“I Made Everyone A Lyricist,” Says Pritam, “But I Missed Amitabh”

MUMBAI- Music composer Pritam, whose recently released album ‘Metro… In Dino’ has been a success, shared that he was pleasantly surprised when he learned that Amitabh Bhattacharya had written the lyrics for ‘Dev.D’. Amitabh was Pritam’s assistant for a long time, but Pritam never saw this side of him.

He said, “Amitabh was one of my first assistants. He came to me for work, but I was quite new to the industry and was trying to make my way in. I thought he sings; he never used to write. I used to make everyone a lyric writer”.

He wondered, “Amitabh Verma, he was an editor at my studio. I made him a lyric writer. Mayur Puri was Sanjay Gadhvi’s assistant. I made him a lyric writer by asking him to write a scratch. I was like, ‘How did Amitabh Bhattacharya get out of my sight?’ Ashish Pandit came to sing. I asked him to write a scratch for the presentation”.

“As Hindi is not my first language, I don’t write the scratches. I write anything, the director is coming. When I got to know he wrote for ‘Dev.D’, I said, ‘This is our Pimpu, he wrote this!’. I think the first song he wrote for me was ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai’. After that, we have been like, now I have formed an equation. Now I trust him a lot with lyrics,” he added.

Pritam shared that he is really excited about a new idea from director Anurag Basu. He said that Anurag has shared a new idea with him, and he is as excited for the yet-to-be-titled project as he was for ‘Life in a Metro’.

“I don’t know when Anurag is going to make it, but I’m super duper excited about that idea. A brand new animal. I hope he makes it fast,” he added. (IANS)