Quick guys, we need to record the B-side in two takes.

In the days when music came in vinyl discs, a B-side was a bonus; a place where artists threw in their experimental stuff. All the hits were expected to come from the A-side, which is what the studio execs usually listened to.

In 1974, Biddu Appaiah was a producer working with Carl Douglas. Biddu was a music producer from Bangalore and Carl was a Jamaican recording artist. The plan was to work on a song called “I Want To Give You My Everything” for the A-side. With little time to spare, Biddu and Carl rushed together a song for the B-side in two takes, the whole package completed in a couple of hours.

Biddu took the finished album to a studio executive, who wasn’t impressed at all. But when he heard the B-side, he changed his mind. The sides were flipped. For it held a surefire hit, surefire because of the martial arts films that were all the rage at the time, colloquially known as chop-socky films. The song was ‘Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting’.



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