The film industry has always been viewed as a competitive arena and has been demonised with the the dog-eat-dog syndrome. However, it has been seen , in a few cases, that the composers have come together to create melodies and masterpieces , in the real quest of music. I shall cite a few such cases where ,forgetting their seniority and the rivalry, composers have collaborated in giving the music in the films. These, obviously , exclude the composers who were part of the same team.
The first and foremost instance is the legendary association of composer Salil Chaudhary for giving background music in so many films, often uncredited, too. The Devdas incident in his own words is worth listening:
"I remember once there was a knock on my door at about 2 am and I found Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh and S.D. Burman standing on my doorstep, the latter wearing a worried expression. Sachin da had been signed up for Bimal's "Devdas", but apparently Bimal had not been happy with his background music for the climactic reels of the film. So, at short notice early the next morning, I was compelled to compose and record four reel's worth of musicfor the ending of "Devdas", uncredited, as our relationships were very cordial."
In fact, Salil Chaudhary gave background music for a lot of films, even when the songs were composed by some other music director. B.R.Chopra who had Ravi as his regular composer engaged Salil Chaudhary for his films such as Kanoon, Waqt and Ittefaq. The list of background music given by him is very long and it is amazing how he could do such a lot of precision work, alongside composing songs of his own films. In fact, for most Hrishikesh Mukherji films , he composed the background music, without being credited, even when the main composer was someone else.
One of the major commercial success was Kala Patthar, whose music was composed by Rajesh Roshan and background music was by Salil Chaudhary.
Laxmikant Pyarelal hit big time in the 70s , when they ruled the Hindi cinema music scene. The success of LP spilled over to the next decade, as other contemporaries were not doing well and the market share of LP skyrocketed.In the late 70s and early 80s, LP had as many as 13 songs out of 33 played in Annual Binaca Geetmala, for 3 years running. Laxmikant Pyarelal were called Long Playing ( the vinyl records which had more songs were called so) and were composing music for many big banners.
One of them was the banner of Subhash Ghai known as Mukta Arts. An interesting thing happened with Krodhi, the 1981 film of Subhash Ghai. They had so much of work that they could not find time to compose the background music of the film. Subhash Ghai had to fall back on his earlier composers Kalyanji Anandji ( Kalicharan) to compose the background score. Though Kalyanji Anandji were senior and LP had assisted them in the 60s, they took up the work. Later Ghai enganed them for Vidhata in 1982.
In the credit titles, it was mentioned : "Music By Kalyanji Anandji" and "Songs composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal"
Listen to the background music of the film Krodhi in this brief clip.
Laxmikant Pyarelal had an explosive debut with Parasmani ( 1963) and followed it up with another chartbusting score in Dosti ( 1964). In the film, one of the two main characters played harmonica or mouth organ in all the songs . One of the dear friends of the composer duo was another 60s debutant, R.D.Burman, who had begun his career with Chhote Nawab ( 1961). In Dosti, the harmonica was played by R.D.Burman , which contributed to the success of the songs. The friendship triumphed over rivalry and the result was a musical treat.
Years later, in one of the films of R.D.Burman called Teri Kasam, a musical contest was shown and as one of the judges, Laxmikant can be seen on-screen. In another song, the maestro was seen to conduct the recording of a song, sung on-screen by Kumar Gaurav. So, while the tunes were prepared by pancham, they were judged by Laxmikant !
Such a good example of comaradeship in the Hindi film music world.
Leaving you with the two songs, one each from Dosti and Teri kasam, which symbolise the friendship between the famous composers.
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