[新聞] Yoshiki: The Biggest Rock Star You've Never Heard Of Invades America
http://bit.ly/ai8II7 (原文網址)
Yoshiki: The Biggest Rock Star You've Never Heard Of Invades America
By Matt Hendrickson
九月 16, 2010
Yoshiki Hayashi, drummer and creative mastermind behind Japan's
biggest rock band, X Japan, is calm amid the chaos in the VIP Room
at L.A.'s Club Nokia, where he is both directing and starring in
the video for his band's upcoming single, "Born to Be Free." He
floats past a horde of extras dressed in Hot Topic Goth and stops
to examine a skyscraping woman in black vinyl leggings, her face
pancaked in white foundation. He says, "The corset on the vampire
needs to be tighter." No sooner does a P.A. give the corset's three
belts a good yank, prompting its wearer to gasp for air, than
another one approaches Yoshiki with two pairs of fangs, and offers,
"This one's more jagged, this one's a little sexier." The story
line calls for the vampire-cum-dominatrix to track down Yoshiki in
a crowded nightclub and to sink one of these into his neck. Yoshiki
studies the fangs intently. "I'll take the sexy ones," he says.
Since the 1980s, X Japan has sold more than 30 million records and
packed out the Tokyo Dome 18 times, comfortably eclipsing Bon Jovi.
(And you know Bon Jovi is Big in Japan.) Now, with their first-ever
U.S. tour kicking off this month, to be followed by an
English-language album due early next year, X Japan's legendary
frontman—who endorses a plethora of products, from energy drinks
to a credit card bearing his likeness; who even has his very own
Hello Kitty doll, the Yoshikitty—is plotting his American rawk
offensive. "Born to Be Free," which blends operatic Freddie
Mercury-like vocals with the propulsive force of Metallica circa
.. And Justice for All, is his opening salvo.
And yet the song still needed tweaking as recently as 4 a.m. this
morning, and after 18 hours of shooting at Club Nokia, Yoshiki's
lack of sleep is starting to show. Wearing tight black pants, a
white wife-beater, and oversized aviators, Yoshiki settles into the
director's chair and calls "Action!" The vampire, seething with
anger and lust, strides purposefully through the packed club,
pushing people out of the way; she's bearing sexy fangs, she's
looking for Yoshiki... who, though he isn't supposed to be in this
shot, suddenly bounds out of his chair without saying cut, quickly
getting the rapt attention of the DP. "The shove at the end needs
to be more dramatic and forceful," he says. The shot is restaged.
Then, when the song starts up again over the set's sound system,
Yoshiki's face looks stricken. "It's the fucking wrong version!" he
screams. The sound man looks on helplessly as Yoshiki cues up the
right one. "This is it," he says, punctuating his words with a jab
at the button.
It seems like everywhere you look on set, there's a rock clich?
being used without irony: leather-clad band members; women dancing
in elevated cages; cannons shooting off pyrotechnics. Later, while
reclining in a makeup chair in his dressing room, Yoshiki
acknowledges that X Japan may become critical laughingstocks. "If
they want to nail us to the ground, nail us," he says with a shrug.
"We were always the black sheep in Japan. No one thought we could
go mainstream. But we did. And now we're ready to rock the world."
Yoshiki turns 45 in November, and if he wants to become a worldly
rock god, it had better happen soon. "I feel like I'm a time bomb,"
he says. "Besides, I've always wanted to conquer the U.S. Why not
now?"
It probably can't go any worse than his first attempt. In the early
nineties, after rising to the top of the charts in their homeland
with hit songs like "Stab Me in the Back," "Endless Rain" and
"Sadistic Desire," X Japan set their sights on the United States—
first by changing their name from "X" (they didn't want to get
mixed up with the L.A. punk band), then by signing a
multi-million-dollar deal with Atlantic Records and holding an
elaborate press conference at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller
Center. But the high-concept album that followed, Art of Life—
comprising a single track inspired by Schubert's unfinished
Symphony #8—held no appeal for an American teenaged public that
had just been punched in the face (and liked it) by Nirvana's
Nevermind. Then there was X Japan's wild, androgynous look, which,
despite having spawned the popular, equal parts cute and
threatening Visual Kei movement (which in turn would help launch
the anime craze), only made them seem more out of touch. "None of
us spoke the language then," Yoshiki recalls. "It's one thing to
cultivate mystery, but it's completely different when you're
mysterious only because you can't communicate properly."
