Joan Baez and William’s tour de force at 22

Unique story on the back page of
The Malay Mail, Oct 19, 1979

By Lim Siang Jin

ONE DAY in October 1979, something unheard of happened at The Malay Mail. The back page lead, always the domain of sport, was stripped. In its place was a story, “GLORY B! This was something”. It was a memorable day for most of us at the production desk, seeing our irrepressible editor, Chua Huck Cheng, make another innovative and inspiring move.

As for the writer, the person who put this “critique” together, he lived one of the wildest dreams any young reporter could have. William de Cruz was 22 when Joan Baez came to town for her only concert in Southeast Asia. Dubbed the Lady with the Flowers, she had become world renowned and, around that particular time, she was also campaigning for the “boat people”, refugees from Kampuchea. What made chasing this story even more dramatic was that Baez had only one night in Kuala Lumpur in her ultra-tight schedule; she was due to fly off to Anambas Islands (Indonesia) the next morning at 8am.

Like many other enthusiastic professionals, William was there at the get-go, attending a press conference at the Subang International Airport, connecting well with Baez and making himself conspicuously known — so much so that at their next contact, at the backstage right after the concert, she gave him a peck on the cheek and a bunch of flowers. That would have been a heaven-sent for an ordinary fan. But it was not nearly quite adequate for a journalist sensing a gigantic scoop looming before him.

Joan Baez: “Disarming feminine charisma”
Source: Wikimedia Commons, 1973

Getting to the story proved to be a bit tricky though. After some niceties at the backstage, all requests for an interview were turned down, albeit politely. There would not be a post-concert party either. The principal rep of the organisers, Jack D’Silva of the Red Cross, even quipped “with tongue in both cheeks” that he would be going to a girlie joint.

Baez was then packed off into a car which headed away for her hotel. William’s deep desire for a scoop, however, couldn’t be satiated. He told me recently: “About an hour later, the journalist in me couldn’t rest. I happened to know at which hotel she was staying. I went there [The KL Regent], walked up to the reception with the flowers Baez had given me. I handed them over to the concierge, and said: ‘Please give these to Joan Baez. I know she’s staying here’.”

William then took a seat in some far off corner. It was late at night and the lobby was relatively empty. With him were Helen Heng and Sheila Natarajan, our colleagues at The Mail who had gone for the concert with him. Ardent professionals themselves, they realised this was William’s moment to relish and remember, and left all the initiative to him. 

Soon after, the scheme started to play out. “I watched the concierge, flowers in hand, take the lift, which only stopped at one floor, and came back to ground level. After a respectable wait, the three of us caught the lift, as discreetly as possible, and I hit the button for the floor the concierge got off at.”

At the floor, they headed for the only suite and rapped on the door. Anne, one of Baez’s assistants, opened it and William said: “If Joan Baez is staying here, please tell her the guy who sent up the flowers is at her door.” Anne excused herself and went back in.

“When the door opened again, there she was — Joan Baez herself,” said an excited William. He recounted that she greeted him like an Indian would, palms held together at her chest, followed by “Come in, Sahib”. Scanning the room, they could see that Baez was having her midnight supper of eggs Benedict and a glass of wine. Jack D’Silva was there too, sipping on a scotch. “I knew it would be you,” he remarked, to which William retorted: “Pretty exclusive girlie joint.”

They were let in for a two-minute chat but it stretched to many more, thanks also to Baez’s kind heartedness and obvious recognition of William’s sincerity, perseverance and knowledge of music — he is a musician and songwriter himself schooled in the respected tradition of buskers and gig performers of the 1960s. The full write-up of the interview, including references to Dylan, her campaign for refugees, etc, can be read here.

I was at the desk at 4.30am when an exhausted William submitted the story to Huck Cheng. Along with me and other colleagues, our editor had also attended Baez’s solo concert at Dewan Universiti Canselor. As the early hours wore on, I sensed something special was being done to the story. I cannot remember who was tasked with subbing it, however, at the paste-up floor, I saw the unusual headline on the back page.

William deserved this very special treatment. He enriched and contextualised our experience of the night and made it so much more meaningful. The words he wrote speak for themselves: 

Hers [Baez’s] was not the long ways of the Streets of London, or the cries of Anak or even the grandiose hopes of Bringing In The Ship — hers was the voice of a generation gone by; one that had thrived on the essence of the Bob Dylans, the Pete Seegers, the Woody Guthries… Four and twenty ears ago, they had only their guitars. Today, she still sticks to hers while others have found an easier way out. 

