BEGIN
Solo Roots : The Search
At last, Ken has reached his solo debut.
His first single, [Speed], may be called natural, and may in fact be so, for as he has said himself, this release is, more than any previous work, strongly coloured by the private sphere.
Here, we will go over his private history anew.
Ken
Profile : Born November 28, AB type blood, guitarist of L’Arc~en~Ciel, major debut in ’94. In ’03, as the vocalist and guitarist of S.O.A.P. (SONS OF ALL PUSSYS), indies debut (?). August 23 2006, solo debut with the single [Speed].
[Speed] also includes a cover of Gary Moore, and theme music from [The Sandpiper].
Available as CD (Digipak), or as CD+DVD.
www.ken-curlyhair.com
** If I had to put it into words, I’d say singer-songwriter. That’s the feeling I have, about solo work. **
– When you were little, what kind of home atmosphere did you grow up in?
[I was born into the home of a salaryman and a housewife.]
– Completely ordinary? Just like Nobita-kun’s house, then? (1)
[Yeah, totally. I didn’t have a Doraemon though (laughs). I have one sibling, older than me. One grade higher. When we played together, we usually ended up fighting. And when we played games, I’d almost always lose. When you’re a little kid, even just one year makes an incredibly big difference. Hasami shogi (2), othello, cards, I’d always lose everything. When that happened, I’d flip our little table over. Then I’d say “I’m not gonna play with you ever again,” and get really mad, or something (laughs). Then one of us would pick up all the pieces, come up to the other and go “PLAY!”. That’s kind of how it went.]
– Did you have friends around, in your neighbourhood?
[My neighbourhood friends, well, they were the kind of kids whose idea of fun is to look for beetles and stuff. But I hate beetles, I’ve always hated bugs of all kinds.]
– It’s unusual to hear of a young kid who hates bugs.
[Normal kids love them, right? They don’t eat them though (laughs). So yeah, a bunch of us would go out to look for beetles, in a group. We’d all grab a bunch, then stick a bunch of them into one cage. When it was time to go home, we’d play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to keep it. Thing is, I’m pretty good at rock-paper-scissors (laughs). So even though I hate beetles, I’d wind up with a lot of them. Well, I took them home, but didn’t take care of them. So the bugs all ended up dying. That grossed me out even more (laughs). What a vicious circle that was.]
– But by going around collecting bugs with the other kids, you managed to make friends, right?
[Yeah. It was fun to have long, pointless conversations during the bug-hunting. Another game we had was, OK there was this pole, right? And when it was knocked over, a cat would always show up. I really believed that pole had the ability to summon cats. Two of my friends and I would go knock the pole over, then walk a bit and look for the cat, and there it was! It totally worked (laughs).]
– In other words, it just means there were stray cats all over the place (laughs).
[Yeah, yeah (laughs). But, that pole would always be back up by the next day, so we’d knock it over again. Not exactly like dowsing (laughs). I played a lot of stupid, normal games. Oh, and one of my classmates lived in the same neighbourhood as me, so we hung out together. Even outside the neighbourhood, we’d ride our bikes someplace to hang out. On the way home from school, we’d play tag and stuff like that. Tag all the way home. That means we were playing tag over a three kilometre radius. Just when I thought “it” was gone, I’d be about to go into my house, then there “it” was! That’s how our games of tag ended up (laughs).]
– I guess you probably played this kind of game up until the middle of elementary school, correct?
[Yeah, I guess. But it was like that the whole time, in my elementary school.]
– That can’t be right. Don’t kids normally take up baseball or soccer by the end of elementary school?
[Oh, I did play in a kid’s baseball team, right, but practise was only on the weekend. I didn’t really like baseball, but it was kind of like the thing with the beetles. All my friends were signing up for it, so I joined them so we could keep hanging out together. I like baseball now, but back then I barely even knew the rules. I just knew I was supposed to hit the ball, and then go run around the bases. I didn’t know what a tag up meant or anything. I had no idea what a balk was. Or what would be the right timing to run at. But anyway, I didn’t manage to hit much, so I was never on the bases (laughs). And sometimes I’d hit the ball and forget to run (laughs). Hey, I hit it, go me, I hit it… I was so surprised. I didn’t get to the bases so I’d be out right then and there (laughs).]
– Hunting for bugs and playing baseball, sounds like you were quite the typical elementary school kid. By the way, by the time you reached the end of elementary school, were you already interested in the opposite sex? (laughs)
[I was (laughs). Since when though, I wonder… Since the middle of elementary school, maybe? That’s when I started writing notes. Woah, embarrassing (laughs).]
– Writing notes in grade four?
[You know, writing notes as in, letters to people. Like, writing to someone to say I like them, I remember doing that. That’s all, really.]
– You didn’t sneak out of class together or anything?
[There was nowhere to go. That’s why I only got as far as exchanging letters.]
– How about the person you were writing these letters to? How long did your relationship last?
[About a year or so, I guess.]
– You split up when class change came around, then?
[Yeah, pretty much (laughs). That’s all it was, so I wouldn’t even say we were together to begin with.]
– From a logical point of view, you really didn’t have the time to date. These days, you’d just have been e-mail buddies, right?
[Yeah. We were un-e-mail buddies.]
– How about we brush up on romantic technique? What did you do when someone shook things up and said “I like you.”?
[Oh, that (laughs). Being liked, being told that they like me, well, it made me happy. That was satisfying enough, you know?]
– Eeeh, how pure of you.
[I am pure, yes.]
– You still were, back then.
[Oh no, I stayed pure my whole life (laughs).]
– When you get to middle school, all of a sudden you have more friends and acquaintances, and your range of activities gets much bigger, right?
[Oh yeah. There’s this guy I’d known since elementary school, kinda like a big brother to me, and it’s through his influence that I got into rock and western music. I hung out with him all the time, so I ended up listening to a lot of western hard rock, too. That was around second year of middle school, I think. In first year, I wasn’t into that music yet.]
– Could you name a few of those western hard rock bands, just to get an idea?
[Speaking in real time, Mötley crüe. I guess Ratt came a little later.]
РSo that would mean M̦tley were in their earlier, gaudy period, right?
[Yep. That’s why when I first heard them, I wondered what was up with them. Mötley crüe, Scorpions, Micheal Schenker, and early Def Leppard too. Oh and I think Gary Moore was during that time too, but I can’t really remember.]
– Starting with British heavy metal, then, that would have gotten you into the American scene too, around that time?
[That was kind of the beginning of the world music thing, you know. I used to go home to a friend’s house, and he had a ton of records that he got me to listen to, I thought it was so cool. It was nothing but hard rock, though.]
– Would that have been your first opportunity to listen to music?
[Nah, a little bit before that I had a Matsuyama Chiharu album at home. It was the one with “Nagai Yoru” on it (3). I’d listen to that and think “Hey, songs are pretty cool.” But not much later, I started listening to all that hard rock.]
– If you even got your friend to let you listen to his records, it sounds like the younger Ken was considerably dazzled by hard rock. What appealed the most to you?
[Plainly put, it made my heart pound. I don’t what it was about it, or why it made my heart pound so much though. Thinking back on it now, I think maybe it’s because it exposed me to whole new horizons. To a kid who was used to catching beetles and playing baseball, hearing words like “HELL!” really came as a shock (laughs). Like, “Eeeh!?”. And the songs were so angry, full of shouting, you know? Coming out of the woods and hearing unbeliavble voices set to unbelievable sounds, that’s what hard rock was like. It was awesome (laughs).]
– Almost like culture shock? (laughs)
[It really was culture shock, actually. I used to think that “songs” were words you sang in a pretty voice for people to enjoy.]
– Because you listened to Matsuyama Chiharu-san before, right?
[Yep. Something about hard rock songs, it always makes me think they’re about to break something (laughs). But yeah, I thought it was so cool, I was totally hooked on it.]
– On absolutely all of it?
[On everything my friend showed me. At the time, all my musical knowledge came from him. I came to think of that friend as my older brother. Somebody else succeeded him though (laughs).]
** To a kid who was used to catching beetles and playing baseball, hearing words like “HELL!” really came as a shock (laughs). It was awesome **
– Which particular bands and musicians did you like?
[Gary Moore, Micheal Schenker. Also Black Sabbath. That was while Ronnie James Dio was with them, though. After that I went through a phase with Yngwie Maalmstein and Alcatrazz. And Vandenberg too, around the same time. Then, Scorpions.]
– They all must have had great songs, right?
[Songs… Nah, it’s really just because they were cool. At middle school age, it’s not like I was doing a whole lot of analysis, right, they were just cool. And every night, I’d go to bed with my headphones, listening to music while I slept.]
– That sounds a bit like sleep-learning.
[Nah, well, actually it was (laughs).]
– So when you woke up, was the first thing out of your mouth “HELL!”?
[Like, screaming it (laughs). The lyrics were all in English so I couldn’t actually understand everything, but “HELL!” was one word I could figure out.]
– But didn’t your mother and father worry? Thinking their kid had suddenly gone crazy.
[I was still pretty OK, at that point (laughs). Until a few years later, I bought a Marshall amp and brought it home, and they were against that. It was big though (laughs). That was my yellow card. But before that I had a no-name one, and they let me play as much as I wanted. For three years in middle school, it was always like that.]
– Did you have a lot of friends who were into hard rock?
[Nah, only two or three. There might have been more people, but there were only two or three that I could talk to. And share information with. In those days, I’d listen to the songs I liked over and over and over again. I listened to Judas Priest a lot too. That was right when they were getting to be successful in America, with that something-or-other-vengeance album.]
