Interpretation by Nate Shockey
Special thanks to Eriko Nitta and Harri Ito
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"There's
a part of me that will hear something in the vocal and think "hey, what
the Hell, knock it off!" and slap it around a bit."
Takuya rolls on. |
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 Pop music...Japanese pop in particular...brings to mind sugary sweet images of bouncy, three minute nuggets of insubstantial ear candy. In the mid 90s, a group of musicians from all over Japan banded together, took this image and flipped it around, taking typically catchy songs and infusing them with a strange, often challenging approach. Between their major label debut "J•A•M" and their swan song "Warp," Judy and Mary became one of the most enduring, most influential, and most successful bands in Japan. As bands so rarely do, Judy and Mary left on a high note: the "Warp" album and tour were hugely successful. Since their split in 2001, the band's catalog has been essential listening for anyone serious about Japanese rock 'n' roll. Vocalist Yuki has gone on to be one of the most recognizable faces in Japanese music, and guitarist/songwriter Takuya became a highly sought after producer/sessionman, working most recently with up and comers Midori. But his main project is Robo+s, a high energy rock outfit whose most recent album, "Roll Over Sandy and Sam," came out earlier this year. Recently, Takuya sat down with Jrawk to discuss guitars, pop, the lack of decent Japanese food abroad, and the importance of fate. JR: What did you listen to as a teenager, when you first started getting into music? TK: In the 80s, I was about ten, and the first music I listened to was stuff like Duran Duran, Culture Club, David Bowie, stuff like that. In the 80s, there were all kinds of music television shows...one that sticks out in my mind is a Kayou Kyoku show that had (RC Succession's) Kiyoshiro Imawano and Ryuichi Sakamoto singing a song called "Ikenai Rouge Magic." They were wearing all kinds of bright clothes and makeup, and then as the grand finale, these two men kissed while money fell from the ceiling. It was a pretty amazing moment...that might have been the late 70s, early 80s. I was just a kid, I didn't get all the implications...for about a year, I thought Boy George was actually a woman!
JR: Yeah, me too. (everybody laughs) It's interesting that you mention "Ikenai Rouge Magic"...a lot of music from Japan has had a very theatrical bent. I found a reference to one of your first bands, Relish of Rose... TK: You found that on Wikipedia! (laughs) In my teens, maybe when I was 16 or so, I was already dressing up, wearing some makeup, had my hair swooped over 80s style. I was in this band that played this Teen’s Music Festival, which was a big, national competition. We were pretty serious about it, we wanted to do it for real, and a lot of the others were more laid back: hey, we're students, we're on vacation away from home. That's pretty much everything! (laughs) Not much more to tell. Not really a proper debut. But the vocalist is now in Takeshi Gundan, he's a comedian. JR: How did you move from the visual aspect of Relish of Rose to the sportier look in Judy and Mary? TK: Well, I had been interested in Visual Kei, and then Boowy started becoming popular. Visual Kei, a lot of that energy was coming from heavy metal. But then there was Bøowy: the vocalist was Himuro Kyosuke, and the guitarist was Hotei Tomoyasu. He was the big, iconic guitarist for that generation, and he had short hair, which was unusual for rock guitarists at the time. He played with no distortion, clean tones. That caused a major shift in a lot of people's perceptions. Anyway, I quit my band in Kyoto when I was 18 and moved to Tokyo to get serious about making music. The next step was to find a band. I went to a lot of live shows, met a lot of people. I was introduced to SkaFunk, they invited me to join. It wasn't really my genre, but it looked like a good experience, and that it would have a good influence on me. At the same time, the Mad Capsule Markets were looking for a guitarist, but they called me about a week too late. I had already accepted the SkaFunk gig. JR: How long was that?
