From his soft solos to his hard rock intonations, Suraj Jagan means much more to his young music fans than just another name in the list of playback singers. For someone who is the most comfortable with rock, Suraj always dreamt of presenting evergreen old Hindi songs as full-fledged rock tracks.
Little did he know that the dream would come true so soon with the launch of his new solo album Back to My Future. “I had this idea ever since I started singing with my rock band. In 2000, I recorded a few songs in a similar album that my friend was planning, but it was never launched. Recently, while I was compiling a list of songs when Saregama, contacted me for something similar and wanted me to sing one of these songs at their shows. That’s when we decided to compile the entire album. Since they have the biggest catalogue of old songs, it turned out to be a great opportunity,” says Suraj. So while Suraj was trying to work his way out to get a copyright of his favourite tracks, Saregama came along and the album was put together.
Living life with no regrets, Suraj feels his dreams came true at the right time. He says, “At that time, the record company shut down, and I was lucky in a way as it wouldn’t probably have worked then, for Indian audiences were not really used to listening to rock.”
Out of the nine songs in the album, Rang Barse is Suraj’s favourite. “It’s the darkest song in the album. This is my last minute addition to the album as some other song wasn’t working out. When I saw the song’s video on YouTube, I realised it’s not as happy a song as it looks. Since Amitabh Bachchan is flirting with Sanjeev Kumar’s wife (played by Rekha) in the film, I decided to do it from Sanjeev’s perspective. So there’s tension in my version of the song,” he says.
And the naughtiest of the lot is Rafta Rafta, which Suraj says was the easiest to experiment with. “When a song is already peppy, it’s easy to convert it into rock. We had fun while working on Rafta Rafta. Experimenting his own way with new melodies, giving his fans hits like Give Me Some Sunshine, Ja chudail and the very popular Zeherilay, we wonder if he had a difficult time turning his childhood favourite classics to rock.
“This is something I love doing and most comfortable with. And I was working with Chandresh, (lead guitarist of Dream Out Loud). We have written various songs together and share a great bond. So it was fun compiling the album,” he concludes.