The interview which appears below, was originally published on I Love A.R. Rahman Podcast in August 2021. ©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.
Gopal, it’s an absolute honor to have you on the podcast, especially someone who has been part of the early stages of Rahman sir’s journey right from the very early stages.
When I first heard of this project, I was definitely intrigued. What you’re doing is creating a bit of oral history that people in the future will look back on and tap into to get intimate information. I think certainly Rahman sir has left a mark where generations are going to come back to his music, to his life and study it, and I think this is going to become one of the must-read or must-listen sources of information.
One thing that certainly intrigued me was when I look at all the people who have participated so far, they’re all associated with sir in a very creative sense – they’re either technicians, singers, other musicians, or even if they are not directly associated with him, they’re still artists who either cover his music or are inspired by his music. I was wondering if I would be a good fit because I have done none of those. I am not a music technician, I am not creative in a musical sense, and in fact, if there’s one thing that bothers me about my being somewhere in sir’s universe is that I cannot speak his language. That’s number one on my bucket list – to really learn music so I can truly appreciate the depth of his creations.
Going back to the point you made that this era of Rahman is going to endure – I think there will be others who will come and create their own eras, but the way it has personally touched many of us, I don’t think there will be another one that can replace that. The example that comes to mind is back in 2011-2012 when “Super Heavy” was released and there was a music release party in New York City. I happened to be there, so sir invited me to come and join the release party. Me and another fan who happened to be also in New York went there.
It’s a very disco party kind of environment – everything is dark, a lot of neon lights and loud music. There’s Mick Jagger, there’s Damien Marley, and there are other people who I cannot recognize. People are queuing up to get their attention, get autographs from them, take pictures with them, and I have no interest – I’m just glued onto one person. For me, that’s the kind of level of personal impact that he has had. I think that will be hard for anyone else to replace, at least in my lifetime.
Would love to know a bit about yourself – where your journey began and your exposure to this Rahman world.
I have probably been there for the entire almost now 30 years of his movie journey. Before “Roja,” of course, he was already a musician but hadn’t burst onto the scene. When he did in ’92 with “Roja,” I actually missed it. I was just getting into my teens then – I was 12-13 – and we were not a big movie-watching family, so we never quite caught wind of the “Roja” wave.
I lived in Bangalore, and my grandparents lived in Chennai. During the summer, all the cousins would congregate there for holidays. In ’93, I was in Chennai and this was still very early days of cable TV in India. Doordarshan was what everyone watched. If you know the Tamil TV scene back then, “Oliyum Oliyum” was that weekly show which would telecast all the latest songs on Friday.
It happened that it was being screened in my grandparents’ house and I wasn’t sitting and watching it – we were just running around doing something. Then this bit of music caught my ears. I started watching what was playing on the TV and then my uncle who was watching commented, “This sounds so much like Roja.” I was like, “What is Roja?” Then he said, “Oh, there was this movie that came out last year and it was a big hit and the songs sound very much like that.”
That’s when I first heard of “Roja.” I went back to Bangalore and we had a friend in the family who had come to visit us. They had a cassette of “Roja” in the car and we were going out somewhere with them. They started playing it – that’s when I heard the music of “Roja” first. Even then, it didn’t arrest me like “this is something that has arrived.”
Where I really got into sir’s music was through “Gentleman.” Back then, G. Venkateswaran of GV Films, who’s Mani sir’s older brother, was the first enterprise in the world of cinema that had an IPO in India. My father had invested in it, and as a publicity move, they gave a free cassette to all shareholders of “Gentleman.” When I played that, it blew my mind. That was the movie that really did it for me and pulled me into the world of sir’s music.
Thankfully, it was still early enough – I didn’t have too much to catch up on. I went back and listened to “Roja,” then “Pudhiya Mugam,” “Kadhalan” came quickly thereafter. From then I became a very steadfast fan of sir’s.
