Pop ban jaaye: How Bengaluru native Biddu brought disco to India

It was in the ‘swinging 70s’ that I first heard about Biddu Appaiah. The Bangalore boy was making waves in London after the release of his new album ‘Kung Fu Fighting and Other Great Love Songs’ featuring Carl Douglas. It was a catchy disco song that captured the spirit of the martial arts craze. It soon became a fun, energetic anthem at parties and discotheques.

It was fascinating and inspiring to read bits and pieces about him in newspapers and magazines. I kept track of his musical career until the ’90s. I knew he made an annual trip to Bengaluru every January and stayed with his sister, the former tennis champion Dechu. I emailed him seeking a meeting. He agreed.

When we shook hands and ensconced ourselves on the settee inside his sister’s tastefully appointed apartment, my fanboy moment came alive.

A few days shy of his 80th birthday, the pop icon of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and pioneer of Indi-pop looked strikingly fit and much younger than his age.

I hastened to ask him about the secret of his youthful looks. “I think it is my genes, my mother lived up to 95, my sister is in her 80s and still plays tennis,” he said, laughing. 

Hitting rewind

Biddu took me back to the Richards Town of the ’50s and ’60s. The Bangalore neighbourhood was a sleepy, leafy area dotted with beautiful bungalows inhabited by Indians and Anglo-Indians in the initial decades after the British had exited. In a corner bungalow facing Richards Park lived the Appaiahs who hailed from Kodagu.

Biddu, the youngest in the family and a Western music buff, grew up listening to whatever was aired by All India Radio and Radio Ceylon. Hamid Sayani’s Binaca Hit Parade (which aired English songs), on Radio Ceylon, was a particular favourite.

“The animal magnetism of the Rolling Stones and the rich harmonies and uplifting melodies of The Beatles were an even greater influence on me than my first idol Elvis Presley. I knew music was my mistress and forever I would dance to her tune,” he said.

On his 13th birthday, his mother gifted him a guitar which he quickly learnt to play. Then, a friend who returned from his holidays in England brought along an LP of The Beatles. “That was a kickstart. This is what we are going to do, I said,” reminisced Biddu.

Thus began the roller-coaster musical journey of teenager Biddu.

He started Bangalore’s first band (perhaps, even India’s) then moved to Calcutta, then Bombay and finally to London in the ’60s with just a few clothes, his trusty guitar and a dream. With sales of nearly 40 million records worldwide, he became one of the top Indian music producers internationally.

A band is born

At 16, fresh out of Bishop Cotton Boys’ School, Biddu and two friends, Ken Gnanakan and Arun Kumar, formed a band called The Trojans. With collarless suits cut like those The Beatles wore, black Cuban-heeled boots made by a local cobbler, and mop-top hairstyles, they began playing at The Three Aces, a restaurant on M G Road. They were on a roll in no time.

In the staid, early ’60s of Bangalore, there wasn’t much happening on the Western music scene. Calcutta and Bombay had some bands, notably the Hellions, The Jets, The Savages and the Cavaliers, and Madras had The Mustangs. “In a field of one, we were number one,” said Biddu, smiling. 

As one of the frontrunners, The Trojans inspired budding musicians and bands — The Spartans, Human Bondage, Devil Beats and others. The Trojans also played at parties and events at Catholic Club and Bowring Institute, charging Rs 50 for a 20-minute gig of five songs.

As luck would have it, at one of their gigs, a man asked them if they would play at his niece’s wedding in Hyderabad. It was a lucrative offer with travel and stay included. They plumped for it.

Having left Bangalore, the trio decided to visit Calcutta, thanks to a jockey friend who offered to host them at his house. He was instrumental in getting them to play at Trinca’s, the iconic hotspot for music and dancing. Within a few weeks, The Trojans became minor celebrities in the ‘City of Joy’, but after some months, fresh pastures beckoned and they landed in Bombay to play at the Ambassador Hotel. However, the Bombay act lasted just three months. It was back to Trinca’s, and then back again to Bombay. However, after a few months, the band broke up.

