Remo Fernandes - Pre-fame Years

Pre-fame Years

After returning, Remo wrote some of his most memorable socio-political songs about life in Goa and India, but had to face rejections from Indian record companies, who believed that there was no market for English music in the country. Besides, in 1980s, there was no air play on radio and television, they were both monopolised by the government, who seem to refuse to accept pop and rock music's existence. "But I knew the record companies were wrong" Remo said. So he recorded his maiden album Goan Crazy and a subsequent album Old Goan Gold on a four-track cassette TEAC Portastudio recorder in his home. In these albums he played all the instruments, sang all voices, and was the only composer of its music and lyrics. He engineered the recording and mixing and designed the album covers. He had cassettes produced in Bombay and personally went about distributing the cassettes from shop to shop in Goa on a yellow scooter along with an illustrated book of poems he wrote, and postcards and t-shirts he designed.

1986 was a turning point in his career when three things happened. The first was being invited to play at an official government function in Goa for the then visiting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. There he sang a song titled 'Hello Rajiv Gandhi' causing a controversy in the local press and then in the national one. But Remo mailed these critical press clippings to the Prime Minister, who immediately replied saying he and his wife Sonia loved the song, and found nothing objectionable in it. This letter, written by the young new Prime Minister of a hitherto conservative country to a pop/rock musician, together with the whole story in pictures, spread like wild fire and was carried in countless publications all over India.

The second significant happening that year was Remo's singing in Bombay at a concert called "Aid Bhopal", held to raise funds for victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy, in which he sang two of his songs, 'Pack that Smack' and 'Ode to Graham Bell'. To his surprise, both his songs were televised by Doordarshan, the single TV channel in India, on four successive Sundays at prime time. In a country with just one monopolistic Government owned and run TV channel at the time, that was tremendous exposure.

The third happening was composing and performing the title song for the hit movie Jalwa, which was released the next year. This last event made him instantly famous due to the popularity of Bollywood cinema and of the Hindi language. Remo's "'Jalwa' was path-breaking; it was a 15-minute piece of creative high-energy improvisation, featuring vocal scatting and a style of Indian flute playing which singers, musicians and music directors in India copy and emulate to this day.