Malaysian cartoonist Mohammad Nor Khalid, better known as Lat, may be retired but he’s still one busy man. Our hour-long chat had to be split up into several phone calls after a couple of interruptions, including the time he tells us that he’ll have to call us back because he’s at a record store in Ipoh New Town and his phone battery is running low.
During the next chat, we ask what he bought at the record store. “I got the new Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds,” he replied. “I heard the new song, Angry. It’s good. I’ve been listening to The Rolling Stones since 1965.”
While on the topic of music from legendary bands, what does he think of the new Beatles song, Here And Now? “To me it’s an unfinished song,” he said. “Personally, I didn’t like it at all.”
“If something is good, you’d want to listen to it again and again,” he added, referencing the Beatles song, Hey Jude. “Like when you watch a new movie and you’re only halfway through but you tell yourself, ‘I want to watch this again’.”
The prolific 72-year-old award-winning cartoonist is clearly a music fan. He has a vinyl record collection, which he says is more for collecting nice album covers. He listens to CDs in his car and when he uses his daughter’s treadmill, he plugs in to music on his phone.
“I still listen to music the way I like – old performers from my time. I still listen to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard.”
He also used to play guitar and a bit of bass in a band with some friends in the late 70s and early 80s. He no longer plays; he doesn’t even know where his guitar is now, although he says he sometimes still picks up the instrument when he visits his son in Kuala Lumpur.