“We had just approached the end of this particular journey; no alimony was involved and it was a painless divorce,” he said.

As the ‘Lone Trojan’ in Bombay, Biddu continued singing mostly Trini Lopez numbers at the Venice restaurant in Hotel Astoria. But when the India-
Pakistan war broke out in September 1965, restaurants had to shut down in the evenings, so Biddu sang at ‘jam sessions’ in the mornings. After the war, aside from two shows daily, weekend concerts kept Biddu busy, but it was all getting very demanding. 

Looking West

As if in answer to Shakespeare’s “Enough, no more, ‘tis not so sweet as it was before”, Biddu decided to live his dream of “making it as a musician in the West”. Setting sail from Bombay to Basra in Iraq and hitchhiking onward to Beirut and Paris, he arrived in London four months later in June 1967.

“I looked up at a darkened sky and offered my thanks to the universe. I noticed that big, friendly star twinkling back. My Eastern star had followed me all the way to a Western sky,” he said.

Life in London was not all beer and skittles. He did all sorts of jobs — as a waiter in hamburger joints, selling carbon paper and paintings, and even cleaning while writing songs on the side. His first single ‘Daughter of love’ was a flop, forcing him to give up singing and focus on writing and producing, which he did initially for some music companies. He later produced his own records.

It was in 1969 that Biddu tasted the first fruits of
success in London when he produced a song titled ‘Smile for me’ written by the Gibb Brothers of the Bee Gees and performed by a Japanese band called
The Tigers. The song topped the charts in Japan, catapulting Biddu to sudden fame.

Next, Biddu worked on producing a couple of disco songs, winning appreciation from as far as northern England.

Kung fu and dejection

In 1974, Biddu hit the jackpot when he produced the EP, ‘Kung Fu Fighting...’, with Jamaican singer Carl Douglas. The song ‘Kung fu fighting’ was to go on the
B side of the tape but the boss of the record label was so impressed by the sound that he suggested it go on the A side. ‘I want to give you my everything’ was relegated to the B side. “I had to work on the chords and melody of this song fast because we had only 15 minutes left
for recording in the studio. It went on to become a smash hit.”

‘Kung fu fighting’ was a chart-buster in many countries, selling over 90 lakh copies. It was one of his most popular compositions in the West, but sadly, the Biddu-Carl Douglas partnership lasted for the length of just one album. The latter left him during the recording of a second album, ‘Dance the Kung Fu’, quietly signing up with another producer. Biddu was left with an unfinished album, having to complete it with instrumental music. “By not signing for me, he played dirty,” he said.

In hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise. His instrumental ‘Blue eyed soul’ did so well that he had top producers coaxing him to do instrumental albums. That is how the ‘Biddu Orchestra’ was born.  Here, too, he scored some big hits with ‘Rainforest’ and ‘Summer of 42’, capping it by winning the Ivor Novello award, the British equivalent of the Grammys.

“Then I went on to write music for two films, ‘The Stud’ and ‘The Bitch’, both based on Jackie Collins’ novels,” he said.

Not one to rest on his laurels, towards the late ’70s, Biddu collaborated with singer Tina Charles and soul legend Jimmy James, producing pop sensations such as ‘Dance little lady’, ‘I love to love’, ‘I’ll go where music takes me’, ‘You set my heart on fire’, and more that made it to the UK Singles Chart and Billboard 100. 

The Biddu-Tina Charles tie-up ended with just two albums. “She was unknown but had a good voice. We had two hit albums; she could have gone a bit longer but she disappointed me by not wanting to perform live and didn’t put in the effort to become a star,” he recalled.

By now, although Biddu was happily a resident of London and making waves in the West, his music caught on in urban India.

Rise of Indi-pop

As we sipped tender coconut water, Biddu began his Indi-pop music story: “It was in 1979 that Bollywood actor-director Feroz Khan flew to London asking me to produce a song for his film ‘Qurbani’, starring Zeenat Aman.”

Unfamiliar with Indian music, Biddu declined the offer but Khan played the Bangalore card, pleading: “Listen, you and I come from Bangalore. We are both Bangalore boys. Come on, do it for a friend.”

