Biddu Appiah | The Greatest Pop Star You Never Heard of
I realise that normally when I write about pop it is the esoteric end of things, but this one is solid pop gold. One of the biggest hits of the 70s.
If you don't mind I want to go back to a record I own called Northern Dancer, by the Biddu orchestra. Northern as in Northern Soul, this is one of the many tracks produced in the mid 70s specifically to get soul fans on the dance floor. I acquired a copy in a job lot of soul singles a few years ago:
Biddu Appaiah was born in the late 1940s in Bangalore. A talented musician he fronted an English speaking beat group The Trojans in Bombay in the mid 60s. Obsessed by British pop music he travelled over land from Indian to the UK, arriving in London in 1967, aspiring to produce records by the Beatles, The Who and the Kinks. He met John Lennon but was shocked to find Lennon freshly returned from an Ashram wearing Indian clothes, while he wore a Carnaby Street mod suit.
Although Indian sounds were briefly popular in the 60s he struggled for work, and the his only production credit from swinging London was for the Japanese band the Tigers. This didn’t sell well in the UK, but did give him his first number one hit, albeit in Japan.
After that work dried up, and he used his contacts on the London mod scene to get himself work as a DJ, mainly playing soul. He still wrote and produced on the side, writing a single for Jack Wild, and composing the soundtrack to the Richard Roundtree movie Embassy.
As the 70s came on he gravitated to the Northern Soul scene, working first as a DJ, then cutting his own dance records marketed at Northern Soul crowds, using a crowd of musicians who he called the Biddu Orchestra. He was responsible for a string of Northern Soul floor fillers including The Playthings – "Stop What You're Doing, The Flirtations – "Love A Little Longer”, and the classic “Action Speak Louder Than Words” by the Showstoppers.
He was close friends with Carl Douglas, who he had met in London back in the 60s. Douglas had fronted a London based mod/soul band called Carl Douglas and the Big Stampede. They never made it and Carl ended up working as a DJ and singer on the same circuit as Biddu, who regularly used him as a vocalist on his soul cuts.
This is Carl, back in the 60s.
In 1974 the Biddu Orchestra were following the trends towards disco and working on his first solo LP Blue Eyed Soul, when they cut a novelty track called Kung Fu Fighting with Carl Douglas as featured vocalist.
Written in D Major, and featuring the "chinaman lick" commonly associated with stereotypes of East Asian communities, it also occurs in "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors
It went on to become one of the biggest selling singles of the 70s. The album released under his own name provided some smaller hits, including Summer of ’42.
From then on he was one of the biggest producers and composers in British pop, with huge hits for Tina Charles, Kelly Marie, and Jimmy James, an incredible run of hit singles.
He even worked his magic in France, with a number one hit for Claude Francois.
By this point the Biddu Orchestra included old Johnstonian Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, and their arrangements were increasingly high tempo and electronic, creating a blueprint for the next decade of British electronic dance music. Trevor and Geoff eventually left the Biddu Orchestra to have their own hits:
Biddu still worked on film scores, notably for The Bitch and The Stud.
A particular favourite of mine is his soundtrack to Phantasm, where his mix of disco and electronica prefigured Acid House, and set the tone for horror movie soundtracks for a decade or more.
Disillusioned by punk Biddu returned to India, where he brought his electronic dance template to Bollywood. He provided songs and soundtracks to many major hit films, and revolutionised the industry promoting the singers as the stars not the actors. Among his many triumphs were Qurbani and Disco Deewane.
He turned Urdu playback singers Nazia and Zoheb Hassan into mega stars in Asia, selling over 60m records.
At the same time he had number one hits in Japan (Don't Tell Me This Is Love by Akina Nakamori), and Hong Kong (Sad Theatre by Samantha Lam).
Although almost unknown under his own name he is one of the most successful UK music producers of all time, with mega smash hits across Europe and Asia.
Pop music is unique among all of the arts for it's ability to contain within itself the timeless and the ephemeral, the profound and the banal, and serious and the daft, of all at the same time. There is as much art in pure pop as in the most high brow music. Pop is difficult, obscurantism is safe.
It ain't easy, being cheesy.