The way my mother would read all the Tamil weekly magazines, I would flip through the pages and whenever I see a picture – I learned to recognize the initials. I would just scan through the magazines to see where there’s a reference to Rahman, and then I would ask my mother to read what it says. I started to take note of what movie is coming and then I would regularly go to the music stores in my neighborhood and look for what new releases have come.
Which music store did you go to? I’m from Bangalore too.
I lived in the south of Bangalore, so Jayanagar Shopping Complex. I don’t know if you remember HMV – there was a very tiny music store on Dispensary Road. Much later, Music World and Planet M came on Brigade Road towards the mid to late ’90s.
At one point, there were a few of us who became so obsessed that we found out cassettes would be shipped to distributors, and then all the stores would go pick it up in the afternoon. When we found out that’s how it works, we would go to the distributor in Chickpet and say, “We want 20 copies,” and buy it before it even hit the store.
If there’s one thing that I would be eternally grateful to sir for – forget the music, forget everything else – I learned to read and write my mother tongue because of him. I used to pester my mother so much. At one point she said, “If this is so important to you, why don’t you learn to read and write it yourself?” I took it as a challenge to actually learn without any formal training, just by stringing together letters and trying to read and write. I learned to read and write Tamil. I can still – I’m not as fluent as someone who’s formally studied, but at least if I get lost somewhere in Tamil Nadu, I can read all the signs.
Tell me about the “Muthu” album release.
In ’95, I particularly remember I was back in Chennai. That was the year that “Muthu” released. I knew it was going to release on a particular day – I think it was sometime in April or May. There used to be a famous music store in Adyar in Chennai. I went there around 10 AM in the morning because I had enquired the previous day and they said they open around 11 AM.
I was shocked to see a mile-long line already standing there! That was incredible. This was before the age of the internet, and I knew a few friends who had the same interest in his music, but that was the first time I saw the breadth of people in a communal sense. That was the first time I got to see the amount of interest in the music. The line cut across four roads and the police had to be called – that was the kind of interest in the music, and that too in ’95.
That’s how things were until ’97-’98. Obviously by then “Rangeela” had debuted and he was much more prominent on the national scene. There was more coverage in the English media covering Bollywood. I would go out, look for every newspaper and magazine, and collect them. I still have all the clippings of all the interviews from back then – they’re still in paper cut form, all filed at my home in Bangalore.
It became sort of from an interest in the music to an obsession, wanting to know everything. I started to record what awards he’s winning, all the different releases that are coming out, and also starting to collect variants. Some of the fans who might hear this will know what I’m talking about – the release of “Bombay” had seven or eight different album arts. I had to collect all of those. At one point my parents thought I had gone crazy.
Till about ’97-’98, the interest and following and listening to his music was a very individual experience. Then in ’98 was when the internet came to India. Around ’97-’98 was when we started to get access to it at work first. We would go to these internet cafes with very slow dial-up internet, trying to see when albums are releasing.
That’s when I found that there are fans in places like the US who had started to document a lot about his career and music. I came across a couple of websites that had a lot of information, and it was quite a shock for me because till then I thought surely there is no bigger fan than me. When I went through these websites, I found that there are movies and releases I had never even heard of. I’d never seen cassettes of films like “Thiruda Thiruda” anywhere, and then started a whole new hunt to learn how to get hold of this music.
How did the fan community start building online?
The arrival of the internet was a force for good in the sense that it really connected people across the world and brought together not just the ability to experience the music and share it with others who have the same interest, but also in being much more aware of everything that’s going on.
On January 1st, 1999, I started an e-circle. This was a service that allowed you to create groups and then people could join and post and share information. Initially, there used to be a guy named Rohit Batra who had just finished his 12th grade in the US. He had started a website on his school’s server documenting all the releases. Then there was another guy named Subramanian who collaborated with Rohit, and the two of them really made it a comprehensive source for information on everything Rahman.