Biddu relented but on the condition that the recording be done in London. They found a 16-year-old London-based Pakistani singer named Nazia Hassan to sing ‘Aap jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye’. The rest, as they say, is history. The song went on to become a monster hit in India and elsewhere.

“Khan had put his money where his mouth was. I always think of him as the last of the Mughals,” Biddu said. So, after the massive success of that song and the film, did producers come knocking on his door? “Ironically, no. But a year later, HMV (SaReGaMa) approached me to do a non-film album with Nazia and her brother Zoheb,” he said.

In April 1981, ‘Disco Deewane’ came out, selling 1 lakh LPs on the first day of release. It went on to become a top-selling album across Asia, South Africa and elsewhere. Overall sales touched 30 lakh copies.

Biddu produced three more albums with Nazia and Zoheb — ‘Star/Boom Boom’, ‘Young Tarang’ and ‘Hotline’, all in the 1980s. The brother-sister duo sold some 6.5 crore records worldwide. “I also scored another record hit in Japan with ‘The look that kills’ which I wrote and produced for leading Japanese singer Akina Nakamori,” he said.

With the disco boom petering off and work drying up in London by the early ’90s, Biddu kept himself occupied working with Indian pop vocalist Shweta Shetty. He produced her album ‘Johnny Joker’ in 1993, which did “reasonably well”.

Then in 1995, Biddu struck gold creating a new genre of music, called Indi-pop (short for Indian pop), partnering with Alisha Chinai for the legendary ‘Made in India’ album. He picked another promising Indian singer, Sophie Choudry, for back-up vocals.

“I knew the album would be a beast of a hit — it took India by storm aided by the phenomenal video, selling over 30 lakh copies in India alone,” he said.

The song and the music video prompted MTV to launch their channel in India. It also helped Biddu work with up-and-coming singers such as Sonu Nigam, Shaan and Asha Bhonsle.

Biddu’s music spawned a craze for Indi-pop across India and musicians such as Bappi Lahiri, Daler
Mehndi and others jumped on to the disco and pop bandwagon, giving this genre a fresh boost.

Carving a niche

The music scene in England was pretty competitive in the ’60s and ’70s. There were numerous music groups like the iconic rock band, Queen, led by Indian-origin singer/songwriter Farrokh Bulsara, better known as Freddie Mercury. But Biddu focused on his genre, which was disco. “Not many were trying to copy my disco, the disco scene was coming from America — The O’Jays, The Three Degrees and a couple of other groups. My sound was similar to theirs but they were better,” he said.

As an Indian, did he face any bias or racism in
England? “I didn’t. I was very Westernised then as I am now and when I went to England, I didn’t see myself as an Indian, I saw myself as a guy wanting to make music. I didn’t have that desi attitude nor that accent. I had long hair. There were no Indians in the music business at that time,” he said.

Remarkably, for his first record ‘Look out here I come’, Biddu had musicians from the famous rock band Led Zeppelin. “I could also hire anyone and pay the fees. They didn’t care about my skin colour or where I came from,” he remarked.

Looking back on his long musical journey, Biddu admitted he could have done a bit more if only he had delegated the programming to younger artistes rather than doing it all by himself and getting bored. “It is important to come out of the kitchen and let other chefs take over,” he said.

His last album was the spiritual ‘Diamond Sutra’ in 2007. After that, by his own admission, he could live without music because he wrote three books — the fictional works ‘Curse of the Godman’, and ‘The Abundance of Nothing’, both set in India, and his autobiography ‘Made in India’.

Biddu surprised me when he said he was never a voracious listener of music, nor does he have a music collection. He listens to the radio when driving to keep himself updated on the current trends in music. He is a fan of singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.

“Doing something you love is irreplaceable. It has shown me how lucky I am to have followed my dream and succeeded in it. Success is not just about talent, but luck and opportunity, although I believe sometimes you make your own luck,” he said.

Biddu divides his time between homes in London, Spain and India. “Life today is all about breathing, which is one way of staying alive and spending time with my wife Sue, son Zak and daughter Zaza,” he says.