Lo Ta-yu's first involvements in the professional music business had outcomes that were both very interesting and very ironic.
When Lo was in his fifth year at the China Medical College, director Liu Wei-bin asked the musically talented youth, through a friend, to write a theme for his movie, Those Flash Days. The movie was shown for only two days here—the quickest boxoffice disaster in local film history. But the theme became quite popular.
Almost a year later, Lo was again asked, this time by another director, to write a movie theme. The script was about a girl suffering from schizophrenia, and Lo, who was then interning at a mental hospital, remembers it well: "You can't find the focal point for their eyes, you know. Their walking steps are mechanical" He gave his theme music the title, So Slightly Blows the Wind. "I was not sure how good the song was," he recalls, "but I tried to use an artist's senses to portray mental disorder."
This time, the movie failed again, and again, the theme music was a success—so much so that almost everyone can still recall bits of the melody and lyrics.
Over the next few years, Lo wrote songs for a number of vocalists, and finally decided to write for himself: "The more I wrote for others, the less I was satisfied. The whole thing was not real. Most of the time, they didn't sing the song correctly." In mid-1982, he put out his first album, Pedantry; it brought him instant fame. Younger listeners admired his musical talent, and his protests against the establishment and the blind rush of industrialization; older people hated his guts.
In his flag tune, Pedantry, he humorously questioned the authority of tradition. Part of the lyric follows:
To know is to know;
to be is not to be.
Who is this man? Confucius.
To know is not to know;
to be is not to be.
Who is this man? Hanshantze.
Not to know is to know;
not to be is to be.
Who is this man? A Chi man.
A long time ago, our ancestors
so stated (twice),
Now see what our young men
have to say (or sing).
Think carefully, what do you want
them to do?
In the Small Town of Lukang, concerning a well-preserved older Taiwan community, Lo complains about thoughtless byproducts of modernization on the island. Accompanied by a mixture of both hard-bitten and mellow melodies, he chants:
If you, Mister, are from the
small town of Lukang,
tell me, have you seen my parents?
I lived right behind the Matsu Temple—
the small grocery that
sells incense ....
Taipei ain't my hometown,
my hometown's got no neon lights;
Lukang is streets, Lukang is fishing,
Lukang is Matsu temple pilgrims ....
They dug out the red bricks,
and built concrete walls.
Townsfolk who got what they wanted,
lost what they had.
A weather-beaten wood board
on a door was inscribed:
"To treasure it forever"
"To trenscend the everlasting"
Oh! Oh! Lukang, small town!
Lo Ta-yu's hoarse voice repeated, "Taipei ain't my hometown, my hometown's got no neon lights," six times in the song, and it later became a phrase known throughout the island.
The son of a famous doctor, Lo Ta-yu began piano lessons at the age of six. They were tough for him. The teacher put coins on the backs of his hands, so little Ta-yu would not move the whole hand, only the fingers. If a coin dropped, he was punished. So he disliked music at first, and when he finally began passionately to appreciate its beauty, he was asked to give it up. His parents wanted him to be a doctor, not a musician. Lo Ta-yu spent all his time now studying to pass the entrance examination for a top-ranked high school, a realistic prerequisite to being accepted in a medical school.
The same type of experience is the lot of many kids. The difference for Lo Ta-yu was that he refused to accept further, all that was held out to him as truth.
He has since used his music to complain of overwhelming parental control over kids, as in his second album, in the title song Future Masters:
Don't think kids are too young to know,
I hear them complain in their dreams.
"We don't want a sky polluted
by scientific games;
We won't be changed to computer kids
because of your invention. "
Though Lo's second album is as full of protest as the first, he also includes two love songs to memorialize a failed romance with actress Sylvia Chang. In Little Sister he sings:
The autumn wind is chilly in the woods;
Little sister, put on my coat.
The black night embraces
a city's discomfort;
Little sister, let me hold you slightly,
Hold your hands tightly,
To resist the biting gossip
And the ruthless tide of fate.
The Vietnam War was finished, but the painful memories lingered. Different people reacted in different ways. Lo Ta-yu sings, in a slow tempo, of the refugees:
Asian orphans weeping in the wind,
Red mud on their yellow faces,
White terror in their black eyes,
West wind singing sad songs in the East.
Asian orphans weeping in the wind,
No one plays an equal game with you!
Everyone is greedy for your lovely toys,
Dear children, why are you crying?
How many people ask
unanswerable questions?
How many people sigh quietly
in the deep night?
How many people wipe
away silent tears?
Dear mother, tell me what kind
of truth this is.
The song found echoes in the hearts of many, and Lo Ta-yu, because of it, came to be identified as a conscientious intellectual rather than a sensational rebel.
Lo's message was used by the KMT -the Republic's ruling party-in exhorting the voters to cherish the political stability of Taiwan: "Don't let Taiwan become an Asian orphan like Vietnam." Opposition elements claimed that they already were Asian orphans. Lo Ta-yu took no side.
Can a doctor be, at the same time, a rock music star? Lo Ta-yu will tell you, "No, you choose one or the other." After producing his second album, Lo made a choice: he decided to return to the medical profession. On his first day on the staff of a noted public hospital, reporters from three major newspapers came for interviews. On the second day, a CTS-TV reporter and camera team walked right into his office to do a story on him. Lo's rejection of the stage put him back on stage.
The public was confused-Was he sincere about returning to the medical profession, or was it all a publicity stunt to push his music career'?
Lo's response: "Patients recover be cause of your ministrations, and you see this, It is a kind of achievement greater than any other I can think of. So I like being a musician. But I like being a doctor too."
When Lo realized that he was not allowed by regulations for a doctor in a public hospital to carryon an outside career, he suffered the agonies of making a final choice between his two professions. His relationship with the hospital lasted only four months.
December 31, 1983, three and half months after he left the hospital, Lo Ta-yu performed in concert before thousands of young fans. And in a response so familiar to contemporary show business, when he jumped on stage, they screamed, "Lo Ta-yu, Lo Ta-yu"—an honor, however, that had never before been accorded any singer by a young island audience.
Until very recent years, the youth here were neglected by the music industry. Most pop singers simply shook their bodies and sang meaningless songs, at least for youth. So for a long period of time, Taiwan's young people listened to only Western music, and especially American music. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Judy Collins, Jone Baez are among their most respected stars; the Eagles, Chicago, Toto, and the Police are their favorite groups. Their music tastes are really very sophisticated. The more they identified excellence in Western music, the more they felt alone-the more negative toward Taiwan's "too-commercial" musicians.
Lo Ta-yu's carefully craned music and meaningful lyrics and his cool style are in the pattern of the better Western musicians. Taiwan youths have gone crazy for him. Lo Ta-yu is now a young people's hero. A recent survey proved him their first musical superstar.