The interview which appears below, was originally published on I Love A.R. Rahman Podcast in September 2023. ©The rights to this material are reserved to the owner. If you have any concerns or comments, please send an email to info@rahmaniac.com.
Senior Director of Berklee College of Music shares his journey from Mumbai to Boston and his friendship with A.R. Rahman
Mr. Clint, it’s an absolute pleasure to finally have you on the podcast. Before we dive in, I had no idea you had a Labrador! I have one too – his name is Happy.
That’s awesome! My guy’s name is Boomer. He’s a big lab, a real darling. You’ll probably hear him bark at some point tonight before he goes to sleep – he wants his apple. How old is your dog?
Mine is four.
Boomer is five. We should probably get these guys to do a FaceTime call sometime soon!
You have an amazing title – Senior Director of Berklee College of Music. That’s such a huge responsibility. Before I ask about your day-to-day life at Berklee, would you like to throw some light on where your passion for music actually started and how it all began?
I grew up in Bombay, which is now Mumbai. I was just with a friend of mine who was over from Bombay – he’s a phenomenal doctor and we’ve been doing a lot of music and meditation breath work. We were talking about the energy of Bombay and the vibe it creates, and the only city that comes close is New York.
When we were growing up in the ’90s, I was playing in church with various friends and colleagues. We used to drive the priest crazy because we’d take all these hymns that were kind of boring and rock them out using drum machines and two keyboards. We were influenced so much by Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Prince, and Sting.
I started learning piano at five or six years old, and by the time I was 14, I was playing with a band professionally – at the festivals and all the hotels in Bombay like the Taj and Oberoi. I even traveled to other parts of India to perform.
I had that kind of fire in my belly to want to work with some of the artists from my childhood who had influenced me so much, and I wanted to try and find an opportunity to create that access point not only for myself but for others as well.
My parents were very supportive, but it was funny with the aunties. Whenever anyone came over to our house, they’d first talk to my brother and ask what he does. He’d say “I’m an IT engineer” and they’d be like “Oh my God, what a nice boy!” Then when they’d ask me, I’d say “I’m a musician” and in their mind they’d think “loser, total loser – we don’t want our daughter to marry this guy.”
I got a little smart when they’d show up again. When they’d ask my brother what he does, he’d say “Auntie, I’m an engineer,” and they’d praise him again. Then they’d ask me and I’d say “Auntie, I’m exploring the ship.” At that time, being a ship captain was a big deal because they earned in dollars, so these Catholic aunties thought this was great for their daughters.
Six months later they’d see I’m still around and ask “Your ship never sails, son, what happened?” I’d say “No Auntie, I’m exploring entrepreneurship” and they’d just laugh and call me a total loser. But at that time I was just all about the music and nothing else distracted me, and it helped my focus to stay on that path.
I went to St. Xavier’s college and that’s where I decided to apply to Berklee College of Music. It was a very different time – you had to send in a tape and receive the application by mail, and it took three months to send it back. Finally, I got in with a scholarship and my parents were very supportive. They were the kind of rock and foundation that gave us that opportunity. So I came to America in 1995 to go to Berklee and that’s where it began.
When you look back from then until now, how do you feel about that journey?
Sometimes I think to myself, if I remained in India, who knows what could have happened. But I feel that if I was an IT engineer or I did something else like marketing or whatever, I don’t think I would have had the access point to the kind of people I’ve met – incredible creative people, industrialists, people in business, doctors, lawyers. Music has been that kind of glue that has not only introduced me to them but also helped me stick around because I had something of value to them.
I think a lot of people either want to be musicians or would love to showcase their talent through music or dance or some creative art, but they don’t get the opportunity because either their parents don’t allow them to or they believe they’ve got to earn a living a different way. Some are never introduced to the fact that music can be a career. So I think I was lucky and I’m living my love for what I do and I just try and learn every day. I’m a student of everything, not only art but everything else.
That must be such a great feeling being the director of one of the prestigious music colleges in the world, shaping the careers of hundreds and hundreds of students, making their careers and building their aspirations.
