Ali Azmat, Salman Ahmed and Brian O Connell really will come together and we can’t figure out why.
Improbable things seem to be happening all around us. One of them is the comeback of the original Junoon, featuring Ali Azmat, Salman Ahmed and Brian O Connell, who will be seen together after 13 years.
No one is denying their contribution to the music scene. They pioneered it and took Junoon to foreign shores as well, often dubbed ‘The U2 of Pakistan’.
The internet seems happy about the news, mostly. But here’s what happened.
The rumour of a reunion has been around for some time. Years to be honest and let’s not even get into how the band broke up, what fault lines emerged afterwards and the amount of vitriol that followed from one member to another (barring the always overshadowed Brian). That’s a matter for another time. It is a good thing if they are willing to let things go. But this is much more than that.
It was rumored that the ‘Sayonee’ version, butchered on Coke Studio by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and (sadly) Ali Noor was originally designed as a comeback vehicle for Junoon, but Ali Azmat is said to have pulled out.
Earlier this year, Ali in an interview dismissed the reunion story, noting: “This news surfaces at least once every month. There is no reunion happening.” Meanwhile Salman Ahmed continued his ‘Junoon will reunite’ notions.
Even rumours about the big three appearing on Pepsi Battle of the Bands started to emerge this year when a photo of Salman and Ali having iftar was shared. It reignited the Junoon rumour to a point that Salman told a local publication: “Junoon isn’t appearing on Pepsi Battle of the Bands,” before adding, “Stay tuned. Never say never! Hope is a game changer!”
But it was Ali Azmat, who told Instep in a telephonic conversation, almost irked by the same question he’s been asked many times before, in June 2018 that though a conversation had happened, the Junoon reunion is not happening and noted, “Wrong! It’s not true!”
And so we must applaud Peek Freans Sooper for doing what even Coke Studio and Pepsi Battle of the Bands could clearly not do. Why? Because the biscuit brand is backing this bizarre reunion.
Ayesha Janjua, Head of Marketing at EBM, in a video available online and in which she was joined by the actual band, stated that they are paying tribute to the passion of Pakistanis by reuniting Junoon. In the same video, the Junoon trio sings lines from ‘Dosti’ and thanks Pakistan for loving them and the brand as well. I’m not sure what Salman Ahmed was trying to say, truth be told, but it was, as a fan, good to see Brian again.
Another video uploaded by the biscuit brand this week features the three in a short video with ‘Khudi’ playing in the background.
Though both Ali Azmat and Salman Ahmed have taken shots at each other in the past and serious ones at that, with Ali rising as a solo artist with two stellar records that proved that his Junoon days were behind him, even as Salman Ahmed continued to do a myriad of things including singing, what is inexplicable is how they could reunite given Salman’s insensitive, tasteless tweet (in July on Twitter) about the massacre in Balochistan that pretty much killed any credibility he once had as an artist. A reconciliation to the old Junoon now seems impossible but great going biscuit brand (enter disdain).
