Talk about an old thing.
In Hung Hom, Hong Kong 31 years ago, the "BeyondLive 1991 Life Contact Concert" was unprecedented.
This is the first time a Hong Kong band has held a concert at Hung Hom Stadium.
This was beyond the last big show of beyond the four sons.
31 years later, a few days ago, the concert was re-screened online.
140 million people watched in 2 hours.
The number of viewers is staggering, but the volume is not large.
No screen swiping, no slaughter list.
People click in and just listen quietly.
The song stopped, the people scattered, and each returned.
A rekindled fire remained in the heart for a long time.
It goes back to June.
This June marks the 60th anniversary of Beyond lead singer Huang Jiaju and the 29th anniversary of his departure.
He had been gone for so long, but he never seemed to be far away.
As soon as he was mentioned, countless voices echoed.
The variety show "Sound and Endless" begins with "Sea and Sky", and "No Longer Hesitates" ends.
Lin Zixiang admitted on the show, "the pride of Hong Kong Music", there is Huang Jiaju.
Whenever Tse fell into depressed pain, he would drive to the tomb of jiaju and light three cigarettes.
Huang Jiaju's songs always have such an energy to lift people's hearts.
Time can't knock down, and popularity can't be sifted off.
Everyone knows that Huang Jiaju is a legend and a superstar.
The labels are so big that we can't see him clearly, leaving only a striking symbol.
The real him, more like a man in red.
"I put a guitar on my back like a sword on my back."
And the red jacket is the red jacket he has worn for 10 years.
Going back a little bit, he's a poor boy who loves music.
At that time, he and a few poor boys like him were crowded in the "back seat of the second floor" and skipped work every day to practice.
Nothing.
In addition to dreams and joy.
No matter how poor you are, it's a good day
Huang Jiaju was not special when he was a child.
Like all naughty children, they often skip class to go out and play, and they don't like to learn at all.
I didn't know anything about math, so I couldn't go on after graduating from high school and had to go out and look for a job.
Worked as an office assistant, opened aluminum windows, and worked as a salesman.
There are no dreams to speak of, and the days are one day at a time, not salty or light.
The only color is given by the music.
Wong loves British rock, David Bowie, Zeppelin, Deep Purple and so on, all of which are his favorites.
Huang Jiaju's collection during his lifetime
At this time, Huang Jiaju only regarded music as a pastime of life, loved to listen, and could not play any instruments.
A few years later, Huang Jiaju said, "I think I would die without music." ”
What changed him was a guitar picked up from the garbage heap.
This was left by the neighbor when he moved, and Huang Jiaju saw that it was not dirty, and thought of picking it up and giving it to his friend.
Friends have said that their ideal is to have a guitar.
As a result, the guitar was too tattered, and the friend said that he would not ask for anything, and Huang Jiaju left it behind.
Yin and yang, fate is predestined, Huang Jiaju has the first guitar in his life.
It didn't take long for Huang Jiaju to join an amateur band and was responsible for rhythm guitar.
As a result, two days later, the lead guitarist threw him out and dropped a sentence:
"You're playing so badly that you don't deserve to play music."
17-year-old teenagers are the strongest, who can withstand this insult.
"I must play the guitar better than he can!"
In front of his younger brother Huang Jiaqiang, Huang Jiaju set the first goal in his life.
Who would have thought that the rock star's musical path stemmed from the self-esteem of teenagers.
After that, the first thing Jiaju did after work was to practice the piano. Every day when the mother of the colt comes home, she can see her son playing the guitar there.
There was also a basin of warm water next to it, and my hand hurt, so I soaked in the warm water for a while and then continued to practice.
This exercise, I was completely intoxicated.
The music allowed Wong Ka-ju to gain like-minded friends, including the later drummer Ye Shirong.
Ye Shirong worked as a salesman in an insurance company and pulled Huang Jiaju over.
Wong Ka-koo and Ye Shi-wing, dressed in insurance company uniforms
This work doesn't have to be in the company all day.
In the afternoon, a few friends went out to play music in the name of visiting customers.
Wander the streets of Hong Kong, listen to music at record stores, chat about music in tea restaurants, and find places to play guitar everywhere.
