and even with a 102⁰ fever, and have you pumping iron!

7. Mission Impossible

Right off the bat, Hit straight on target, out of the stadium, for a mighty six… the lighting of the match stick, zip zap zooooooommmm… it plays almost once a week in my car… 12 years after it was first released. This one is a keeper.

Of course there are the James Bonds, the Pink Panthers, Jaws, Satte Pe Satta and so many others… but none like the ones in the list that have stuck with me like glue… a few others are…

8. Bombay (A.R. Rahman)

This makes you see the aftermath of riots in your head and the healing touch of those bells… amazing!

9. Bunty aur Babli (Shankar Ehsaan Loy)

Pur pur pur Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. it’s going on an infinite loop in my head as I write this… probably the only ones after A.R. Rahman to seriously work on signature background scores, S-E-L’s one of the better attempts.

10. Company (Sandeep Chowta)

My only grouse here is that the signature tune came out of the punch packed song “Sub Ganda Hai Pur Dhanda Hain Yeh”… there was this itch to hear more out of it, but Chowta didn’t move an inch from the song’s tune. Still… vote pe note, dhoti bhi khot, dil mein chot… SUB GANDA HAIN PUR DHANDA HAIN YEH… it kept your feet tapping!

11. Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Jatin Lalit)

Even today if the background music is played anywhere - on the streets, in parties, in your car, the words “DDLJ” flash in front of your eyes. Whether the background score would have been as successful as it is, had DDLJ not become DDLJ is anyone’s guess… still it finds its place here cause it’s etched permanently in our memory cells.

12. Meri Jung (Laxmikant Pyarelal)

The piano tune has stayed with me. For more than 23 years. Since 1985. Subhash Ghai has this trait where he always got a signature tune for each and every of his movies. In Hero it was the flute, in Ram Lakhan it was the duphli, Karma had the banjo… but never did he manage to get a marked signature tune that would stay with us, with or without the movie. Yet, in Meri Jung he got that beautifully wrapped and encashed from LP.

The piano tune has such a melancholic effect, I don’t think it was made into a full blown score, rather, just the notes were used for the title song.

There are others, but I wouldn’t call them signature tunes that uniformly identified the movie. For example the background score in Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti, has this amazing unique tune that plays whenever father and son face each other on screen (Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan) or the score of Hero (the flute)… so why haven’t we got more background scores saved on our hard drives or on our CDs?

In spite of Bollywood making musicals after musicals, strangely the background score has never got its due. Probably because it has not been considered important. Or perhaps the melodramas that we produce needs the usual tunes that would handshake or accentuate the scene and do nothing else.

The seventies saw this overblown, over the top scores like the hero’s entry on screen or the parting of lovers, the slow motion and mind numbing background score trying every bit to get your tear ducts working. The eighties was the worst, it being the worst phase of Bollywood. Can you believe it, that RD Boss was without work for most of the eighties!!! RD BOSS WAS WITHOUT WORK FOR MOST OF THE EIGHTIES… Deplorable is a word that doesn’t even reach a mile within the emotion I would like to express.

Still with SEL, A.R. Rahman and a few others now coming out with signature background tunes, there is hope in this area of music.

Do add in your favorites that may not exist in the list above. It helps to bring out those scores that we may have forgotten… and it would be nice to bring back the memories of those lovely tunes that stayed behind the scenes… but did a lot more… creating the magic from behind the curtains…