– Ah yes, the title is “SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE” actually.
[Yeah that. I’d go to sleep listening to that Jararaaaaa raaugh intro track, “The Hellion”.]
– Eh, but with that much stimulation, how can you get to sleep?
[For me, actually I’m still like this, heavy metal is the best kind of music for getting to sleep. I had my headphones on while I slept, so my parents always said it was bad for my ears. Well, obviously (laughs).]
– Speaking of your metal sleep-learning, do you think that maybe you cultivated musical DNA that way?
[Oh yeah. But of course, if my big-brother-friend had made me listen to punk, I’d be a punk, if it had been new wave, I’d have been into that. Back then, I thought pop and heavy metal were the only kinds of music that existed, honestly.]
– Ah… That’s quite special.
[Until I was eighteen.]
– A bit slow on the uptake (laughs).
[No, it really was like that (laughs). Because I had so little information.]
– No way, were you living in a completely isolated neighbourhood? (laughs)
[No, well, maybe I was, actually (laughs). It was only open to metal (laughs). I succeeded my big-brother-friend’s place and once in a while I hit the jackpot. For the later part of middle school, I was a metal head.]
– Just listening to it wasn’t enough for you, was it?
[That’s right. When I got into high school, I asked for a guitar as a present, so my parents bought me one.]
– They bought you one just like that?
[That’s right, it was pretty easy to convince them. Once I had it, every day after school it was all “Wooooah~” (laughs). I had distortion too, that was just so cool, so awesome. Metal, metal, metal (laughs). I played everything so scratchy and rough. And, I couldn’t pull it off, but I tried to cover Micheal Schenker’s stuff. Those were the early days. I guess I spent a lot of time with tetsu around then. I think tetsu listened to a bit more musical variety. But he seemed to like hard rock too. That’s when me and tetsu and one other guy from my neighbourhood were hanging out to listen to it.]
– Did that become a sort of metal community for you?
[Nah, it was just the three of us getting together (laughs). We went to the other guy’s house to listen to records, and he had guitars so we played them, too. When I got home, I kept playing on my own. I couldn’t quite play anyone else’s songs, so I just started building on some riffs that I liked.]
– Did you choose your first guitar yourself? Was it some radical shape?
[No, actually I really wanted a Strat. But I guess there weren’t any. So I ended up with something else. A regular one. Eventually I got something more radically-shaped (laughs). But I really played that first guitar nonstop. I’d snap out of it and notice it was dark out, or because my mom was calling me for dinner. Her voice always made me jump (laughs). When had she started calling me? It had to have been a while, but since I was playing my guitar I didn’t hear her. Then, after dinner and a bath, I’d go right back to playing guitar.]
** Back then, I thought pop and heavy metal were the only kinds of music that existed, honestly. Until I was eighteen (laughs). **
– That’s a considerable amount of practise.
[Yeah, it was, but I was just playing my own nonsense, not copying any songs, so I didn’t improve. I’d listen to a record and try to copy the solo or something. It was like a game. Back then, there wasn’t a single song I could play all the way through to the end. I’d rather make my own riffs, or ad-lib some gibberish to go along; that was more fun.]
– Did you imagine yourself as the lead guitarist of the bands on those records?
[Something like that (laughs). I got a strap and tried playing on my feet. But I couldn’t do it, so I sat back down.]
– Around the same time, was there any talk of forming a band in that metal community of yours?
[We could have, but of course, we didn’t have a drummer. We did know a guy who could get a drum set for us from a friend, but of course he couldn’t play them so that didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t any fun, and I didn’t particularly feel like being in a band anyway. I wanted to go back to the days where we just played in one guy’s room. In high school, I had another friend who liked metal, so we’d go around looking for fast guitar players who didn’t know us, then challenge the guy to see who was the faster player (laughs).]
– Sounds like he was a bit of a metal maniac.
[After that, we went off in different directions. Guitar speed was what mattered. We’d go looking for records, have each other listen, then be like “This one goes much faster, Gyahahahah~”. Oh, but that friend wasn’t a guitarist, he was just into things with a fast tempo. Metallica, Slayer, Antrhax, that sort of thing, right when thrash metal was getting to be a big deal. My friend heard Metallica’s “Kill ‘Em All” and then got into the thrash metal scene, but I kept right on listening to metal, just like in middle school. I did like Slayer though, at least.]
– Just from the name, it sounds like they were the most atrocious band of all (laughs).
[From Slayer’s debut, there was just Lombardo (drums) that I especially liked. I still feel the same way; Dave Lombardo was the best. Some years ago, at this “Beast Feast” event, I met him, and he really is awesome.]
– But he’s a drummer, isn’t he?
[Yep. There are guitarists I like, but there are also drummers and bassists I like. Among bassists, there’s “Geezer” Butler from Black Sabbath. I like Sabbath’s drummer, Bill Ward, too. As far as slash metal goes, I still like Slayer even now.]
– If you think really really hard, Slayer is one of those “HELL!” bands too, after all.
[Yeah yeah (laughs).]
– Your metal mania was a high school thing, so ultimately it’s not what led you to joining a band, is it?
[I wasn’t in any real bands, was I? My friends started a band, but they didn’t have a singer. Oh well, it’s a common problem right? So I did the singing for them. These weren’t songs for amateurs, I only did one live.]
– Did that experience get you to think that being in a band wasn’t so bad?
[Nah, I didn’t get it, not at all. Singing, you know? I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to sing, so it was tiring, anyway. And I lost my voice. I didn’t think it was much fun. It was fun being with my friends though, but yeah, performing got to be boring. Boring, or well, it was tiring anyway. But, I wasn’t thinking about joining a band as guitarist, either.]
– It was strictly a hobby?
[That’s right. That was the nature of my relationship with guitar and music.]
– After that, you went to university, right? How did you decide which field to study?
[Study…… All the way up through middle school I barely bothered. When I got into high school, I was ranked near the bottom of the list (laughs) (4). After that, I scraped by and got into university. In university, they have music clubs and stuff, don’t they? I dropped in on them and what do you know, I met a senior who was great at guitar. But I was just so into that (laughs). It’s just that things kinda changed. See, at my part-time job, I told people I was into metal. I was kinda stuck on making the point that I liked metal. So I was going on and on about how nothing good had come out recently when my sempai from work went “You know, there are other kinds of music besides metal.” (laughs).]
– I see, that’s when you noticed the existence of other genres beyond pop and metal (laughs).
[Yeah, seems they existed after all (laughs). They showed me The Cure, The Smiths, and so I listened to those for the first time. Hey, The Cure really caught my eye, I liked them a lot. I listened to The Police too, and then Sting’s solo stuff, and David Sylvian’s solo too. And even though it was a completely different genre, I tried listening to Bob Marley too. That’s how I learned about the wide world of music (laughs). Then I started listening to all kinds of music. The world suddenly opened up (laughs). But I kept wondering how come I had never noticed all that stuff before (laughs). Since I never bothered to check out other things on my own, my friend’s influence was the biggest factor, I guess. It was the same later on. I didn’t do simple things like buy music magazines to get an idea of what’s out there and whether it might be any good. Instead, I just acted on the advice my friends gave me, thinking it had to be good. I discovered The Cure through my friend at work, so I think that if he’d shown be something else, I’d have been into that instead. But he got a bingo with that one, starting me on The Cure.]
– Did that get you into New Wave, into guitar that doesn’t go all over the place?
[I heard the clear tones and arpeggios and thought hey, that’s pretty cool! And they didn’t scream, and the lyrics weren’t all “HELL!” (laughs). All that and also a decadent sort of atmosphere. I liked that. A little later I got to know someone who also liked The Smiths, but while we were talking he told me all about The The. I listened to them, and bingo~. That’s how my musical tastes got to expand.]
– Did you try playing that way, on your guitar?
[You’ve got to be kidding. They’d have several guitars on at once, I couldn’t pick them apart on my own. Even when I was playing metal, I’d just do my own thing with it, so I did the same with other kinds of music. After getting into university, I started dropping in on this band, thinking of joining them.]
– Is that how it all got started?
[But see, that band didn’t have a bassist, so they invited me to play bass for them. The members were interesting people, so I went for it and joined. They were hard rock, but it wasn’t long before I quit. And then, I started slacking off again (laughs). I barely even went to school.]
– You are quite the slacker (laughs).
[Yeah (laughs). I’d go or not go, depending on my mood.]
– By the way, it’s become well-known that you like dams. Does that have anything to do with your university studies?
[No. In university, I was into motorcycles, and I had a biker friend, too. We’d go riding in the mountains together. If you go far enough down a mountain road, most of the time you’ll find a dam, you know? On a mountain road though, you can’t stop. The curb is tiny, there’s no escape zone or anything. The only place to take a break was in the parking lot of some dam. We’d talk about how it might not be a good idea to take the road all the way to the dam, but we’d just go there anyway. We’d rest by the dam, and so I came to love them (laughs). Sometimes we’d go out at odd times, and get to see the valley with the dam in the middle of the night. I thought that was so awe-inspiring, it felt great. If we rode all night, we’d get to the dam right at dawn, and it was so pretty. Where there’s a dam, there’s a deep valley, and so the mountain scenery around it would be pretty too. So that’s how dams found a place in my heart.]
** I started listening to The Cure, and it was like the world opened up. They didn’t scream, and the lyrics weren’t all “HELL!” (laughs). **
– Did you visit every dam in the country?