There is no money, white steamed buns can be eaten dipped in sugar, go to the tea restaurant for a few people to order only a cup of milk tea, and continue the cup until it becomes white water.
The days of immersion in music are like dreams, and how to live is a good day.
The most triumphant time was to win the championship in a competition run by Guitar Magazine.
In order to participate in the competition, Huang Jiaju and his friends officially formed a band, and the name of the band was beyond the thunderous Ears.
Ye Shirong tricked his family into getting married in exchange for a small room in his ancestral home to use as a rehearsal base.
This is the "second floor back seat".
After the death of Jiaju, there were only three people left, beyond, and the first album was called "Second Floor Backseat".
This is Beyond's Garden of Eden, their "second home."
During rehearsals, because it was too disturbing, the police often came to the door.
Once before the police had gone far, they couldn't help but continue rehearsing, and the police listened for a while, but they didn't want to leave, and became their fans.
At that time, the Beatles let the rock wind blow all over the world, and most of the bands in the competition were cover songs of their songs.
Huang Jiaju was reluctant to sing, and if he wanted to sing, he had to sing his own original.
With two songs written by Huang Jiaju, Beyond emerged in the cover song and won the championship.
At the right time, Huang Jiaju wanted to take advantage of this momentum to hold a concert at his own expense.
So he took the members to raise money together and lived a busy life of working to save money while preparing for concerts.
When he was most tired, Huang Jiaju had to work five jobs a day.
But as long as you return to the "second floor back seat", as long as you touch the guitar, the bitter moment of life will disappear.
It seems that there is no better day in this world.
Plunge headlong into the ideal
What no one expected was that the first blow Beyond had come from within the team.
Near the concert, guitarist Chen Shi'an suddenly left Hong Kong and went abroad to study.
For a time the whole band was in chaos.
Is the concert still held? Of course.
At this time, Huang Jiaju has rushed into the musical dream, just moving forward.
He found Huang Guanzhong, who helped him with art design for the concert, and lobbied him to save the scene temporarily.
Huang Guanzhong prides himself on being a crazy person who loves music, practicing for ten hours a day, and waking up to find himself holding a guitar in his arms.
But when he met Huang Jiaju, he bowed to the wind.
"The guitar has become a part of his body."
Huang Jiaju listens to any music, not only rock, folk music, "unbearable" experimental music, all like it.
Talking to Huang Guanzhong about music was endless, enough to talk for three days. This obsession with music made Huang Guanzhong completely impressed.
Later, Huang Guanzhong recalled, "Without Huang Jiaju, there would be no me now."
After gathering the members, the first concert was held as scheduled, called "Beyond - Forever Waiting".
For this concert, they took to the streets themselves, handing out flyers to passers-by one to sell tickets.
Concert tickets of your own design
Everything is done by yourself, but it has not been successful.
Five hundred seats, only three hundred people, the performance was less than halfway through, and the audience was half gone.
At a loss of more than 6,000, the money from part-time work was lost.
How could the hot-blooded youth be willing, and the stubbornness in Huang Jiaju's bones came up again.
The concert is not good, the work is not wanted by the record company, then you can make the album at your own expense.
However, if you don't succeed this time, let's go back to ordinary people's lives.
In this way, Beyond's first album "Goodbye Ideal" came out.
In fact, Huang Jiaju was not a utopian, and Beyond was already famous in the underground music scene at that time.
Went to Taiwan to participate in the music festival, because the scene response is too warm, the organizers also arranged a special performance for them.
However, this album, which was made purely for himself, has neither the popularity of popular music nor the commercial packaging and marketing, and still makes a big splash.
Frustrated, one agent noticed them.
Chen Jiantian and others took a group photo with Beyond
His name is Jiantian Chen, Faye Wong and the Black Panther Band, all of which he single-handedly excavated.
The discerning agent made a special trip to the back seat of the cramped second floor, and as soon as he entered the door, he saw Huang Jiaju sitting in the corner wearing a red jacket, repeatedly wiping the guitar in his hand.
After listening to a few original songs by Huang Jiaju, sign beyond.
This "underground band in Hong Kong" finally came to the ground.
However, fame is not an easy task, and there is a gap between talent and business.
Talent is the ego, business is the masses. Withdrawing from the self and moving closer to the masses is destined to be difficult.
