Lo Ta-You: A Personal Selection of Beatles Songs

The career of C-pop’s seminal figure has a symbolic resemblance with The Beatles’: While The Beatles pioneered a mix of rock ‘n’ roll with R&B and later psychedelia, Lo Ta-You broke the Mandopop tradition with piercing sounds of rock and folk; while The Beatles were the spiritual leaders of the counterculture, Lo’s non-conformist attitude was a beacon for youth in the ’90s. It doesn’t come as a surprise then that Lo is a die-hard fan of The Beatles. “The 20 songs were carefully chosen [for this playlist] with a special angle—only die-hard fans know which songs were written by Paul McCartney and which were by John Lennon,” he tells Apple Music. Below, we talk with Lo about how The Beatles influenced him in music and in life. Can you please share the story of how you came to be a fan of The Beatles? As a first-rate Beatles fan, what kind of fan behaviours do you have? “The first time I did an interview was when I was 18 years old, and I was the keyboard player in a band called Rockers. [The journalist] asked me, ‘Who’s your favourite musician?’ I said Paul McCartney. You can probably find that interview—it was around the autumn of 1972. I had already been listening to The Beatles for a while. I was born in 1954 and The Beatles blew up around ’62 or ’63. I was seven or eight years old, so I couldn’t really listen to them then; I only started listening to it around the time I was in high school or college, when they had already long been famous, and had probably already been disbanded. So, at that time, they would have been extremely influential because of their widespread fame, as well as the fact that them making such a stir around the world and being humanity's most legendary band wasn’t without a good reason. It all had to do with the 1960s, the end of the second World War, the Vietnam war, the big political changes that were happening, and the massive influence that Europe and America had. Actually, many people started learning or becoming conscious of the electric guitar because of The Beatles, so they definitely had an influence on its popularisation as an instrument. In Taiwan, we didn’t really get it. The Beatles were English and, in Taiwan, young people were generally more into American bands. Year upon year, however, we saw English bands like The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin making much deeper music. English people just have a deeper sense of history, philosophy, and education in general. The best and deepest music was coming out of the UK.” According to you, what comparisons are there to be made between John Lennon and Paul McCartney as songwriters, and what special qualities do they each have? Which one of them had more of an influence on you? “McCartney was a better songwriter, and Lennon was a better philosopher. During their time in Hamburg, their bassist left the band and nobody wanted to play bass, so McCartney said, Alright, I’ll play it then’. Actually, playing bass, singing, and being a songwriter is really difficult. McCartney also chose to play the hardest instrument [piano], so his musical achievements were greatest within the band. John Lennon also played piano, but his playing was the kind of ‘plinky plonky’ style you hear on ‘Imagine’—much simpler. McCartney’s piano playing was harder, because he had a better grasp of chords and rhythm. However, because of Lennon’s attitude, particularly anti-war protests, campaigns for peace, and towards personal values as well, he was much more powerful and more outspoken than McCartney. Aside from their level of depth, it’s hard to compare their popularity. Even though they were only around for ten years, it was the most important ten years in the history and development of rock ‘n’ roll music as a whole. Apart from being part of the 1960s generation, why were these two men so powerful? There are three reasons that people don’t normally think about: Both of their mothers died early, when they were teenagers. McCartney’s died around 14 or 15; Lennon was put into foster care, and then taken back by his mother, who then died in a car accident. Your teenage years are when a parent’s care is most important, because you’re just starting to understand the world; their mothers dying at that time would have cause huge damage. That was their first emotional wound. The second was growing up during the second world war. During the second world war, London and Liverpool were both bombed to pieces by the Germans. When McCartney was 5 or 6, he was playing amongst the rubble caused by the bombings. The third is the fact that they weren’t concerned with tensions between British and German people [after the war]. In their 20s, they went over to Germany to perform. Many British people wouldn’t dare, but they took on that challenge. Liverpool and Hamburg are both port cities. People from port cities are usually more open to influences from abroad; they both like to explore, and they are generally more tolerant. They dared to do