Laxmikant-Pyarelal Bollywood Film Music Directors

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Laxmikant was born in a poor family. He was quite impressed by mandolin and learnt to play it by his own. He used to play mandolin in street functions. Later, to earn some money, he started organizing Indian Classical Music concerts and started performing in them. He also started playing mandolin for Bollywood film music directors.

Pyarelal was the son of a renowned trumpeter Pt. Ramprasad Sharma (popularly known as Babaji), who taught him the basics of music. He learnt to play violin from a Goan called Anthony Gonsalves (Incidentally, Amitabh Bachchan's character was called Anthony Gonsalves in the movie Amar Akbar Anthony as a tribute to Mr. Gonsalves.

The movie had music by Laxmi-Pyare). Pyarelal was born in Gorakpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Started learning violin at the age of 8 and practised it 8 to 12 hours daily. At the age of 12, he started playing violin in studios to earn money for his family, whose financial condition had deteriorated.

In their early days, Laxmi-Pyare's music was very similar to Shankar-Jaikishan's music, as Laxmikant was a great fan of theirs. Once Shankar even changed his orchestration to make sure that his music did not sound like Laxmi-Pyare's. Laxmi-Pyare's first film as music directors was not released.

The first released movie which featured them as music directors was Babubhai Mistry's Parasmani (1963), which was a B-grade mythological film. Throughout their tenure as music directors, Laxmi-Pyare only used A-grade singers. Their mentors, Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi, agreed to sing for them in spite of low budgets, and Laxmi-Pyare always remained indebted to them. In fact, both Mohammad Rafi and Lata has sung the maximum number of songs in their career for Laxmi-Pyare.

When Rafi's career was sidelined due to Kishore Kumar's ascending star, Laxmi-Pyare continued to give patronage to Rafi, sometimes against filmmakers' wishes. [citation needed] Of course, they had a great rapport with Kishore Kumar as well.

After Laxmikant's death, Pyarelal has done some work independently. When the playback singer Kumar Sanu turned music director, he approached Pyarelal to arrange music for him. Pyarelal was approached to assist in the music of Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om song Dhoom Tana Tana, but no credit was given to him on the album, as per Pyareji's insistance.

After Laxmikant-Pyarelal made debut as a music director duo in 1963, they were nominated for the Filmfare Awards (Best Music Director) almost every year. Many times, they were nominated for three or more numbers of films in a particular year. At the same time LP narrowly missed the awards for musical hits like Aaye Din Bahar Ke, Intquam, Do Raste, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Shor, Daag, Bobby, Ek Duje Ke Liye, Utsav and Sur Sangam

LP got 7 Filmfare Trophies, for the following films:

1964: Dosti
1967: Milan
1969: Jeene Ki Raah
1977: Amar Akbar Anthony
1978: Satyam Shivam Sundaram
1979: Sargam
1980: Karz

• As musicians, Laxmikant Pyarelal have worked for every reputed music director of the 1950s with the exception of O.P. Nayyar.
• Laxmikant Pyarelal have given music to over 500 Hindi films.
• Laxmikant Pyarelal are also winners of Indian Government’s prestigious Lata Mangeshkar Award.
• Singer Lata Mangeshkar has sung the maximum number of songs in her career ever for this duo.