TK: A year and a half, maybe two. JR: When you left, was it to join Judy and Mary? TK: Well, SkaFunk was on Sony, and the album didn't really sell. They told us we could try a second record, but not to expect it to sell. We were suddenly confronted with the less glamorous side of the music business, sales, numbers, things like that. The band broke up pretty quickly after that. I think every serious musician has that experience, they'll run up against the business side, and it can be demoralizing. After that, I did some odd jobs, things weren't really going that well. About 1992, I started Robots. It was just a group of friends, getting together to play around, but mostly we'd go out drinking. About a year later, I heard about an audition for this band Judy and Mary. I showed up to the audition, and everybody had all this gear: Marshall stacks, everything. I just had my guitar and one pedal! I didn't think I'd get it, but it worked. JR: Yeah, they became successful pretty quickly. TK: With Judy and Mary, the rhythm section (bassist Yoshihito Onda and drummer Kohta Igarashi) were career musicians already. Onda-san especially had been in Presence...some people say Presence were the last indie rock heroes from Osaka. He had also been in Jacks 'n' Jokers. But they had played these big shows, with big audiences. It was Yuki's first band in Tokyo. Basically, we knew that if we couldn't get it moving, Sony was going to drop us. But...Yuki was a great singer, and I wanted this really bad. So we had this balance of these two professionals and these two eager relative beginners. They could go on stage and be professional, whereas we were a little younger, and went crazy on stage. When that first album happened, we knew we had something. This was going to work. Looking around at the scene at the time, we really knew we'd stand out. JR: At the time...did you think of Judy and Mary as a pop band, a rock band, or a punk band? TK: (thinks) Everything! (laughs) JR: The reason I'm asking is that one of the interesting things about Judy and Mary is the tension between styles. One song can go from sweet pop to jagged noise in the space of a few seconds.
TK: At first we'd bring in our favorite records to play for everyone. We'd go out in the mountains and rent a practice space, and have these listening parties. Each member was coming from a different place, musically. We brought a lot of heavy metal, some punk, and I brought Bo Gumbos and Rosa Luxembourg, bands like the Spitz from before they got big. Yuki brought many CD’s as well including the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We would bring all this together, thinking we could mix it up and see if we could find a balance between all these varying styles. I think this made us unique, not just in Japan, but in the world in general. We had a pretty unique sound, and Yuki's a really charismatic stage presence. So we wrote tons of songs...everyone would write and bring them in and decide what would make the cut. Out of about 100 songs, we'd choose 10 that had simple, direct melodies and strong lyrics. We had really strict quality control. It wasn't just pop, but we'd pick things that could cut across generations, things with strong melodies, that would stick with everyone, despite the diversity of our backgrounds. We were lucky to have Masahide Sakuma (Yonin Bayashi, Plastics) as our producer as well, he really helped bring it all together. JR:When Sobakasu (1996 single used as the theme for the TV series Ruroni Kenshin) hit, suddenly you went from a successful band to being THE successful band. Did that level of success effect how you worked? TK: When Sobakasu came out, yeah, it sold really well, mostly with younger listeners. But people didn't really talk about us as a major band until right around the time we broke up! (laughs) When I first started writing songs, I wasn't that good at it. But Onda san was, and as I worked with him and played more, I started getting better. After a while, we started getting this backlog of good songs. So when we'd work on new material, we didn't just try to come up with good songs: we already had those! What we wanted was to top what we had, to improve. After a while, that gets pretty difficult! JR: Eventually, you became the main songwriter, taking over from Onda. TK: (nods) I didn't write anything on the first album, I had a few on the second. "Taboo" was the first song that was really truly mine, but "Overdrive" was when things started to really take off. It was a hit, made it into some advertisements, which resulted in it becoming a bigger hit. I thought hey, I can do this! Onda had been writing really strong songs for years, but eventually I grew in that area, and there did come a point where I took it over, right around 'The Power Source." Most bands, they're lucky to get two or three good, strong albums before they run out of ideas. But between the two of us, we had six, which I'm pretty proud of. Between us, we managed to retain a pretty high standard.
JR: The band took some time off when Yuki had some throat problems, and you released The Robots' "Guitar De Pop." How did that break effect the group? TK: We came back from that hiatus with "Brand New Wave Upper Ground." There had been some thoughts of the band maybe breaking up, and I didn't feel like we really had time to get things back together. Sony called us into the office and put the pressure on: they wanted us to resume. I wasn't so sure we were ready, but ultimately, they didn't give us much choice. JR: Did that concern carry over into the making of "Warp?" TK: Confidence wasn't a problem, but there was a lot of tension in the band. Onda-san had some things happening in his life, the band was going through some troubles. but I always had faith in the music. After Yuki had her throat problems...she wasn't a girl anymore, we were in our late 20s at that point. She didn't really want to play this Lolita-esque character anymore, she wanted to do something more real. Of course, we had to maintain this high energy performance level to keep the band going. We did that, but ultimately, it hurt our relationship. JR: Listening to "Warp," there does seem to be a lot of push and pull between the different styles, almost like they're arguing. TK: Well, we stayed pretty civil. We didn't fight, per se. But if you look at our debut, that was Onda's vision of Judy and Mary, and "Warp" was definitely mine. Really, it had to be, since nobody else would even show up to record! (laughs) Basically, I said, if we're going to do this, let me do it with my ideas. The tensions were inevitable, I think. Every year for about three months, we'd go to London for about three months to work in the studio, and when we did "Pop Life," people were starting to get homesick. Before long, (producer) Sakuma-san and I were the only people left, everyone else had gone home! At the time, i was really immersed in the London culture and the music scene, which of course influenced me. I think that album in particular, non-Japanese can pick up on those influences. And...well, in London you can't really get decent Japanese food. We stopped trying, we'd just get Chinese, Italian, whatever. We weren't used to that, and that had...that had a physical impact! (laughs) Our manager actually collapsed at one point. I don't think I could do that today!