it, and they learned things from being in Germany that they couldn’t have learned back home—things that they could apply when they went back. This had a lot to do with their resoluteness and courage, because they easily could’ve been misunderstood by people back home.” Can you share with us how your music was influenced by The Beatles, perhaps with regard to songwriting, philosophies and ideas? “The [refrain] from ‘未來的主人翁’ (‘Masters of the Future’) sounds like ‘Hey Jude’. And my ‘亞細亞的孤兒’ (‘Orphans of Asia’) has a similar composition to [Paul McCartney’s] ‘Mull of Kintyre’.” Just like The Beatles, social commentary is also a big part of your music. From a creative standpoint, what place do you think music has in the development of society? “Because music is immaterial, an abstract art, its influence on people is on the spiritual plane. Because it's immaterial, it penetrates most easily into peoples’ hearts and affects them there. That’s why a short, three-minute song can be just as powerful as a full symphony. You see how many people and how much cooperation it takes to play in an orchestra, but then a short folk ballad or pop song can have the same effect. That’s because it's so easy to decipher and understand its meaning.” The new Peter Jackson documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, includes precious footage of their legendary rooftop concert. You also put a track from your Yi Hua Dong Lu live album on your playlist. What's your view on the difference between live and studio recordings? Are there any live Beatles performances that have made a big impression on you? “It was around the time of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that The Beatles stopped doing concerts, because they understood that there was no way to replicate what they did in the studio as a live performance. That rooftop performance, in actual fact, really isn’t a concert. They set it up in secret, and then the police came to arrest them—it was an illegal show and, fundamentally, not a concert. They just wanted to do something that would take London by surprise. It was also a display of their standing as a band, and they were already set to split up around that time. If I remember correctly, it was at the end of 1969, when the weather was very cold. Their engineer told them that there would be noise in the microphones due to the wind, and he went to a famous up-market department store early in the morning to buy women’s stockings. People in the department store were like, ‘You two big men want to buy women’s stockings?’ They wrapped the mics in the stockings. Live performances really depend on cooperation between members of the band—whether or not they can align their energies with each other, whether they can move each other, and give I00 percent to each other, supporting each other completely. When you receive that support, you also attune yourself to that resonance and offer your support back. For example, when jazz musicians improvise, it doesn’t have the same perfection and completeness as a studio recording, but it’s more about whether or not they can rouse that jazz spirit in each other to perform in the moment, and not worry about any criticism. Forget criticism, forget the rigid click of the metronome, and the music that comes out is a mysterious thing, something that we can’t grasp. That’s the significant thing about live performances.” The Beatles also had George Martin with them in the studio, playing instruments, experimenting with all kinds of recording techniques, and producing some very special sounds. Did this have any impact on you at all? “The important thing was EMI. George Martin had experience recording classical music for EMI, and Abbey Road Studios was EMI’s recording studio. Look at how big and high-ceilinged their recording space was. That’s because it was used for classical music. London isn’t a very big city, so classical, punk, rock ‘n’ roll, and folk music all mixed together in London. When it came to resources, the relationships and mutual support between them were very significant, so it was pretty easy for these things to happen. But the point is that The Beatles made use of these things early on. They weren’t interested at all in stooping to commercial pressures. Rock ‘n’ roll didn’t usually use string arrangements; it was very conventional. The Beatles never shied away from using whatever they could get their hands on that could add to the vitality of their music. I think that’s a very good attitude to have. They didn’t just stick to using electric guitars, and that was what broadened the possibilities of their music, and also what made it timeless. I believe that, from a songwriters’ point of view, their biggest achievement is that their music has stayed so relevant and powerful for so long—it’s not just about it being popular or getting to the top of the charts, rather it’s about being listened to and respected throughout several consecutive generations of listeners. I think that’s the most important thing.”