I reached out to them, but Rohit had moved on to the next stage of his life. Subramanian and I took that information and launched a new site. Subramanian was a web wizard – he graduated from IIT Chennai and was doing his post-grad in the US. He registered a domain, “rahmanonline.com,” and took all that content and created a completely new website.
I said we should make it interactive because the website otherwise is static. We started this section called “Ask Gopal,” and I would try to answer questions. I would typically write something about the music and then people would post questions like “This song – was it used in another movie?” Going into the nitty-gritties of where the music originated from.
That carried on till 2001-2002, and then Subramanian decided to move on and unfortunately abruptly shut down the website.
In ’99, I started this group on e-circles, which led to people starting to join. There was a global group that would discuss when is the next release, just like you can see now on social media – the same kind of fervor and passion. E-circles got acquired by e-groups, e-groups got acquired by Yahoo, and it became Yahoo Groups.
This group grew to be at its peak just shy of about 100,000 members globally. This was before the age of social media, so it was a reasonably large number. Somebody in Malaysia would get the release first, they would scan the album art, post it, and people would ask when it’s releasing in India. Somebody from the US would post, “We got it with a different album art,” and immediately, “Can you buy five copies and keep it for us? I want a copy with that album art.”
That’s how the fan community started to engage. We started to meet in person – once we got to know people in different cities, we started to have meetups and get to know people.
How did you first get in touch with Rahman sir?
Sometime in the early 2000s, around 2003, one of the guys, Vijay, was based in Mumbai and was also a huge fan. We got to know each other on the group. Vijay used to work for one of the businesses in the British Airways group, and he was on a flight to London. This was when Rahman sir was traveling frequently to London for “Bombay Dreams,” and he happened to bump into Rahman sir on a flight. Rahman sir being the nicest human being gave him his contact.
Vijay introduced me to Rahman sir as another fan. As everyone knows, Rahman sir’s email address is the worst-kept secret in the world – everybody knows it. What’s worse is Rahman sir being the person he is, he will reply to every email he gets. I wrote to him not expecting a response at all, and he responded saying, “Hey, nice to hear from you.” But I was too starstruck to really pester him and I kept a distance.
Tell me about the first concert Rahman sir did in India.
The first concert that Rahman sir did in India was in Chennai in 2004. That one unfortunately I could not go – this was the one that Mani Ratnam directed, Rajiv Menon filmed it, and virtually every singer who sang the original song sang it on stage. It was like a complete celebrity event. They actually filmed it for a DVD release which never happened. I ended up missing it because I was in business school and there were some important exams coming up.
Then in 2005, he announced a concert in Bangalore. The fans said we’ve got to play a role in this, and we approached the organizer. When the first announcement came up, there was a press conference that there’s going to be a concert in a month from when the announcement happened. We went and approached the organizer and said we want to volunteer and help make the concert a success.
While they were a little reluctant – they didn’t want us to see some of the not-so-nice things of what goes on behind the stage from the business aspect – we approached them and they said, “Come on, you have to help us sell some tickets.” We organized as a group of about 40 people and we spent a month doing publicity. We would go hang out at all the music stores in the main malls of Bangalore and publicize the concert and sell tickets.
That gave us access to being part of the crew at the venue during the concert. We had written to Rahman sir saying we’ll be there, would love to meet you, and he had connected me to his friend based in Canada, Ganesh, who used to travel with Rahman sir around the world for concerts. Rahman sir connected me to him and said, “Keep in touch with him and he will make it happen.”
October 8th, 2005, was the concert. October 7th, the whole day we were at the venue trying to get everything organized. Someone came up with this brainchild of taking the album art of every release of Rahman sir’s till then and making a montage in Rahman sir’s face outline. We had a couple of very creative fans – Bharat from Chennai and Rajiv from Bangladesh – who put together that montage. We printed it on something like a four-by-five-feet canvas, framed it, and we wanted to gift it to Rahman sir.
What happened when you finally met Rahman sir?
