Classic Rocker JP discusses the great music divide.

JP (center) flanked left and right by guitarist Man Shou & bassist Wang Lei

It’s not a cover song if the cover band owns it. The Man Who Sold the World was a minor hit in David Bowie’s quirky opus, until Nirvana covered it on MTV Unplugged. In three and a half minutes, Kurt Cobain invested enough of himself in the song to make it his, or at least to make him a major stakeholder, much as Eric Clapton co-opted I Shot the Sheriff.

How many classic rock songs do JP and his band own? It’s hard to say. On a given gig night at the Goose & Duck, there are no TV cameras or recording equipment. But every time JP launches into Message in a Bottle, even the bleariest swaggering barfly turns away from the ball game, looks up from sighting the eight ball, to wonder, “Why the hell is this guy so intense?”

Pain, love and loss, the slings and arrows that would make all of us intense if we weren’t so good at distracting ourselves, that’s why. No blow-dried boy idols, JP and his crew. The years and cigarettes take their toll, while they quest for a sound as elusive and forgotten as the Holy Grail, classic rock with a Chinese feel.

How long have you been playing, and why classic rock?

I’ve been playing for money since 1992. In high school, I had a friend whose parents worked abroad. Once, they brought back a Beatles cassette – I still remember how old the thing was; the paper liner had turned yellow. Anyway, one listen, and me and my friend were hooked. I did everything I could to listen to and learn all the music associated with that time, that style.

Obviously, classic rock doesn’t sell anymore, here or abroad. Pretty pop stars sell all the CDs, and Chinese rock bands think of Nirvana as an old rock act.

Obviously. But yeah, who cares? I can’t care. I can’t play something I don’t love and hope people will love it. It would be nice to ‘make it’, be famous. But feeling the song enough to make the audience feel the same thing, that’s the most important thing. The only thing, really.

Maybe you could reach a larger audience if you sang those classic rock songs you love, but translated the lyrics into Chinese. How’s that for a novel approach?

(Laughs) Yeah, I don’t think that will work. The words to a song are everything to a Chinese listener. It would be very hard to translate the words right, so that they would fit with the melody.

I’ve noticed the Chinese focus on the singer. I remember playing some Pink Floyd for a Chinese friend who had never heard the band, and he asked, “Who is the singer?” As though the instruments weren’t important!

That’s what I mean. The attention to the singer shows that for the Chinese, music is very much the lyrics and melody. Western music is a lot more, I don’t know, could you say, 3-D?

You could at that. But lyrics and melodies from a lot of classic rock songs are certainly more complex and profound than so much pop garbage out today, in the East or West.

OK, but look at it this way: you might have heard about the golden age of Chinese poetry, in the Tang Dynasty. Those poems were almost all sung, you know. And even though there is no recording of the melodies for those poems, we Chinese can read those lyrics, and be just about certain what the melody was. That’s the relationship of lyrics and melody I’m talking about. That’s what would make your translation idea difficult, or silly even.

OK, point taken. So how does that lyrical importance explain “I love you like a mouse loves rice?” [lyrics from a ubiquitous Chinese pop song]

Most popular music is going to be light, meaningless. I struggled with that reality for a long time, because music is everything for me. But for most people, give them something light, easy to sing with, that’s all they need. And someone nice-looking to sing it.

That sounds tragic to me, and doesn’t explain the popularity of Cui Jian. Where the hell is the next Cui Jian?

(Laughing) Don’t waste too much time looking. Cui Jian’s time was a special time. Chinese people needed a Cui Jian in the 80s – that’s why he showed up. I believe it’s like that with the best music, like with the Beatles. Today, Chinese people are much too comfortable to need a new Cui Jian. They have so many choices for entertainment, too, internet, TV, movies, downloads. What would new Cui Jian sing about? Mobile phones?

Come on, there’s plenty going on in China for people to be concerned about or protest about…

Sure, sure. No one really cares, though. It’s all about keeping together to show the world, like the Olympic song; what do they say? Oh yeah, (singing) We are ready…(laughs).

So we have to have a united Chinese front, even for music?

For sure. I’ll tell you a story. This happened a few months ago. I was at 798, hanging out with Eddie at his studio. He’s an Austrian music producer, and there was a Chinese guy there, obviously some kind of big shot in the music business. And he was playing this typical Hong Kong pop music, looking so proud, and asked me, “What do you think?”

I’m Chinese; I have to be polite, right? (chuckles) So I say, “I know nothing about this kind of music.” But he’s Chinese too; he knows what I mean. So he says to me, “Ni hao da de kou qi!”[lit.: “You have very big mouth breath!” idiomatically: “Who are you to talk?”]

So now I’m a little bit angry, and I tell him, “This kind of Chinese music isn’t high level.” He goes crazy, shouting questions about if I’ve lived outside China, if I’ve produced so much music like him.” Eddie could tell something was wrong. He says, “We’re not fighting here!”

So the guy calms down, and tells me, “Chinese music now is very good, the same as western. We have reached the international standard. I hate when people say China isn’t as good as somewhere else.”

I tell him, “It’s not even the same question!” But he keeps going. “How can you talk like this in front of a foreigner?” I could only say, “For me, we’re all just people, especially when it comes to music.”