[I couldn’t go to every single one, but I marked the ones I’d been to on a map. And I’d trace the roads I’d used in red. They have those touring maps for bikers, the kind that you can spread out as one big page, you know? I was tracing them on that, thinking I wanted to fill in the entire map. But it’s impossible, actually (laughs). I spent my university days doing that sort of thing, and messing around with bands.]
– And then you appeared on “Tamori Club” (5) to talk about dams (laughs).
[When I went on there, I was thinking “Oh yeah, I really love dams, yeah~”(laughs). I know so much about them.]
– Speaking of which, What can you tell us as a dam specialist? Are there any that you recommend?
[The Kuzuryuugawa dam. All dams are great, but the water that collects there turns emerald green! Looking at that while riding a bike feels incredibly good. Plus the Kuzuryuugawa river is pretty long. That’s what I’d recommend. And I know everyone knows about it, but the Kurobe dam is beautiful too. You can’t get to it by car, so it feels blocked off from the outside world. There’s still greenery around, and you can see far into the Japanese Alps, where there are also dams. They’ve gone crazy building tunnels over there, so riding around, all of a sudden you can end up in some mountain valley. It feels like you’re seeing hidden bits of scenery. The Japanese Alps are right there, and so it feels like another country. If you’re going to see dams, you should at least get out to those two. And the best season has to be autumn. Kurobe is nice in summer too. Kuzuryuugawa is best in autumn. You get to see the red leaves and emerald green water together. You ought to get a bike and go there.]
– Wow, you make it out to be a great interest to have.
[Do I? I didn’t pick mountain roads because I want to zoom around or anything, I just like going on unpopular, deserted roads.]
– Looking at your university-era interests, I’d say the common thread was that you wanted to be in touch with beautiful things. New Wave music is beautiful to hear, and dams are beautiful to see.
[You’re making too much of it (laughs). With music like with mountains, I think I just like stuff that’s out of the ordinary.]
– During university, did you figure out what you were going to be, what kind of work you were going to do?
[Nope, I didn’t. I really didn’t. So I guess I’d have ended up as a salaryman. Couldn’t tell you what kind of salaryman, though. There wasn’t anything I wanted to do. I remember in elementary school, I thought adults didn’t get enough vacations. They just get Obon and New Year’s (6). Late nights and early mornings, it all seems so haaaaaard. I was pretty anxious. In elementary school, I’d look at high school kids who where walking and reading at the same time. I’d go whoaah. I didn’t know what I was gonna do when I grew up, I worried about it in elementary, middle and high school, all the way through university (laughs).]
– Sounds like a type of Peter Pan syndrome to me.
[Guess so (laughs). Cause I thought it would be great if I could stay young and always be a kid. I wanted to keep living the life of a child, but realistically, I knew it was impossible.]
– So by listening to music and going to look at dams, you could just about escape from reality (laughs).
[Ah ha ha…. That might be partially true (laughs). I said I wanted vacations, but I had a ton of free time back then. I spent that unbelievable amount of free time with my guitar. It passed the time, and I was quite crazy about it. When I didn’t have my guitar with me, I didn’t know what to do, as I noticed later on. My trips to the mountains weren’t planned, I liked the way my friend would call me up and we’d just go. It was last-minute.]
– You didn’t like to be tied down by anything, right?
[Ah…. Yeah. Nah, I just couldn’t accept it (laughs).]
– But it was while you were in university that you came to join L’Arc~en~Ciel.
[Right. tetsu had already started L’Arc~en~Ciel, and I had been down to see them live in Osaka. Then sometime in my last year before graduation, I got a phone call from tetsu, saying “Wanna join my band?”. But I was close to graduating, so I asked him for a week to think it over.]
– What kind of thoughts ran through your mind during that week?
[I basically wasn’t thinking anything at all. I just knew that when I’d gone to see their live, even just seeing them from the audience side I thought they were such a cool band. And then, even though I’d asked him for a week to think about it, he called back earlier than that. “Decide, now.” (laughs). And so, I joined the band. Until then, I hadn’t wanted to be in a band, but being one and playing my guitar, deep inside I think I did want it. Since I hadn’t analysed my own feelings before then, I just followed my gut instinct. A little before that, I had made myself a little demo tape sort of thing, and since I thought it was pretty good I made tetsu listen to it. He said it was good too. That made things a little easier.]
** I spent that unbelievable amount of free time with my guitar. When I didn’t have my guitar with me, I didn’t know what to do. **
– But to join the band, you had to pack up and move to where the action was, namely Osaka. That meant you wouldn’t be going to school anymore. And you were so close to graduation, too. Your parents must have had something to say about that?
[I went to see a teacher and said “I’m quitting.” Then he answered calmly “You don’t really need to.” So that’s how it went. I took a break from school and went to Osaka. I didn’t tell my parents right away (laugh). They found out their kid was in a band in Osaka, though (laughs). Well, it couldn’t be helped. I listened to my parents most of the time, but there are some cases where it’s all or nothing, you know.]
– Did they give up and partly forgive you?
[Yeah, kinda (laughs). But you know, my joining the band went pretty smoothly. When new members come in, you usually see a personality clash or something, right? (laughs) Back then, my hair was in a recruit cut, and I didn’t know the deeper side of L’Arc~en~Ciel yet. I didn’t know how the others would react to my disposition, either. But, they did let me in (laughs). Just a few days later, we had a live to do, and there was already time booked to record a demo, so I had to work my heart out to learn the songs for the live and for the recording… I’ve been rushing along ever since.]
– From the very beginning, L’Arc~en~Ciel was able to attract about 200 people at a time, right?
[From the start I kept hearing that we’d sold out our venue. I had the chance to see the last live the previous guitarist did before quitting. There were lots fans screaming passionately for him not to quit. I thought “Hey, what are they going to do to me when I take his place?” (laughs). Well, whatever, I guess I just went up there and got started.]
– But did you find it very stimulating? Even though you had played with bands in the past, L’Arc~en~Ciel was one that people paid money to see, so the lives were always sold out. With some crazy fans, on top of that.
[That’s true. I was surprised by all those squealing voices. I’d been listening to metal, you know? The cheers are earth-shaking “WOAH”s and stuff like that. Ah, so this sort of thing exists too, I learned. A lot of things surprised me like that, but all of it was fun. The rehearsals, the lives, everything. And at the recording, I was amazed at how pretty my guitar could sound, when recorded.]
– Somehow, you seem to do everything at your own pace.
[That’s because my environment let me be that way, don’t you think? I didn’t worry about the fact that I was a newbie guitarist, the other members just let me be, naturally. Not once did they act like I sucked just because I was new, everything felt very normal.]
– But the band’s popularity was climbing sharply, right? I believe that L’Arc~en~Ciel wasn’t holding lives too often, only once a month or so. Always leaving them hungry for more like that, it seems almost like a game where you tried to score the highest number of audience members.
[Yes, that’s what it was.]
– You didn’t have a change of heart after doing it for a long enough time?
[Guess not (laughs). I say no, but I was having so much fun. We were a band playing live houses, so of course the members all have experience, right? The riffs and ideas I came up with ended up becoming good shows and songs. It was great.]
– I see. It must be a pleasant surprise to see your ideas accepted, rearranged, and turned into songs.
[Yeah, it made me very happy. And when we played it live, it would make the audience happy too. So it made me happy to make people happy. And it feels wonderful to play live. That’s how I spent my days.]
– Did you want to keep doing it forever?
[Just like that, yeah. And you know, I, the newbie guitarist, started pulling in my own set of fans, bit by bit. They were really sweet to me (laughs). I let my hair grow out a bit, so I wasn’t wearing a recruit cut anymore (laughs).]
– The more you did it, the more you felt like a musician yourself, right?
[Yeah, it just happened naturally.]
– The first album the band put out was DUNE in ’93, yes? What do you remember about that?
[We were still in Osaka, right? The drummer, Sakura, had just joined us a few days or weeks before. We had to go in for recording right away, so we had rehearsals every single day…. The surprising thing was, well, I was under the impression that pros had to record everything right the first time around. So I wanted to do it all in one shot, but they let me play it over again, two or three times. That was great, but I didn’t need to do it over too often. We did the recording at a studio in Tokyo, and the engineer was Jack Danger, who we all know very well, so it felt more like everything would be fine. So, if we suggested adding a keyboard somewhere, he’d go and get us a keyboardist. If I said I thought something would sound better in acoustic, he’d come up with an acoustic guitar. If I said I wanted a gut guitar, he’d get one of those. Eh, he could get anything. It was pretty awesome. All in all, it was a fun recording.]
** The riffs and ideas I came up with ended up becoming good shows and songs. It was fun, and made me happy. Every day was like that. **
– You never change at all, do you? No matter what happens and no matter what you do, you just focus on the happy, fun times and keep going on, focused on that.
[Yeah that’s right. Cause, it really was fun.]
– Around the time DUNE came out, your activities shifted toward large halls, right? Were those times a lot of fun, too?
[Yeah, it was fun, and made me happy. But when the venue gets a little bigger, it really feels like you’re on stage, you know? The stage set gets to be elaborate, and if you don’t have good communication before going onstage, you won’t know what kind of mood to go for. That happened sometimes. Like, there’s a column here, but I don’t know what it’ll look like if I do this, over here (laughs).]
– You must be talking about the first large hall you played at in Tokyo, Nippon Seinen-kan Hall, right?
