Music
A Kolkata band charted the way for original western music in India.
…with songs like ‘Gotta Keep Rolling’ and ‘Monkey Song’ – songs that Balakrishnan wrote and the band gave shape to – Great Bear were treading a sonic territory that Indian bands hadn’t approached before.
Let us begin before the beginning when recounting the history of High. The band was formed in 1975, but its genesis lay in 1971, in a Calcutta where a part of the crowd is still drunk on the Naxal revolution, while another is on Park Street in their dancing shoes, drinking wine.
Four youngsters – Dilip Balakrishnan, Nondon Bagchi, John Brinham and Devdan Sen – bucked prevalent musical trends to form ‘Great Bear’ that year, turning a deaf ear to candy-coated, peppy pop tracks à la The Carpenters, and instead playing music by The Allman Brothers, The Grateful Dead, The Band, Cream, and more of that ilk.
Meanwhile, from his room, Balakrishnan was probably scripting history in the country – he was writing his own ‘western rock’ songs. “As far as I know, Great Bear is the first Indian band to play original music,” Bagchi says in a telephonic interview, restating a claim that no one has challenged, at least till now.
This, by the way, was in an India that had only recently shed inhibitions about listening to The Beatles and wearing flared pants. The western rock ‘n’ roll wave had left its ripples across our shores. There had been Calcutta bands apart from Great Bear who’d already made a name for themselves, such as The Cavaliers and The Flintstones. But with songs like ‘Gotta Keep Rolling’ and ‘Monkey Song’ – songs that Balakrishnan wrote and the band gave shape to – Great Bear were treading a sonic territory that Indian bands hadn’t approached before.
But then, “Devdan and John went off travelling, to go out and see the world out there, you know.” Suddenly, Great Bear was no more.
So here were Balakrishnan and Bagchi sitting on a musical goldmine, but without enough guitarists to extract the songs. They needed a bassist and in Lew Hilt they found one. Then Adreshwar ‘Adi’ Irani came on board. Great Bear was metamorphosed. And while you’re welcome to inferences about the etymology, High is the new band name that this quartet chose.
Three of them held day jobs, though. Balakrishnan was in sales, Irani was a chartered accountant and Bagchi taught maths. So they played around three gigs a year at sit-down venues in Calcutta. But with apathetic bosses, travelling to other cities was always difficult.
Bagchi narrates a story to elucidate this point. “Dilip was a highly-placed executive at Exide when we were called to play at IIT Delhi, in 1982. He said leave was out of the question. So we said, ‘Tell your bosses that we’re playing in a contest meant to select bands for the Asiad Games.’”
“That worked. And later, when they asked him about how we’d done at the ‘contest’, Dilip said something like, ‘Oh, you know, we weren’t Asian enough.’”
Such corporate hurdles couldn’t have been anything more than minor bumps on the musical journey that High had embarked on. The ride lasted 15 years from 1975 – work during the day, play at night. Bagchi says that Irani was initially hesitant about performing the original songs. He felt that he might not be able to justify a collaborative effort that had also involved the duo who’d packed their travelling bags, folding up Great Bear - Brinham and Sen.
But Irani gradually came around to the idea. He later left, to be replaced by Subir Chatterjee. (High went through many different avatars over the years). But by then, the band had already started building a reputation based on the strength of their capabilities, a sophisticated set list, rare appearances and some initial luck when it came to the press.
Bagchi narrates, “We were playing at Khalsa College in Delhi. Tickets had been oversold and there was chaos. The gates were broken down and later people climbed up on stage. There was an article in the papers about it the next day, which mentioned us, with lines like, ‘Amidst the clash of cymbals on stage...’ or something like that. It was probably just some kid out of college writing a news report, you know. But for the band, it was free press.”
All this led to a dedicated collective of fans. And – in what’s definite proof that giants of the American counter culture movement, such as The Grateful Dead, had entered the Calcutta consciousness – High’s fans were named ‘High Heads’.
But in 1990, this wave of glory the band was on came tragically crashing down – Balakrishnan passed away. Cancer claimed ‘the soul that had bound Great Bear and High together’. The three others stopped playing, in respect for their friend. Thus, High ended 19 years after Great Bear began.
But, it wasn’t before Balakrishnan left behind a personal legacy that continues to influence contemporary Indian songwriters, such as Ananda Sen of The Supersonics.
Lineup:
Great Bear – Dilip Balakrishnan, Nondon Bagchi, John Brinham and Devdan Sen
High – Dilip Balakrishnan, Nondon Bagchi, Lew Hilt and Adreshwar Irani (who later left to be replaced by others, such as Subir Chatterjee)
This article is courtesy NH7 and is part of the Standing By Project that is archiving the history of Indie Music in India since 1947.
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