On that day, we didn’t hear from the organizers because they were obviously very cautious and wanted to ensure that his privacy and security were maintained. In the evening, we had Sivamani and others come up and start setting up the stage. We met Sivamani and all these musicians, and that itself, even if we hadn’t met Rahman sir, we would have gone back happy.
Finally, at nine or ten in the night, he walks out on stage and literally everyone is frozen. We watched the rehearsals go on for about two hours. We try to signal to Ganesh that we are here, would like to meet him. I tell everyone else, “Keep your expectations low, may or may not happen, but don’t lower your guard – we still have to get the concert through the next day.”
We had an incredible team of people. That’s where Nazeef came up that day and said he was not part of our group that had approached the sponsors – he had independently approached them and they said join the other group. Back then, to me, Nazeef was still a kid, still in college, and he came and said, “Yeah, join us,” and he started working as part of our team. That was the first day I met Nazeef.
The rehearsals happened, and at the end we didn’t hear anything. All the musicians put their instruments down and we thought it was time to go. Then Ganesh called and said, “Sir wants to meet you.”
He walked down from the stage – we were all standing in the front rows watching the rehearsals – he came up and his first comment was, “So Gopal, are you married?” I was like, “No, I’m not married.” I always wondered why he asked that question, but then later in another discussion I realized that he had a perception that fans were typically very young people who are impressionable. In their young age they get caught in this “we love somebody,” and then when they move on to the next stage of life, they forget all of that and move on.
Some of the people I mentioned, like Subramanian, had been in touch with Rahman sir when they were doing the website, and then when they disappeared, I think he got the impression that when people get busier with other things in life, they drop all this and move on. So I think that’s the first thing he said to me – it’s funny in a way, but also speaks to the journey that fans go through in their lives.
He asked us to gather at a side stage next to the main stage. All of us went there and obviously there was a little bit of chaos. He was trying to calm everyone down. There’s a concert tomorrow, it’s midnight, and he spent over an hour speaking with everybody, posing with everyone. We gave him that gift and he took it and posed for pictures with that.
First-hand, we got to see what an incredibly nice human he is. Then of course he went back to the hotel so he could refresh and be ready for the next day.
What happened on the day of the concert?
The next day again we were there on the ground trying to get all the seating in place, and some of us were playing the role of ushers. While we were on the grounds we had work to do – we couldn’t just simply sit in the first row and watch the concert – but nobody was complaining because we had met him. Everyone was still hungover from the previous night from meeting him, so everyone was in high spirits.
If you’ve lived in Bangalore, you know it never gets humid, but if it gets humid, you know it’s going to rain. That morning it got really humid. Everyone was worried. This was in Palace Grounds. That evening, six o’clock people start coming in, concert is supposed to begin at seven, and the clouds are dark. It’s not looking great.
There’s a delay because they’re still unsure if things are ready on the stage, and then it starts pouring really hard. For nearly an hour and a half it rains. Most of the crowd goes back – there’s obviously a lot of clamor saying, “We need our refunds.” Some people decide to stay back.
After an hour and a half, the rain stops. Sivamani and some others come back out on the stage to see the state of things. Everyone is like, “We don’t know if the concert is going to happen or maybe it will get rescheduled to the next day.” Then he comes out on stage and says, “We are going to perform. Let’s get this all set up and we are going to perform.”
By that point, since most of the crowd had left, there was a very small crowd. Whoever was left just gathered in front like it was a rock concert – everyone forgot the seats and just gathered in front of the stage. We were expecting about 50,000 people to attend, and roughly maybe seven to eight thousand people were there finally, which is still remarkable given how much rain there was that day.
He came out and performed. I think he still performed 30 of the 40 songs that were on the set list. Some of the magical moments for us – “Meenaxi” was then a new release and he performed songs from that. From “Water,” the film had not released but the song had leaked out on the internet, and Sukhwinder Singh and Sadhana Sargam performed that song on stage. Whoever was left, many of them didn’t even know which song it was.
