The monsoon has recently bid adieu. There is not much activity anywhere else and the CWG siege has just been lifted. This is autumn, the part of the year when the city keeps its date with entertainers. The time is ripe for new things to roll, perhaps rock ’n’ roll. Here begins a saga of a band from far away. Their first show in India takes off in Delhi, followed by Bengaluru with the final leg in Mumbai. Besides their own music they also render versions of the legendary bands of the ’60s in a style of their own — they call it “modernising the vintage”.
Meet Rockfour: the band from Israel has been making music for 22 years and is still going strong. Being unusual is normal. The youthful energy about them is fissile, ever fresh, ever full. A plucky quartet.
They have been part of the music scene and yet away from it. Their ambitions require a bold fortitude, and they have plenty of both. For the first 10 years they sang in Hebrew, then switched to English, and finally comfortably settled with both. It is extremely difficult for a band to shed a captured market for a new one.
Issar, the drummer, explains, “We decided to switch completely to singing in English from Hebrew in the year 2000. The switch was in the hope of getting an international record deal and access to a larger music market. It took us a year to get signed to an American label. There is risk involved but then you win some and you lose some.”
The band has not only been featured in major music festivals in the US, like the Texas indie South by Southwest festival, but has also toured America and Canada extensively. Baruch Ben Yitzhak, the guitarist and vocalist, chips in, “For us it was like a dream come true. To be from a small place like Israel and go to America is like a dream and we chewed it all over.” The experience was so thrilling and overwhelming that it eventually erupted in Rockfour’s constant confusion over the eventful chronology of the US tour. But mission accomplished, and brilliantly.
For Rockfour, music is exclusively a personal space. There is no space for political or social overtones in their music. They like to keep their music basic. And they have a litmus test too. “We don’t pay undue attention to song arrangement. What matters is if you take the song arrangement apart and play the song acoustically. If it still sounds good, it is good,” says the chirpy Issar. Yet, in their basic approach, you can feel a soaring flight of imagination stronger at its foundation.
The band has performed the world over and most music scribes have tagged them as vintage: old wine in new bottle. They are in love with the vintage, especially the equipment and have plenty of it.
Baruch, who carries a sense of solemn authority, has a thought to air. “If you play the guitar and you sing and not use your computer for everything, you are vintage,” he says, adding, “Working with the computer in the studio gets very technical and it almost feels like a laboratory.” Marc, who pens lyrics and is a quieter member of the four, has worked out a settled definition on the vintage chapter. “We are the kind of band which modernises the vintage. We have found a base and we build around it.” Chapter closed.
For young believers, Rockfour has the distinction of having spent a day, which they earned, in the legendary Abbey Road Studio on the basis of a rendition of the Pink Floyd song Arnold Layne. David Gilmour instituted the prize and he, along with David Bowie, selected the best cover. It is forever a momentous day for the band. They played for 10 hours in three live sessions with one lunch break. They played for themselves and for the audience and recorded the whole session. The youngest and latest recruit of the four is keyboardist Yaki Gani, who fondly recalls, “There is this song Astronaut on which we jammed for over 30 minutes whereas the original song lasts only five minutes!” That was some years ago. But even now one mention of it breaks big excitement amongst the band members just like flowers bloom effortlessly out of buds every spring.
Rockfour’s music conveys their subtle and spontaneous personality. They don’t adorn prop ups for photo ops or live shows. Their music has bits that you can discover by listening to over and again. They make music, write lyrics and don’t bother about the rest. Marc explains, “We don’t write songs to make changes. We make music to make art, bearing in mind that it can bring change. But that change is very slippery. You can’t pin it down.”
The band is also addicted to Indian food and now that they are here, they are not letting any opportunity go. Issar quips, “When we were in the US, we ate all kinds of food. Indian food has a close resemblance to Israeli food. We ate Indian cuisines all the time and we loved it.”
The most striking aspect of the band is perhaps their confidence and at-ease attitude. They are confident of their abilities and even limitations.
The members are in utter ease with their environment. It is as if they are spiritually contented and music has become a steadfast purpose of their life.
Rockfour’s musical ideas have definite character, body and space for expansion. They inherited a musical legacy and “modernised the vintage” without fear. And they leave enough rope for all to make impressions on the sands of time.
Meet them, attend their concert and listen to them. Expect your date to be a memorable one.