Particularly, that was the feeling she radiated last night — in her simple midnight blue embroidered caftan, her 75-year-old Martin guitar, a pocketful of songs written so long ago they still apply today, and a disarming feminine charisma that brimmed with character and humanity. 

Bit by bit, the person in Baez kept creeping out — the mother, the lover, the sensitive, the forlorn, the human — and the songs spoke for her. As she sang The Weary Mothers Of The World Shall Rest, one felt almost palpably the experiences of the war-torn and the dislocated. It was powerful idiom delivered with the fondness of the feeling of care. But even for them she had her own ray of hope: “We may never be the poor, for no one owns us anymore...” 

And, yes, she had her less-than-reverential remembrance of Dylan in her rendition of his Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word — complete with her instantly recognisable mimicry of the slur and scraggly diction of the one-time high priest of youth.

Not one song escaped the injection of the message she wanted to put across — not The Beatles' Yesterday, not The Night That Drove Old Dixie Down, not Diamonds And Rust. They all had the Baez interpretation, the Baez cause — sung as if they were meant to be sung that way. No one noticed the greying hair; no one noticed the overpowering voice; no one noticed the absence of a back-up group. It was, simply Joan Chandos Baez, 38, singing her cause.

William enthused that the concert, which 3,000 attended, rivalled “the most mammoth of rock happenings… even if not in number, diminishing the electric parodies of the Today Era with the simplicity of yesterday's flower revolution.” Read his story in full here.

The making of GLORY B!, the story, was a special act in the play of Malaysian entertainment journalism, an interplay among its three protagonists: a passionate and driven writer, an open-minded editor who gave the story what it deserved notwithstanding the age and lack of seniority of the author and, most of all, a star brimming with warmth who, amidst “her unbelievably tight time schedule”, opened her heart to a near stranger.

                                                                 ****

1. William and I have been great friends since 1980-81, when I was seconded to head the entertainment desk of The Malay Mail while the section editor went on long leave. He and the other team members, like Aishah Ali and Lim Kim Bee, persuaded me to do a weekly series on veteran musicians in Malaysia. It ran for about two months and covered, among others, Frankie Cheah, Ahmad Nawab, Alfonso Soliano, Ooi Eow Jin, DJ Dave and Saloma. It was a memorable exercise, especially for me because I got to know the stories behind these music greats.
2. From then until now, there have been many milestones in his life. The following are two major ones: 
• Becoming the founding president of Global Bersih, leading and co-ordinating its activities from Sydney with a deeply-committed group of Malaysians from the diaspora. William gave me a short account at first but decided to expand it to give a better picture of “The Road to Global Bersih”.  It is certainly a story that needs telling. Read here. 
• 
  Writing Love is the Pill, “the biggest story of my life”, after his encounter with cancer. William’s experience with the disease was nothing short of dramatic, as can be read in his introduction to the blog-book or “blook”. Called “Gifts are for giving”, his comments to lend context to his project can be read here. He had been thinking about writing this “book of thanksgiving” for some time after his recovery. It was during an outing to Kuala Selangor with me and another friend in early 2019 that he finally made a firm commitment to do it. Our pictures from that trip are carried here.

• Lim Siang Jin is one of three people who manage this WPS blogsite. Read more about him here.

Straits Echo

THIS IS quite a well-known picture, a three-storey building that once housed the venerated Straits Echo Press newspaper. I have no idea when the newspaper located its operations here but very long ago, it used to operate from a shophouse in Beach Street. In the 1960s, I do remember seeing the building at this spot – the corner of Penang Road and Dato Koyah Road – but never in my wildest dreams then could I foresee that one day in the 1970s, I would have this newspaper as my first employer, albeit only for a short six-month stint.

I said venerated because where the Press was concerned, this English language daily was the pride of Penang. Often, it carried news that the more national-level The Straits Times, with its headquarters in Singapore, was unable to report first-hand. Before the Second World War, The Straits Times occasionally had to rely on re-printing news that had earlier appeared in the Straits Echo. Thus in a way, the latter, despite its regional coverage, was seen as an ultimate source of authority for news about Penang.

