I had voluntarily withdrawn from that world. The only people I mixed with were my gurus and parents. What was your sense of the self while writing these songs?įrom 1979-83, I went into complete isolation. Cover jacket of his latest album Seventeen, released earlier this year So, I want to look at this self that is not trying to be somebody else, not trying to be Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan, but working with something. It doesn’t matter if the self was still evolving at that time in terms of its ideas to do with poetry and literature. I don’t see it as my old work, I see it as the work of a different self. It gave me a chance to compose a song with a blues structure, and also to speak about a sense of illusoriness.Ī lot of musicians tend to cringe at their old work. (Laughs) It came from that time where I had long hair and was pretending to smoke weed, and charas (cannabis). Once AIR found out I was singing my own stuff, they stopped inviting me. When these songs were broadcast, my mother would record them on a two-in-one. He’d arranged to get a slot on Bombay All India Radio and I’d go with my guitar and sing my own songs. One of the people in the competition was activist Sanjay Ghose (abducted and killed by the ULFA in 2008). But in the end, they gave me a rapturous applause. Everybody sang covers but I sang a song of my own, Shout. I also participated in a college talent competition, which was to be judged by Nandu Bhende (who sang with rock bands Velvette Fogg and Savage Encounter and played Judas in Alyque Padamsee’s play adaptation Jesus Christ Superstar, 1974). I sang Armistice Hour, one of the songs from Seventeen, for my teachers who were invited home after I had not done too disgracefully in my ICSE exams at the age of 15. A lot of the music I sang was inspired from there. When I was writing these songs, I was already making my way through Hindustani classical music.