[That’s right, that’s right (laughs). “Wow, so this is what it feels like to play a large hall,” I thought. And opportunities started flying at us after that.]
– When your major debut came along in ’94, did you feel like some big changes were about to happen? Or was it more like the things you had already been doing were big, themselves?
[Hm. I still think this way now, but yeah, since it wasn’t a clear goal of ours, it felt like the debut just sort of happened. I mean, if we had been working specifically so that we could go major some day, it would have felt different after we accomplished that. If our goal had been to play at Budoukan, we’d feel like something was different after we’d made it there, and I thought the same thing when we got to play in Tokyo Dome, and after we went overseas. But since I wasn’t setting any goals for myself, I made it that far without stressing my brains.]
– Hearing you talk, it really sounds like you walk at your own pace, always.
[Uh huh. Plus I think it was only possible because I was with the band.]
– In 2002, you started S.O.A.P, as a separate project outside of L’Arc~en~Ciel. Did you do that because you wanted to try something else, express different ideas?
[No, I can do everything I want to do with L’Arc~en~Ciel, definitely. But at the time, it was just that I had some extra time on my hands, and everyone else was doing solo work. So I figured I might as well, but I didn’t know what to do, and besides I needed voice training (laughs). So I got some lessons, like “Ooohhh~” (laughs). That’s how I got going in that direction. So yeah, for a while Ein and Sakura and I were goofing around together, and somehow we wound up trying to put some tunes together. It was just for fun, honestly. I totally wasn’t thinking about making a CD, I hadn’t decided to do anything ahead of time. It’s just that, I was thinking it’d be cool to do something with Sakura, but we’d need one more person. There was Ein, the model, but he said he could play bass so I called him over. Then the three of us started jamming. That’s how the group formed. We started it without wanting to make a CD or do any lives. Even so, we went through training camp (laughs). We just felt like having a training camp, that’s all. But a band with an amateur singer, an amateur bassist, and no management to call for help can’t go anywhere, which is fine because we didn’t think about it, we hadn’t decided to do anything whatsoever. So I took care of the training camp myself (laughs). When we, as S.O.A.P., were starting to rehearse what would eventually become our songs, a bunch of other people wound up coming over to hang out. The other members of L’Arc~en~Ciel came over too (laughs). So yeah, we were doing that, when Sakura went “Hey, we should have a live!” so we went up to Sapporo and had one. We hadn’t actually made up any lyrics yet, though. While we were working on that, we put together a mini-album, and we put the sound source together, too.]
– And then you ended up taking it seriously?
[Yeah, guess so.]
– I’m sure that when I saw you at Summer Sonic in 2002, I was surprised to hear your band name (laughs). “Can you really call a band that?!” I think I said.
[Ahaha…. And we came to the next year’s Summer Sonic too (laughs). We were just before SUM41, right? It had been a long time since I’d felt like so much was going against me (laughs). We hadn’t rehearsed, and there were tons of SUM41 fans, and our band name is awful (laughs). And then Chi**ko went up the stage with his headgear on. The security guys were all laughing (laughs). “That’s impossible.”]
– Even the tough-looking foreign security guards were laughing, surprisingly (laughs). But headgear included, S.O.A.P. always has a few interesting stories when it comes to lives. Like you’re the host of a Showa ballad. (7)
[Yeah. Like playing macho man while on stage and stuff. I started wanting to do that sort of thing, cause it makes the fans and the staff happy. All the S.O.A.P. lives are called “Festival”, you know? Because they’re festivals. It just makes me wanna go “WASHOW!” I think they used to have festivals in every single city. Lives are like that, they’re the same sort of thing, aren’t they? I think so. They have a festival element to them. We’re like the taiko players in the tower, playing while everyone dances around us. At first were like a band that would stop playing if the fans weren’t watching us (laughs). But that’s part of the fun. We messed up the performance a little but our practises were on stage, so whatever, on with the song (laughs).]
– So, the band came together just by being the way it was, not as a planned process. Ein said that he could play bass, but he was actually just a beginner, right?
[Yeah, yeah (laughs). But he got good at it pretty fast, it was interesting to see. Sakura said it first, we were just goofing off as a band. That was the mood.]
– But, while you were playing around as S.O.A.P., and the other members were doing their solos, it made one wonder what would happen to L’Arc~en~Ciel. Perhaps the hiatus would become permanent. Did you know the public was wondering about that?
[Nah, I had no idea (laughs). Well I did wonder when we were going to get back together. Maybe the other guys knew (laughs).]
– As usual, you just did your own thing (laughs). Do you think each member’s plans turned out quite differently from what they originally intended to do?
[Hmmm, I don’t know, but I don’t think the core of anything changed much. But you know, yukkie (yukihiro) has been devoted to his thing since before he joined L’Arc~en~Ciel, and I knew hyde wanted to make his ROENTGEN album for a long time before it actually happened. The solos came out of that, and while they had the time, it makes sense to throw in a bunch of other ideas too, right? The strangest thing for me was, after doing S.O.A.P., L’Arc~en~Ciel did some dome lives and stuff, right? It was like I could suddenly see everyone’s faces. Things changed that way, for me. This is changing the subject, but this time, I’m doing my first real solo, you know? I think I might be getting a taste of what hyde, tetsu and yukkie experienced in 2002. I’m late to the party (laughs).]
– Your solo work as Ken, did it start with a clear idea of what you wanted to do?
[I guess so. First of all, I wanted to do a cover, though.]
– That would seem to be Gary Moore’s song, Empty Rooms.
[Yes. Before, with S.O.A.P., I had said I wanted to a cover of Gary Moore, but it didn’t happen, somehow we didn’t get around to it. But yeah, Gary Moore’s songs are just guitar and piano and singing, so it might be fun to do a Gary Moore cover live of the songs I like. The way I picture it, Gary Moore’s songs are good for covering, so it would be pretty cool. But then I wanted to do some recording too, and if I’m going to record something, I figured I’d better have an original song too, so I found a good song from one of my old demos. Then this past February, I decided to record a solo single. At last year’s holiday event, DANGER IV, I went to rehearsals for S.O.A.P., which put me in the right frame of mind for lyrics and singing and seeing songs from a vocalist’s point of view. I told the members I wanted to perform like that. That’s how I ended up doing a solo. To go a little further, during L’Arc~en~Ciel’s AWAKE tour, we had a concept woven through the whole thing, and I realized how nice it is to have words, sound and a concept all working together. There was that, there was the holiday thing, and there was Gary Moore, it all flows into my solo.
** I focused on songs as songs, and focused on guitar as guitar. They’re both fun.**
– So you basically just wanted to sing?
[Yes. I wanted to sing Gary Moore, and as I was practising pronunciation and reading the lyrics, I realized what a romantic he is. By practising my pronunciation so I could convey those emotions English, it would spill over into my Japanese pronunciation, and I realized it could help me sing better. I wondered what I could do to simplify the lyrics of Speed a little. It was the first time I practised simplifying my singing. Before that I only focused on songs that I could scream out to make it sound as cool as possible. It must be in my DNA to appreciate the softer side, too. But simplifying the words to sing better turned out wonderfully. Doing Gary Moore, and practising my singing for Speed, it got me to explore different ways of singing, made me think about singing without screaming. That hit me while I was recording. It felt really good.]
– Did the vocalist part of you become more important?
[I guess so. But to cover Gary Moore, it meant that I, the guy who never bothered to copy anyone, would have to copy someone else’s guitar. The choking speed and so on, I copied all his nuances in this solo. I thought wow, it’s wonderful. For the backing on Speed, more than just wanted to play it well, I wanted to play it in a certain way. But doing that meant not using my own techniques. I could still play it, somehow, as if putting so much feeling into it let me soar through the playing. The power of my imagination drove my skill level up. Since I wanted to put so much feeling into it, I practised guitar a lot. So, I focused on songs as songs, and focused on guitar as guitar. They’re both fun.]
– You wanted to make your guitar sing as well, then?
[I guess so. It’s more like, instead of screaming out my songs, I wanted to communicate through the lyrics, and I guess I wanted to put those nuances into my guitar playing too. In my mind, I really wanted to do that, I wanted that kind of sound, but then I also wanted to listen to it myself. That’s how I think my solos are going to be from now on. If I had to put it into words, I’d say singer-songwriter. That’s the feeling I have, about solo work. And it feels that way too.]
– As if you were going back to the days when you listened to Matsuyama Chiharu-san?
[Yeah, maybe. So yeah, really that too.]
– It’s completely separate from S.O.A.P., of course.
[Yeah. But now, I’m wondering if all the stuff I randomly decided for S.O.A.P. was such a good idea, maybe I shouldn’t have. It’s on my mind. Not thinking about making a decision, more like just wondering about it.]
– You might not have thought this through yet, but do you any goals, even vague ones, concerning what you’ll do from now on, either with L’Arc~en~Ciel or on your own?
[Lately I’ve been thinking about communication. Just cause we’re playing, making music, doesn’t mean everyone is happy, right? A smiling face might be hiding feelings that are just the opposite, deep down. It’s pretty hard to discuss, but I want to be able to communicate better. That’s so we can keep having fun together. Not just during lives, but even concerning our CDs, I think it’s important to communicate.]
– The exact opposite of when you were happily alone with your music (laughs).
[Guess so (laughs). If anything’s changed since I joined L’Arc~en~Ciel, it’s that. With this solo, I’ve put together something that’s very introspective, but I think that the ones who listen to it will like it too.]
