I have to thank the 1980s for its soul-stirring music. It added so much melody and cheer to my life -- there hasn't been so much lovely music like that since, recalls Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
Key Points
The single biggest change that the 1980s brought into my life -- apart, obviously, from meeting my husband and marrying him :) -- was The Music.
In India I had been weaned on an odd, uneven diet of ABBA, Boney M, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond, Anne Murray, Nana Mouskouri, Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Ali Akbar Khan, Madhushala, Rabindrasangeet, K L Saigal, a bunch of Hindi songs thrown in from Sholay, Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, Noorie, Nazia Hassan, Umrao Jaan and possessing no knowledge of the contemporary music of, say, the Beatles or Bob Dylan.
A return to America to study in college there, in the mid-'80s, introduced me to this special and very memorable decade of the grandest rock and pop music.
It was such an especially wondrous time for music that when people play oldies these days, yes, many are singles from the '80s. The greatest musicians that ever lived lent a famous hit or two to this glorious span of years.
In 1984, after landing back in the US, I remember walking into a large department store in Baltimore called Bamburgers and being completely enthralled by the beautiful and novel strains of Purple Rain that was rocking the teen clothing section. Prince's hit song (he's wearing such an intriguing throwback-in-history garb on the record cover) had such energy and unique vibes that, even 42 years later, it can charm you. What a wonderful song it is!
From a Sam Goody music shop in a local mall, one day, the dulcet and fresh voice of this new young singer, Whitney Houston, wafted out and my mom and I just stopped in our tracks, transfixed, and made a beeline into an outlet to buy the 7 inch vinyl of All At Once.
In the '80s too arrived the melancholy, husky sound of Tracy Chapman and her marvellous Fast Car -- You got a fast car, Is it fast enough so we can fly away? -- that raced up the charts.
And there were funky, electric songs like Footloose, Ghostbusters, Down Under, One Night In Bangkok, Burning Down The House, Jump, Money For Nothing, Rock You Like A Hurricane that climbed billboards in the US and across the pond in Britain.
Sexy, seductive, sassy Madonna, with her unique hussy fashion style, unleashed the slutty Like A Virgin. Red-haired, baby-faced Cyndi Lauper bopped about to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Paul McCartney crooned about No More Lonely Nights and the iconic Eric Clapton lustily sang about the difficulties of being a Forever Man.
Lionel Richie, in an as-smooth-as-chocolate voice, said Hello. Stevie Wonder called to tell us about love, even as Foreigner was looking for it and Air Supply made it out of nothing at all.
REO Speedwagon taught us about fighting feelings and Bryan Adams acquainted us with Heaven. And Tina Turner didn't think love had anything to do with anything.
How can one forget the gravelly tones of Rod Stewart's Forever Young? Or the magical Freddie Mercury and Queen feelingly belting out I Want To Break Free? And Mark King's band Level 42's Something About You. Or Phil Collins and Against All Odds.
It was also the era when Bruce Springsteen hit it big singing in his gritty, unmistakable roar the anthem Born In The USA. Wow!
To entrance us all, along came a sprightly musician with a single, rhinestone-encrusted glove and a jauntily angled felt hat. Yup, MJ and this Thriller with that evil laugh went on to become the sensation that took over the 1980s.
If the decade wasn't good enough already, it gave us We Are The World. A single created for charity to aid famine-stricken Ethiopia, it was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones. A whole medley of the classiest 80s voices came together to sing this number that took your breath away, so wickedly good it was!
The 1980s saw the modalities of music change too. Records began to be slowly phased out and the world trotted out to get stacks of TDK and Maxell blank tapes and tape decks (and those wretched tinny-sounding two-in-ones).
We were now smack in the middle of the Mixed Tape Epoch. Everyone sat down to make a mixed tape for each occasion. I had probably easily 70-75 tapes for any mood, labelled with names like Trashy, Fresh Pop, Slow Rock and the mysterious Tape 3.
There was that unique joy in burning a cassette that took you on a whole kind of journey in 30 minutes of play time: Cheering you up, to start with, with We Built That City, Every Breath You Take, Caribbean Queen and Cheri Cheri Lady and kicking you into a highly soppy romantic mood with Crazy For You, Nights In White Satin, Lady In Red, Broken Wings, Total Eclipse of The Heart, Careless Whisper, Missing You, Don't You Forget About Me and then taking you off dreaming with 99 Red Balloons, Drive, Sweet Dreams, before charging you up with I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Billie Jean and then, in a bizarro touch, toss in Disco Deewane to shake things up.
This wild, fantastic decade of music, of course, taught us how to dance.
Well, my husband will say I never did learn but at least it gave us some moves, no matter how weird. And we were introduced to discos and dance parties.
I started the 1980s living in Ranchi, in then Bihar, where we were sleepily and incongruously running a decade behind the latest trends. Then, I then reached the US in '84-'85, before being catapulted to a heady late ’80s Bombay, where I also went to college.
So my run-ins with discos followed this strange arc.
Ranchi had not really heard of discos in those years, although HSL colony (where Mahendra Singh Dhoni grew up) had a 'disc'. And the flock of Russians who were posted to sort out the heavy-duty equipment in the dreary HEC engineering colony at Dhurwa surely must have whooped it up Friday nights at Russian Hostel, to their own tunes.
Mumbai, on the other hand, had quite a few grooving discos -- the fancy 1900s at the Taj, The Cellar that attracted a lot of international airline crew, snazzy RG's and loads of dance evenings like Valentine's Day extravaganzas, the Navy Ball and jive nights at Byculla Mechanics.
The music opened up the world of dance. So did, of course, Michael Jackson, the slickest dancer the world has ever seen.
There were certain numbers that everyone loved to dance to. The moment the familiar opening bars of Walk Like An Egyptian, 1999, She Drives Me Crazy, West End Girls, Walking On Sunshine and many ’70s Doors songs
played, everyone would enthusiastically swarm to the floor to swing their hips.
I have to thank the 1980s for its soul-stirring music. It added so much melody and cheer to my life -- there hasn't been so much lovely music like that since.
Those 10 years left us with a song for all moments as we closed that decade with powerful stuff like If You Don't Know Me By Now or Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting. They were golden music years... If We Could Only Turn Back Time!
