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Second Hand Roses’ founder and
front man Liang Long talks about Nirvana, Nietzche and why he
started wearing drag on stage.
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Second
Hand Roses go for transvestite look.
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A year after forming his band Second Hand Roses in Harbin in
1999, Liang Long was on a night train to Beijing. It was a lonely
ride south, through the Siberian-like landscapes of a northern
Chinese winter. His band mates had stayed behind in Harbin, the
largest Chinese city before the Russian border, but, suffocated
by a dead-end busking scene and a tiny audience, the 29-year-old
knew he had to get out.
In Beijing he found an audience for his folk-infused rock –
and an oft-changing lineup of musicians for the band he called
Second Hand Roses in the impoverished early days. Today Liang’s
core group is Yao Lan on guitar, Bei Bei on drums and Jiang Ningzhan
on bass. The high pitch of Liang’s voice echoes a brand of
Chinese opera popular in his native Heilongjiang. That and his
cheeky, self-deprecating lyrics define the group’s reputation
but Yao Lan’s trashing guitars and an overlay of traditional
instrumentation from multi-instrumentalist Wu Zekun fleshes out
the Second Hand Rose sound.
Honed now to patented popularity, it’s a sound that’s
yielded a critically acclaimed debut album. “It’s not
hard to find good traditional music players but yeah it’s
harder to find someone with whom you can have an understanding
about the music you want to make,” he explains as we sit
in the green room of New Get Lucky, where the band played a Valentine’s
Day gig the night before. As we talk Liang juggles calls from
MTV China, seeking to confirm the band for appearances in the
channel’s Beijing studios – and an impresario in deep-south
Guangzhou, who wants the band to play an upcoming festival there.
Two singles were released in March from a new album due later
this year, two years after the eponymous debut recording. Ten
songs have been recorded but Liang is still rowing with the band’s
Hong Kong-based record company over a name for the record. Obduracy
is a Liang Long trademark. Rock after all was an outlet for an
angry young man to vent the spleen of youth.
There’s also the drag. Liang started putting on makeup in
Harbin when his band was overlooked at a variety show in a cold
Harbin concert hall. “We were on for only a few minutes at
the end and at break time we didn’t even get food!”
So upset was the group that before their set they got drunk and
smudged their faces with a tube of lipstick left in the changing
rooms. “Then we were on and the crowd went crazy. It was
totally unexpected, these guys in drag. And I thought ‘Hmm,
this is interesting!’ and kept it in the act.” Today
there’s a more philosophical reason for Liang’s drag
act. “We’re pretending to be women but we’re not.
We’re in between. It’s like in the world there are people
in between good and bad. This obscures our identity.”
Nietzche
So the rock star is also an intellectual? “As a student
I read a lot of Western fiction and philosophy. I felt lost and
depressed at that time. I was on the edge.” Worried friends
even burned his books by German philosopher Nietzche. They didn’t
however get to his records. The angst-ridden rock found in Seattle
grunge prototypes Nirvana and Appetite For Destruction-era Guns
N’ Roses a logical fit for his rage, sounds he picked up
off “broken CDs,” castoffs from European and US record
shop clearances that end up on the Chinese black market.
Very few classmates shared the high school kid’s taste for
Los Angeles glam rock and Seattle grunge. Nor did his parents,
but they at least benevolently ignored the angry rock blasting
from a bedroom stereo. Ignorance of the genre has made rock a
niche noise in China’s hinterlands, says Liang. “There
was nothing in the mainstream media. People didn’t have sources
to access this kind of music.” China’s mass media doesn’t
promote rock, complains Liang. “Lately I’ve had a lot
of interviews from cultural magazines and newspapers curious about
the new album. But in fact they don’t ask many questions
about the music. It’s more about our perceived controversial
influence on Chinese culture.” The Chinese personality could
also be a barrier to rock’s progress here. A prevailing taste
for softer Mando pop and karaoke staples clouds out the diversity
minorities add to China’s cultural scene, agrees Liang, who
himself prefers the ethnic guitars and folk songs of Tibet and
Xinjiang.
Another Chinese minority sound proved an indelible influence
on the Second Hand Roses front man. The seminal record Balls Under
a Red Flag, a mélange of Western rock rhythms and Chinese
melody pioneered by Cui Jian, China’s first and still-preeminent
rock star (and an ethnic Korean), helped decided Liang’s
mind on a future career as the teen completed a major in computer
science from a local technical college. He ended up teaching himself
guitar after a tutor pulled the class when not enough students
showed up.
The philosophy books and grunge rock hint at the two sides then
to Liang, a stage and a quieter off-stage personality. Off stage
he’s not much of a concertgoer, preferring to sit home reading
and watching art house films. “Other times I call up a few
friends from Heilongjiang for beer and food. Sometimes I just
sit and think.” Stranger perhaps for a rock front man and
songwriter, he rarely listens to music, picking up ideas instead
from off-beat films he watches. “I lead a very normal existence.
I eat and sleep. Sometimes I will need new ideas for a different
period in my life. But other periods I don’t want to do anything.”
On stage Liang cuts a commanding, wisecracking presence, striding
on in heavy makeup and dark reds and blues, a rose in his long
black hair. “I like being quiet but before concerts I get
very excited. But it’s a natural excitement. I’m not
overacting.” Audiences come in all guises. “Some come
for the way I dress. Some are rock fans. Some are fellow Heilongjiang
out-of-towners, but not many.” Foreigners make up an average
ten percent of crowds. “To be honest I don’t understand
why they come. Our lyrics are one of the things that makes us
unique but they can’t understand those.” When a friend
at China Central TV who took some foreign friends to a Second
Hand Roses gig reported the lao wais bought a stack of the band’s
albums afterwards, “I was shocked!” says Liang.
Trips out of China have worked wonders for the band’s confidence.
“People can understand us here in China but when you go abroad
you have to find yourself and what you are about.” Trips
have been lucky chances however. An invitation to a Chinese cultural
festival in Holland came only after a Dutch friend persuaded the
organizers to add them to a lineup of Peking Opera and traditional
musicians. “He said ‘let’s show the Dutch people
there’s rock in China!’” says Liang. Three gigs
on a 2002 tour of Switzerland funded by a culture exchange program
also happened by chance. Worried the Swiss wouldn’t connect
to the older Chinese music an organizer who had heard a couple
of Second Hand Roses songs figured the band would be a good bridge
between East and West. The band still ranks their Holland show
as the best one abroad. “The sound system was the best. There
was good equipment and a great atmosphere.”
Second Hand Roses is a household name in northern China but like
some of his idols Liang has found it harder to find approval in
his hometown. “They still don’t get it. ‘He doesn’t
know music at all so how comes he’s so successful?’
they ask.” Liang responds with his trademark modesty. “I’m
totally not professional. I can’t read music and I write
by feelings.” He’s a deep person and so are his responses
to jibes about his trademark cross dressing on stage. “Yes
some are negative. But I really welcome this. It makes me think
about myself. I know my own shortcomings.” No marks for arrogance,
full marks for originality.
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