Today the barriers to translation may not be as great, as
social-networking tools have made it easier for bands to
communicate directly with their fanbase. (While he professes no
interest in Facebook or MySpace, Yoshiki finally opened a Twitter
account during the run-up to X Japan's U.S. concert debut at
Lollapalooza in early August—and garnered more than 12,000
followers in less than 12 hours.) Another reason for optimism lies
in a larger cultural shift, wherein Japanese artists have proved
ever-more adept at appropriating bits and pieces of American
culture and returning them in new and exciting forms. "We're in an
age of mashups, fan sites, bit torrents and YouTube," says Roland
Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded
the U.S. "A culture that mastered the art of imitating and copying
original ideas is right in tune with the 21st century."
The Gap begets Uniqlo, Disney begets anime. And now the cycle of
appropriation is starting to go in the other direction. "Japan has
always been a source of great inspiration to me, and X Japan is a
big part of that," says My Chemical Romance frontman and
award-winning comic book writer Gerard Way. "Because of my love for
manga and Japanese animation as a boy, I was able to connect with
the music, the emotion, and the visual intent." And that's
precisely the recipe that Marc Geiger, the band's booking agent,
hopes to duplicate with fanboys across the country. The bet is that
X Japan can find greater success than their J-Rock predecessors—
Dir En Gray, Boredoms, the Kurt Cobain-endorsed Shonen Knife—by
catapulting Yoshiki into becoming an anime superhero with the help
of D.C. Comics legend Stan Lee. (The project was slated to be
announced at New York Comic Con in early October, but it has since
been delayed.) "For any kid under the age of 14," Geiger says,
"anime is huge. It makes sense for them to come over now."
Yoshiki and his childhood friend, Toshi, were 17 years old when—
covered in blood-spattered makeup with fuck-you attitudes to match—
they arrived in Tokyo as self-described "cartoon monsters." But the
initial seed of their rebellion—and ultimately of X Japan—was
planted seven years earlier when Yoshiki came home from a music
lesson to find his father, a kimono-shop owner, dead from suicide.
Up to that point, he'd been listening exclusively to classical
music. But in the wake of his father's death, Yoshiki's tastes took
a sharp, screeching turn toward heavy metal. He wore out the
grooves on Kiss' Alive! and was able to convince his mother, who'd
been teaching him classical piano since he was 4, to take him to
one of their concerts at Tokyo's Budokan arena. "It was shocking to
me," he says, "but I loved every minute of it. My mother, however,
was a little worried." Soon he'd moved on to Led Zeppelin, then the
Sex Pistols, proving that rebellion through rock and roll works
pretty much the same in Japan as it does in the States. "I went to
a very conservative junior high school, and I started dying my
hair," he remembers. "One time a teacher held me down and shaved my
head. The next day I came back with a different color."
X Japan's garish looks and rebel ways struck a chord with Japanese
youth. Yoshiki and Toshi didn't just trash hotel rooms, but entire
hotels. Eventually, various restaurants and bars in Tokyo started
posting "No Yoshiki" signs outside. The music propelled them to
superstardom, but if you've ever seen "Behind the Music," you
already have some idea of what led to their late-nineties flameout.
In this version, Toshi leaves the band to join a cult, and the
guitarist, Hide, is found hanging from a towel tied to a doorknob.
And that's when Yoshiki's career really takes off.
The former rebel morphed into something more palatable—and
marketable—releasing several classical solo albums to great
acclaim, collaborating with Sir George Martin, and catching the ear
of Emperor Akihito, who commissioned Yoshiki to write and perform a
song to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his reign. "I knew there
would be some controversy, and maybe years ago I wouldn't have done
it—but to rebel against the rebellious was appealing," he says. It
wasn't long before the endorsements started flowing, but he's
adamant that they do little to dilute the Yoshiki brand. "I cut
myself onstage, yet I have Hello Kitty. I like the contradiction,"
he says matter-of-factly. "I don't worry about it. I'm still
mysterious. I don't even know who I am anyway."