We had a blast listening to all these somewhat newer and less-known songs. We were all completely drenched, but we’ll never forget that night. It’s a very special day not just because it was the first time we met him, it was the first concert, but the rain added its own touch of making it even more special.
What happened after that first meeting?
After that, I got a bit more regular in corresponding with him, staying in touch with him. He would occasionally call. Towards the end of the first decade of this century, as social media started to come up, we started to branch out. Orkut was one of the platforms back then – there was a fan named Vaidoor who had created a Rahman group on it, and the fan base continued to expand.
I started to take on a bit more of a closer role. I convinced him that we need a website, we need an official source for what is the home of all your music. This was still before the days of YouTube and Twitter and Facebook where artists could directly communicate with fans. We wanted to create the authoritative source of all things Rahman.
He connected me to the MD of Sony Music in India because Sony had registered “arrrahman.com” for the “Vande Mataram” microsite and then it was dormant for a long time. Sony transferred that domain to sir and sir said, “Here it is, take it and do what you want.”
Vijay and I worked with a creative agency in Mumbai to create that website. He had a vision for it – he wanted the seven doors to heaven and he even offered to create a theme for each of those doors. Obviously with everything on his plate, some of those things never happened, but we had some very interesting plans for the website including merchandise and special access for fans.
I started to travel to Mumbai where Rahman sir had set up another studio and started to record there. By then, Vijay had started to work for Rahman sir formally and managed all of his affairs in Mumbai. I used to travel to Mumbai or Chennai occasionally when Rahman sir was there for either we had to review the creatives for the website or something like that.
Tell me about Rahman sir attending your wedding.
I was getting married in 2008, and as you would do with anyone you know, it’s disrespectful to not invite anyone you know. So I went and invited Rahman sir as well. I went to Chennai, met him in his house, and gave him the invitation.
Two days before my wedding, he calls me and says, “I’m coming.” So he came and attended my wedding, which was incredible. Nazeef was there at the wedding as well, so was Vijay.
What’s been your experience with Rahman sir’s personality over the years?
I think the conclusion I got to was: came for the music but staying for the man. I think he’s beautiful just in terms of his values, the person he is. We live in a world where we struggle to find role models, and I think he’s the kind of person who is obviously extremely successful but still very much tied to his roots, very humble. I think all the people who have been on your show before me have probably used that word, but I don’t think you can use it enough to describe the person he is.
He conveys a set of values that are inspiring. Sometimes there is often a bit of a negative association with the word “fan” – that fans can be on a spectrum and many tend to be on the fanatic spectrum where you get so obsessed that you become intrusive, you become disruptive to who you are a fan of.
One of the things that I have seen with most Rahman fans is they have embraced what he embodies and been trying to be more responsible. Yes, you are a fan, yes you are interested in him, yes you are obsessed with him, but not in a way where you lose sight of what your life is. There is a level of responsibility we all have channeled into our personal lives which is reinforced based on what he has himself done in terms of being hardworking, trying to be the best in whatever you do, but still you can be very humble, very down-to-earth, very giving.
If one thing we’ve all tried to be careful about is not to misuse that association and use it for personal benefit that puts him in a sticky spot or is in any way embarrassing or troublesome for him. Rahman fans, for the most part, have been with him for over two decades. They are fans of Rahman but they are also fans of music first, which means you’ll appreciate good music no matter where it comes from.
Any memorable moments from his concerts or interactions?
He’s very open to meeting fans. I’ve been at so many concerts. He’ll always – on the one hand, some of us who know him more closely have a little more freedom to ask him things, but on the other hand, we should not become gatekeepers to others. But he’s the sort of guy who if 100 people come, he’ll meet all hundred and speak with them, pose with them.
Virtually every concert that I’ve been at, people like Vijay and now Nazeef try to get the fans in a way that they get to meet with sir, sir gets to meet them, but at the same time it does not disturb him in his rehearsals or everything that needs to happen for what the concert has to be.
