This is part three of a multi-part interview:

Part One - Part Two - Part Four

---


In the West, if people know Zuno Keisatsu, they're known as key figures of 70s Japanese rock, releasing six politically incendiary albums before their split in 1975. What these people generally don't know, however, is that the story didn't end there: frontman Panta went on to an enormously successful solo career, and even reformed Zuno Keisatsu in 1990. Next year, Panta, along with Zuno Keisatsu mainstay percussionist Toshi, will be celebrating the band's 40th anniversary with a new album based on the poetry of the late Shuji Terayama (of Tenjo Sajiki fame.)

You can't do 40 years of history justice in one sitting, so in the coming weeks, Jrawk will be posting installments of this exclusive interview. Here, Panta speaks frankly about nervous breakdowns, comes to a deeper understanding of his place in the music scene, and fends off nervous police with toy guns.

---

JR: OK, so HAL was no more. Now what?

PT: I started writing love songs. I was turning 30, I wanted to do the music I would have done if I hadn't gone in Zuno Keisatsu's direction. I had done Zuno Keisatsu, then HAL, for ten years. Both were rock 'n' roll bands, I wanted to try my hand at pop music.

Rock music is about first and second person...You And I. Zuno Keisatsu and HAL were very narrative, always telling stories. I got away from that. I wanted to work with melody, pop structures, with less focus on the lyrical content...or rather, I didn't worry about the lyrical content so much as I fit the lyrics to the mood of the song. The meaning wasn't something I thought too much about.

Kiss

At least, that's what I wanted. I had a meeting with (Panta's record label) Victor and they said NO! (laughs) They hated the idea, but I thought it was a kind of betrayal to the fans to ignore what I thought was the best artistic direction at the time. I had been very serious about Zuno Keisatsu and HAL, I didn't want to suddenly start selling insincerity. It took some convincing, but eventually they let me work.

That became "Kiss." I wanted to do more of a 60s inspired, Merseybeat kind of thing. We hired Makoto Yano (the now former husband of Akiko Yano) for the arrangements. When they came back, they were a lot more...gentle than I intended. I wanted pop, but this was much softer than what I had in mind. The producer told me to follow that lead, and to sing accordingly. I ended up singing as softly as possible.

JR: So...how was it received?

PT: Not well! (laughs) The fans' reaction was "what the fuck are you doing?" The critics really piled on. The jazz critics of one magazine wrote an article with the headline "Panta, go back to where you came from."

It really caused a stir. My own fan club was telling people not to buy the record! The fan club wasn't some promotional setup, it was fan run. I knew I was in trouble when the people who went out of their way to work in the fan club were telling people to reject the record.

JR: Ouch. So what did you do next?

PT: I had a couple of albums that were inconsequential. "Kuchibiru Ni Spark" ("Lip Spark") had more of a Motown feel, and there were a lot of references to Supremes lyrics, a lot of wordplay. I was just playing around. Later, I head about a comic called "Kuchibiru No Punk," I always wondered if that was lifted from the album! (laughs)

I had initially thought about doing three pop albums in a row, starting with "Kiss," but after "Kuchibiru No Spark," I lost interest. The third album was going to be all covers. "Salvage" was next... (shrugs) Not much to say about that one.

16

JR: "16" came next, that one seems a lot more serious.

PT: It was. I had a nervous breakdown making this album.

"16" was inspired by Sybil Dorsett, a woman that had sixteen distinct personalities. She worked with a doctor, it took 20 years to merge them all. I was really shocked about the extremity of the situation, but I started thinking it would happen to anyone. We all change our behavior according to who we meet, we all have that kind of personality shift, but we don't forget ourselves. "16" also happened to be my 16th album, and it had sixteen songs, all based on differing mental states: "Goodbye My Shadow," Time Thief," "Strange Cohabitants."

The morning the tour for "16" started, I was very sick. I woke up and I had soiled the bed. I had never done that, not even as a child. I got some medicine on the way to the station; my band were already in Kyushu for the first show of the tour, but I had to stop over in Osaka to make a TV appearance. I actually made a diaper just in case, I didn't want to embarrass the TV staff.

After the interview, we went out for a gorgeous dinner, but there was no way I could touch it. I hardly ate anything for three days, I was so worried about getting sicker. I had a box of caramels, that's all I would touch.