"I'm very scared of myself," he continues. "Suicide has crossed my
mind. I can't sleep and I can't relax. I'm very fragile when I'm
alone. But when I leave my house, I feel stronger and nothing can
stop me."
For the last twelve years, Yoshiki has lived in Encino—the
pinnacle of L.A. suburbia—on the street where Michael Jackson once
resided. When he's in Japan, he has a 24-hour bodyguard detail, but
here he's remarkably lax about security. He moved to L.A. to escape
the incessant hounding. "I enjoy going to the grocery store and
buying ice cream," he tells me while relaxing on a hotel-room couch
the day after the video shoot. Dressed in a white linen shirt with
black pants and winklepicker boots, his wavy hair tickling his
shoulders, Yoshiki's still working the androgynous angle pretty
hard. Yet if he's incredibly thin, almost to the point of being
frail, it isn't entirely a matter of style: Yoshiki suffers from
chronic tendonitis, and last July he had to have major neck surgery
to relieve bulging discs—the result of too much head banging.
Afterwards he spent two weeks in the hospital undergoing a battery
of tests, and his doctor warned him that his neck "may only hold
out for two years. He told me not to play the drums. Fuck that. I
may become paralyzed—so what?" Yoshiki has always been the
screaming, stick-twirling sort who likes to bash out his demons on
the kit—but these days he has to gut out shows in a neck brace.
Yoshiki spends most of his time either at home in the company of
the 20 people he employs, or in the studio he bought in 1993—the
one where Metallica recorded their eponymous album, popularly known
as Black Album. (Metallica producer Bob Rock had the space booked
for his next project, but Yoshiki dropped a few million, renamed it
Extasy Recording Studio, and kicked Rock out.) He says when he
drinks, he drinks, though he's careful not to make a public display
of it like he did during the glory years. Now he ventures out only
once a week for business dinners at, say, Matsuhisa, before
unwinding at clubs like Bar Sinister, a Hollywood Goth nightspot,
with one of his four assistants. "One of us is always with him,"
says primary assistant Lauren, a skinny doe-eyed beauty dressed in
short shorts and black thigh-high socks. "He doesn't talk to too
many people." He used to have a girlfriend, Julia Voth, an
up-and-coming Canadian model/actress, but he broke up with her in
June after six years together. "I was too busy," he says without
emotion, waving his hand dismissively like a petulant teenager. "I
mean, I want to get married. I think. I guess. I don't know."
"When he says he doesn't have any good friends, I honestly believe
him," says Phil Quartararo, Yoshiki and X Japan's manager, who, as
then president of Warner Bros. Records, signed Yoshiki to a solo
deal in 2000. "He lives for the mystery and cultivating that myth."
Yoshiki might like to walk the aisles of Ralph's in anonymity, but
when the ego needs a shot, he likes to make an appearance where
he's sure to get recognized, including the occasional movie
premiere. (This is It, most recently). But when X Japan goes out on
the road, will Yoshiki be able to keep the adoration at arms
length? (Will he even want to?) Either way, the prospect of
widespread success in the U.S. remains an iffy proposition. Anime
might have a massive following among 12 year-olds and the downtown
hipster class, but that doesn't necessarily translate into fondness
for an unironic brand of bombastic arena rock that can sometimes
sound about 20 years behind the curve. For every Rush (Canada) and
Phoenix (France) there are hundreds of Tragically Hips and Noir D?
sirs—bands you've never heard of for a reason.
Yoshiki is well aware of the obstacles that face any foreign rock
outfit trying to make it in rock's birthplace. Still, X Japan's
50-minute, five-song blast at Lollapalooza was lauded as one of the
weekend highlights by both fans and critics, and Yoshiki plans to
keep that momentum going. "We played heavy songs—I didn't want to
lose people with the ballads," he tells me on the phone a couple
weeks later, following two enormous stadium shows outside of Tokyo.
"I know what I'm doing. And now, after Lollapalooza, I want success
in the U.S. more than I ever did. It's a long, winding road. But
we're going to run, not walk."
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