Hu Shen’s (虎神) rock odyssey began as an exercise in teenage pragmatism: seventeen year old Hu Shen needed an in with the girls, and girls, he had heard, were into musicians.

“I think a lot of us start out hoping our music will turn us into chick magnets. It rarely works,” the guitarist and bandleader of Quarterback (四分衛) says with a laugh.

What began as a tenuous line of reasoning–from girls to guitars–has since evolved into a career spanning more than two decades. But even as he pokes fun at his adolescent motives, Hu Shen recalls a passion that soon eclipsed any romantic concerns.

“It felt like the guitar had become a part of me…Nowadays, when I’m onstage, I try to channel the feeling I had when I first started. I’m not there to promote a record or hear applause–I’m there to savor the music, pure and simple.”

Now that we’re older, our message and our sound have become simpler, and gentler. It is the simplest things that are the hardest to convey.

If Hu Shen, whose name is Taiwanese for “fly” (the insect, not the verb), speaks with the ease of a seasoned rocker who can afford to joke at his own expense, his is a confidence that has been years in the making.

“It took a long time for me to find my own style. Quarterback started out doing covers, so when it came time to make our own music, we all found it difficult to get out from under the shadow of the bands we covered. For a while, everything we wrote sounded like a riff on Guns n’ Roses.”

External forces threatened the band’s survival as well. According to Hu Shen, “rock band” was synonymous with “gang” in the 90s, and the band faced disapproval on all sides.

Family gatherings became nerve-wracking affairs, with relatives pressuring the fledgling musicians to find “normal jobs.”

The joys and trials of the rock n’ roll life, Hu Shen learned, were often a package deal.

“Doing the thing you loved also meant spending less time with family, and sometimes even disappointing those close to you.”

 

And yet, Hu Shen feels Quarterback has been luckier than most. In an industry in which re-packaging artists for a mainstream audience has become common practice, signing a record deal often amounts to signing away a band’s say in their own image. Quarterback, however, has partnered with labels who appreciate their style and enable them to stay true to their own brand.

This is not to say the band has remained unchanged since its inception in 1993. For one, members have come and gone–Hu Shen and lead vocal A-shan are the only founding members left. Quarterback, and Hu Shen, are no stranger to reinvention.

Their latest album, the first since the band’s three-year hiatus following a temporary breakup, is the result of continued experimentation.

“Our music has definitely changed over the years. The first album was more angry, more angsty. A lot of ‘why this, why that?’ Now that we’re older, our message and our sound have become simpler, and gentler. It is the simplest things that are the hardest to convey.”

Finding a way to be yourself is the most daunting, but also the most important challenge any artist can undertake.

The Battle of the Bands judge offers the following advice to participating bands: cultivate a unique sound, one that doesn’t sound like anyone else’s.

It is a project whose frustrations Hu Shen is only too familiar with. “I found it very difficult to escape other guitarists’ influence–I even changed guitars at one point. Eventually, I had to train myself to listen as though I were a third party–someone in the audience–and this made a huge difference.”

“Finding a way to be yourself is the most daunting, but also the most important challenge any artist can undertake.”

Asked to encapsulate Quarterback in a single phrase, Hu Shen compares it to a diesel truck. “It’s the combination of power and endurance—not the fastest car around but definitely the most durable.” It is a truck whose drivers have picked up–and dropped off–many passengers along the way, and whose travels have taken it all over Taiwan.

A diesel truck? Even as a metaphor, it’s not likely to be a hit with the ladies. But it’s hard to imagine seventeen-year-old Hu Shen, a rockstar-to-be, having any objections.

 

Images via Street Voice and SNAPPP