Mikey shares his childhood memories in India, varied musical pursuits
Mumbai: A song is on. And there on the screen is the face of its maker, Mikey McCleary, running across his website. On the side, a brown cardboard entry rolls down with his bio. A songwriter, composer, performer and producer living in Mumbai, born in Chennai, worked in London, originally from New Zealand. Phew! In two lines, he has dropped quite a few countries, and quite a few passions indeed. Mikey explains in an email interview: “My parents travelled a lot and I guess that made me very much interested in different countries.”
He started with India and is back again, with a lot of stories and songs. His newest album TV Dinners comes out with 10 tracks, including The Little Things You Do, which were all ad jingles once upon a time. Mikey had written that one really fast track for a Vodafone ad four years ago. “The whole thing took four hours flat starting from writing or composing to mixing. It just came straight out. And talented singer Anushka’s voice was perfect for the number.” On its Youtube video, people kept commenting, asking for the whole song. Mikey must have realised this euphorioc public demand, i.e. how much they all wanted to hear it. Hence, he made a nearly three-minute long song out of the catchy jingle. But that’s not all he has been up to. He recently released his third Bartender album titled Classic Bollywood With a Twist alongwith three music videos. And also had Gannu Rocks released, which is a Ganapati song for the soon-to-be-released film, Sonali Cable. Moreover, he worked on the songs and background music fora film called Margarita with a Straw and has also directed five music videos for TV Dinners.
His love for music began with his ‘quite musical’ family, and he started banging away on his drums as a 13-year-old. By 15, he was working out songs on his guitar and piano and at 16, he decided to be a music composer. He was also moving around a lot in his childhood but has his early memories of India. “Odd things like having a pet python and 5-star chocolate bars,” he reveals his quirks. After completing his university studies in NZ (New Zealand), he went to London and got a job in a studio called Trident.
Incidentally, on one fine day, an Indian man knocked on his studio and introduced himself as his new brother-in-law. “Actually, my sister had got married very suddenly on an Indian trip,” he chips in. “The guy was still an unknown singer then but I really loved his voice and went onto make music for a couple of songs for him. The rest as they say is history, since both Lucky Ali, the anonymous artiste and the music that we made together became sensationally popular in India and I seriously started looking at working within the Indian music industry from that point. Eventually, I shifted my base to Bombay (now Mumbai). I wish I had moved back earlier.”