It’s a responsibility but also it’s very important for all of us to do it at any level because you don’t know who the next genius is going to be. If somebody did not give A.R. that opportunity, he wouldn’t be able to influence so many other people that he has. Talking about somebody who really creates access points for people, A.R. has done it. I see him all the time on Instagram – he’s always going through Instagram and checking out these young people and he’ll fly them from wherever they are and bring them over, and the next thing you know they’re either in his band or his orchestra or in a movie and their lives take off. He’s got that magic touch.
Somebody who did it a lot before him was Miles Davis, the jazz musician who had many young musicians in his bands and all of them went on to have huge successful careers. A.R. has done that with many young people, so we learn from the best.
What’s the vision for Berklee College?
Berklee is going through a transition. There’s been a lot of expansion with so many different ensembles. There’s a platform for musicians from a global environment to collaborate, create, and build communities. That’s so important – to come to a place where you can work with like-minded people.
You may be from a small town somewhere in Nepal or Bombay or somewhere in America and you don’t have access to folks you can play with or friends you can collaborate with, or an innovative lab where you’re creating sounds or sound design or creating sounds for Tesla. You come to a place like Berklee where there are other people like you, or there’s MIT which is close by where you can collaborate with tech geniuses, or Harvard’s business school where you could get advice from some kind of incubator where a star can flourish.
Boston’s a great city for that. The vision is constantly transforming. Berklee’s in search of a new president and when that happens, they’ll lay the foundation of what the vision is for the global strategy of the college. But the values don’t change of creating access for young people and being the pre-eminent school of music in the world and dance.
When we were growing up it was very difficult to access people or collaborate, but now you can do it through various platforms and that makes life much easier. But with AI you got to be able to embrace it and look at what… people were worried about CDs at one point, but technology continues to change and the earlier you embrace it, the more relevant you’re going to be.
Berklee creates access from technology to the music business to education, online learning, performance, dance, theater. It’s an ecosystem by itself and it has locations in New York, Valencia Spain, and Abu Dhabi besides Boston, so there’s a lot of cross-collaboration that can happen.
Any plans of bringing it to Australia? Selfishly asking!
There have been some great Australian musicians that have come to Berklee and they go back to their hometown and many are teaching there possibly. But I think it’s very difficult for a college to keep expanding because real estate costs money and you have to have somebody funding it. But anything is possible – it just depends on the timing, circumstances, and who’s supporting the initiative. I don’t know the answer but I hope it does one day. Let’s put it out in the universe and hopefully it manifests, and we will do an in-person podcast when that happens!
Earlier in the conversation you mentioned meditation. I can’t resist asking about this. For me personally, music is very meditative – I get into a meditative zone. I have a certain playlist, predominantly A.R. Rahman songs, that takes me into a certain zone. Nine out of 10 times when I try to sit in one place and focus on something to meditate, it doesn’t really work that way for me. But it’s more meditative when I’m having music on and focusing on something where my passion lies. What’s your perspective on meditation and the interlink with music?
I’m around people who do it much better than I do. Some of these folks have been studying with gurus for years. The doctor I work with who I’ve partnered with, Amit Anand, has worked with a guru who’s 91 years old and still teaching. But it’s more breath work – actual breathing to help your body and lung capacity, reducing your heart rate and blood pressure. It’s like the Peloton of music – breath work is hard work.
If you’re going to run and jog, it’s work you got to do, but when you have music to guide you, it’s like a metronome. Sometimes the faster the music, you work harder, sometimes you slow yourself down. What we’re doing is taking certain tones that calm and relax you – not just typical meditation music. If you Google meditation music, you’re going to get some Indian music with a flute player or a santoor player, but this is very customized to how young people today resonate. They didn’t grow up with that, not all over the world.
If we’re creating a space for people to do this meditative work with breath, they need to have music that resonates with them. So it started with me going back to my days in church thinking of hymns and things of that nature, but it doesn’t have to be about hymns – it’s more about spirituality. All those lines that even A.R. sings so beautifully take you on a journey somewhere spiritually. It could be anything, or it could be something from the Vedas or shlokas. I’ve got some people singing all the shlokas and then putting certain pads and voicings around it to support that feeling.