Solo Roots : The Search
At last, Ken has reached his solo debut.
His first single, [Speed], may be called natural, and may in fact be so, for as he has said himself, this release is, more than any previous work, strongly coloured by the private sphere.
Here, we will go over his private history anew.
Ken
Profile : Born November 28, AB type blood, guitarist of L’Arc~en~Ciel, major debut in ’94. In ’03, as the vocalist and guitarist of S.O.A.P. (SONS OF ALL PUSSYS), indies debut (?). August 23 2006, solo debut with the single [Speed].
[Speed] also includes a cover of Gary Moore, and theme music from [The Sandpiper].
Available as CD (Digipak), or as CD+DVD.
www.ken-curlyhair.com
** If I had to put it into words, I’d say singer-songwriter. That’s the feeling I have, about solo work. **
– When you were little, what kind of home atmosphere did you grow up in?
[I was born into the home of a salaryman and a housewife.]
– Completely ordinary? Just like Nobita-kun’s house, then? (1)
[Yeah, totally. I didn’t have a Doraemon though (laughs). I have one sibling, older than me. One grade higher. When we played together, we usually ended up fighting. And when we played games, I’d almost always lose. When you’re a little kid, even just one year makes an incredibly big difference. Hasami shogi (2), othello, cards, I’d always lose everything. When that happened, I’d flip our little table over. Then I’d say “I’m not gonna play with you ever again,” and get really mad, or something (laughs). Then one of us would pick up all the pieces, come up to the other and go “PLAY!”. That’s kind of how it went.]
– Did you have friends around, in your neighbourhood?
[My neighbourhood friends, well, they were the kind of kids whose idea of fun is to look for beetles and stuff. But I hate beetles, I’ve always hated bugs of all kinds.]
– It’s unusual to hear of a young kid who hates bugs.
[Normal kids love them, right? They don’t eat them though (laughs). So yeah, a bunch of us would go out to look for beetles, in a group. We’d all grab a bunch, then stick a bunch of them into one cage. When it was time to go home, we’d play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to keep it. Thing is, I’m pretty good at rock-paper-scissors (laughs). So even though I hate beetles, I’d wind up with a lot of them. Well, I took them home, but didn’t take care of them. So the bugs all ended up dying. That grossed me out even more (laughs). What a vicious circle that was.]
– But by going around collecting bugs with the other kids, you managed to make friends, right?
[Yeah. It was fun to have long, pointless conversations during the bug-hunting. Another game we had was, OK there was this pole, right? And when it was knocked over, a cat would always show up. I really believed that pole had the ability to summon cats. Two of my friends and I would go knock the pole over, then walk a bit and look for the cat, and there it was! It totally worked (laughs).]
– In other words, it just means there were stray cats all over the place (laughs).
[Yeah, yeah (laughs). But, that pole would always be back up by the next day, so we’d knock it over again. Not exactly like dowsing (laughs). I played a lot of stupid, normal games. Oh, and one of my classmates lived in the same neighbourhood as me, so we hung out together. Even outside the neighbourhood, we’d ride our bikes someplace to hang out. On the way home from school, we’d play tag and stuff like that. Tag all the way home. That means we were playing tag over a three kilometre radius. Just when I thought “it” was gone, I’d be about to go into my house, then there “it” was! That’s how our games of tag ended up (laughs).]
– I guess you probably played this kind of game up until the middle of elementary school, correct?
[Yeah, I guess. But it was like that the whole time, in my elementary school.]
– That can’t be right. Don’t kids normally take up baseball or soccer by the end of elementary school?
[Oh, I did play in a kid’s baseball team, right, but practise was only on the weekend. I didn’t really like baseball, but it was kind of like the thing with the beetles. All my friends were signing up for it, so I joined them so we could keep hanging out together. I like baseball now, but back then I barely even knew the rules. I just knew I was supposed to hit the ball, and then go run around the bases. I didn’t know what a tag up meant or anything. I had no idea what a balk was. Or what would be the right timing to run at. But anyway, I didn’t manage to hit much, so I was never on the bases (laughs). And sometimes I’d hit the ball and forget to run (laughs). Hey, I hit it, go me, I hit it… I was so surprised. I didn’t get to the bases so I’d be out right then and there (laughs).]
– Hunting for bugs and playing baseball, sounds like you were quite the typical elementary school kid. By the way, by the time you reached the end of elementary school, were you already interested in the opposite sex? (laughs)
[I was (laughs). Since when though, I wonder… Since the middle of elementary school, maybe? That’s when I started writing notes. Woah, embarrassing (laughs).]
– Writing notes in grade four?
[You know, writing notes as in, letters to people. Like, writing to someone to say I like them, I remember doing that. That’s all, really.]
– You didn’t sneak out of class together or anything?
[There was nowhere to go. That’s why I only got as far as exchanging letters.]
– How about the person you were writing these letters to? How long did your relationship last?
[About a year or so, I guess.]
– You split up when class change came around, then?
[Yeah, pretty much (laughs). That’s all it was, so I wouldn’t even say we were together to begin with.]
– From a logical point of view, you really didn’t have the time to date. These days, you’d just have been e-mail buddies, right?
[Yeah. We were un-e-mail buddies.]
– How about we brush up on romantic technique? What did you do when someone shook things up and said “I like you.”?
[Oh, that (laughs). Being liked, being told that they like me, well, it made me happy. That was satisfying enough, you know?]
– Eeeh, how pure of you.
[I am pure, yes.]
– You still were, back then.
[Oh no, I stayed pure my whole life (laughs).]
– When you get to middle school, all of a sudden you have more friends and acquaintances, and your range of activities gets much bigger, right?
[Oh yeah. There’s this guy I’d known since elementary school, kinda like a big brother to me, and it’s through his influence that I got into rock and western music. I hung out with him all the time, so I ended up listening to a lot of western hard rock, too. That was around second year of middle school, I think. In first year, I wasn’t into that music yet.]
– Could you name a few of those western hard rock bands, just to get an idea?
[Speaking in real time, Mötley crüe. I guess Ratt came a little later.]
РSo that would mean M̦tley were in their earlier, gaudy period, right?
[Yep. That’s why when I first heard them, I wondered what was up with them. Mötley crüe, Scorpions, Micheal Schenker, and early Def Leppard too. Oh and I think Gary Moore was during that time too, but I can’t really remember.]
– Starting with British heavy metal, then, that would have gotten you into the American scene too, around that time?
[That was kind of the beginning of the world music thing, you know. I used to go home to a friend’s house, and he had a ton of records that he got me to listen to, I thought it was so cool. It was nothing but hard rock, though.]
– Would that have been your first opportunity to listen to music?
[Nah, a little bit before that I had a Matsuyama Chiharu album at home. It was the one with “Nagai Yoru” on it (3). I’d listen to that and think “Hey, songs are pretty cool.” But not much later, I started listening to all that hard rock.]
– If you even got your friend to let you listen to his records, it sounds like the younger Ken was considerably dazzled by hard rock. What appealed the most to you?
[Plainly put, it made my heart pound. I don’t what it was about it, or why it made my heart pound so much though. Thinking back on it now, I think maybe it’s because it exposed me to whole new horizons. To a kid who was used to catching beetles and playing baseball, hearing words like “HELL!” really came as a shock (laughs). Like, “Eeeh!?”. And the songs were so angry, full of shouting, you know? Coming out of the woods and hearing unbeliavble voices set to unbelievable sounds, that’s what hard rock was like. It was awesome (laughs).]
– Almost like culture shock? (laughs)
[It really was culture shock, actually. I used to think that “songs” were words you sang in a pretty voice for people to enjoy.]
– Because you listened to Matsuyama Chiharu-san before, right?
[Yep. Something about hard rock songs, it always makes me think they’re about to break something (laughs). But yeah, I thought it was so cool, I was totally hooked on it.]
– On absolutely all of it?
[On everything my friend showed me. At the time, all my musical knowledge came from him. I came to think of that friend as my older brother. Somebody else succeeded him though (laughs).]
** To a kid who was used to catching beetles and playing baseball, hearing words like “HELL!” really came as a shock (laughs). It was awesome **
– Which particular bands and musicians did you like?
[Gary Moore, Micheal Schenker. Also Black Sabbath. That was while Ronnie James Dio was with them, though. After that I went through a phase with Yngwie Maalmstein and Alcatrazz. And Vandenberg too, around the same time. Then, Scorpions.]
– They all must have had great songs, right?
[Songs… Nah, it’s really just because they were cool. At middle school age, it’s not like I was doing a whole lot of analysis, right, they were just cool. And every night, I’d go to bed with my headphones, listening to music while I slept.]
– That sounds a bit like sleep-learning.
[Nah, well, actually it was (laughs).]
– So when you woke up, was the first thing out of your mouth “HELL!”?
[Like, screaming it (laughs). The lyrics were all in English so I couldn’t actually understand everything, but “HELL!” was one word I could figure out.]
– But didn’t your mother and father worry? Thinking their kid had suddenly gone crazy.
[I was still pretty OK, at that point (laughs). Until a few years later, I bought a Marshall amp and brought it home, and they were against that. It was big though (laughs). That was my yellow card. But before that I had a no-name one, and they let me play as much as I wanted. For three years in middle school, it was always like that.]
– Did you have a lot of friends who were into hard rock?
[Nah, only two or three. There might have been more people, but there were only two or three that I could talk to. And share information with. In those days, I’d listen to the songs I liked over and over and over again. I listened to Judas Priest a lot too. That was right when they were getting to be successful in America, with that something-or-other-vengeance album.]
