When AR Rahman met Mick Jagger

Music maverick AR Rahman has been a consistent news-maker, whether for his Oscars or otherwise. Recently, he created much buzz with his latest collaboration with music legend Mick Jagger under the band Superheavy, which also comprises Joss Stone, Dave Stewart and Damian Marley. So how did the group come about? “Some things in life are never planned,” says Rahman.

“I was doing a lot of movies in 2008. At the end there were a lot of dark things that happened in my life. I lost my sound engineer and we had those floods in Chennai. We had so many negative things. I was going through a lot of stress in my work. At that point of time, I got this call from Dave saying, ‘AR, would you be interested in collaborating with me and Mick?’”

Rahman recalls, “I was like... anything to get out of here at this point. I was doing Oscar promotions, so the first meeting happened probably at that time when I was in LA, when I was doing promotions for Oscars before Slumdog Millionaire. We met and after that some sessions happened. Then I met Joss, Damien and the whole band and the lovely players from Jamaica.”

Rahman, who has become a name to reckon with in Hollywood, is currently working on Alex Kurtzman’s Welcome to People and an animated movie which, he says, is tentatively titled Monkeys of Mumbai. So is he bored of Bollywood? “I can never be bored of doing music for Bollywood. I am cherry picking and will only take up interesting projects. I have Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar and Rajinikanth’s Rana coming out.”

As for Superheavy, they have already released their two singles — the debut Miracle Worker and Satyameva Jayathe — a foot-tapping patriotic anthem that was released before the Indian Independence Day. The album too will be released soon.