When I got to the first gig, I got dizzy during the rehearsal. I went through with the show, but just barely. I could hardly move, I finally ate a little when we hit Kumamoto, but at that point I was afraid of everything. I'd panic if I drove into a tunnel. I started getting stage fright. I couldn't even look at pictures of women, 'cause if my heart rate went up even a little bit it would go berserk.

I went to the hospital, of course. They said nothing was physically wrong. OK, so it was mental. I went to the psych department of Keio University. Beforehand I had written down this long description of my life, planning on showing it to them when I got there.

They had one doctor asking questions and two taking notes. After they consulted with each other, they sent me to a fourth doctor. I gave him this long paper I had written about my home life, and he gave me medicine in return. I asked him what it was. He looked at this long paper I had given him, looked at me, then said "if I tell you, you'll second guess everything!" (laughs) He ended up telling me it was a wheat extract, like what was used in udon. It turned out it was actually a mild anti anxiety drug. I took two of these things three times a day, and I felt this tension, a kind of weight lift from the back of my head and shoulders. Suddenly, everything was easier. I could do anything, talk to anyone! Dammit, why didn't I take these sooner? (laughs) I took them for ten years. I still take a little before I go to bed.

反逆の軌跡 (Trace Of Rebellion)

JR: What about the next album? Did this change in lifestyle effect how you approached your music?

PT: I was in my car, on the way to another meeting at Victor, thinking about everything. Rock had become a big business, and I had this sudden realization: I should quit. Just walk away. So I open the door to the meeting, everyone's sitting around the table. I say "I'm quitting," and everyone just stared at me. And that was that. Meeting over.

A week later, I'm driving around, and Sting's song "Russians" came on the radio. I started thinking: here's this political song, and it's a hit. He even got a Grammy for it. I think about this for a little while, then I realized that I was in Japan for a reason. I might be playing Shinjuku Loft instead of Carnegie Hall, but my function was the same. Then I decided to continue.

The next album was called "反逆の軌跡" ("Trace Of Rebellion,") and the cover had the subtitle "Don't Forget Yesterday." The album title didn't have anything to do with the songs (laughs,) but I wanted the title to show who I was. I'm defined by rebellion.

JR: You definitely got a lot more serious with the next album, "R•E•D."

PT: "R•E•D" started as an idea for a film. Of course, it takes a lot of money to make one, so I had the idea of making the soundtrack to an imaginary film. It took about three months to come up with a 100 page outline for it. (A synopsis can be found here.)

R•E•D

While I was working on that, I had an...incident. A woman from the Mossad started following me.

JR: Huh?!?!

PT: When I was making "R•E•D," it was right before the 12th G7 summit in Tokyo. This girl approaches me, says she's from Manchester, she wants me to help her find a modeling agency in Tokyo. Then she starts telling me she's Jewish, and she had been to Israel, then went to Iraq, Iran...

At that time, maybe it's still true now, you got a passport stamp whenever you went to Israel, and they wouldn't let you into Iraq or Iran if you had it. She was telling me she had done this traveling in these three countries to impress upon me that she wasn't just anyone. Anyway, some friends of mine directed me to a modeling agency in Akasaka. I was driving her there, and she said "what would you do if I started killing your friends one by one?"

I said, in English, "it's up to you." While I said that, I'm thinking "too bad I'm not driving an Aston Martin, I could hit the eject button and launch you out of the car!" (laughs) Unfortunately, it was just a Jaguar.

JR: Unbelievable.

PT: (nods) She disappeared after the summit.

JR: Anything else happen during the making of "R•E•D?"

PT: Well, we wanted to get some shots for the cover, make it look like they might have been stills from the film. So we got all this equipment, Army fatigues, toy guns, and a boat. We went to what is now Odaiba with the idea of taking these shots, as if we were on an island in Bangkok. So I'm standing there, holding this realistic looking fake gun in an Army jacket, surrounded by all this fake artillery, in the middle of Tokyo Bay. Problem is, this is during the Tokyo Summit! (laughs) The bay police come over to check us out, I'm trying to explain "they're toys, really! Look!" (laughs)

---

Part 4 of this interview, where Panta finally creates his masterwork, and subsequently reforms Zuno Keisatsu, is here.