Lata Mangeshkar

Setting Lata’s L-P record straight

When a very close relationship turns bitter, two factors are

always present. One, the utter futility and avoid ability of the

split, which is invariably due to an ego-clash, and two, the

sheer intensity of the negative feelings, at least on one side,

as the emotional pendulum swings and get locked on the other

extreme.

And this is what took place, a few years ago, between Lata

Mangeshkar and Laxmikant-Pyarelal.

Look at how L-P and their role and their songs in Latabai’s

career   have been marginalised in her recent concerts and

compilations. Look at how chroniclers loyal   to   her   are

misguidedly undermining the enormous role L-P have played in

Lata’s career between 1963’s Parasmani and 1996’s Prem Granth.

One is led to think that L-P hardly mattered in Lata’s musical

life. But such a magnificent and magnitudinous association cannot

just be brushed away by bias, or wished away by the magic wand of

expediency. And L-P and Lata were a longer, larger, closer and

with ANY singer in Hindi cinema.

Their mutual admiration society was formed in the 50s when L and

P were struggling musicians whom Lata then recommended to top

composers like Shanker-Jaikishan and SD Burman. For a while L-P

even stayed with the Mangeshkar family, and had formed a

performing musical group called Surel Kala Kendra with Lata’s

sister Usha and brother Hridaynath. When they got their first

break, it was with Lata Mangeshkar that L-P recorded their first

song (for an aborted film called Tumse Pyar Ho Gaya ). That was

in 1962.

In the next 35 years, Lata and L-P were to chalk up an astounding

700 songs together, which accounted for one in every 10 Hindi

film songs recorded by the Melody Queen, and one of every four

songs composed by the duo. And but for the bitterness, it is safe

to assume that L-P would have chalked up a still higher tally.

And what a mind boggling variety and range did we get in those 700

singer.

’’We are so besotted by her, ’’ remembers Pyarelal, ’’that we could

not look beyond Lataji, whether it was for the heroine, the vamp

or a child artiste. She would go out of her way too, even singing

cabarets for us (as in Intequam), reducing her fees and adjusting

her dates. Hamari success mein Lataji ka 50 per cent se zyaada

haath hai!’’ His late partner Laxmikant would often talk about how

Pyarelal and he would fork out money from their own pockets if

the producers of their early small films could not afford

Latabai. ’’In the mid-60s, Latabai even kept seven recording days

in a month only for us, which boosted the producers’ confidence

in us, ’’ recalled the late composer.

And Lata wasn’t doing this merely out of friendship. In L-P she

sensed the potential to be Shanker-Jaikishan’s successors. She

saw in their music the same blend of popular appeal, musical

substance, range and prolificity. In return, L-P uninterruptedly

gave her a fantastic array of dazzlers for over three decades and

even quit Gulzar’s Meera (for loyal producer Premji) when Lata,

for her own reasons, opted out of the project. ’’How would we

dream of composing such a subject without Latabai?’’ asked

Laxmikant simply. A few years earlier, the war between Raj Kapoor

and the Melody Queen simply had to be ended before L-P entered

the RK portals for Bobby. How else could the Lata-inspired Raj

Kapoor dream, Satyam Shivam Sundaram have been realised? L-P by

then had more than vindicted Lata’s faith and her unstinted

support.

And if Laxmikant often said, ’’Latabai could even convert a char-

aana song to a one-rupee one, ’’ he also admitted ruefully that

their own phenomenal contribution to her career had never got its

due. ’’All the learned people who wrote about music never

spotlighted the 100 per cent truth that we gave her the kind of

variety no other composer did. Neither did HMV, who repeatedly

highlighted her songs with other composers who never experimented

her sheer versatility and voice in the way Pyare and I always

did.’’

How then did this bond turn bitter? Said Laxmikant then, ’’By the

mid-’80s, Latabai had begun to do a lot of shows abroad. At first

we would get her songs dubbed and then wait for her. But in that

video era the producers soon began to see no point in the extra

expense. So though we still reserved ourbest for her - like Yeh

ishq dunk bicchhua ka in Batwara and the Nagina and Ram Lakhan

numbers, we did begin to record extensively with Kavita, Alka and

Anuradha Paudwal. And it was not our fault that most of our songs

which these young singers proved hits and other music directors

were also emboldened to work with them! In this line there are

always malicious elements who are looking for a chance to poison

friends against each other. Maybe vested interests told her that

we were deliberately not working with her. So though there was no

fight or argument, we just drifted apart...’’

But the break-up proved calamitous for both, much as Lata’s fans

would like to believe otherwise. In the post L-P phase of her

career, Lata Mangeshkar has had consistent hits, but   the

substantial songs among them can be counted on our fingers. As

for Laxmikant-Pyarelal, the men who decimated all opposition with

Lata’s support for over three decades, they simply lost the will

to compete even with comparative greenhorns. Today there is only

a priceless L-P-Lata treasury to fall back on, and the loss to

film music and film music lovers (being now irreparable after

Laxmikant’s   death and Pyarelal’s indecision on whether to

continue) is nothing less than catastrophic.

But if L-P worshipped her enough to give her those hundreds of

divine compositional offerings, which have stood the test of time

and politics, Lata’s own intense and calculated indifference to

L-P also shows that in the core of her heart, she actually

realises what they meant to each other. She knows that L-P are

the very last composers she will be able to erase from both, her

famous memory and her even more renowned ouevre. Only that

explains the degree of her aversion to give L-P their rightful

place in her own glorious innings.

And if, only for history’s sake, we must both entreat her and

hope that she sets her own L-P record straight!