• The 'Unforgettable Tour' Updates

• by: Hoopla  |  last updated: August 20, 2008

• Category: Bollywood, News, TV & Radio |  Tags: Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Unforgettable Tour, The Bachchan Parivar

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  Living up to its hype, the Amitabh Bachchan-led Unforgettable Tour opened to an unprecedented response in America, Cananda and Britian. The stars of the Unforgettable tours - Amitabh Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Riteish Deshmukh, Shiamak Davar, Vishal-Shekhar and Viraf Sarkari, director, Wizcraft.
  
  

• The Tour is a huge sucess everywhere

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  With Madhuri Dixit joining the tour, the US lap has become even stronger. The dancing queen who has worked with Amitabh Bachchan in Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan shared stage space with the superstar on the tour, much to the excitement of their fans. She also danced to the famous Dola re dola number from Devdas alongside Aishwarya Rai.
  
  
  
  In Houston, the viewers were treated to Bachchan nostalgia as he revisited his top tracks of the ‘70s and ‘80s. He also rendered some of his famous dialogues from some of his films. While Aishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan performed to some of the romantic songs in Hindi films, Preity danced to peppy songs like Where’s the party tonight and Riteish grooved to some popular music from his recent films.
  
  
  
  When Amitabh Bachchan says he is amazed at the sophistication and professionalism many Indian star shows have acquired over the years, he knows what he is talking about. For Amitabh, who had his first big show in America in the early 1980s at the Giant Stadium in New Jersey, was perhaps the first big star from the Hindi cinema to popularise the concept.
  
  When he spoke about the evolution of the desi shows in America, Canada and Britain at a press meet for the Unforgettable tour, he also paid tribute to the promoters of the soldout New Jersey and New York shows: Bharat Jotwani, Victor Khubani and Sona Patel.
  
  
  
  The Change of Era
  
  
  
  Amitabh says he should thank the film composers in Mumbai for daring to go out of India and spellbind the expatriate community. "Initially, it was just the music directors [like Kalyanji-Anandji], who took a group of musicians and singers and went out to London and New York and performed on stage," he said. "I think it was in 1980 or 1981, that Lataji [Mangeshkar] was doing a concert in New York and she asked me to join her just to be able to introduce her to the audience," he recalled. Though he said the audience was 'very small, about 3,000 people, in Madison Square Garden,' it should be noted that such a number was a record breaker for an Indian performer in those years.
  
  "She said to me that while you're here, why don't you sing a song?" Amitabh continued. "I had just recorded a song for a film of mine called Lawaaris. I did that [sang the song live]. That's how things started. When Jaya and I got married in 1973, we went to England and we were called to a show in Southall. There were only five people in the audience: two of them were my relatives and three were ushers," he said chuckling. "Now, it has grown to massive venues like the Madison Square Garden, Wembley Stadium in London, where we had 17,000 people, and the Giants Stadium in New Jersey in the 1980s where we had 17-18,000 people."
  
  
  Amitabh says because of the desire of the promoters to have sophisticated and lively shows, organisations such as Wizcraft, who have produced the Unforgettable, bend backward to make the event memorable.
  
  The Unforgettable Stars take a bow
  

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