I think one example from a New York concert – I had gone with a couple of fans and we had to go from the hotel to the venue. The venue was about a 20-minute drive from the hotel. Sir asked, “Why don’t you all come with me to the venue?” They had come in their car, so they said they would drive and come on their own. So he said, “Gopal, you come with me.”
We went in a stretch limo which can seat many people, and there’s me and there’s Ganesh. Sir looks at Ganesh and said, “So now we’ve trapped this guy. Let’s talk about how to get him married!”
Another time, this was the first performance in New York after “Sivaji” had come out, and I just casually looked at the set list and told him, “You’re performing in New York and you don’t have ‘New York Nagaram’ on your list.” He didn’t react then, but when the show started, out of the blue he performed it. I think he’s completely open to feedback and not in the mold of “I know best.” He’s much more open to input from all around.
How has the fan community evolved with social media?
What has changed in this decade – as social media took off in the early 2010s, I convinced him that he needs to be on Twitter and Facebook. Initially he was like, “You guys run it.” In a way that was good because in social media, often you say something spontaneously and sometimes it can backfire on you. In a sense, we acted as a filter where he would send things to us and we would look at it from all angles and say, “This looks fine, let’s put it out there.”
Over time, he’s gotten more comfortable. Now of course he has his own Instagram and he posts himself. I think particularly in the last year, given that he’s not had to travel as much, I think he’s been even more active on social media.
What has changed in terms of the fan community is the traditional groups have sort of dissipated. In the traditional groups, many were able to separate their personal lives from their online interests – you could sign up as whoever and many did, they signed up with anonymous names. In the world of Facebook, it has to be the real you, and not everyone necessarily wants to be part of formal groups.
Also, there are closed universes like WhatsApp where there’s no way to search if there’s a group like this. If you know somebody who’s on a group, then you could get invited to it. What that has meant is that the world of fans has become very fragmented. We obviously interact more directly with sir himself, which I think is a great thing because there are no filters.
Some of us continue to meet in person. There’s Prasad, one of the fans here in the US, and he’s a fantastic host. He’ll get a group of us together every now and then in his house and he has some of the best home audio gear I’ve seen. We’ll just spend two days playing everything and appreciating the music.
Any message for Rahman sir?
The only thing I can tell him is thank you. Keep doing what you’re doing. We have no way to teach you what to do – you have been a teacher, you’ve been bringing new things to us, scaling new horizons. Please continue to do that. The one thing we can offer is we will continue to be on that journey with you, sir.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I think Rahman sir’s mother obviously was the biggest influence on his life, and it’s been incredible being by her side in many concerts. Before she became too ill to be mobile, she would be at every concert because she would travel the world, sit in front of the stage, and watch every performance. In a few of them, I’ve had the good fortune of being by her side because sir would entrust the care of his mother to people he trusted.
I’ve been by her side many times and the experience is surreal. When you’re by her side, you can tell that this is a special person. She has an aura. She was a woman of few words – she would sit down and take in the concert, but you could see by the radiance on her face that there was a feeling of having accomplished something that she had set out on maybe 20 years ago when she had to make some decisions because of circumstances.
You could see that there was that sense of fulfillment and very quiet, humble sense of accomplishment – that maybe the decisions I made 20 years ago have turned out to be right. Even when one would visit sir at home, she was an amazing host. I happened to be at sir’s place a couple of times on Eid when they prepare biryani and serve it to everyone. I am vegetarian, and when I go, sir’s mom would immediately send someone to get vegetable biryani.
Always welcoming people, making sure they’re taken care of, giving everyone tea every few hours. Many of the studio staff today, you can see them follow those same principles that she established in terms of how the place was managed, being a host to many artists and technicians who would come visiting.
You can only take solace from the fact that she got to see some of the pinnacles that sir achieved. From something like the Oscar stage acknowledging her role – “I have my mother” – I think that kind of acknowledgement she was there to see it.
