50년의 역사를 정리한 마지막 앨범 [Anthology Part I.II 1958-2006]!!
1938년 서울에서 태어난 락의 거성 신중현은 1957년 미8군 무대에서 ‘Jacky’라는 이름으로 공식 음악 활동을 시작한다. 당시, 미군들의 기호에 맞춘 재즈나 로큰롤등을 연주하며 큰 호응을 얻었던 그는 일본식 트로트 일색이던 한국 땅에 서구 음악을 들여놓은 중심역할을 하며, 미8군의 톱 스타로 군림하게 된다.
비틀즈가 결성 되기 1년 전인, 1962년 신중현은 이미 한국 최초의 로큰롤 밴드인 '애드 포'(Add 4)라는 그룹을 결성하였으며, 이 그룹은 서구식 로큰롤 밴드의 라인업(기타•보컬•베이스•드럼)의 구성으로 활동을 시작하였다. 그룹 애드 포는 1964년 〈빗속의 여인〉 〈커피 한잔〉 등 새롭고 전위적인 사운드의 노래들이 실린 데뷔 앨범 《ADD4》를 발표하며 대한민국 록 음악의 씨앗을 태동 시킨다.
신중현의 실험적 노선은 에드포를 거쳐, 조커스, 덩키스, Questions 등의 그룹등을 조직해 활동하면서 밴드 문화 를 국내에 정착시켜나갔으며, 로큰롤의 서양 리듬과 한국적인 리듬을 결합시킨 유니크한 한국의 락사운드를 개척해 나갔다. 한편, 1968년에는 펄 시스터즈가 부른 〈님아〉 〈떠나야 할 그 사람, 그리고 69년 김추자의 〈월남에서 돌아온 김상사>등 수많은 히트곡을 만들어 내었고, 장미화• 장현• 박인수등 셀수 없이 많은 빅아티스트들을 발굴해내며 소위 “신중현 사단”의 면모를 유감없이 보여주었다. 1970년대에는 당시 세계적으로 유행했던 사이키델릭록에 심취했던 신중현은 단조의 예술적 미를 그려낸〈봄비〉 〈꽃잎〉 등 사이키델릭 스타일의 파격적인 사운드를 계속해서 선보이며 한국에서 뿐만이 아닌 일본에서의 관심을 얻게 되며, 군계일학의 음악 노선을 구축해간다.
당대의 히트 넘버 “미인” 이 발표된 1973년에는 '신중현과 엽전들'의 브랜드를 구축하는 최고의 전성기를 가졌으며, 4장의 앨범과 함께 한국적 록 사운드가 담긴 수많은 대표작들을 남겼다. 특히, 1집 앨범의 결과물은 현재까지도 최고의 명반으로 기록되며 한국록의 새로운 지평을 열어 나갔음을 시사한다.
하지만, 소위 최고의 인기를 구가하던 그에게, 음악활동에 제약을 받게 되는 불행한 사건들이 이어졌다. 1971년 유신으로 재집권한 제 4공화국 정부의 출범과 함께. 수많은 뮤지션들이 대마초 연예인으로 낙인 찍혀 구속되었고, 대부분의 노래들이 퇴폐적이고 불온하다는 이유로 금지 당하였는데, 신중현 역시 1974년 대마초 사건의 폭풍을 피해갈수 없었다. 이를 통해 그는 징역 4개월과 각종고문에 내쳐지며 수많은 곡들이 판매 및 방송 금지곡으로 묶이게 되는 불운한 시기를 겪게 된다. 이는 실질적인 활동의 연장이 불가능한 시기로 기억되며, 10여년의 생활을 암흑 속에 살아야 했던 비운의 시기가 되었다.
이후에도 신중현은 1980년 ‘뮤직 파워’라는 밴드를 결성하여, 공전의 히트를 기록한 <아름다운 강산>을 만들어 내었으며, 1983년 ‘세 나그네’를 다시 결성 , 전통적인 락사운드의 음악 노선을 이끌어간다.
락의 거장, 신중현의 행보는 비단 개인의 음악선상을 뛰어넘어 후배 양성에도 지대한 공헌을 하게 되었는데, 국내 클럽의 실질적 인프라를 구축한 라이브 클럽 '록월드'(Rock World)를 개관하여 록뮤지션들의 연주공간을 마련하였고, 그 후 개인 스튜디오이자 카페인 '우드스탁'(Woodstock)을 차리는 등 1980년대 중반 이후 다시 활발한 활동을 재개하여 한국적 록의 완성을 위한 작업에 매진하였다. 그 결과 한국적 락음악의 완성작이란 평가를 이끌어낸 전기기타 산조 <무위자연>(1994)과 <김삿갓>(1997) ,<Body & Feel> (2002), <안착> (2005)를 발매하였으며 2006년 은퇴 라이브 무대를 끝으로 공식적인 음악 활동을 마친다.
