Multifaceted Farhan is a true rockstar!

Farhan Akhtar as a Rockstar!

In fact, the actor-director is now concentrating on a musical career while he has also spent a record one-and-a-half years training to play Milkha Singh in his upcoming film Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.

The musical journey which is known to have started started with Rock On!! and continued in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is taking Farhan Akhtar on a completely different track. After having sung altogether eight songs in the two films, he’s now onto what looks like a serious musical career.

Moreover, Farhan spoke in Bangalore recently while in a rock concert for college students Karbonn Colossus 2013 organised by Presidency College about forming his own band Farhan Live over two months ago,, and that “After Rock On he wanted to further explore the musical side of things and they felt the time was right, young people in colleges listen to very different kinds of music while he was speaking about his decision.

Farhan and his interest in music

Rejecting the idea that his interest in music is a recent phenomenon, Farhan said that he have been interested in music as far as he can remember. In fact a teacher came home and taught singing and playing the harmonium when they were kids. But he was more of a Beatles person. By the time he was 17 or 18, he seriously started playing the guitar and that he taught himself to play it. But as a fact Rock On!! gave him a valid reason to take his music seriously and it seems all that crowded is coming to good use now.

Multifaceted Farhan

Farhan is one of those rare species in Bollywood who is multifaceted enough to be a director, actor, producer, scriptwriter, playback singer, lyricist even if it sounds that he is taking on too much.

Perhaps he feels as he says that he don’t know how is it a limitation, and that how can people put a limit on themselves?

Starting out his journey in the Hindi film industry as an assistant director on Lamhe, Farhan turned director with the coming-of-age film Dil Chahta Hai. The film re-set the course of Hindi films in 2001 and it was his first independent directorial venture and from his own production house while he was 27.

The great Javed  Akhtar is his father..

The great Javed Akhtar screenwriter and lyricst Javed Akhtar is his father, he says that he is 50 per cent of his genes while he laughs and continues saying his father being a prolific writer,  was always supportive and never overbearing and always gave him and his sister (filmmaker Zoya Akhtar) the courage to go out and try things without wondering if it’ll work.” In fact, brother and sister was also seen to have worked together on Luck By Chance and ZNMD.

After steering the rather-successful Don 2 last year, a sequel to the remake of the immensely popular Don, Farhan took up a rather challenging project. He is pushing the envelope with his next release, the much talked-about Bhaag Milkha Bhaag which happens to be a biographical movie of the athlete Milkha Singh known as The Flying Sikh, which will release this July.

The Journey continues...

Farhan has been in rigorous training to look the part of the man who clocked 45.60 seconds in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. It’s rather unheard of in Bollywood that an actor dedicates that kind of time for one film.

He says, that he has actually worked on the film for over one-and-a-half years and that’s what the film required for him to do justice to it. He added,  he was committed to do it, if that’s what it takes.

Farhan calls it an “intense experience” and says it’s difficult to put in a few words the kind of preparation he’s been doing but as a fact what he did helped him push himself to recreate a legend like Milkhaji and it’s extremely satisfying.

Moreover, Milkha Singh also gifted Farhan his Olympic shoes which according to Farhan is  most-prized possession. It’s what he wore and ran in the 1960 Olympics and was restored by the shoe-maker and that he gifted it to him as a good-luck mascot.

Coming back to Farhan's music, he says the band is currently performing previously written material and they are in talks for collaborations, then hope to work with a music producer to put out original work and do collabs as well.

Farhan says that he would like to explore the electronic music side, and hope to work with the brilliant Shankar Mahadevan, Karsh Kale, Medieval Punditz while he says it’s a good time, when others want to know about Indian music.

They are also meeting with Deep Purple on March 14 in Nepal, and they will decide what they are doing. He continues saying that it’s an amazing thought just to share stage with them  and he have been to two of their concerts in India and they are planning to do about two songs together now. In fact, that the band is also working on incorporating technology and live-tweeting their concerts.

There could be no doubt that “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” would be an absolute power-packed entertainment for us. The count down starts now!

Note: Adaptation from an online sources.

(AW:Samrat Biswas)