– Ah yes, the title is “SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE” actually.
[Yeah that. I’d go to sleep listening to that Jararaaaaa raaugh intro track, “The Hellion”.]
– Eh, but with that much stimulation, how can you get to sleep?
[For me, actually I’m still like this, heavy metal is the best kind of music for getting to sleep. I had my headphones on while I slept, so my parents always said it was bad for my ears. Well, obviously (laughs).]
– Speaking of your metal sleep-learning, do you think that maybe you cultivated musical DNA that way?
[Oh yeah. But of course, if my big-brother-friend had made me listen to punk, I’d be a punk, if it had been new wave, I’d have been into that. Back then, I thought pop and heavy metal were the only kinds of music that existed, honestly.]
– Ah… That’s quite special.
[Until I was eighteen.]
– A bit slow on the uptake (laughs).
[No, it really was like that (laughs). Because I had so little information.]
– No way, were you living in a completely isolated neighbourhood? (laughs)
[No, well, maybe I was, actually (laughs). It was only open to metal (laughs). I succeeded my big-brother-friend’s place and once in a while I hit the jackpot. For the later part of middle school, I was a metal head.]
– Just listening to it wasn’t enough for you, was it?
[That’s right. When I got into high school, I asked for a guitar as a present, so my parents bought me one.]
– They bought you one just like that?
[That’s right, it was pretty easy to convince them. Once I had it, every day after school it was all “Wooooah~” (laughs). I had distortion too, that was just so cool, so awesome. Metal, metal, metal (laughs). I played everything so scratchy and rough. And, I couldn’t pull it off, but I tried to cover Micheal Schenker’s stuff. Those were the early days. I guess I spent a lot of time with tetsu around then. I think tetsu listened to a bit more musical variety. But he seemed to like hard rock too. That’s when me and tetsu and one other guy from my neighbourhood were hanging out to listen to it.]
– Did that become a sort of metal community for you?
[Nah, it was just the three of us getting together (laughs). We went to the other guy’s house to listen to records, and he had guitars so we played them, too. When I got home, I kept playing on my own. I couldn’t quite play anyone else’s songs, so I just started building on some riffs that I liked.]
– Did you choose your first guitar yourself? Was it some radical shape?
[No, actually I really wanted a Strat. But I guess there weren’t any. So I ended up with something else. A regular one. Eventually I got something more radically-shaped (laughs). But I really played that first guitar nonstop. I’d snap out of it and notice it was dark out, or because my mom was calling me for dinner. Her voice always made me jump (laughs). When had she started calling me? It had to have been a while, but since I was playing my guitar I didn’t hear her. Then, after dinner and a bath, I’d go right back to playing guitar.]
** Back then, I thought pop and heavy metal were the only kinds of music that existed, honestly. Until I was eighteen (laughs). **
– That’s a considerable amount of practise.
[Yeah, it was, but I was just playing my own nonsense, not copying any songs, so I didn’t improve. I’d listen to a record and try to copy the solo or something. It was like a game. Back then, there wasn’t a single song I could play all the way through to the end. I’d rather make my own riffs, or ad-lib some gibberish to go along; that was more fun.]
– Did you imagine yourself as the lead guitarist of the bands on those records?
[Something like that (laughs). I got a strap and tried playing on my feet. But I couldn’t do it, so I sat back down.]
– Around the same time, was there any talk of forming a band in that metal community of yours?
[We could have, but of course, we didn’t have a drummer. We did know a guy who could get a drum set for us from a friend, but of course he couldn’t play them so that didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t any fun, and I didn’t particularly feel like being in a band anyway. I wanted to go back to the days where we just played in one guy’s room. In high school, I had another friend who liked metal, so we’d go around looking for fast guitar players who didn’t know us, then challenge the guy to see who was the faster player (laughs).]
– Sounds like he was a bit of a metal maniac.
[After that, we went off in different directions. Guitar speed was what mattered. We’d go looking for records, have each other listen, then be like “This one goes much faster, Gyahahahah~”. Oh, but that friend wasn’t a guitarist, he was just into things with a fast tempo. Metallica, Slayer, Antrhax, that sort of thing, right when thrash metal was getting to be a big deal. My friend heard Metallica’s “Kill ‘Em All” and then got into the thrash metal scene, but I kept right on listening to metal, just like in middle school. I did like Slayer though, at least.]
– Just from the name, it sounds like they were the most atrocious band of all (laughs).
[From Slayer’s debut, there was just Lombardo (drums) that I especially liked. I still feel the same way; Dave Lombardo was the best. Some years ago, at this “Beast Feast” event, I met him, and he really is awesome.]
– But he’s a drummer, isn’t he?
[Yep. There are guitarists I like, but there are also drummers and bassists I like. Among bassists, there’s “Geezer” Butler from Black Sabbath. I like Sabbath’s drummer, Bill Ward, too. As far as slash metal goes, I still like Slayer even now.]
– If you think really really hard, Slayer is one of those “HELL!” bands too, after all.
[Yeah yeah (laughs).]
– Your metal mania was a high school thing, so ultimately it’s not what led you to joining a band, is it?
[I wasn’t in any real bands, was I? My friends started a band, but they didn’t have a singer. Oh well, it’s a common problem right? So I did the singing for them. These weren’t songs for amateurs, I only did one live.]
– Did that experience get you to think that being in a band wasn’t so bad?
[Nah, I didn’t get it, not at all. Singing, you know? I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to sing, so it was tiring, anyway. And I lost my voice. I didn’t think it was much fun. It was fun being with my friends though, but yeah, performing got to be boring. Boring, or well, it was tiring anyway. But, I wasn’t thinking about joining a band as guitarist, either.]
– It was strictly a hobby?
[That’s right. That was the nature of my relationship with guitar and music.]
– After that, you went to university, right? How did you decide which field to study?
[Study…… All the way up through middle school I barely bothered. When I got into high school, I was ranked near the bottom of the list (laughs) (4). After that, I scraped by and got into university. In university, they have music clubs and stuff, don’t they? I dropped in on them and what do you know, I met a senior who was great at guitar. But I was just so into that (laughs). It’s just that things kinda changed. See, at my part-time job, I told people I was into metal. I was kinda stuck on making the point that I liked metal. So I was going on and on about how nothing good had come out recently when my sempai from work went “You know, there are other kinds of music besides metal.” (laughs).]
– I see, that’s when you noticed the existence of other genres beyond pop and metal (laughs).
[Yeah, seems they existed after all (laughs). They showed me The Cure, The Smiths, and so I listened to those for the first time. Hey, The Cure really caught my eye, I liked them a lot. I listened to The Police too, and then Sting’s solo stuff, and David Sylvian’s solo too. And even though it was a completely different genre, I tried listening to Bob Marley too. That’s how I learned about the wide world of music (laughs). Then I started listening to all kinds of music. The world suddenly opened up (laughs). But I kept wondering how come I had never noticed all that stuff before (laughs). Since I never bothered to check out other things on my own, my friend’s influence was the biggest factor, I guess. It was the same later on. I didn’t do simple things like buy music magazines to get an idea of what’s out there and whether it might be any good. Instead, I just acted on the advice my friends gave me, thinking it had to be good. I discovered The Cure through my friend at work, so I think that if he’d shown be something else, I’d have been into that instead. But he got a bingo with that one, starting me on The Cure.]
– Did that get you into New Wave, into guitar that doesn’t go all over the place?
[I heard the clear tones and arpeggios and thought hey, that’s pretty cool! And they didn’t scream, and the lyrics weren’t all “HELL!” (laughs). All that and also a decadent sort of atmosphere. I liked that. A little later I got to know someone who also liked The Smiths, but while we were talking he told me all about The The. I listened to them, and bingo~. That’s how my musical tastes got to expand.]
– Did you try playing that way, on your guitar?
[You’ve got to be kidding. They’d have several guitars on at once, I couldn’t pick them apart on my own. Even when I was playing metal, I’d just do my own thing with it, so I did the same with other kinds of music. After getting into university, I started dropping in on this band, thinking of joining them.]
– Is that how it all got started?
[But see, that band didn’t have a bassist, so they invited me to play bass for them. The members were interesting people, so I went for it and joined. They were hard rock, but it wasn’t long before I quit. And then, I started slacking off again (laughs). I barely even went to school.]
– You are quite the slacker (laughs).
[Yeah (laughs). I’d go or not go, depending on my mood.]
– By the way, it’s become well-known that you like dams. Does that have anything to do with your university studies?
[No. In university, I was into motorcycles, and I had a biker friend, too. We’d go riding in the mountains together. If you go far enough down a mountain road, most of the time you’ll find a dam, you know? On a mountain road though, you can’t stop. The curb is tiny, there’s no escape zone or anything. The only place to take a break was in the parking lot of some dam. We’d talk about how it might not be a good idea to take the road all the way to the dam, but we’d just go there anyway. We’d rest by the dam, and so I came to love them (laughs). Sometimes we’d go out at odd times, and get to see the valley with the dam in the middle of the night. I thought that was so awe-inspiring, it felt great. If we rode all night, we’d get to the dam right at dawn, and it was so pretty. Where there’s a dam, there’s a deep valley, and so the mountain scenery around it would be pretty too. So that’s how dams found a place in my heart.]
** I started listening to The Cure, and it was like the world opened up. They didn’t scream, and the lyrics weren’t all “HELL!” (laughs). **
– Did you visit every dam in the country?