JR: Of the artists we've spoken to, some have thought of themselves as specifically Japanese artists, whereas others have simply thought of themselves as musicians who happen to be from Japan. Do you think about this? TK: Hmm...tough question! In the West, there seems to be an interest things from the East. Americans tend to have interest in the European culture, and the Europeans are interested in Oriental culture. People from the East have admiration for the freedom in the U.S. I think that can effect how people view our music, but I don't think about it. JR: How important is success outside Japan? TK: Well...I'm still dreaming about it! (laughs) With the internet, it could be that Judy and Mary would have had a different international profile. Aerosmith came to Japan, and they seemed to like us, like they wanted to take us under their wing a little. We had heard some rumbles about how they had considered us to open for them on their Australian tour. I don't know how serious they were, but at the time, we were completely booked, so it would have been impossible. And who knows. Maybe David Bowie will hire me as a guitarist! I have to admit that thought has been one of my motivations for learning English and guitar. When we went to London, it was a little like starting over. You're new to the scene, you have to make your way up. But that's not easy, and we're certainly not getting any younger. JR: It's interesting you mention Bowie, since there are times your work reminds me of (longtime Bowie guitarist and Tin Machine member) Reeves Gabriels. I also pick up a bit of similarity with Robert Fripp's work on Bowie's "Lodger." How did you arrive at the style you have? TK: If I had to pick one, I'd say my biggest influence is Eddie Van Halen, especially the way he plays alongside the vocals. He'll have a different melody going on, but still maintains the riff and drives the song. I'm not comparing myself to him...I'm not as skilled a player...but he's definitely my biggest influence. That started when I was young. Later, there was Robert Fripp, XTC's Andy Partridge, The Edge. Not in their pitch so much, but the harmonies and how they'd react with them.
I'm from Kansai, Kyoto. Western Japan is the home of Japanese comedy. There's a style of comedy called Manzai, where you'll have a duo, a boke (fool) and tsukkomi (straight man.) The boke will be going crazy, and the tsukkomi will sometimes smack him, keep him in line somewhat. I grew up in that area, the kids there are always joking around like that with each other. There's a part of me that will hear something in the vocal and think "hey, what the Hell, knock it off!" and slap it around a bit. JR: OK, less involved question, maybe. The cover of Roll Over Sandy And Sam features you handcuffed to a giant cat with two different color eyes. What's going on there? TK: Well...the cat's cute, but it's huge! It could maul me at a moment's notice. The cat started out as a cute, small thing, but now...I'm in my late 30s, everything's grown considerably. It's cute, but there's potential danger. JR: Ah, I get it. Thanks so much, is there anything you would like to add? TK: Hmm...yeah! In the 80s, when I was younger, I wanted to be a keyboard player. I was going to a tough, strict boarding school all the way out in Nagasaki. I was living in this dorm, with a small allowance, not enough to buy this keyboard. I talked about it with an older friend, who let me borrow his keyboard to practice, and eventually I started to think about buying my own. I tried to call home to ask my parents for the money to do this. The call didn't go through, which I thought was weird. I tried again, no luck. The next day, the phone rang, it was for me. My house had been set on fire, it was nothing but a heap of ash. I'm thinking...this is not the best time to ask my parents to buy me a keyboard! So my friend offered to sell me his guitar for ¥15000 (about $150,) so I thought "yeah, I'll be a guitarist instead." Fortunately, everybody was OK, but I think the Guitar Gods were telling me I wasn't meant for keyboards! (laughs) |
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