Chan of a lifetime

The man had already created a legendary name for himself as far back as the late 1960s with his bevy of timeless hits that tugged at the heart. Mention “Afterglow,” “Beautiful Girl,” or “Please Be Careful With My Heart” to any group of Pinoys here or abroad, and most certainly one or two (or all!) of them would break out into song, complete with perfectly memorized lyrics.

Then, when social media broke out at the turn of the millennium, he also had a “career revival” of sorts, re-introduced to the next generation, thanks to the countless memes of his image and the obvious reference to his 1990 hit “Christmas In Our Hearts” signaling the start of the “Ber” months and, arguably one of the longest Yuletide celebrations on the planet.

But for all his musical achievements, Jose Mari Chan still doesn’t want to take the credit all to himself. “I always believe that the gift of music comes from God. I think it was Johann Sebastian Bach who said, ’I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.’”

Maybe God created music to ease our suffering while stuck in traffic? If so, it may be high time to thank Him for inspiring car manufacturers to install radios in our cars, for without the driving music, specifically Chan’s music, we would have all lost it.

God knows what Chan would have resorted to, if he didn’t find a way to distract himself from the gridlock.

“On Monday, I was caught in traffic coming from guesting in a morning show in a major TV network in Timog, Quezon City on my way to my Makati office for two hours and 50 minutes. The cars were not moving. Then I saw a motorcyclist with a hitchhiker stopping beside my car. I rolled down my window and said: “Buti pa kayo makakarating kayo ng mas maaga. Baka mamayang hapon andito pa rin kami (Good for you, you’ll arrive early. We might still be here up to afternoon),” he laughed.

“I don’t know if they recognized me, but I just said it out of frustration.”

A songwriter’s gift–or talent–is that he or she has that innate ability to feel how others feel. We call that empathy. Chan, must have loads of it in his system. “I can imagine the truck drivers and the bus drivers when they need to go to the toilet, what do they do? Maybe they wear diapers. You feel sorry for them. That’s why you can understand the way they drive. It reflects their frustrations. And you don’t know what problems they have in their lives.”

How does he react when he hears his own songs played on the radio? “It’s like looking at yourself in the mirror. That’s vanity,” he chuckled.

Chan was eight years old when he first sang on the radio, when his yaya (nanny) took him to the DYRI radio station in Iloilo.

Let the man himself drive you down his own memory lane: “I was in college at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City. In 1963, I was staying at a boarding house of the university. On the second year, my father bought a small house in Bel-Air in Makati, and then he bought a car, a white Dodge Dart (originally built by Dodge from 1958 to 1976 in North America). That was what I would drive to school.

“It only took 20 minutes to drive from Bel-Air to Ateneo, and we had neighbors who would share the ride with me. We were carpooling. One of them is now the president of Ateneo de Davao University, Father Joel Tabora. He and his two sisters would ride with us, along with Tito Osias who was my classmate.

“They remembered fondly that I would be driving along Edsa, at a time when there was not much traffic, and then I would be singing and tapping the dashboard. Sometimes I would look back and ask the back seat passengers, ’Do you know that song?’ And then they would shout: “Joe, keep your eyes on the road!’”

Chan’s favorite driving song then was “Constantly” by Cliff Richard. We certainly see where Chan gets his melodious inspiration from.

In 1966, Pete Roa (Boots Anson Roa’s husband, then working for ABS-CBN) told Chan: “JoeMari, we watched you host campus concerts, combo festivals in different schools, and we want to copy that format on television. We want to call it ’Nineteeners.’ We want you to host it.”

Chan narrated that Roa came over to his Bel-Air house to ask his father’s permission. “In the beginning, my father was not too crazy about it. He wasn’t going to allow me. But he must’ve seen the glitter in my eyes. Finally, he relented: ‘On two conditions: One, that you keep your grades high in
Ateneo; Second, ABS-CBN will not pay you.’”

And so Chan hosted “Nineteeners” for two years. Without pay.

Mercedes-Benz 450SL

“From Ateneo, I would be off by 5 p.m., drive from Diliman to Roxas Boulevard where the ABS-CBN studio was then. It took me only 30 minutes. Then I would come out on TV. I would have several combos as guests, such as Tito Sotto and the Tilt Down Men. That was fun.

“I realized later the wisdom of my father. He wanted me to be a businessman. If I got paid for doing music, I might not have gone to business anymore. That’s wisdom from someone who started from scratch. I miss my father. I learned a lot from him. Often, I would think of him when I tend to do more concerts than business.”

Today, Chan owns several cars, befitting his stature both as a successful musician, and as the chairman and CEO of Binalbagan-Isabela Sugar Company and A. Chan Sugar Corporation. His everyday cars would either be a Lexus SUV or an Audi sedan.

“I don’t have 20 cars in my garage. When I see young people driving flashy sports cars, I laugh, because look, they are also caught in traffic. There’s no fun driving a flashy sports car on Edsa.”

He did, however, have a taste of the fast lane. He once owned a blue Chevrolet Corvair (a compact car sold from 1960–1969) that he drove right after he graduated from college. “I never had an accident (with that car), thank God.”

Chan lived in the United States for 11 years, between 1975 and 1986. “That was during Martial Law, when the sugar business was controlled by Marcos. We set up a small company in New York to buy and sell sugar from Central and South America. So I was buying sugar from Peru, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Bolivia, and at that time my car was a white Mercedes-Benz 450SL. Understated, not flashy. Then, when I left New York to come back to the Philippines, in my last year there, I bought a Jaguar XJ with British racing green.

“It was a dream for me to own a Jaguar. Until now, I still have that car, and it only has about 8,000 miles (about 12,000 kms) on it since I only drive it when I go back to New York. I park it there, lock it up, and unhook the battery. If you don’t unhook the battery, the clock in the car will eat up your battery, so by the time you get back after a few months, it won’t start.

“I like practical cars. As long as it takes me there, that’s enough. I like safe cars. Toyota has been a favorite of ours because they have good after-sales service. I also had a sky-blue Range Rover.”

Looking at Chan’s dual life as a singer/songwriter and as a sugar businessman, we now understand what he means by “sweet music.”