이번에 기획된 <신중현 Anthology Part I.II 1958-2006>는 총 두개의 박스에 담겨진 101곡의 사료적 가치를 지니는 주요곡들로 구성 되었고, 신중현 역사를 집대성한 의미 있는 마지막 앨범으로, 현재까지 그가 고수하고 있는 원테이크 녹음의 표준을 손상하지않는 그만의 진실한 소리를 담아낸 노장의 50년 역사가 담겨있는 앨범이다. 다수의 곡들이 히트곡과 지금까지 재발매 되지않아 흔히 볼 수 없었던 희귀 트랙들로 구성되었으며, 장장 6개월에 걸친 리마스터링 작업등을 통해 나오게 된 값진 앨범이다. 감히 범접할 수 없는 외길 음악인생을 정리하는 이번앨범은 한국 대중음악사의 중요한 사료이자 록음악의 진수를 아우르는 음악 바이블로 충분한 소장가치를 지닐 것이다.
- 본 음반은 복각음원이 많아 약간의 잡음이 들어간 곡들이 있습니다.
- 본 앨범의 마스터링은 신중현 선생님이 직접 작업하셨습니다.
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Korea’s Godfather of Rock Makes a Comeback
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
TAEGU, South Korea
I’M worried,” Shin Joong-hyun said in the dimness backstage, standing in front of a full-length mirror, in a white suit and white boots that lifted him a couple of inches above 5 feet. “My voice is terrible. It’s cracked.”
Known as the godfather of rock ’n’ roll for popularizing the genre in South Korea, Mr. Shin, at age 68, was in the final months of a farewell tour. Early this year, he had already moved into an as-yet unfinished house in the countryside.
But before retreating there for good, he would add finality to a long career in which he emerged as “Jackie Shin” on American Army bases in a postwar South Korea ground down to dust, rose as a homegrown rock poet and then fell with his stubborn refusal to write a song glorifying the nation’s military dictator. In a new South Korea that has left him bewildered, and a little embittered, Mr. Shin has recently been rediscovered.
So on a recent Sunday evening, Mr. Shin set about to thrill a middle-aged crowd in this southeastern city one last time. Backstage, he ensconced himself in a chair facing the mirror, leaned back and shut his eyes, until someone yelled out, “It’s time!”
On stage, bothered by a poor sound system, Mr. Shin sang hesitatingly at first. Two giant television screens zoomed in on his face, his white hair shaved close to the scalp, as he strained to read the lyrics. “My memory is not so good anymore,” he said, “and my eyes are not so good.”
But he played on, an electric guitar strapped across his left shoulder, going through, with increasing confidence, the rock classics that would be his epitaph. As he neared the end of the first set, he sang two of his most famous songs, “Beauty” and “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains,” and the television screens showed the pleasure on his face as the crowd clamored for more.
Five days after the concert, Mr. Shin was recovering at his new house in a rural area south of Seoul. Facing farmland, his two-story brick house was built around a small studio cluttered with computers, sound equipment and costumes.
“I was out of my mind for a few days,” Mr. Shin said, explaining that the concert had exhausted him. Several concerts were left, though thankfully, they were spread out.
Mr. Shin was born in Seoul during the Japanese occupation, and spent his childhood listening to his father’s 78 r.p.m. records and his mother’s harmonica. After both parents died, he began working at age 11, delivering pharmaceutical goods and saving up money to pursue what he believed was a destiny in music.
As he entered his late teens in the years after the Korean War, resources were few in South Korea. He bought a violin — “because it was the only instrument in the music store” — but found it too difficult to learn and eventually turned it in for an acoustic guitar. A friend gave him the money to buy an electric guitar, which gave him entry into the only place Korean musicians could perform regularly: American military bases.
Mr. Shin played jazz in the officers’ club, sang country for the sergeants and rock ’n’ roll for the troops. He mimicked an American accent so well that the soldiers — who would shout, “We want Jackie!” — mistakenly believed he was fluent in English. At the base, he ate fried chicken and drank Dr Pepper. He met his future wife, Myeong Jeong-gang, who was Korea’s first female rock ’n’ roll drummer in a band called Blue Ribbons.
“The music we played shouldn’t taste like kimchi,” Mr. Shin said of the spicy pickled vegetable that is the Korean national dish, “but it should ooze butter.”
Around the same time the Beatles scored their first hits in the United States, Mr. Shin formed the first Korean rock band, “Add 4,” in 1964. Influenced by the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix — he is often compared to both, the Beatles for his songwriting and Hendrix for his guitar playing and lone-wolf style — he wrote a series of classic hits and began the careers of other artists with his songs.
But at his peak, one morning in 1972, a fateful phone call would derail his career. A caller identifying himself as an official in the presidential Blue House asked Mr. Shin — in a “tone that was not unpleasant” — to write a song for Park Chung-hee, South Korea’s military ruler from 1961 to 1979. Mr. Shin declined “in a nice way,” he said. But 10 minutes later, another caller, this time from Mr. Park’s political party, gave him an order. Again, he refused. Politics had never interested him, he said, and he simply hated the military dictatorship.
His refusal, he believed, eventually led to his imprisonment for drug possession. American hippies protesting South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War had introduced Mr. Shin to marijuana and LSD, which he said he took for a while, but quit because it interfered with his work. The hippies went back to the United States, Mr. Shin said, but left a huge quantity of marijuana at his home. South Korean musicians, interested in experimenting, came to him.