After signing the company, Beyond released a concert EP of the same name, "Forever Waiting", two albums "Alabore Dancing Girl" and "Modern Stage", both of which pounced on the street.
The band's original fans, feeling that Beyond music was not as avant-garde as before, criticized them as "rock traitors".
And the public's impression of Beyond is that of a "sister boy" who is not doing business.
The bastard with long hair will only attract the attention of the girls, and the girls who love to scream in the audience are all brought bad by them.
Not recognized inside the circle, not toothless outside the circle.
The company also gave them an ultimatum: if the next album is still a mediocre response, it will not have another chance.
At the most painful time, Huang Jiaju's sister told him that music is not played by himself, but must be accepted by more people, and only when the public accepts it can he further do what he wants to do.
He understands this truth, of course, it is good to be avant-garde in music, but pop can also have good works.
So Huang Jiaju asked the band members to cut their long hair and turn into a serious singing appearance.
Write songs with more catchy melodies, but the arrangement and lyrics are uncompromising.
The song "The Land", formerly known as "Yangtze River", has nothing to do with love and is full of nostalgia.
My friend returned to Hong Kong from the mainland, and mentioned a mouth of the Yellow River of the Yangtze River with Jiaju, and Jiaju was fascinated and pulled him to chat all night, which led to the later "Earth".
Although they have never met, they are deeply rooted in their hearts.
Aberdeen's nostalgia for the mainland is more or less so.
At first, Chen Jiantian was reluctant to put "The Land" in the third album, and if it were not for Huang Jiaju's repeated insistence, I am afraid that we would really not be able to get Beyond.
At that time, the Hong Kong music scene was immersed in the wave of love songs brought by Tam Wing Lin, and the love was endless.
"The Land", full of oriental colors, turned out to be a success, winning the "Top Ten Golden Songs" in 1988, and thus opening the "non-love song era" in Hong Kong.
Beyond, who finally walked through the time of no name, became the first band to board the Hung Hom Sports Centre in Hong Kong, and opened five consecutive performances, full of seats.
For three years, the fire cooked oil and flowers were brocade.
The trophy is non-stop, the music world is amphibious, and even autobiographical movies have been produced, and this trend has blown all over Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, which can be described as a very popular.
But in the spotlight, Huang Jiaju is still not happy.
The company wanted to be easier to sing pop music, so Jiaju wrote "Really Love You" and "Like You".
These two songs beat the others and became masterpieces, and they were appointed to sing over and over again.
Love songs are still the mainstream.
In order to maintain their fame, under the company's arrangement, they went on variety shows, lost their smiles, played various boring games, and went to the liquor bureau.
The glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry makes the family colt physically and mentally exhausted.
"The Face Party" said with great excitement:
"Party eternal meaning."
On the one hand, there is the increasingly loud call of "superstars", and on the other hand, it is the original intention of music that is forced to drift away.
"There is no music scene in Hong Kong, only the entertainment industry."
Leaving this sentence that angered the Hong Kong music scene, at its most popular, Beyond fled.
There is no longer a Huang Jiaju in the world
Looking back at the decision to "leave Hong Kong", some people lament the courage to change paths at the peak, and some people lament that they have entered a dead end.
But no matter how you look at it, it is inevitable.
Wong Ka Cau is an outlier in the Hong Kong music scene, and although it is fresh, it has no soil for acceptance.
Before Beyond, not only love songs were popular, but also cover songs, and Japanese songs alone supported many Hong Kong lyricists.
There are too many covers, and there will even be multiple words in one song.
In Beyond's day, the vast majority of their songs were original.
As a rock band, Beyond has been widely discussed as "rock" because of its lack of rebellious style.
It is for the sake of expression, so try to balance the trade-offs.
At the beginning, this music was sung to himself, experimenting with niche styles, saying his own mood and sadness;
Later, I wanted to talk more about war and children, the earth and belonging, so I tended to be popular and catchy in the arrangement, so that more people could listen.
It was the most sincere words of an idealist who was gentle, naïve, but never gave up.
"Goodbye Ideal" depicts the struggles of teenagers at a low ebb;
"Lost Days" inspires young people to fight upwards;
"I Have My Style" chronicles the growth of the band.