Whatever resonates with you, it takes you to that spiritual place. We’re trying to really get this recipe right and it’s a work in progress. We’re really working towards the therapeutic side of how healing happens. We’ve got a music therapist who’s a trained music therapist working with us because I’m not a music therapist – I just feel and know what I feel. But this person’s trained in music therapy with neurology and music therapy, and we’ve got somebody who’s a tech guru helping us with all the tech stuff. This is a work in progress but it’s really exciting because the music is supporting the breath.
It doesn’t have to be about religion, it’s more about what you feel and you don’t have to… when you go to a special place, that zone could be anything. You listen to songs like “Yen Sirithu” and you’re like where the heck did A.R. get that from? Where did that come from? Such beautiful songs. What did he have to say about where he gets those?
It comes to him because somebody’s sharing those, whoever it is. It’s coming from a very spiritual place. I remember I heard this quote that Michael Jackson would say that he needs to be awake all the time because when God gives him those special songs, if he’s not awake he’s going to give it to Prince or somebody else, so he better be awake.
A.R. has mentioned that those special moments come when he’s gifted with those special songs and they just flow. That’s why he’s genius.
That’s a perfect segue into the A.R. Rahman world. Meeting A.R. Rahman for the first time ever – how did you get to meet him? I take it you were always his fan, or you turned into his fan after meeting him?
Honestly, I didn’t know too much about him initially. I knew he did great music. When I was living in India, I’d hear about this guy from Chennai. I was talking to a gentleman named Ronnie Monserrate. Ronnie was in the early years of Anie Burman and Biddu – he was their keyboard player and did all the scores for a lot of big films at that time. I grew up knowing Ronnie very well, he would be at my house very often.
Just last week I was speaking with him and he told me a story. In the early years when A.R. was doing jingles, he was doing all these great jingles and nobody could understand where the sound came from. Suddenly this guy from Chennai had this really forward-thinking mindset and sound that nobody was creating, and he was so daring to go for it. He believed in the music he was creating.
Apparently, Rahul Dev Burman and Ronnie were in a studio in Bombay – A.R. was in Studio B and they were in Studio A. Burman comes to Ronnie and says “Hey I got this cassette from this guy, I want you to hear it, tell me what you think.” Ronnie listens to it and says “Oh my God this is unbelievable, I’ve never heard anything like this.” Then Rahul Dev Burman says to Ronnie “This guy is gonna be the biggest thing you ever heard.” The rest is history.
But I met him in 2014 and that was the first time I met him. I’d never interacted with him before. I knew some of his music, I knew he was good, but I was so focused on Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, David Foster, and all these artists that I’d kind of left India a little behind for a while. I was just trying to find my own way at that point.
When I met him and understood who the man is and what his music’s about, that changed the way I felt about the music. Getting to know him as a person was very special because he’s not just a phenomenal musician – I have great respect for his music – but also a great teacher and individual who does so much for people that a lot of communities don’t know about.
The Sunshine Orchestra, him putting these kids on the map – that’s phenomenal work. That takes more than just being kind. That takes perseverance, diligence, taking risk, putting your own money where your mouth is. Lots of people talk about “I’ll do this, I’ll do that when I…” but he’s actually doing it. See the young people coming out of KM Conservatory or anybody who’s been in the studio with him – you come away feeling like you learned something that day, and that’s the biggest gift.
Look at anybody you talk to from Shaan to Vijay Prakash or Hariharan or Shankar Mahadevan or anybody – forget the international artists, I’m just talking about our homegrown local phenomenal global artists from India – and all of them will tell you the same story, that just working with the man is very special.
I know for the fact that it usually takes time, especially with him, and that’s probably how long he takes to invite and include someone in his world. Once you’re in, you’re in and it just evolves and blossoms. He’s a different person altogether amongst his friends. What do you want to shed some light on there?
