“Before the Mad Chinaman, I was just Dick Lee”
“How did the Mad Chinaman [moniker] come about? That is something people often ask me. “But you know, before I was the Mad Chinaman, I was a singer-songwriter playing ballads on the piano. “Before the Mad Chinaman, I was just Dick Lee,” said Singapore music legend Dick Lee in an interview with channelnewsasia.com, as he lounged comfortably in a designer sofa at his converted-shophouse home.
Lee said he wanted to reintroduce himself to a new generation of “people who only know me as a judge on ‘Singapore Idol'” and allow fans who only remember him from his “Mad Chinaman” days to learn what he is really like as a musician. And to do that, he will be holding a series of recitals at the Esplanade Recital Hall from May 24, entitled “The Adventures of the Mad Chinaman” that traces his musical journey from the time he started playing the piano when he was seven till he released his hit album “Mad Chinaman” in 1989.
“It will be intimate, just me speaking to the audience and playing songs that have inspired me,” said Lee, his voice echoing in the warmly lit, high-ceilinged hall, with walls adorned with all sorts of different artworks. “There will be old songs that you would never have heard before; I am going to chronicle my life as a composer, especially songs from my teenage days.” Lee added that he will share with the audience everything that happened in his life during those days, even the embarrassing bits. “I will be playing long lost footage of my television appearances [like those] in the 80s, it will be quite funny, entertaining. The 80s was all big hair and big shoulders!” Lee said with a laugh.
Dick Lee – THE MAD CHINAMAN