The Lucky Ali interview: On ‘Intezaar’, first inspiration, Elvis Presley and more  

On a summer afternoon, WION got the opportunity to interact with Lucky Ali in Delhi where the singer had come to promote his upcoming album 'Intezaar'.

Off the record, the singer readily spoke on all subjects; Russia-Ukraine, the impact of the war, inflation including Bollywood gossip...who’s the most intelligent actor, the non-intelligent actor, the most slappable actor, (that was the day when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock and the rest is history). Be it global issues or regular gossip, Ali seemed like a patient listener who cares deeply about others' opinions.

During the tete-a-tete, the singer spoke about music, war and much more. Here are the excerpts.

Where are you planning to head with your new album, ‘Intezaar’?

A: I really don’t know where I am going, I really don’t. But for as long as I know where I’m going, I will keep doing the work that I know of, which is music and help in whatever way I can to make some kind of difference hopefully...Even if I am not here, the music should be here.

It’s not every day that we get to sit and chat like this, but now that I have got the opportunity, I really want to ask, remember the viral video of you in Goa? What happened exactly back then?

A: After the pandemic, I really needed to go somewhere, I didn’t want to go to the mountains, so I went to the beach, so we drove down to the beach and then my friends live there and they said that there’s this group of musicians and they are very talented. It was a multi-cultural band. So I went to listen to them and enjoyed their performance, and at the end of their performance, they started playing my song. After that I was kind of.... you know obliged to you know then play the song. That was the expectation and that was what I did. I started making mistakes and fumbling and what not.

Do you remember how music happened? Your inspirations?

A: My inspiration for the music was,...umm...I mean, of course, my parents were movie makers and there were a lot of artists who came home so that’s where the education started or the feeling towards music, and I think I gather my inspiration from anything. It’s just there, it comes to me. Anything could be a form of inspiration, even a child saying something can make sense, and that could become a song and yeah, there’s no given formula I function with.

Every creative person I know has a method. What has been yours?

A: Confusion...confusion has been my method. That’s my method. If you even come to my studio you will find things just in such a haphazard way I’m embarrassed to call people, it’s a very messy studio and that is how I function. So I try to make order out of chaos, so where there is chaos I'm very good at sorting things out.

So do you remember the time when you thought, oh I want to be a musician?

A: I didn’t want to be in the film industry, to be honest, first of all, I didn’t like the place. I didn’t like the place because, I mean my father had had his run, and he was on the farm for twenty years when he didn’t work and he was happier there. For me that made more sense, he was happier being where he was so that became a kind of thing for me. So when dad died, my love for the industry also faded away. But I needed to express and the only thing that I really understood was my instrument, my thoughts and getting them together. For a long time people said, man decide what you want to be an actor or musician, what do you want to be. I said I can be anything I want to be. But it was very hard for people to accept that no you have to do this or you have to do that. They have to-dos, the cant dos, I had to move away from that, to find a way to do what I do.

So what pushed you exactly towards music?

A: As a child, we saw Elvis Presley. So that was something, I mean he was this person with a guitar. That was the image I wanted to be. I don’t remember his songs, I mean there are some songs that I do remember. And everybody at that time was you so singing and doing something like that, you know impersonating Elvis Presley. That’s what I took away from it, I wanted to be a musician. I got my first guitar when I was thirteen years old, and I felt, oh man, now that I have the guitar, I got the music. But it started from that.

What would you like to bring back from the 90s to this era?

A: Nothing, there’s nothing that I want to change. I'm actually very grateful to the almighty for giving me this opportunity to have this journey. Now what’s left of the journey is what I think of.