Actually, I have to give credit to Kevin Antunes. Kevin is a dear friend of mine and Kevin and I met in 2011. We’re both Berklee alums and Kevin at that time had come off the Jai Ho tour. We met in San Francisco at a Berklee alumni event and we were talking about what we do. When he found out I was from India, he said “Well I just came off the tour with Mr. A.R. Rahman.” I was like “A.R. Rahman? What are you doing with A.R. Rahman?”
He was handling all of his technology and studio and working with him very closely. We both talked about bringing A.R. to Berklee to receive an honorary doctorate. We said let’s work on it – it might take some time but let’s do it. That’s how the 2014 honorary doctorate happened. Kevin and I were really interested in making that happen.
When we got the opportunity with the president of Berklee, Roger Brown – a phenomenal person who’s been very instrumental in some of the things I’ve been able to do – he believed and he loves A.R. as well. That’s how that synergy happened and that’s how I got A.R. to Berklee.
How did your friendship evolve with him after you got to know him?
I think it evolved around a mutual respect for what he does and what I do. We started trying to work on a song together for a project, and slowly you get to know each other. Maybe I learned more about A.R. as a person and he learned more about my skill set and what I was into.
We started bumping into each other for various reasons. First we tried to give three students an A.R. scholarship, and that happened. Then there were various circumstances that brought us together. Kevin was still working with A.R. very closely and Kevin’s a dear friend, so invariably they’d pull me in for something or the other.
I always felt in my heart that A.R. was already on his way, but he could do so much more – the world is his oyster. With every artist you go through phases in your life, and he’s searching all the time. That’s the genius of him – he’s a learner, he continues to learn. So he was always curious or inquisitive about various things that were happening.
He talked to me about KM and the schools, and we’ve been in situations where you have to go shopping with A.R. for musical gear – that’s another experience, another podcast!
Oh no, please do talk about it! That was actually going to be one of the things I was going to ask you.
He’s like a kid in a candy store! A.R. loves technology, so either you’re chasing him or you’re finding out what technology he’s into. That kept me inquisitive as well – how is this guy keeping up with a family, with beautiful kids that he has such a beautiful relationship with, his lovely wife, and he’s such a humble man?
The biggest kudos I have to give A.R. honestly is the respect that he has for everyone who walks into his studio. He just treats people with respect and they feel the respect. They also feel so safe in his place to record, to be there, to share their music and art. These are values that come from his mom and maybe his dad – these are in his genes.
He pretty much meets you with every visit to the US, isn’t it? Because I see you in almost every picture of his, even at events like Grammys, Oscars, and even the latest ones.
I am a little small piece among many many pieces of his big puzzle. A.R., one good thing about him is that he makes time for everybody. I don’t know how he does it. I told him “A.R., look, I believe you’re definitely timing your emails, like you’re auto-sending them” because you’ll get emails at all hours, but it’s him. So maybe there are two of him or three of him, I don’t know.
He’s that kind of person, and that’s the genius of who he is. He makes time for everybody and I don’t know how he has time for his family, which he has time for and makes time for. I’ve learned so much about that – his family comes first and you never leave without a meal, which is what a generous person he is in many ways.
I feel like I meet him all the time, but maybe there are many times I’ve never met him.
What do you guys talk about when you catch up?
Sometimes where we are, there’s not a lot to say. You can learn so much by just observing, and sometimes I think we all have to learn to just shut up and listen, which I’m trying to do more of now, getting older and wiser. But hanging around with A.R., you learn a lot of that.
Sometimes there’s so much to share but everybody’s not ready for that. I think it’s like music when playing in a concert hall – it’s not about the notes that you choose to play, but people are paying for the notes that you choose not to play. Silence in music is something that actually costs more money. You see a lot of kids who come out of schools who want to play every note they know, but people who are older and have more experience actually do not overproduce.
I think this is something that I’m trying to practice with my own life with the words maybe I choose to say and not say. It’s a learning experience – I’m humble about that.
I know for a fact that when he is in India or in Chennai most specifically, he misses out on going out for walks and going to the stores or just doing things as a normal person, which obviously he’ll get mobbed if he does in India. I know he loves doing it while he stays in the US or abroad. Any memories of just going for a walk with him? I know he likes little pleasures like going for little walks, even to grab a coffee.
