BENGALURU: I had a special soft corner and respect for all-round musicians (false humility aside, because I am one too), and when Rocky came over after lunch and proved to be more than capable of handling the bass, it suddenly struck me that my intended ‘half-hour audition and dumping’ had turned into a regular, serious, very enjoyable six-hour rehearsal. And that, by the end of it, not only did I have a complete new band, but 75 per cent of our repertoire in place.
I confirmed them all and welcomed them to The Microwave Papadums. No, they had no superstitious objections whatsoever to the band carrying on with the same name. After we had fixed the next rehearsal date and they had all left, I went up to my studio and sat alone in silence, looking at the evening sky and coconut trees through the double-glass window in front of my chair. I shook my head and almost pinched myself. So that was it?! I actually had a new band? Formed in the course of one single day? While I had taken twelve long years to grow my old one organically?
And there and then, like an irrefutable certainty, it hit me right between the eyes: my old departed band had put this one together for me. In one stroke, as only they could from their vantage point. And I saw all four of their faces up in the sky, smiling and winking at me from between the clouds.
And tears welled up in my eyes for the first time since I had left for Paris almost a year ago. But these were not tears of sadness and depression. These were tears of joy, of communion, of gratitude.
The old band’s last debt
We had started rehearsing towards end-October. By the beginning of November I had signed up to perform on New Year’s Eve 2001 in Bangalore – it was going to be the first performance with the new band. The price agreed upon was Rs 13,00,000.
Hold on – that figure seemed familiar somehow. Ah! It was the exact figure which I had given as compensation to the four families of the expired band members plus Santana. Anyone would say my old band was paying me back.
It was a gig for a prominent builder who was building a new township just outside Bangalore city. It was meant to be a free concert for the buyers and prospective buyers of plots in this hitherto remote spot, and their families and guests. The concert was supposed to start at 7 pm, and go on until 9 pm. I wasn’t going to be away from my family on New Year’s Eve, so I travelled with Michele and the kids.
That evening there was such an unseasonal storm, the event management company weren’t even able to take us to the venue for the sound check. The stage itself had been fully erected and covered, but the rest of the venue was totally open green virgin land, with no temporary roofing provided whatsoever. The sound and lighting men had set up their systems but were not able to connect them for fear of short circuits and electric shocks in the rain. We were requested to stay put in our hotel rooms and await further news. The rain finally abated around 9 pm, and that’s when we were picked up from our hotels.
By the time we reached the venue the sound and lights had been connected, and we were asked to please start performing straightaway, as the audience had been waiting for long already. We went straight up on stage, I said hello to the audience, apologized for the delay, joked about the storm, and worked them up. They were fully drenched but surprisingly in the highest of spirits, like wet school kids, super-excited that the show was starting at last. I asked the engineers to adjust the sound levels while the first song progressed, and, on the spot, I invented a song called Sound Check.
I started scatting on these two words, slowly building them up into a vocal percussive rhythm. When my mic sounded fine, I took the scat into the words ‘electric guitar’. Reynold’s was one of the best sound systems in the country, and their engineer, Mike, knew our band and our sound like the back of his palm. When he had adjusted the sound and level of the electric guitar, I scatted on the word ‘drums’, and the drummer came in, then ‘bass’, and so on and so forth until, by the end of this impromptu song, all the instruments and mics had joined in and been perfectly adjusted. And then, without further ado, we launched straight into ‘O, Meri Munni’.
(Excerpted from Remo: The Autobiography of Remo Fernandes, with permission from HarperCollins)