Like The Straits Times, the Straits Echo newspaper was a broadsheet which was a large format and somewhat unwieldy to hold. To keep up with the times, but more to challenge The Star newspaper which hit the streets in 1971, the Straits Echo transformed into a tabloid in the 1970s. With it came a new name, The National Echo, and blue was adopted as its colour for the masthead in contrast to The Star’s red. The competition with The Star was keen and at one stage, an evening edition – the so-called street edition – of the newspaper was introduced so that readers could read that day’s news on the same day. Later, The National Echo opened an office in Kuala Lumpur and shifted its centre of operations there. Unfortunately, it could not compete with the likes of New Straits Times, The Malay Mail and The Star, and The National Echo folded in 1986.

When I worked there in the 1970s, the newspaper was owned by someone named KK Liew. The editor was a Eurasian named Wilson de Souza while the senior editors were Cheah Cheong Lin and Sunny Tan. The chief reporter was a very loud man named G Ratnam. Among my peers were people like Kee Thuan Chye, Ung Mah Pheng, Ong Thean Seang and Ooi Kee Beng. The last named is now the Executive Director of Penang Institute.

© Quah Seng Sun

Updates and add-ons:

Lim Siang Jin: 

• My great grandfather, Lim Cheng How, used to manage the company that owned the Straits Echo. This is from my grandfather’s memoirs: “Attached to the Criterion Press, Ltd, former proprietors of the Straits Echo, the premises of which were at Nos 226 and 228 Beach Street, presumably as an assistant, my father rose to the appointment of manager with, I believe, a salary of $100/- pm which was then considered excellent pay having regard to the fact that the cost of living was cheap”.
• In the mid-1980s, the late Soo Ewe Jin (later one of the Deputy Executive Editors of The Star)  and I were approached to come up with a plan to revive The National Echo, perhaps take it back to Penang and focus on news from the north again. We were both working for ISIS Malaysia then. Both from Penang, we were quite excited about the project, however, nothing came out of it.

Tribute to Soo Ewe Jin by a fellow journalist

This tribute is published in the above handbook. See notes below
for more information on the Soo Ewe Jin Scholarship Award.

By Lim Siang Jin 

EWE JIN had been a dear friend since 1979 when he joined The Malay Mail a few months after I did. We got on very well quickly even though a six-year age difference separated us. He was 20 and I, 26. Being similarly from Penang and Penang Free School helped to bolster the friendship that lasted 37 years.

A bit insecure then, but well-read, and full of ideas and initiative, he was quickly recognised as a strong potential to move up the ranks. His early skills as a writer and sub-editor had been honed at the now-defunct The Straits Echo. However, his interest in communications, journalism in particular, was a life-long one. Few children in our days, for example, read the newspapers every day. Few of us, on our own, developed an interest in current affairs. He did, and it showed in his work.    

We spoke a lot during those years at The Mail — about work, how to deal with life, and just about anything else that came to mind. His insecurity started to disappear later when he found the two rocks of his life: God and his wife, Angeline Lim. After Ewe Jin and Angie met, I observed a special glow in them and thought they had found a perfect match. Their faith in Christ became the bedrock upon which their lives together was built.

There were times, I thought, that the decisions Ewe Jin made could put them in financial straits. However, each time I advised him to take the path of greater “security”, he would tell me God would provide, and He did! What flowed from his faith to him and his family were gushes of abundance, not so much in material terms but the stuff of everyone’s life dreams — loving family[1] and friends, welcome acts of generosity and the reciprocity of others, respect and admiration as an example and mentor, very focussed missions in life, and a deep sense of reason and compassion.

I could always count on Ewe Jin for help at various stages of my own development: At The Malay Mail, I started to read his mannerisms. Whenever something was amiss, he would come over, with a face slightly twisted and a “tsk, tsk” at the tip of his tongue, to tell me or one of the other approachable seniors.[2]  After we revamped Malaysian Business from a monthly to a bimonthly in 1984, he was still at The Malay Mail. He would volunteer to sub and write part-time for us whenever we were short-handed — which was very often. The late Shaik Osman, the editor then, was very grateful for his help.  

This book is a compilation of
one of the best-read columns
in The Sunday Star. See Note [3]
below for more info.

In 1985, I decided to exit the NST Group and take up Dr Noordin Sopiee’s offer to join the publications unit of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia. “Doc” favoured communicators in his team because they are trained to be doers as well as thinkers. 

As ISIS started to play a bigger part in national affairs, I thought Ewe Jin would be a great asset to our team. At ISIS, our publications team, at various times, included the late Salim Abdul Rahim Kajai (former editor of Berita Harian, fondly known as Pak Salim), the late Chew Lay See (former journalist from The Malay Mail) and Dorothy Teoh (from The Star who later became editor-in-chief of The Edge). Knowing the team he was to work with and the aspirations of the organisation, Ewe Jin decided to join us.

