Rock On!! Turns 13: Celebrating The Musically Crafted Tale Of Friendship That Gave Us Farhan Akhtar, The Actor
As Farhan Akhtar’s acting debut, Rock On!!, also featuring Arjun Rampal, Prachi Desai and Purab Kohli, completes 13 years today, let’s revisit this musical treasure that paved a glorious path ahead for its leading man.
In 2001, a new young and successful filmmaker was born in the Indian film industry, who stumped everyone with his tale of friendship among three men in just his first film, Dil Chahta Hai. The filmmaker in question is Farhan Akhtar and he showed a lot of promise with his work, which he followed up with films like Lakshya, Don and Don 2. Then in 2008, on this very day, that filmmaker shifted from behind the camera to its front as a leading man in the 2008 Abhishek Kapoor directorial, Rock On!!
This was a very unconventional step as usually it happens the other way round, but it did happen and that film gave us one of the best actors of our industry today. Rock On!! has gained a cult status over the years and even after 13 years of its release, the film still rages in the hearts of both cine-goers and ardent cinephiles.
The film told the story of four friends who come together to rekindle their friendship, and how music acts as the binding force between them. Abhishek Kapoor presented a tale of friendship sewn with the laces of timeless music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.
Rock On!! is a sweet concoction of many firsts. It gave us a new narrative style by Abhishek Kapoor that broke the rules of a conventional Bollywood film. It was Farhan Akhtar’s debut as an actor, and it also gave a fresh and different kind of soundtrack from the laboratory of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Be it the existential, ‘Pichle Saat Dinon Mein’, the curious case of ‘Socha Hai’, the slow burn of ‘Yeh Tumhari Meri Baatein’, the live wire of its title track or even the cathartic venom of ‘Zehreelay’, each song of the film stands apart and has a certain mystic charm to it.
Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy experimented with a lot of sounds from soft rock, pop rock to trash metal blended with a vivid poetry by Javed Akhtar to evoke a myriad of emotions. Rock On!! has a tremendous depth in its soundtrack and it still feels fresh to this day and age. Abhishek Kapoor’s vision and the film’s music made it what it is today. The film sketched a clutter breaking road map that eventually made way for a different kind of cinema and a soundtrack that became a very important chapter in the book of Bollywood.
Image Source: Instagram/boxofficewala/onlyindian22, imdb
Image Source: Instagram/boxofficewala/onlyindian22, imdb
