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Raymond Lauchengco and his shift from pop-rock stardom to balladeer



Back in the '80s, Raymond Lauchengco was one of the most in-demand singers and actors. He could have done and achieved more in mainstream showbiz, but he didn't want to compete.     Looking back, he's just thankful that at one point in his life, he was at the top of his game. No regrets either, even if these days his star is not as bright as it used to be.

Noel Orsal

Raymond Lauchengco and his shift from pop-rock stardom to balladeer

Nini Valera

Wednesday, June 23, 2010
03:57 PM

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Singer Raymond Lauchengco could have been a pop star in the 1980s but he chose to be an enduring artist instead.

 

What that means for Lauchengco to endure these days is to sing to about seven people and compete with the tingling noises of slot machines. For four more weeks in June, Lauchengco would be singing every Wednesday night at the slot machine area of the casino of the Heritage Hotel.

 

"We have to do what we have to do," Lauchengco told PEP (Philippine Entertainment Portal) on Wednesday night, June 2, after his first night at the Heritage. "I've performed in ballrooms, palaces, cockpits, town plazas, and once, in an airplane where it's not allowed."

 

Lauchengco has also performed in the Araneta Coliseum, which he describes as a glorified cockpit.

 

"If I didn't enjoy what I do, I wouldn't compete with the slot machines," he said.

 

POP CELEBRITY. Superstardom was once within his reach after the iconic youth-oriented movie Bagets, directed by Maryo J. delos Reyes, became a blockbuster in 1984. Lauchengco played one of the lead roles alongside Aga Muhlach, JC Bonnin, and Herbert Bautista.

 

"I tried to live up to being a pop superstar," he said. "I really tried. I tried, not knowing any better. I tried to be Martin Nievera and Gary Valenciano...Keno and Gino Padilla. I didn't know then that I would be perfectly happy just being Lauchengco."

 

Nievera and Valenciano were at the height of their careers when Lauchengco's star was rising. Keno and Padilla led a pack of young pop-rock singers that included Lauchengco, tagged as the Pepsi Generation, a major music marketing campaign of the soft-drink company in 1986.

 

"That was a different ball game altogether," Lauchengco said, referring to the frenetic pace of his booming career and the fan adulation.

 

At that time, Lauchengco was a high-profile singer, actor and television presence, co-hosting shows like Maricel Live with Maricel Soriano and Herbert Bautista, Studio Whispers with Janice de Belen, and GMA Supershow with German Moreno.

 

Aside from Bagets and Bagets 2, he starred in movies with Sharon Cuneta (Cross My Heart and Bukas Luluhod ang mga Tala), Janice de Belen (Remember Me, Mama), Gary Valenciano, Herbert Bautista and Aga Muhlach (Hotshots), and Maricel Soriano (Saan Darating ang Umaga).

 

He was managed by an equally high-profile manager, theater and stage director Roxanne Lapus. In one conversation with Lapus and this writer back then, the manager confided that Lauchengco  was confused about his success.

 

"It's as if he didn't want it," she said, bewildered.

 

Lauchengco wanted it; he just didn't want to compete.

 

"Yes, I could have done more then," he admitted. "But it could have driven me crazy. I'm just thankful that all that [success, popularity] happened."

 

ROOTS IN THEATER. These days, Lauchengco takes "great pride in doing a good job" as a balladeer. At last count, he has done eight albums, the latest, released in 2007 under Viva Records, is called Full Circle. Here he embraces the big-band sound, and swings as he sings some of the hits of the 1980s.

 

The year 2005, however, was his comeback, sort of, as a major pop artist when Vicor Records re-issued some of his previous hit songs in the album, Lauchengco. He had been out of mainstream pop for a decade.

 

Lauchengco has hit his mid-40s, gained a few pounds and shows some gray hair. He married Mia Rocha in 2004, and had a baby. Now they have two-Natalie, 3, and David, six-weeks old. He still looks cherubic, but not in the "bagets" way.

 

"You have to grow up sometime," he had said during the presscon to launch  Lauchengco, the album.

 

He was saying that again on Wednesday night (June 2) at the Heritage Hotel.

 


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