After four months in prison, Mr. Shin found that the government had banned his songs, a ban that was lifted only after Mr. Park was assassinated in 1979. Clubs started offering him gigs again. But by then disco had supplanted his style of music, young waiters told him to play faster, and he was considered out of fashion.
It was only in recent years that his music was rediscovered, and young musicians recorded covers of his songs in “A Tribute to Shin Joong-hyun.”
The lost years, though, have added a bitter edge to Mr. Shin, who never raked in the big money that goes to Western rock stars. He makes about $10,000 a month now, and complains that he is being cheated.
He describes current popular music as “demented.” Like many in his generation, Mr. Shin remains fiercely pro-American and rails at the youth’s misgivings and criticisms about America.
“Young people don’t know anything,” he said. “They’re pathetic. It’s because of the U.S. we have what we have.” At the concert here, however, Mr. Shin basked in his fans’ embrace. “We love you,” said Chang Young-woo, 46, a restaurant manager, adding, “When I listen to his songs, I feel as if I’m a high school student again.”
After the concert, Mr. Shin patiently signed autographs. But something, it seemed, was ruffling him. At a postconcert party, he was feeling “exhausted” and in no mood to drink or eat. His manager had booked a hotel here. “But I didn’t feel that I could sleep,” Mr. Shin said, “so I decided to go back to Seoul.” He drove alone on the main highway to Seoul, but he soon started running out of gas.
“At that hour, there were no gas stations on the highway that were open,” he said, “so I had to get off the highway and search for an open gas station. I was running out of gas.”
It seemed to take ages before he found a station and was able to get back on the highway. Dawn was about to break when Mr. Shin at last made it home.
'The Godfather of Korean Rock'
By MARK RUSSELL
July 14, 2006
Shin Joong-hyun, an old man with a new house in the countryside south of Seoul, is anticipating a quiet retirement. But not before he rocks South Korea one last time.
In the 1960s and '70s, the iconic Mr. Shin introduced Koreans to rock'n'roll, spun out a decade's worth of Jimi Hendrix- and Jefferson Airplane-influenced hits, and wrote many of the country's most popular songs for other pop performers. As singer, songwriter, producer and coverer of American classics, he was the godfather of Korean rock. Until a run-in with the government began his long goodbye.
Mr. Shin, 68, never quite recovered his momentum after December 1975, when -- at the peak of his fame -- he was arrested on marijuana-possession charges and banned from performing. Mr. Shin and others believe the arrest was payback for a political snub. Asked in 1972 to write a song glorifying then-President Park Chung Hee, Mr Shin refused.
Only with President Park's passing in 1979 was the ban on Mr. Shin finally lifted. But he discovered a greater obstacle in his path: time. The rock movement he had started had passed away in late-1970s Korea, to be replaced by a curious blend of disco, modern synthesizers, and revival of the old trot tunes that former President Park had enjoyed. It was the start of the bubblegum pop and syrupy ballads that have ruled Korea ever since. "It was all 'Let's work hard,' and 'Let's be happy' kind of stuff," Mr. Shin says. "It was completely physical, with no spirit or humanity. That trend has carried over to today, so people are deaf to real music."
Beginning July 15, he embarks on his "retirement" tour, a last hurrah that will showcase the roots of Korean pop. His songs are more retro-cool among Japanese youth than Korean youth at the moment. But a loyal -- if silver-haired -- fan base will line up to hear early classics like "The Woman in the Rain," recorded during his years as lead singer of Add 4, Korea's first rock band -- or "Beautiful Mountains and Rivers," a 1970s hit that captures his psychadelia phase.
In 1957, Mr. Shin started playing rock music for U.S. Army bases under the name "Jackie Shin." "The U.S. bases are where Korean rock developed," he says. Mr. Shin remembers the music he liked to play then for GIs: "Bill Hailey's 'Rock Around the Clock,' Guitar Boogie Shuffle." He was a big fan of Elvis, but frustrated that he couldn't move his hips like the King.
When he pioneered Korean rock by forming Add 4 in 1964, Mr. Shin's sound was still out of the mainstream. He only hit platinum in 1968 by producing an album for two high school girls who called themselves The Pearl Sisters. Their album, "Nima," was a huge hit, and started Mr. Shin's habit of collaborating with other top artists.
Now decades past his glamor days, Mr. Shin has retreated to Techno-ville, a small new community on Seoul's rural fringe. After his Korean farewell tour ends in October, he will return to the handmade sound studio beside his rural home. He plans to keep on experimenting with music -- even recording new live shows on the Internet.
Of his plan for staging a final tour, he says: "I want to break away. I felt like I had lost my direction. After 50 years, I was at the limit of performing in Korea and want to try something different."
Mr. Shin speaks with the quiet confidence of a man with nothing to prove after reaching his perch in Korea's musical pantheon. The almost Johnny Cash-like swagger he once carried has mellowed with age, but he still plans to keep up his stride. ....
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