Goodbye Ideal Music: BEYOND - Original Beyond Final Selection
Even the love songs that were urged by the company are also a sincerity that is rarely seen in the market.
It is rumored that jiaju worked too focusedly, ignored his girlfriend, and recalled his voice and smile after the breakup, before making the song "Like You";
"Really Love You" focuses on the mother and confesses with pleasure.
He even sang love songs with a serious energy that was not in line with the atmosphere of the music scene at that time.
Huang Jiaju, who can't sing the sound of silence, pays more attention to the love that he pays attention to.
Attending a disaster relief charity concert, he said, "Chinese can withstand any storm. ”
With nostalgia from the heart, he was able to make the demo that he initially named "Yangtze River", which was later "The Land".
His love is not only in this land, but also in the cries of fate in the distance.
Beyond was invited by a charity to Africa, where he saw war and desolation along the way.
In Africa, Huang Jiaju sponsored 6 orphans, and along the way, he made "AMANI", the song name means "peace".
The aria-like tone repeats: "At the end of the war, the wounds are children." ”
The trip to Africa also made him admire Mandela in prison, and in "The Glory Years", he sang about the old man's lifelong perseverance:
"The meaning that black skin gives him is a lifelong struggle to dedicate skin color"
"Today there is only a remnant of the shell, to meet the glorious years, to embrace freedom in the wind and rain"
"May there be no distinction between you and me in this land"
Surviving the lonely years with faith is a portrayal of Mandela and the expectation of the family colt for the music road:
"In this life, I will not change my career to do anything else, that is, to make music, and I also believe that people will win the heavens..."
At that time, the Hong Kong music scene was not worthy of such a foal.
With the original intention of being a band, Beyond left the praise of Hong Kong and came to Japan, which they saw as a more free and diverse creation.
But fate, so tricky.
Life in Japan is more miserable than they thought, life is embarrassing and tired, and the feeling of wandering in a foreign land has struck——
Money has been donated, Japanese house prices are too expensive, can only sleep in the cramped hut, lying down hands and feet can touch the four walls;
The language barrier, the lack of social and entertainment when idle, and even let the same team of Huang Guanzhong from a drop of wine to a liquor as a medicine, Ye Shirong also learned to smoke.
In Japan, Beyond did not get the freedom it wanted, and the first announcement was to go on variety shows and make games.
Music companies still want them to embrace pop and settle for mediocrity.
But Huang Jiaju, how can it be mediocre?
After watching the first snow in his life in Japan, Beyond released two albums of "Continuing The Revolution" and "Music and Anger", of which "The Sea and the Sky" composed by Ikoma stirred up some splashes.
It seems that there is finally some light on the way forward, but the accident comes unexpectedly.
On June 24, 1993, Huang Jiaju fell from a three-meter high platform while recording a variety show in Japan.
A month ago, he said to fans "We'll see you again";
A few days ago, he and his brother Huang Jiaqiang agreed to "go home soon."
I didn't think about it, and the difference became a trick.
On June 30, 1993, Huang Jiaju died.
As soon as the obituary came out, all sorrows cried together, and the family colt stayed forever at the age of 31.
To this day, his music still inspires thousands of people.
Regrettably, some people say that "entertainment to death" is becoming more and more turbulent, and his early departure is not a kind of luck.
I can't help but think of what he once said:
"I definitely don't want us to Chinese and dwell forever on nostalgia for the glorious history of the past.
Those glorious histories have passed,
We want to build on our glorious history of tomorrow. ”
I just didn't think about it, but there was no second him. She published
Source:
1. The Book "The Legend of Huang Jiaju"
2. Documentary "Archives: Hong Kong Music Legend Wong Ka Koo", "Through the Classics: Glorious Years, Forever Wong Ka Koo"
3. Southern Weekend ""God will not send a musical angel to the mortals" | Sixty years of Huang Jiaju's birth"
4. Sanlian Life Weekly "In Hong Kong, Looking for Wong Ka-ju and His Glorious Years"
5. Book list "Huang Jiaju: 25 Years apart, the ideal and you and I have not forgotten"
6. The most character "Huang Jiaju, still alive"
7. Visual Chronicle "Heaven sent him to save the music scene, but the entertainment industry killed him"
8. Weibo @Beyond Museum
9. And various interview audio and video materials of station b that cannot find the original source