Nazia Hassan becomes a household name overnight with her first LP Disco Deewane

The innocence of her face, wide-eyed and schoolgirlish, effuses the seduction of an Indian Lolita. Her twin pigtails, cheap cotton overalls and the glow of a single red strobe light emphasise the well-scrubbed cleanness of her image. But in the parting of her lips and in the movement of the hand-held microphone is contained a success story that is nothing short of revolutionising the Indian pop music industry.As the Pakistani teenager prepares for another day at school in London, she is 6,000 miles away from the scene of her success, shruggingly casual about her star status and cool about her future prospects. Back in India, record company executives gloat over her name, established singing stars shudder at the competition, and buyers for her first LP Disco Deewane keep pouring in. A 16-year-old with a little bit of help from her younger brother has taken them all on in one go.When Nazia Hassan's disc was released on April 3, it went gold the very first day, with a sale of 100,000 LPs and Dolby cassettes; in under three weeks it went platinum, with over 200,000 records and cassettes sold. In India, such a sales record is without precedent. No album has ever gone gold in less than two months, and platinum in under six. Polydor took seven months to sell 200,000 pressings of its best seller - the sound-track from Qurbani - in which Nazia made her debut with the Aap Jaisa Koi number. The Bobby album went platinum in eight months, and the sound-track from Sholay, another Polydor best seller, hit the platinum mark in seven. Lata Mangeshkar's biggest seller, Live At Albert Hall, took nearly a year to go gold, and is yet to turn platinum. No Jagjit-Chitra record to date has sold 200,000 copies.Massive Publicity: The selling of Nazia Hassan is not only a pop music phenomenon in the pulsating rhythms of her disco beat. It's a tribute to the massive onslaught of publicity and sales promotion hype that is unparalleled in the Indian record industry. The launching of her first LP was undertaken with the kind of blow-by-blow marketing build-up that is usually reserved for a big new consumer product or a big-budget Bombay movie. "They succeeded in selling a record like a new brand of toothpaste," admits a rival executive of HMV's mammoth sales campaign mounted for the Hassan LP.Says P. K. Banerjee, national marketing manager of the Gramophone Company of India (UCI) which owns the HMV's label: "Our modest sales estimate is about half a million albums by July this year. This will be the largest shipment of a single album from any Indian record-manufacturing factory." Last week, the record was selling an estimated, 12,000 LPs and cassettes a day. Rhythm House, Bombay's best-known music shop, sold a record-breaking 675 discs in two days. And police had to be summoned to disperse crowds collected before HMV's Bombay office to listen to a free playing of the disco numbers. Nazia Hassan's face, blown up in posters, her name, ballooned on bill-boards and bus-hoardings, and her voice, echoing from every speaker, made her a household name overnight, and her music almost a national anthem in the passing.At Rs 33 an album, the record company will gross a cool Rs 1.65 crore by July. The sales figures refer only to sales in India, though the record is a number one best seller in Pakistan and in the Indian pockets in England as well. Both the Hassans and Biddu, the music producer, will earn Rs 2 each on the sale of each record, which may not amount to much in international terms, but is virtually unknown in India. Biddu, the London-based Indian musician who owns Subiddu Music, the record company-that created best sellers like Dance, Little Lady, Dance by Tina Charles and Kung-fu Fighting by Carl Douglas a few years ago, reckons he will earn a minimum of 35,000 (Rs 6.3 lakh) from the LP, which isn't much, he told India today on the phone from his London home last fortnight, conceding at the same time that he was unaware of the extent of the record's success in India.Marketing Strategy: Behind the high-pressure sales technique and Hassan's throbbing voice quality, however, is a story of how Hassan was persuaded to produce the record after her unsavoury experience in being associated with Bombay film star Feroz Khan (she was alleged, by Bombay's gossip rags, to have had a love affair with him), how two top record companies fought tooth and nail to bag her, and how the marketing strategy was meticulously implemented."The credit for discovering Nazia must go to Feroz Khan," admits Biddu. According to him, he found her voice "so refreshing and youthful" and Nazia herself "so easy to work with" after the Qurbani record that he "tried to model her as a sort of IndianTina Charles." Biddu says that she has enormous star potential, but it depends on how much she wants to be a star herself and go along with the industry. Bhaskar Menon, chief of international operations for EMI, the English parent company of GCI, adds: "Nazia has a remarkable voice and Biddu has a remarkable sound. Together they make remarkable music."Composer Biddu: A golden touchIt was Menon who got Mansur Bukhari, EMI's chief in Pakistan, to approach Hassan's father, a wealthy businessman who divides his time between Karachi and London, for a possibility of getting her to record an album for them. The Feroz Khan episode had apparently soured relationships between Hassan and Polydor; Nazia's parents were diffident about letting their daughter enter the big commercial market. Finally Vinoth Kumar, GCI's London branch manager, got in touch with Biddu and, through him, to the family. The man who softened the family's initial reluctance was Ghulam Ali, the Pakistani ghazal singer.Overwhelming Response: Biddu, Nazia and Zoheb worked on the project over Christmas to deliver the first scratch tape in Calcutta this January. Biddu had suggested Gayen Milkar as the title, GCI didn't think much of it. They came up with Nazia Jaisa Koi. This time, Biddu said no, and went back to record two tracks afresh Disco Deewane 1 and 2 and named the album. Disco Deewane. The name stuck. The cover's basic design was executed in London, but layout changes were made in Calcutta. Thirty-five rolls of colour film were exposed on Nazia to get the final transparency of her right. Then on March 23, the "lead single" was cut. GCI planned their sales campaign in three phases. Cutting the "lead single" is an advanced marketing technique to test-market the album through pre-releasing a 45 rpm disc - 30,000 were pressed and sold at a throwaway price of Rs 6 each. They were a sell-out. The response was equally overwhelming from receivers of 2,000 singles distributed free. Till March 23, however, the original scratch-tape was jealously guarded in the briefcase of Anil Sud, GCI's dapper managing director and two other executives. Although the album was slated for release through HMV's 1,500 authorised dealers - and as many private retailers - on April 8, the consignments were pilfered in railway yards which forced the company to advance the release date to April 3.It suited Nazia excellently. It happened to be her 16th birthday. But the celebrations really took place among the GCI staff who knew they had licked their rivals, Polydor India, with their subsequent launch of another Pakistani disco singer from Canada, Musarrat singing to Boney M's music. The shock-waves of the Disco Deewane success were felt by everyone, including the most haloed of Indian light music personalities. Within a week of the album's release. Lata Mangeshkar, the jealous mistress of popular music, felt threatened enough to fly to Calcutta for an evening's concert for which she charged Rs 3 lakh.Hassan's runaway success could intimidate not only Mangeshkar, but the entire Indian pop music industry which is almost wholly dependent on best-selling film songs. Mangeshkar has had to be placated by being offered the same advertising and sales promotion budget - about Rs 4 lakh - as Hassan. But it is doubtful whether she will prove another scoop for HMV. Her offerings for next year an lp of Meera bhajans and a ghazal album teaming her with only Jagjit Singh - may be pale in comparison to the next Nazia-Biddu effort which will hit the market at the end of 1981.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Feb 26, 2014 11:40 IST--- ENDS ---

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Nazia Hassan becomes a household name overnight with her first LP Disco Deewane

The selling of Nazia Hassan is not only a pop music phenomenon in the pulsating rhythms of her disco beat. It's a tribute to the massive onslaught of publicity and sales promotion hype that is unparalleled in the Indian record industry.

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