Mariah Carey, Korn and the making of a Hong Kong radio DJ
‘I learned English from the Backstreet Boys because I was going to marry one of them,’ says Alyson Hau of her preteen self – years later, she introduced them on stage
I WAS BORN in Kwong Wah Hospital in October 1983. I have a sister, Melody Hau. She’s eight years older than me. She’s always been more of a second mother than a sibling. She’s actually my manager now. We have different fathers and she didn’t come into my life until she was 11. She was brought up by my (maternal) grandma and then she joined our family. That’s when I realised I had a sister. I was three. My mum was a businesswoman and she would fly a lot. So I saw my sister a lot more than my mum or dad.
WE STARTED OUT in Jordan and then lived in Wan Chai. I have lived in at least 25 places. The whole nomad journey was because when I was seven my mum divorced my dad because he got into some bad habits and we were escaping from him. He had a gambling problem. My mum just said, “Here, take my company, take all my money, take my house. I just want to keep my girls.” So, every time he found us to ask my mum for more money, we had to get going again. At the time I thought it was fun. She kept every weekend very busy for us. We would have so much to do that we forgot that we needed a dad.
I STUDIED AT St Mary’s Canossian School, a traditional Catholic girls school, and then Pui Ching Middle School for secondary. Then I moved on to another government school in Tuen Mun. Growing up I just daydreamed about songs, music, lyrics and choreography, and watched music videos. I was a preteen when the Backstreet Boys came around. I learned English from the Backstreet Boys because I was going to marry one of them. I listened to the songs and created my own lyric book. I listened to Metro FM and Kiss FM. Then Metro put out a promo when I was 16, saying they were hiring. I did a tape, one side Cantonese, the other English, but I just hid it under the bed. My mum found it, said, “Who’s this DJ?” and told me to send it. There were nine rounds of competition every Saturday where we would battle it out on air. I won. I never thought I would become a DJ, I thought at best I would be the voice of a telephone system.
THAT’S WHEN I got obsessed with editing, with sound engineering. I had a part-time contract (on Saturdays). I had a massive falling out with my mum because I wasn’t continuing my education. She told me to get a job at HMV. I called them and they were auditioning for a DJ at their flagship store in Tsim Sha Tsui, so I went into the fish tank-like DJ booth to audition, playing a song from a CD and then tagging it to the next song in Mandarin and then English, and they offered me a contract. They were starting a new radio channel with Commercial Radio so I jumped in with HMV. Those three and a half years were the best years of my life because they provided the foundation of my career.
AFTER HMV, I REALISED education was my weakest link. So, in 2004, I began a two-year course at drama school, at the Academy for Performing Arts (APA). My one and only ticket-selling show with the APA was Trojan Women. We had real sand in the amphitheatre. It was cold. It was a January show and we were acting on sand and mud in very thin outfits. I was in the main chorus. At that time, RTHK needed someone to do a filler gig. A show called Teen Time needed a segment called “Backstage”, where they packaged interviews to air. So, I studied drama and did radio on the side.
SINCE MY HMV days, I had been doing cheap MC-ing gigs for Sony Music because I knew that the Backstreet Boys were signed to the label and when they came to Hong Kong, it would be through Sony. I did the launch for heavy metal band Korn in a bar – I didn’t even like the music, way too heavy! I did countless ridiculous shows and gigs as an MC. But because of that, I also got a lot of exposure as to what’s needed as an entertainment MC. It was all great for shaping me into who I am today. Around nine years after I got my first radio gig, my friend at Sony called to say the Backstreet Boys were coming. He said, “We’re throwing an Asian regional press conference before their gig at the AsiaWorld-Expo and we need you to be the MC.” I screamed on the street, and the beautiful, full-circle moment was when I got my skin-tight dress on, the press was there, there were so many cameras, and I did the whole gig, the translations, max level of professionalism without the little girl screaming inside. And then they were shaking my hand as they were leaving the stage, and AJ – I was always going to marry AJ – he shook my hand, he was the last to leave, and he said I was beautiful. He was married already. They were older, I was older. But it was a moment!
I waited for her for five hours, but it was OK because it was Mariah. The moment she popped onto the screen she had a real fireplace and a wind machine blowing in her face, perfect cinematic lights and a lounge chair. “Hey darling,” she said, “how can I say ‘Merry Christmas’ to the people in your language?” So, she learned how to say, sing dan fai lok in Cantonese.