Yeah, we’ve gone to breakfast a bunch of times and gone for coffee. We went to what was it… I think we went for a Costco test together. It was funny because those folks didn’t know who he was. It’s just a trip, it’s just nice to see him just relaxed and not have to worry about anything.
I’ve taken him to a black gospel church. That was an experience by itself. I think his children were with him – Khadija, Rahima, and I don’t know if Ameen came, maybe he didn’t wake up, I don’t remember. We went to this black gospel church because he asked me “Where are you going? What are you doing this weekend?” I said “Oh I’m going to take my brother to this black gospel church.” If you’ve never been to a black gospel church, it’s a phenomenal experience.
His curiosity kicked in and he’s like “Hey I want to come.” I’m like oh my God, now I’m taking A.R. to a black gospel church in a pretty sketchy neighborhood, so I have to make some arrangements here. We went and we reached there, we parked and had to walk on the street. We get to the church and all those folks are like “Welcome, welcome!” and they go to give him a hug. He’s not used to that and he had a cap on – they told him he needed to take that cap off.
It was early in the morning, like a Sunday early in the morning, but the music was killing, was unbelievable. Khadija was there and she had her hijab on, and Rahima, and they were enjoying the music. It was fantastic. I think A.R. won’t forget that experience and he always talks about it sometimes.
His sense of humor – any of those witty comments or anything that still stands out for you that you would like to share?
He always says things like “totally” because when he comes here everyone’s like “totally, we got that, don’t worry, totally.” So he’ll be going on about “totally.” He’s a funny dude, especially when you’re in an environment where… look, I understand that sometimes it’s very difficult to be a star, especially in a country like India. You just don’t get time to just look at the sun and enjoy just the moment, be yourself. So I think he cherishes those moments when you’re not on camera all the time and all that stuff. Who needs that, right?
When you go out for breakfast with him, what does he usually order? Like scrambled eggs and stuff, or what does he eat?
I think it’s just a wholesome meal. I’ve had breakfast at his house too. He’s a normal person just like you and me, and I think that gets lost in translation. He’s just a good human being trying to live like all of us, and he has the same worries about his family and his children and his close loved ones like we all do. Sometimes you need that time to just be who you are.
He meditates too, doesn’t he?
Yeah, and look at the man – he has so many people and so many mouths that he feeds. That’s a huge burden on someone. It’s one thing to be a star, but when you know that many families depend on you, you got to keep earning, you got to keep making movies, you got to keep making music for movies, and you got to keep innovating. Sometimes it’s a lot of pressure.
You want to hit… it’s not like when you’re playing cricket, the ball’s not always hitting the bat. You can’t take it for granted. Music is changing, the world is changing, there’s AI coming in. How do you embrace all this stuff? How do you keep being relevant? That is the trickiest part for any artist – how can you continue to be relevant.
If you’re a computer engineer, you got to keep up with the latest coding techniques, software, security. There are hackers all over the place. If you’re still working in Windows 95, you might as well retire. That’s happened to people where they don’t change with time unfortunately. But you see somebody at the top of his game forever – that’s a legacy, that’s sustainability, and that is a true icon.
Jumping into something that I definitely want to get your perspective on – the recent concert in Chennai just over a week ago. I completely empathize with the fans who could not even enter the venue, and at the same time I feel that A.R., being the person he is, just decided to take it upon himself for the whole thing, although it’s pretty evident that it was poorly organized by the organizers. What are your thoughts on everything that happened?
It’s very sad and it’s complicated because on one end you have fans who go through a lot to attend a concert – not only shelling out a lot of money, sometimes more than they can afford, but also getting to a venue early, whether you take a bus or train or you’re driving there. Even little things like trying to go to the bathroom – it’s a huge commitment, especially if you’re older or younger or you have some kind of disability.
