Cliff Richard’s The Young Ones has a Dev Anand connection. Read here

Long before YouTube playlists and Spotify made musical influences easy to trace, Bollywood had its own way of borrowing a little bit of inspiration from the West. One rather interesting example connects British pop star Cliff Richard to none other than the charming Dev Anand.

What does Cliff Richard’s The Young Ones have to do with Dev Anand?

It is to be noted that the British singer spent the first few years of his life in India. Richard’s The Young Ones, released in 1962, was the title song of his 1961 musical film of the same name. Written by Sid Tepper and Roy C Bennett, the song became a huge hit, spending six weeks at No. 1 on the UK singles chart. Nearly two decades later, its musical DNA found its way into Hindi cinema.

This time around it was in the dashing star Dev Anand’s Des Pardes (1978), the romantic drama that he produced, directed and starred in, which also marked the debut of Tina Munim as the leading lady. The film’s music was composed by Rajesh Roshan, with lyrics by Amit Khanna.

One of the songs, Nazrana Bheja Kisi Ne Pyaar Ka, sung by Kishore Kumar, bears a striking resemblance to Cliff Richard’s The Young Ones. The connection has been noted over the years by listeners and music enthusiasts who have traced the melody back to Richard’s early-1960s hit.

And this is what makes the story particularly interesting. The Young Ones itself was very much a product of the British youth-pop explosion of the early 1960s. The film revolved around Cliff’s character and his friends trying to save their youth club from demolition, turning the story into a glossy mix of romance, rebellion and pop music.

By the time Des Pardes arrived in 1978, Dev Anand was already an established Bollywood icon. Yet the film’s music reflected the continuing influence of Western pop on Hindi film composers. It’s a classic example of how melodies travelled across borders, from a British musical in the swinging 1960s to a Dev Anand film nearly 20 years later.

The icing on the cake is that both Cliff Richard and Dev Anand have become cultural icons in their respective fields who refused to age out of their industries. Dev Anand continued to remain active in movies well into his 80s after which he passed away, Cliff Richard, too has managed to sustain a career for decades.

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