[I couldn’t go to every single one, but I marked the ones I’d been to on a map. And I’d trace the roads I’d used in red. They have those touring maps for bikers, the kind that you can spread out as one big page, you know? I was tracing them on that, thinking I wanted to fill in the entire map. But it’s impossible, actually (laughs). I spent my university days doing that sort of thing, and messing around with bands.]
– And then you appeared on “Tamori Club” (5) to talk about dams (laughs).
[When I went on there, I was thinking “Oh yeah, I really love dams, yeah~”(laughs). I know so much about them.]
– Speaking of which, What can you tell us as a dam specialist? Are there any that you recommend?
[The Kuzuryuugawa dam. All dams are great, but the water that collects there turns emerald green! Looking at that while riding a bike feels incredibly good. Plus the Kuzuryuugawa river is pretty long. That’s what I’d recommend. And I know everyone knows about it, but the Kurobe dam is beautiful too. You can’t get to it by car, so it feels blocked off from the outside world. There’s still greenery around, and you can see far into the Japanese Alps, where there are also dams. They’ve gone crazy building tunnels over there, so riding around, all of a sudden you can end up in some mountain valley. It feels like you’re seeing hidden bits of scenery. The Japanese Alps are right there, and so it feels like another country. If you’re going to see dams, you should at least get out to those two. And the best season has to be autumn. Kurobe is nice in summer too. Kuzuryuugawa is best in autumn. You get to see the red leaves and emerald green water together. You ought to get a bike and go there.]
– Wow, you make it out to be a great interest to have.
[Do I? I didn’t pick mountain roads because I want to zoom around or anything, I just like going on unpopular, deserted roads.]
– Looking at your university-era interests, I’d say the common thread was that you wanted to be in touch with beautiful things. New Wave music is beautiful to hear, and dams are beautiful to see.
[You’re making too much of it (laughs). With music like with mountains, I think I just like stuff that’s out of the ordinary.]
– During university, did you figure out what you were going to be, what kind of work you were going to do?
[Nope, I didn’t. I really didn’t. So I guess I’d have ended up as a salaryman. Couldn’t tell you what kind of salaryman, though. There wasn’t anything I wanted to do. I remember in elementary school, I thought adults didn’t get enough vacations. They just get Obon and New Year’s (6). Late nights and early mornings, it all seems so haaaaaard. I was pretty anxious. In elementary school, I’d look at high school kids who where walking and reading at the same time. I’d go whoaah. I didn’t know what I was gonna do when I grew up, I worried about it in elementary, middle and high school, all the way through university (laughs).]
– Sounds like a type of Peter Pan syndrome to me.
[Guess so (laughs). Cause I thought it would be great if I could stay young and always be a kid. I wanted to keep living the life of a child, but realistically, I knew it was impossible.]
– So by listening to music and going to look at dams, you could just about escape from reality (laughs).
[Ah ha ha…. That might be partially true (laughs). I said I wanted vacations, but I had a ton of free time back then. I spent that unbelievable amount of free time with my guitar. It passed the time, and I was quite crazy about it. When I didn’t have my guitar with me, I didn’t know what to do, as I noticed later on. My trips to the mountains weren’t planned, I liked the way my friend would call me up and we’d just go. It was last-minute.]
– You didn’t like to be tied down by anything, right?
[Ah…. Yeah. Nah, I just couldn’t accept it (laughs).]
– But it was while you were in university that you came to join L’Arc~en~Ciel.
[Right. tetsu had already started L’Arc~en~Ciel, and I had been down to see them live in Osaka. Then sometime in my last year before graduation, I got a phone call from tetsu, saying “Wanna join my band?”. But I was close to graduating, so I asked him for a week to think it over.]
– What kind of thoughts ran through your mind during that week?
[I basically wasn’t thinking anything at all. I just knew that when I’d gone to see their live, even just seeing them from the audience side I thought they were such a cool band. And then, even though I’d asked him for a week to think about it, he called back earlier than that. “Decide, now.” (laughs). And so, I joined the band. Until then, I hadn’t wanted to be in a band, but being one and playing my guitar, deep inside I think I did want it. Since I hadn’t analysed my own feelings before then, I just followed my gut instinct. A little before that, I had made myself a little demo tape sort of thing, and since I thought it was pretty good I made tetsu listen to it. He said it was good too. That made things a little easier.]
** I spent that unbelievable amount of free time with my guitar. When I didn’t have my guitar with me, I didn’t know what to do. **
– But to join the band, you had to pack up and move to where the action was, namely Osaka. That meant you wouldn’t be going to school anymore. And you were so close to graduation, too. Your parents must have had something to say about that?
[I went to see a teacher and said “I’m quitting.” Then he answered calmly “You don’t really need to.” So that’s how it went. I took a break from school and went to Osaka. I didn’t tell my parents right away (laugh). They found out their kid was in a band in Osaka, though (laughs). Well, it couldn’t be helped. I listened to my parents most of the time, but there are some cases where it’s all or nothing, you know.]
– Did they give up and partly forgive you?
[Yeah, kinda (laughs). But you know, my joining the band went pretty smoothly. When new members come in, you usually see a personality clash or something, right? (laughs) Back then, my hair was in a recruit cut, and I didn’t know the deeper side of L’Arc~en~Ciel yet. I didn’t know how the others would react to my disposition, either. But, they did let me in (laughs). Just a few days later, we had a live to do, and there was already time booked to record a demo, so I had to work my heart out to learn the songs for the live and for the recording… I’ve been rushing along ever since.]
– From the very beginning, L’Arc~en~Ciel was able to attract about 200 people at a time, right?
[From the start I kept hearing that we’d sold out our venue. I had the chance to see the last live the previous guitarist did before quitting. There were lots fans screaming passionately for him not to quit. I thought “Hey, what are they going to do to me when I take his place?” (laughs). Well, whatever, I guess I just went up there and got started.]
– But did you find it very stimulating? Even though you had played with bands in the past, L’Arc~en~Ciel was one that people paid money to see, so the lives were always sold out. With some crazy fans, on top of that.
[That’s true. I was surprised by all those squealing voices. I’d been listening to metal, you know? The cheers are earth-shaking “WOAH”s and stuff like that. Ah, so this sort of thing exists too, I learned. A lot of things surprised me like that, but all of it was fun. The rehearsals, the lives, everything. And at the recording, I was amazed at how pretty my guitar could sound, when recorded.]
– Somehow, you seem to do everything at your own pace.
[That’s because my environment let me be that way, don’t you think? I didn’t worry about the fact that I was a newbie guitarist, the other members just let me be, naturally. Not once did they act like I sucked just because I was new, everything felt very normal.]
– But the band’s popularity was climbing sharply, right? I believe that L’Arc~en~Ciel wasn’t holding lives too often, only once a month or so. Always leaving them hungry for more like that, it seems almost like a game where you tried to score the highest number of audience members.
[Yes, that’s what it was.]
– You didn’t have a change of heart after doing it for a long enough time?
[Guess not (laughs). I say no, but I was having so much fun. We were a band playing live houses, so of course the members all have experience, right? The riffs and ideas I came up with ended up becoming good shows and songs. It was great.]
– I see. It must be a pleasant surprise to see your ideas accepted, rearranged, and turned into songs.
[Yeah, it made me very happy. And when we played it live, it would make the audience happy too. So it made me happy to make people happy. And it feels wonderful to play live. That’s how I spent my days.]
– Did you want to keep doing it forever?
[Just like that, yeah. And you know, I, the newbie guitarist, started pulling in my own set of fans, bit by bit. They were really sweet to me (laughs). I let my hair grow out a bit, so I wasn’t wearing a recruit cut anymore (laughs).]
– The more you did it, the more you felt like a musician yourself, right?
[Yeah, it just happened naturally.]
– The first album the band put out was DUNE in ’93, yes? What do you remember about that?
[We were still in Osaka, right? The drummer, Sakura, had just joined us a few days or weeks before. We had to go in for recording right away, so we had rehearsals every single day…. The surprising thing was, well, I was under the impression that pros had to record everything right the first time around. So I wanted to do it all in one shot, but they let me play it over again, two or three times. That was great, but I didn’t need to do it over too often. We did the recording at a studio in Tokyo, and the engineer was Jack Danger, who we all know very well, so it felt more like everything would be fine. So, if we suggested adding a keyboard somewhere, he’d go and get us a keyboardist. If I said I thought something would sound better in acoustic, he’d come up with an acoustic guitar. If I said I wanted a gut guitar, he’d get one of those. Eh, he could get anything. It was pretty awesome. All in all, it was a fun recording.]
** The riffs and ideas I came up with ended up becoming good shows and songs. It was fun, and made me happy. Every day was like that. **
– You never change at all, do you? No matter what happens and no matter what you do, you just focus on the happy, fun times and keep going on, focused on that.
[Yeah that’s right. Cause, it really was fun.]
– Around the time DUNE came out, your activities shifted toward large halls, right? Were those times a lot of fun, too?
[Yeah, it was fun, and made me happy. But when the venue gets a little bigger, it really feels like you’re on stage, you know? The stage set gets to be elaborate, and if you don’t have good communication before going onstage, you won’t know what kind of mood to go for. That happened sometimes. Like, there’s a column here, but I don’t know what it’ll look like if I do this, over here (laughs).]
– You must be talking about the first large hall you played at in Tokyo, Nippon Seinen-kan Hall, right?