On the other end, you have an artist like A.R. who’s so loved and he wants to give folks the best show he can and accommodate as many people as he can. But he does not make those decisions on how many tickets are sold – he’s a creative force. He comes and delivers a concert whether there’s one person in the room or 50,000 people in the room.
I think the promoters need better infrastructure where there are some checks and balances and guard rails to protect people all around from this kind of situation. If you don’t have those guard rails or infrastructure, it’s like a building where you have a foundation and you have approvals for one story, and then somebody decides there’s an opportunity and you put two stories on it – it won’t have the foundation to be able to take that load.
But A.R. is the kind of person who… many other artists would say “Hey that’s not my problem, I tried to do the right thing, I performed, I gave everyone a great concert,” and some people probably never saw the difference. But people who were affected, even if it was one person or three people or five people or 3,000 people or 7,000 people, he is trying tremendously. He’s set up an email address where people can actually write directly to him and he’s reading all those emails. He’s really empathetic about what has happened and really trying to put himself in the shoes of those folks who were unable to get in or suffered some kind of consequences.
I don’t know the details of what actually happened, but the most important thing is he’s trying to resolve it and also learn from that experience, even though it’s not something that he directly had control over. I give him a lot of credit for trying to not brush it under the rug but really face what has happened, because ultimately his name is what people are coming for. People are coming because they’re fans of his and he really cares about his fans.
I think he’s doing the right thing. Hopefully a lot of those folks who were unable to get in will get reimbursed to whatever extent they can be. From what I hear, A.R. is trying to pay people from his own pocket when he’s not the one that needs to be doing that, but that’s just the person he is. I would not expect anything less from him.
He’s going all out of his way to do what he can because he cares about people. The people from Chennai have been his foundation, they are his rock, they are his everything. So even more so, he cares about all of those folks.
It’ll hopefully be much better next time around. These are sometimes things you can’t anticipate. With the rain, what happened, that got cancelled and that probably put another kind of dagger into the whole situation and amplified it even more than it should have been. But there are definitely key learnings. You just have to accept and say “Hey I got to learn from this or I got to fix something internally” or working with whoever the promoter is, because only they sell the tickets – A.R. is not selling tickets.
Do you think going forward there should be someone from A.R.’s team working along with these organizers, ensuring that this checklist is ticked off and overseeing things as opposed to fully delegating this to the organizers?
That’s why there are very structured talent management companies that have a compliance department for that reason. For example, if a promoter doesn’t pay you, that can happen. Or there are liability issues when a stage falls down or something like that happens – that has happened. But having a compliance division or a person who’s managing that compliance – it’s somebody’s job rather than everybody’s job being nobody’s job. There’s somebody who’s actually overseeing, and there might exist somebody, I don’t know.
This is how it’s done here so that there are checks and balances so that ultimately everyone’s protected, not just the artist but the fans as well. There have been concerts where people have thrown stuff at Rihanna or Harry Styles. How does that happen? That can happen and it’s not right, but it does happen. How do you deal with those circumstances? Harry Styles might have to get off stage – what about all those fans who paid so much money for that ticket?
That would be something that’s really required going forward because abroad, for the most part, there are these checks and balances. But in India unfortunately there’s not – I’m not saying everywhere it happens, but it’s ad hoc. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. But this could happen anywhere. The question is, if you have a legit company that actually sells tickets and knows the capacity of the spaces and what it can bear, that is one place to start.
Have you had some sort of interaction with A.R. post this concert incident?
I think he’s really caring about everybody. My takeaway is that he’s really concerned about his fans and why did this happen and how can he resolve it and what can he do. I think he’s doing a lot of it already, maybe behind the scenes, not probably in public, but he’s doing a lot.
He’s a man who has a conscience and somebody who doesn’t do anything that he wouldn’t want done to himself. He’s always trying to do the right thing and I think he’ll continue to try to do that, even though this has nothing to do with his organization. His role is to go on stage and give the best concert he can with his band. That’s his role. He’s not there looking at how many bouncers there are and how many police showed up and who’s managing the sound booth – that’s not his job. And who’s selling samosas or whatever, that’s not his job, and it shouldn’t be at all because he needs to be focusing on the creative.
