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A star born anew

By Yu Sen-lun
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Jul 15, 2001, Page 17

"In the mornings [after moving recently to Shihlin], I would always pass a group of old ladies chatting in the streets. I saw people could be really happy with a simple and ordinary life." Lin Chung

It takes strength and resolution to destroy oneself and begin again from scratch. But Lin Chung (林強) has done just that. Once a teen idol rock singer and spokesperson for new Taiwanese music in the late 1980s, Lin has refashioned himself as DJ Lin Chung, or simply as the electronic musician Lin Chung.

"I used to write songs with my guitar. Now I use this," Lin said, pointing to a digital synthesizer and sequencer in his Shinlin studio.

"The future of music is less about song, less about melody. The feeling, the atmosphere will be more important. Sometimes people just need a wave of sound," Lin said.

Now 38 but still baby-faced, Lin lives in his small studio, as he prepares to release his new album, the first Taiwanese-language electronic music album.

Right beginnings

Ten years ago Lin was a household name, with his music videos seeing constant rotation on TV and his 1989 song Marching Forward (向前走) breaking barriers as the first Taiwanese-language pop song.

Lin Chung works on his music in his Shihlin studio. PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES

In the video Lin sings "Ohh' Go ahead!/Oh' I fear nothing/in such a big city like Taipei/I'm gonna make something to return home with pride" while moving to its disco beat along with his corps of dancers.

Singing rock 'n' roll in Taiwanese without any trace of self-consciousness was rare at a time when the only Taiwanese-language pop songs one heard were by Nakashi-influenced crooners singing pained love songs. Lin's rock was refreshing and exciting both for the pop music scene and for society as a whole, which had just been freed from martial law, during which the Taiwanese language was marginalized. Marching Forward was practically a theme song for the political movements occurring at the time.

Politicians, hoping to boost their street credibility during the nascent so-called political "localization" drive, appropriated the song as an embodiment of the Taiwanese spirit. Lin Chung then went from being a pop star to a symbol for an entire social transformation.

"Three years ago, some KMT politician even offered me NT$400,000 to sing Marching Forward for an election campaign rally," Lin said. He rejected the offer, refusing to be drawn back to that part of his past.

After the success of Marching Forward, Lin released a hot-selling album titled Spring Young Fellow (春風少年兄) in 1991 and completed the soundtrack to Dust of Angels (少年也安啦) in 1992 with then up-and-coming musician Wu Bai (伍佰).

It was about this time that fame began to wear on Lin and he began searching for an exit from the media's incessant gaze. Then he became close friends with the acclaimed Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢).

"Director Hou by chance went to see Lin at a recording studio. And he was truly impressed by Lin's strength and devotion to singing. He thinks Lin has a quality of typical Taiwanese men -- truly sincere and focused on what they like to do. And that was the kind of person Hou was looking for to play the protagonist in the movie Puppet Master (戲夢人生), the story of Lee Tien-lu (李天祿)," said Angelika Wang (王耿瑜), the deputy secretary general of the Golden Horse Film Festival who worked with Lin and Hou on Dust of Angels and a number of later projects.

"Director Hou had a great deal of influence on Lin Chung, good and bad. The bad part was Lin later walked away from the mainstream pop music scene and his idol image to become the media's favorite bad boy. The good was that Lin became quieter, like director Hou, who tries to focus on his own art," said Jessie Huang (黃修) a close friend of Lin and Hou's.

In 1993, when Lin published his third album Entertainment World, which was produced by John Fryer, the producer for Nine Inch Nails, he rejected all interviews and refused to be part of any TV or radio show. Then, at the Golden Horse Award ceremony in 1996, Lin received the Best Film Music award for the song Self Destruction and when accepting the award, he took the trophy and swiftly left in silence, leaving his PR staff and the media in shock.

Finding his way again

"At that time, I felt I was labeled and limited to the role I had to play. I had lost my freedom," said Lin.

Lin retreated further from the media spotlight and went on to star in several of Hou's films, such as Good Man, Good Woman (好男好女), in which he played a leftist victim of the White Terror, and in Goodbye South Goodbye (南國再見南國), playing a young gang leader. With his music he veered into the world of techno and became a DJ.

Eight years after Entertainment World, Lin is poised to come back with his latest creation. His new single A Simple Person (單純的人) was chosen as the theme song for Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest movie Millennium Mambo (千禧曼波).

In the film's opening scene, the starlet Shu Qi (舒淇) walks on a seemingly endless overpass, reminiscing about her youth, while in the background Lin's techno drums, folk guitar and light and distant vocals in Taiwanese fade in: "kind, ordinary, happiness, a simple person ..."

"I'm no longer a star singer anymore. So my vocal singing is just one of the musical instruments I mix with the music," Lin said. As for the lyrics in Taiwanese, he says plainly "It's my mother tongue. I feel weird and unnatural if I have to sing in Mandarin."

Lin's new album, due out at the end of this month, is filled with a variety of styles that covers the full range of electronic music. Along with A Simple Person, other tracks include the trip hop-flavored Fallen (沉淪), the ambient The World (世間) and a techno track called Drugs not for Illness (無病吃的藥).

"He is by nature a kind and simple person. Lin used to be unhappy, and now he is much more relaxed," said a local filmmaker who goes simply by the name Orange (柳丁) and who is a good friend of Lin's.

Lin now lives a healthy, regular life, getting up at 6am, riding his bicycle to the Tamsui riverbank where he does two hours of tai-chi, and then heading to work on his music at his Shihlin studio called Fluidmix (流體音樂), which he opened with his friends DJ Fish and DJ Ty last year.

"In the mornings [after moving recently to Shihlin], I would always pass a group of old ladies chatting in the streets. I saw people could be really happy with a simple and ordinary life," Lin said.

To friends like Angelika Wang and Orange, his ability to change and to try new things are Lin's greatest attributes. "What I appreciate the most about Lin is his ability to negate himself and then move forward to a new challenge," Wang said.

"He knows when to stop and to change directions. He is always blossoming," Orange said.

Reflecting on the adaptability that his friends so admire, Lin says philosophically "You have to keep moving, flowing, and not take everything so hard. But never stop, because once you're stuck in one place, you're dead."
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