30 years of The Mad Chinaman

THIRTY YEARS AGO, Dick Lee was just about to give up on music. "I had released seven albums so far, and none of them was successful - apart from my first album Life Story (1974), which essentially kickstarted my career."

He told his friends that this eighth album, The Mad Chinaman, was to be his "swansong". He was running a successful events company then, and he'd decided that however much he loved music, it just wasn't paying the bills.

The Mad Chinaman was then almost an attempt to include every music he adored, from Rebecca Pan's hit Nee Nee Wo Wo to the Indonesian kronchong classic Bengawan Solo, from the ubiquitous cla…