[That’s right, that’s right (laughs). “Wow, so this is what it feels like to play a large hall,” I thought. And opportunities started flying at us after that.]
– When your major debut came along in ’94, did you feel like some big changes were about to happen? Or was it more like the things you had already been doing were big, themselves?
[Hm. I still think this way now, but yeah, since it wasn’t a clear goal of ours, it felt like the debut just sort of happened. I mean, if we had been working specifically so that we could go major some day, it would have felt different after we accomplished that. If our goal had been to play at Budoukan, we’d feel like something was different after we’d made it there, and I thought the same thing when we got to play in Tokyo Dome, and after we went overseas. But since I wasn’t setting any goals for myself, I made it that far without stressing my brains.]
– Hearing you talk, it really sounds like you walk at your own pace, always.
[Uh huh. Plus I think it was only possible because I was with the band.]
– In 2002, you started S.O.A.P, as a separate project outside of L’Arc~en~Ciel. Did you do that because you wanted to try something else, express different ideas?
[No, I can do everything I want to do with L’Arc~en~Ciel, definitely. But at the time, it was just that I had some extra time on my hands, and everyone else was doing solo work. So I figured I might as well, but I didn’t know what to do, and besides I needed voice training (laughs). So I got some lessons, like “Ooohhh~” (laughs). That’s how I got going in that direction. So yeah, for a while Ein and Sakura and I were goofing around together, and somehow we wound up trying to put some tunes together. It was just for fun, honestly. I totally wasn’t thinking about making a CD, I hadn’t decided to do anything ahead of time. It’s just that, I was thinking it’d be cool to do something with Sakura, but we’d need one more person. There was Ein, the model, but he said he could play bass so I called him over. Then the three of us started jamming. That’s how the group formed. We started it without wanting to make a CD or do any lives. Even so, we went through training camp (laughs). We just felt like having a training camp, that’s all. But a band with an amateur singer, an amateur bassist, and no management to call for help can’t go anywhere, which is fine because we didn’t think about it, we hadn’t decided to do anything whatsoever. So I took care of the training camp myself (laughs). When we, as S.O.A.P., were starting to rehearse what would eventually become our songs, a bunch of other people wound up coming over to hang out. The other members of L’Arc~en~Ciel came over too (laughs). So yeah, we were doing that, when Sakura went “Hey, we should have a live!” so we went up to Sapporo and had one. We hadn’t actually made up any lyrics yet, though. While we were working on that, we put together a mini-album, and we put the sound source together, too.]
– And then you ended up taking it seriously?
[Yeah, guess so.]
– I’m sure that when I saw you at Summer Sonic in 2002, I was surprised to hear your band name (laughs). “Can you really call a band that?!” I think I said.
[Ahaha…. And we came to the next year’s Summer Sonic too (laughs). We were just before SUM41, right? It had been a long time since I’d felt like so much was going against me (laughs). We hadn’t rehearsed, and there were tons of SUM41 fans, and our band name is awful (laughs). And then Chi**ko went up the stage with his headgear on. The security guys were all laughing (laughs). “That’s impossible.”]
– Even the tough-looking foreign security guards were laughing, surprisingly (laughs). But headgear included, S.O.A.P. always has a few interesting stories when it comes to lives. Like you’re the host of a Showa ballad. (7)
[Yeah. Like playing macho man while on stage and stuff. I started wanting to do that sort of thing, cause it makes the fans and the staff happy. All the S.O.A.P. lives are called “Festival”, you know? Because they’re festivals. It just makes me wanna go “WASHOW!” I think they used to have festivals in every single city. Lives are like that, they’re the same sort of thing, aren’t they? I think so. They have a festival element to them. We’re like the taiko players in the tower, playing while everyone dances around us. At first were like a band that would stop playing if the fans weren’t watching us (laughs). But that’s part of the fun. We messed up the performance a little but our practises were on stage, so whatever, on with the song (laughs).]
– So, the band came together just by being the way it was, not as a planned process. Ein said that he could play bass, but he was actually just a beginner, right?
[Yeah, yeah (laughs). But he got good at it pretty fast, it was interesting to see. Sakura said it first, we were just goofing off as a band. That was the mood.]
– But, while you were playing around as S.O.A.P., and the other members were doing their solos, it made one wonder what would happen to L’Arc~en~Ciel. Perhaps the hiatus would become permanent. Did you know the public was wondering about that?
[Nah, I had no idea (laughs). Well I did wonder when we were going to get back together. Maybe the other guys knew (laughs).]
– As usual, you just did your own thing (laughs). Do you think each member’s plans turned out quite differently from what they originally intended to do?
[Hmmm, I don’t know, but I don’t think the core of anything changed much. But you know, yukkie (yukihiro) has been devoted to his thing since before he joined L’Arc~en~Ciel, and I knew hyde wanted to make his ROENTGEN album for a long time before it actually happened. The solos came out of that, and while they had the time, it makes sense to throw in a bunch of other ideas too, right? The strangest thing for me was, after doing S.O.A.P., L’Arc~en~Ciel did some dome lives and stuff, right? It was like I could suddenly see everyone’s faces. Things changed that way, for me. This is changing the subject, but this time, I’m doing my first real solo, you know? I think I might be getting a taste of what hyde, tetsu and yukkie experienced in 2002. I’m late to the party (laughs).]
– Your solo work as Ken, did it start with a clear idea of what you wanted to do?
[I guess so. First of all, I wanted to do a cover, though.]
– That would seem to be Gary Moore’s song, Empty Rooms.
[Yes. Before, with S.O.A.P., I had said I wanted to a cover of Gary Moore, but it didn’t happen, somehow we didn’t get around to it. But yeah, Gary Moore’s songs are just guitar and piano and singing, so it might be fun to do a Gary Moore cover live of the songs I like. The way I picture it, Gary Moore’s songs are good for covering, so it would be pretty cool. But then I wanted to do some recording too, and if I’m going to record something, I figured I’d better have an original song too, so I found a good song from one of my old demos. Then this past February, I decided to record a solo single. At last year’s holiday event, DANGER IV, I went to rehearsals for S.O.A.P., which put me in the right frame of mind for lyrics and singing and seeing songs from a vocalist’s point of view. I told the members I wanted to perform like that. That’s how I ended up doing a solo. To go a little further, during L’Arc~en~Ciel’s AWAKE tour, we had a concept woven through the whole thing, and I realized how nice it is to have words, sound and a concept all working together. There was that, there was the holiday thing, and there was Gary Moore, it all flows into my solo.
** I focused on songs as songs, and focused on guitar as guitar. They’re both fun.**
– So you basically just wanted to sing?
[Yes. I wanted to sing Gary Moore, and as I was practising pronunciation and reading the lyrics, I realized what a romantic he is. By practising my pronunciation so I could convey those emotions English, it would spill over into my Japanese pronunciation, and I realized it could help me sing better. I wondered what I could do to simplify the lyrics of Speed a little. It was the first time I practised simplifying my singing. Before that I only focused on songs that I could scream out to make it sound as cool as possible. It must be in my DNA to appreciate the softer side, too. But simplifying the words to sing better turned out wonderfully. Doing Gary Moore, and practising my singing for Speed, it got me to explore different ways of singing, made me think about singing without screaming. That hit me while I was recording. It felt really good.]
– Did the vocalist part of you become more important?
[I guess so. But to cover Gary Moore, it meant that I, the guy who never bothered to copy anyone, would have to copy someone else’s guitar. The choking speed and so on, I copied all his nuances in this solo. I thought wow, it’s wonderful. For the backing on Speed, more than just wanted to play it well, I wanted to play it in a certain way. But doing that meant not using my own techniques. I could still play it, somehow, as if putting so much feeling into it let me soar through the playing. The power of my imagination drove my skill level up. Since I wanted to put so much feeling into it, I practised guitar a lot. So, I focused on songs as songs, and focused on guitar as guitar. They’re both fun.]
– You wanted to make your guitar sing as well, then?
[I guess so. It’s more like, instead of screaming out my songs, I wanted to communicate through the lyrics, and I guess I wanted to put those nuances into my guitar playing too. In my mind, I really wanted to do that, I wanted that kind of sound, but then I also wanted to listen to it myself. That’s how I think my solos are going to be from now on. If I had to put it into words, I’d say singer-songwriter. That’s the feeling I have, about solo work. And it feels that way too.]
– As if you were going back to the days when you listened to Matsuyama Chiharu-san?
[Yeah, maybe. So yeah, really that too.]
– It’s completely separate from S.O.A.P., of course.
[Yeah. But now, I’m wondering if all the stuff I randomly decided for S.O.A.P. was such a good idea, maybe I shouldn’t have. It’s on my mind. Not thinking about making a decision, more like just wondering about it.]
– You might not have thought this through yet, but do you any goals, even vague ones, concerning what you’ll do from now on, either with L’Arc~en~Ciel or on your own?
[Lately I’ve been thinking about communication. Just cause we’re playing, making music, doesn’t mean everyone is happy, right? A smiling face might be hiding feelings that are just the opposite, deep down. It’s pretty hard to discuss, but I want to be able to communicate better. That’s so we can keep having fun together. Not just during lives, but even concerning our CDs, I think it’s important to communicate.]
– The exact opposite of when you were happily alone with your music (laughs).
[Guess so (laughs). If anything’s changed since I joined L’Arc~en~Ciel, it’s that. With this solo, I’ve put together something that’s very introspective, but I think that the ones who listen to it will like it too.]
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