At 19, Tan Soon Loke, better known as Jap Tan, was the manager of The Strollers. Before he turned 30, he disappeared from the music scene.

In his first ever media interview, Jap, now pushing 74, talks about a vanished dream gig in Las Vegas, why he quit and how he enjoyed life with The Strollers.

He said in the early 70s, there was a standing offer for The Strollers to play at a nightclub in Las Vegas where the Jackson Five were performing.

It would only happen after they had completed their stints at the Golden Gate nightclub in Jakarta and at another club in Bandung, Indonesia.

“We were hardly two weeks into our gig in Jakarta when one of the key band members, urged by his wife, wanted to return home,” he told FMT.

Jap said the band had to cut short their contract in Jakarta, dashing the ultimate delight of making a name in the US.

Not long after that disappointment, Jap was horrified when he discovered drugs had sneaked into the band during their engagement at the Rasa Sayang Hotel in Penang.

“It was time to quit music,” said Jap, adding, “It was a tough decision to make as collectively, the boys worked hard and made me happy but I could do little or nothing about the drugs.”

Jap said he then went to Kuala Terengganu where he sold second-hand Vespa scooters and other motorcycles for Tunas Motor Sdn Bhd, owned by his cousin.

He remained there for 20 years and upon his return to Petaling Jaya in 1996, he went into a short-lived T-shirt business, marketing the ‘Cicak’ brand.

He did not have money to venture into any other business and a return to the music industry was not an option.

“I did not make money as manager of The Strollers as we were a poor band and I spent what I earned to buy equipment for them,” he said.

Today, he lives with his older brother, Soon Chake, in Petaling Jaya, with the priority in his life being his failing health.

Jap agreed to the interview with FMT following the death of The Strollers’ lead guitarist, Hassan Idris, at the age of 73, last week.

Hassan was the fourth member of the band under Jap to have passed on. The others were multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Nand Kumar (1991), guitarist Amrin Majid (2010) and drummer Ramli Yaakob (2019).

Guitar sensation, Terry Thaddeus, who briefly joined the group after Jap left, died in 2003.

“They were great musicians who made the country proud with their brand of music and popular culture should not forget them,” said Jap, still a bachelor.

On why he has remained single, Jap said: “It just happened. I was too busy with the band and later with other businesses.”

Jap may only be 5’3” tall but he had the spirit and presence of a tiger to become a mover and shaker in music soon after he cut his teeth in the industry in the early 60s.

He was called Jap because his friends referred to him as “yat pun chai” which in Cantonese means “Japanese boy”.

The Strollers of the 1960s and early 70s were a foursome and Jap was the “fifth Stroller” who added star power to Malaysia’s first pop band.

He groomed the boys to make the transition from teen idols to accomplished entertainers.

As The Strollers unleashed teen screams, Jap became a face of the band as well, and got mobbed by fans along with the rest.

Fans came out in droves whenever the band played and on occasions, Federal Reserve Unit trucks had to be on standby for crowd control.

“In 1972 in Sabah, I was mobbed by fans on the stage as I was handing out autographed photos of the band, forcing me to crawl out of the crowd,” Jap recalled laughingly.

On why he never did press interviews in the past, Jap said: “I was a low-profile person and hands-on manager, including being backstage to ensure everything was okay when the band was performing.”

A non-musician, Jap had the uncanny ability to set everything on stage by ear, including tuning the guitar and doing balancing – meaning, “the band comes on stage, plugs and plays.”

He said there had been occasions when he had to tune Hassan’s lead guitar on stage and instantly hand it back to him.

“The skill just came naturally,” said Jap, who was also known to put his ear to the speaker and get the lyrics of a song.

What was equally startling was that none of the band members had any formal musical training and each composition was arranged, playing by ear.

Jap may be short in stature but he was always the grown-up in the room.

Hussein Idris, 70, who is still the drummer of the band with a different line-up, said: “Jap learned the hard way and as the manager, he fought for the band members and we respected each other.”

He said Jap’s work was never done as the “cheerleader, confidant, businessman and creative sounding board.”

Hussein said Jap convinced the band members to leave their day jobs and become full-time musicians, pushed them to write their own material and helped secure a deal with CBS Records to produce English songs.

Inspired by Jap, The Strollers, over the years, released nine singles, one EP, one album and 33 songs, of which 17 were original compositions.

Jap said he had fun giving the band a visual identity by smartening the long-haired idols up with suits and ties. He did the same.

How protective was Jap of his boys? Saying, he was always in the frontline when trouble came, he related a brawl between rival gangs over Jacky’s Bowl on Jalan Ampang where The Strollers were playing.

He said the popularity of Jacky’s Bowl upset the Bukit Bintang gang that resolved to sabotage the venue.

“A fight erupted after one of the patrons, a British lady, was hit by a gang member and I quickly hid the band in a room to avoid trouble.”

Jap said it was at Jacky’s Bowl that The Strollers, as an emerging band, managed to buy their own instruments, thanks to Agus Salim who was the group’s first full-time singer.

Agus, who won the ‘Cliff Richard of Malaysia’ contest in 1963, got $2,500 from his uncle, then cabinet minister, Ghazali Shafie, to buy used equipment for the band.

They bought Fender guitars, a Rogers drum set and amplifiers from a Melaka band, The Vipers – and soon they were on a roll.

Like any good manager, Jap was frustrated at members leaving the band but he took it in stride as “the manager’s job is to stop a band breaking up and find suitable replacements.”

Jap was accorded special treatment at the reunion of The Strollers as was the case at a concert in Royal Selangor Club in 2016.

Would Jap encourage people to become band managers?

“It’s a hard life for musicians in Malaysia and one must have strong perseverance to go through what I went through,” he said.