The Hyderabad of the late ’70s to early ’80s was a different place all together — it was smaller, everyone knew everyone, people had the time, and they partied like no tomorrow. The parties were wild, but classy and went on from lunch to the early hours of next morning. Hear it straight from the party boy of those days, Hyderabadi artist,
Vijit Pillai
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Let me take you way back to the Hyderabad of late ‘70s and ’80s. Those were the years when I used to party a lot. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that we broke quite a few records in partying. Hyderabad was a small town where the parties in the homes went on all night, the entertainment, food and music had to be really good for such parties. There were times my friends would come over for lunch and we would party till 3 am at night. I remember one such day when we started partying from lunch time and we realised it was 3 am when one of my friends said, say, “Do you realise, its a Tuesday, and we started partying on Monday? Oh, it was such a charmed existence. In those days, Hyderabad had wide-open expanses, around Jubilee Hills. We could just go and have some beer, you didn’t have cops you know. We would go with our bikes to Jubilee Hills, and come back and have a drink again. .The concept of nightlife hadn’t yet arrived, so most of the parties were thrown at our homes.
When people came from Mumbai and Bangalore they would say they hadn’t seen people party like that anywhere else in the country. Also, they were the liberal.
I had very liberal parents who used to say, “Don’t go out drinking, drink at home if you have to.” Coming back to music, there were no deejays for parties in those days. So you were your own deejay.
The ’70s party playlist staples comprised of Led Zeppelin, The Who, Deep Purple. Back in those days you had to have certain skills to throw a good party and knowing how to make a good playlist was one of them. We played music on Vinyl Records. I used to sit down and make my own playlists. There was a lot of planning that went into it— first starting with the slow numbers then slowly building up the tempo. We recorded music on Tape Deck. Aah, that certainly was a charmed existence.