GEORGE LAM CHI-CHEUNG is a man of few words. But when the veteran singer-songwriter is on a roll, his sense of humour can be contagious. 'I think I am really funny,' Lam says. 'I mean, I think people must want to laugh when they look at my face. It's a comical face.'
By any means, someone who comes up with the idea of superimposing his face on the body of Beethoven and plastering it all over town on promotional posters deserves some credit for his sense of humour, or at least, eccentricity.
The much-talked about 'make-over', which merges Lam's mung bean-shaped eyes and his trademark moustache with Beethoven's wild mane, has raised the profile of his forthcoming concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra so successfully that Lam is convinced a little fun is all that's needed to make classical music accessible in Hong Kong. So far, it's working like a charm. Tickets were snapped up so quickly for the three concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum next week that the Philharmonic has added another show.
'I got the idea when I looked at a CD cover of Beethoven at home,' Lam says. 'I thought he looked too intense. His expression was so stressed, so I decided to put my face on it. I just wanted to be playful.'
But the fun ends there, for Lam is deadly serious when it comes to work. For more than 30 years, the singer affectionately known to his fans as 'Ah Lam' has blazed a trail for himself in the Canto-pop industry. 'It doesn't matter what I do, I always insist on being myself,' he says. 'Creativity is the most important thing, but if it's not an individual process, it's nothing.'
Despite being a relative 'outsider' to the music industry rat race, he has always been sufficiently attuned to know what the market needs, and adapt accordingly. When he returned to Hong Kong in the mid-1970s after studying and working in the United States and England, he tested the waters by releasing albums in English but it didn't sell. It was a time when Canto-pop was quickly gaining a foothold as Hong Kong's own style of music, so Lam started singing and writing Cantonese jingles for television ads and theme songs for TVB dramas. Unlike packaged artists, who left everything to their producers, Lam wrote and produced his own songs, quickly grabbing the attention of recording companies and, more importantly, audiences.