They have been companions for almost three decades, and now the association is getting a seal of recognition. Well-known music composer and guitarist Ehsaan Noorani has become the brand ambassador of the iconic Fender guitar and incidentally, he has been playing a Fender since 1981.
“Well for someone like me who has been labelled as a ‘Fenderholic,’ the news came as a pleasant surprise. The experience of buying my first guitar will remain ingrained in my mind forever. I got a call from my guitar teacher Bismark Rodriguez that there was a Fender Stratocaster for sale. I couldn’t sleep the whole night in anticipation of seeing the guitar. The next day, I went to see the guitar and there it was a red Fender Stratocaster in its case. I picked it up, and it felt like an old friend. That guitar travelled with me to the US, when I went to study music there, and later it saw me through many shows,” says an excited Ehsaan.
Talking about his passion for the guitar, the famous music composer says, “I love to play the blues, and have been a huge fan of that music ever since I first heard it in the late 1970s. I spend a lot of time at home playing and listening to the blues both traditional and modern. BB King, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton and Eric Clapton are my favorite guitarists, and I can never get enough of them. I also spend hours on the Internet checking out guitar players of all different styles from all over the globe.”
On the Bollywood front, the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio is a name to reckon with but it wasn’t a smooth beginning. “Dus was supposed to be our debut vehicle, but unfortunately, the film didn’t release due to producer Mukul Anand’s demise. Thankfully, a video of the song Hindustani was shot, and it became a huge hit. That set the ball rolling,” he smiles.
And together the trio has scripted a success story that includes, the music of Dil Chaahta Hai, Kal Ho Na Ho and Rock on. “We are currently doing the background score for Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milengi Dubara. Prakash Jha’s Arakshan, Kamal Hassan’s and Abhishekh Kapoor’s next films are also in the pipeline.”
Moreover, with creativity that’s three dimensional, Ehsaan admits that differences cannot always be kept at bay. “Sometimes creative differences help to compose a good piece of music. With three composers working together, the music literally goes through three filters. At any given time one of us has to take an objective view of our work, and very often we may even thrash it to come up with something better. Creative differences are resolved by keeping an open mind towards the other person’s opinion, after all, at the end of the day a good song matters the most,” he points out.
Ehsaan is not evasive to the fact that the filmi music’s domination has clearly spelt doom for the other genres. “Bollywood has cornered the music scene in India, almost 90 per cent of it. The music industry should promote new artistes and bands with finance and marketing. Non-film music was popular in the late 1980s and the 90s, but then it just disappeared from television and radio. A revival of sorts is long overdue.”