15 August,2020 07:00 AM IST | Mumbai | Rahul da Cunha
Illustration/Uday Mohite
They were prized possessions, birthday presents from my parents. First, the Philips cassette recorder backstory: Why did I carry the cassette recorder, you will ask. It's not like it was a Bluetooth connected gadget filled with podcasts and Spotify. Plus, this was five years before the Sony Walkman, and two decades before the iPod. But, I had begun my rock music journey with something no millennial will fathom - the pre-recorded cassette. And, I carried cassettes and cassettes of Martin Birch around with me. Who's Martin Birch, you might ask. Musician? Singer? Nope. He was the sound engineer who navigated and produced the greatest rock albums from the early '70s though to 1990. He also motivated and pushed many great artistes to excel beyond their capabilities.
He was the man who helped shaped classic rock and heavy metal - every Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Rainbow, and Whitesnake record had his indelible wizardry on it. As they say, rock music is only as good as its recording, metal only as powerful as the mixing.
In the '70s, rock music for us teenagers had a home, Rhythm House, Kala Ghoda. A curtain separated one from the rest of the browsing world, driving rock played on private headphones, as you sampled music, precious pocket money spent on vinyl and vada pao. Almost every cassette/record I bought with my R150 a month pocket - money, was Martin Birch produced.
And then, 40 years later, done with the angst of adolescence and the air guitaring, YouTubes videos and Wikipedia filling in the information blanks unavailable in the 70s. But, the pure sound that one had been weaned on, by Birch, remain unchanged.
Which brings me to the Bush radio. Way before MTV there was AIR - All India Radio.
Every Saturday night, AIR ran a music programme creatively called Saturday Date, where listeners from all over Bombay sent in requests and the silver-voiced Pola Mistry played them. I was introduced to a singer called Trini Lopez, crooning out of that Bush radio, insisting melodically that 'This land was his land' and the 'Lemon Tree was very pretty'. Lopez had a definite dimple in his voice that went with the chuckle. I always felt he sang only to me. Years later, you hear the first bars of those songs, and the dimpled smile and the chuckle, remain undiminished by time.
Why am I telling you these two nostalgic stories? Because those two guys died last week.
Martin Birch and Trini Lopez, aged 71 and 83 respectively. Two musical maestros, moved to the afterlife, though their physical being stays with us.
Two men who worked with the one weapon they each had - fingers and wind pipes respectively.
Trini, this land is your land, and Martin, you are our smoke on the water.
Rock In Peace.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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