Ehsaan Noorani on the music he grew up with

Ehsaan Noorani, one-third of the reigning Bollywood troika shankar-ehsaan-loy, shares with us the music which influenced him and admits that it was the Beatles that caused him to pick up his guitar and wail!

May, 2008

BLENDER Let’s start at the beginning then. How did it start off for you? How’d you get into music?
EHSAAN I've been into rock bands like Deep Purple and many other bands since I was in school, it was when I heard this guy Alan Sayani play Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles that I just knew I had to pick up the guitar and took lessons from Bismark Rodrigues who’s pretty much taught everybody in Mumbai. I carried on with my practice through college and formed my first band Pegasus, which was quite a progressive rock band at the time. It didn’t go down too well but we enjoyed the stuff we did.

Then I formed Crosswinds and played some really interesting non-regular rock music, from REO Speedwagon to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Wishbone Ash. Later we shifted to a lot harder stuff like Blue Oyster Cult and others, which back then came under the gamut of hard rock.
I took off to GIT to study music in LA for a year in ’85 and did some studio work upon getting back. I also joined Louis Banks for a year, did jingles on my own and then finally I met Loy and Shankar and the whole SEL thing happened.

BLENDER What are your earliest memories of music though? I’m sure there was more before Here Comes The Sun...
EHSAAN Well, I used to listen to a lot of my dad’s music. Old Latin American music that was huge back then as were movie soundtracks like My Fair Lady. Besides, my uncle had more of the newer stuff of the time like The Doors, The Ventures etc. The album that really got me into rock though was Deep Purple’s Fireball. That was the first hard rock album I ever heard. Then hearing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon completely converted me and from them, I jumped straight into rock. And then on the side, there was my sister’s taste for pop bands like ABBA and bands like Santana. So, as you can see, my musical growth was excellent because I’ve listened to everything… starting from classic oldies to retro rock to hard rock to punk to techno.

BLENDER What was the heaviest stuff you heard while growing up?
EHSAAN The heaviest I went up to was Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. There’s hardly any serious guitar playing in newer bands. I did however, like Guns N Roses and Velvet Revolver. John Mayer is another young guy who is brilliant. I also like Coldplay… they’re a good, relatively young band who’re writing great music.

BLENDER Blues?
EHSAAN Oh, absolutely. I first heard the blues in 1978 when a friend played a Johnny Winter record for me and I was instantly hooked. I mean, it was something else! This was around the same time I started playing the guitar, so the blues really took me. I listen to a lot of it even now and I think it's pretty visible in my style of playing guitar.

BLENDER There seems to be a lot of western influence on your music, considering the kind of sounds you use. Who do you think has shaped your style of playing guitar?
EHSAAN B.B.King, Eric Clapton, Robben Ford, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Carlos Santana, Alvin Le, and a number of other guitarists.

BLENDER Does this apply when you’ve got to make mainstream Bollywood music?
EHSAAN For Bollywood, the face of the music is the film and since you’re composing for the film, it is the film that influences you to make the music it needs. But our influences always come out whether it’s Loy playing the keyboards or me playing the guitar.

BLENDER So you still manage to retain your essence even in the Bollywood work you do…
EHSAAN All the time! In fact, there’s this new movie coming up called Rock On which has Farhan Akhtar in it. It is straight-on rock in Hindi.

RAPID FIRE WITH EHSAAN

TOP 5 BANDS
Pink Floyd
Tears For Fears
Wishbone Ash
Lynyrd Skynyrd
The Doobie Brothers

TOP 5 SINGERS
Ian Gillan
David Gilmour
Paul Rodgers
John Mayer
Robert Plant

TOP 5 ALBUMS
Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon
Paul McCartney - Band On The Run
Tears For Fears - The Seeds Of Love
B.B. King - Live At The Regal
Lynyrd Skynyrd - One More From The Road

TOP 5 SONGS
Pink Floyd - Us And Them
Tears For Fears - Advice For The Young At Heart
Paul McCartney - Let Me Roll It
The Doobie Brothers - South City Midnight Lady
John Lennon – Imagine