As expected, he injected news and human interest into our work, most notably interviewing celebrities who passed through ISIS. He spoke, for example, to Oscar-winning Killing Fields actor Haing S Ngor who was later shot dead in Los Angeles in 1996. 

Little known to others, during our ISIS days and in the early 1990s, Ewe Jin and I (with Tan Boon Kean on two occasions) were approached by people to initiate or revamp a number of publishing projects. One was to try to revive The Straits Echo. Another was to start a political weekly with the support of people like Tan Chee Khoon. The third was to start a business weekly. The first two didn’t get past a few meetings. The third resulted in the formation of The Edge.

In 1992, after I had left ISIS, Tong Kooi Ong wanted to start a weekly newspaper expressly to provide more information on the capital markets in Malaysia. This would help in their development. Three of us, Boon Kean, Ewe Jin and myself, were tasked to produce a concept paper. Boon Kean drew up the business plan while Ewe Jin and I worked on the editorial processes, production and design.

When the time came to present the paper, Ewe Jin, with a full-time job then, declined to join us. Ipso facto, he was not offered a directorship of The Edge Communications Sdn Bhd when we started. However, when the The Edge was launched in September 1994, I managed to persuade Angie and Ewe Jin to join us. He spent two years with us, and at the time he left, he was our Executive Editor.

Ewe Jin subsequently joined The Star. On reflection, it was one of his best moves. It was there that he managed to find his true calling — to be confidante of the likes of Wong Chun Wai and Wong Sulong, both of whom have high regard for him; to meet and cultivate the friendship of people of influence; to continue to counsel the younger journalists; and to write a column that would be widely-read and highly-impactful.[3] It was also The Star that provided for him not only in his early years there but also in his times of greatest need — throughout his entire journey with cancer.

To be struck with cancer at 40 was a big blow to him. On reflection again, and bearing in mind acutely the pain and suffering he and his family went through, I think his life’s mission was galvanised by this disease. It was his Cross to bear and he bore it with bravery without losing sight of the need to serve with compassion — setting an example for the rest of us on how to suffer yet cherish life; sharing his journey (via a book that was published six times)[4] so that others, sufferers and care-givers, can draw inspiration from it; and loving life for the small things it offers. It is the life of a true Christian.

• This tribute is published in “A handbook for recipients of the Soo Ewe Jin Scholarship Award”. According to The Star, April 7, 2017: “With [Angeline] Lim serving as benefactor, the Soo Ewe Jin (SEJ) Scholarship has been set up under the umbrella of the Star Education Fund and the Yayasan Universiti Sains Malaysia. It will sponsor one undergraduate every year pursuing a Bachelor in Communications (Journalism) degree at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which is renowned for producing top-notch journalists. A Trust Deed for setting up the scholarship was signed by Star Media Group managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai, USM Vice Chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Asma Ismail and Lim at Menara Star” on Friday, April 7, 2017.

[1] The Soos, Ewe Jin and Angie, are blessed with two children, Kevin and Timothy. Kevin, born 1987, is doing his doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is married to Evelyn Yarzebinski. Tim, born 1990, has a Master of Arts from Macquarie University in Sydney. He works at an advertising agency in Kuala Lumpur.

[2] The approachable seniors included KC Boey (chief sub-editor then, who later became editor of The Malay Mail and Malaysian Business before leaving for Australia), Chua Bok Chye (assistant chief sub-editor) and Monica Moey (senior sub-editor). He was, at that time, terrified of The Mail’s fierce editor Chua Huck Cheng. They have since become quite close.

[3] His column, “Sunday Starters”, has been published in a book, Soo Ewe Jin: Sunday Starters: Reflections on Life, paperback, 360 pages, Star Media Group, 2015.

[4] Soo Ewe Jin & Angeline Lim: Face-to-face with cancer: Four journeys… God always present, paperback, 97 pages, published by the authors, 2012 (sixth edition). 12,000 copies of the book have been printed since April 1999, when Ewe Jin first discovered he had nasal cancer. In this difficult journey that took 17 years, he encountered the disease four times. First diagnosed and treated in 1999, he later found a malignant lump in his lymph nodes in 2006 and suffered from a relapse of nose cancer in March 2011. Ewe Jin’s final confrontation with the disease was in 2015-16. He passed away on November 17, 2016.

• Lim Siang Jin is one of three people who manage this WPS blogsite. Read more about him here.