If that was his job, then he wouldn’t be able to give a great concert and he wouldn’t be the artist you’re coming to see – his artistry at its best, not him checking on who the… That doesn’t do justice to anybody if he were to do all that, and he can’t.
Just over an hour in this podcast and I was wondering – is there any topic under the sun that you want to talk about that I may not have touched on? Can be part of the A.R. Rahman world or outside, anything under the sun that you want to talk about?
One thing that always comes to mind is that A.R. has put the sound of India on the map, and I think that gets lost sometimes. At least being in this part of the world and my interactions with various artists not only from India but all over the world, and the way many of them would like to collaborate with him or many of them who have actually been influenced by the kind of music that he creates – that doesn’t happen overnight. That happens when you’ve really built a lighthouse for people to want to come and collaborate with you.
Bridging that gap between India and the West, he’s done it so beautifully. Not a lot of people have been able to do that. I’ve been kind of an observer, like a fly on the wall, and seen that happen in many ways.
I’ve been with other legendary artists and producers like Quincy Jones and others, and the way they connect with A.R. – Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, all these people who are icons. I don’t think many of them know any other artist from our country besides him, maybe Ravi Shankar, but that’s because the Beatles spent time with him.
Unless they have had a reason to want to know… but if you ask any of them about some Indian artist, they would know A.R. because that intrigues them. A.R. challenges them musically. The way he writes – it sounds simple, but if you’re a musician and you go and start transcribing what he did as a musical geek, then you understand the influence of his music. Some of it is very simple and you’re like “Why did you write that?” but then how the public reacts to it is a whole different thing.
We could go on and on, but I feel fortunate to have had some super time on this journey and more to come. I never take it for granted.
Probably that leaves us with a message for A.R. Rahman via this podcast.
I think a message for A.R. is that it’s very difficult… I think one thing he could do is to continue to write more and more because the world needs it. Especially his music brings peace, his music brings a lot of harmony, his music makes people think. I think he should continue to do that much more as time permits him because I think the world needs it even more now.
Mr. Clint, thank you so much for making time for this. It’s been so phenomenal to have you on this podcast, super articulate, and the deep dive on some of those topics I loved. I’m sure I want to have another podcast with you very soon.
I hope I was helpful – I was not prepared, I don’t know what I said, but hopefully it was helpful to whoever listens to it. I hope it was helpful in understanding somebody that I’ve had the privilege to spend a little time with in my life, in my journey. I’ll cherish those moments forever for sure, and I will cherish this podcast with you.
Thank you for all the good work that you do that nobody gives you credit for sometimes. I know it takes a lot – there’s a lot of hard work that goes behind what you’re doing. The love and appreciation you have for A.R., the fans benefit tremendously from that. It’s easy to be in the limelight and be all glory on the stage and stuff, but to do the work you’re doing takes a lot of perseverance. I know you’ve chased me down among others, but actually that’s a compliment.
John Mayer called me “the nicest pest” because I would chase him down – that’s what I’ve been known to do. Hustling is 50% of this music industry, the other 50% is your creative stuff. You have to have that X factor, but if you don’t know how to hustle, you’re just going to be like a Gucci dress sitting in the closet. It’s all nice to play great music and all, but if you can’t get your music out there, who cares? So I would just be a nice pest and I took that as a compliment. You got to chase for what you want.
I’m going to remember this phrase! Thank you for sharing it. I will let you enjoy your evening. Thank you so much once again for giving me your time. I really value this and I can’t wait to put this out. The fans are going to benefit so much from this and I personally feel that I’ve gained so much knowledge in this podcast. I’m just thankful for the friendship.
I want to be respectful to A.R. and not share stuff that is very personal. I think I’m just sharing stuff that most people know anyway, but some little tidbits that were good memories to me.
Of course, and that’s the way it has to be. Thank you so much Clint, take care.
This interview was transcripted as part of the ongoing series exploring the personal stories and professional journeys of those in the A.R. Rahman universe. For more exclusive content, visit rahmaniac.com
