Published in the hide BIBLE (by Akemi Oshima) 2008
Note: The same thing as for the interview with Toshi applies here: This is not a translation but a summary of what I learned from an interview that was too long and too difficult for my limited Japanese skills to fully translate. Read at your own risk, knowing that I may have interpreted things incorrectly. I left out things I was too unsure about to post them here in any kind of good conscience.
Again: If anyone who understand Japanese and knows this interview reads this and recognized something I am totally wrong about, please let me know so I can fix it!
Things Pata tells us:
- When Pata returned to Tokyo Dome, it all felt very nostalgic and familiar. He continues to talk about baseball.
- He first saw the hide-hologram during the rehearsal and recognized the guitar solo of Art of Life from the movement of his fingers, even though there was no sound. He points out that during a performance he doesn't actually see hide, because he's standing next to him.
- Pata first met hide when he re-joined the band in 1987. They needed another guitarist, so they asked him to come back and Yoshiki introduced them when they met for rehearsal.
- His first impression of hide was "Guy who wears a hat and leather pants". He also seemed like a kind older brother type.
- Pata doesn't remember what songs they played during rehearsal, but since there were lives soon after, it was probably songs from that set list.
- They had to go the same way on the train, which was when they started talking a lot, though he doesn't remember what about.
- Since they were both guitarists, the talked about what to do with this, how to handle that etc.
- Pata had only done recordings with X when he helped them out as a guest before, so his first live with hide was his first live with X as well. He thinks it was probably at the live house Kagurazaka EXPLOSION. [Note: This appears to be referring to a place that was called Rock House EXPLOSION at the time, had several name changes, and finally settled on Kagurazaka EXPLOSION in 2008.]
- They had three shows in Tokyo and then immediately moved on to Osaka.
- At this time, PATA used his job at the video store to copy the music video X had made for their promotion. He asked for permission from the store owner to use the equipment, but the cost of it was deducted from his pay.
- Toshi was in charge of their finances and they would give him the money for studio fees etc.
- PATA had no money left to buy things at this point. It took him a while to financially recover. So making the video actually did cost money.
- They distributed the videos for free. Every band was giving out free cassette tapes or song sheets at that time, so they wanted to do something different. There was a refrigerator involved somehow.
- At this time, PATA often drank with HIDE. Because he lived nearby, hide would come and stay at his place and then sleep under the Kotetsu. [Note: A kotetsu is a heated blanket attached to the (low) table, creating a warm space underneath.] The kotestu was the only form of home heating PATA’s place had to offer in winter. He didn’t mind himself since he slept in bed, but HIDE would complain that while his body was warm, his ears were cold, and because his ears were cold, they hurt. Then he would accept that there was “nothing to be done about it, since it was the home of a poor person”.
- This was around the time of the album “Vanishing Vision”. Pata was still working at the video store.
- During their tour, they went directly from the Material Arts Stadium to an event in Kyoto. All of their hair was styled upwards and caught on the ceiling of their car. They slept on the lawn. There was no time for a full styling before the next performance, so they changed clothes but left their hair as it was, deciding to merely fix what needed fixing when they got there.
- Pata doesn’t actually remember if hide was the one who created his mohawk hairstyle.
- Nori of the Tokyo Yankees used to cut and dye Pata’s hair. He was a kohei of Pata’s from Chiba and used to go to beauty school, though Pata doesn’t think he graduated.
- hide used to style Pata’s hair before performances and got it vertical. For Yoshiki, George used to do it.
- Pata accepted having to do his hair this way to go with the style of the band.
- One afternoon, the back of their van opened and spilled their newly made promotional stickers as well as hide’s luggage onto the highway. The doors were probably not closed properly and opened from the vibration. They did not notice immediately. Pata’s luggage barely escaped doom.
- While they were collecting the stickers, a highway police man yelled at them “Do you want to die?!” But since they were poor, the stickers had to be rescued, even though there was a high risk of being run over – a fate that hide’s luggage did in fact suffer.
- Shit like that happened to X all the time.
- During the recording of Vanishing Vision, which took place in Roppongi, Pata was so broke he had to borrow money from the band’s manager to get back home. He then had enough left for some food and a bit of beer. His power had been turned off but since he only returned home around 5 a.m. when it was already light outside, that wasn’t much of a problem. He still had water and heating, so he could at least shower. He lived like that for about 3 – 4 weeks, until recording was over.
- Also during the recording of Vanishing Vision, hide developed tenosynovitis in his right hand. Pata can’t tell if it was caused by playing too much – he himself has had it in both hands, and since it happened so much, at some point it would just start hurting for whatever reason.
- Pata didn’t really have anything to do with Extasy Records, which existed since before he and hide joined the band.
- They would often go to Mother Farm in Chiba on a whim. It was a location that always came to their minds since four (later three) of their five members were from Chiba.
- hide and Pata went to the Sea of Trees at Mount Fuji at least twice. [Note: The Sea of Trees in this case means the forest of Aokigahara, which is known as a popular suicide location and also a place where criminals like to hide bodies. It is said to be one of the most haunted places in Japan.] One time was during the Rose and Blood tour. Hide’s playful mood was in full swing and he would just drag them anywhere.
- They stayed at the holiday home of a friend of hide’s.
- Once they stayed in Karuizawa to go see a live of ZI:Kill in Kanazawa from there, but they arrived too late because hide, whose sense of geography was shit, thought Karuizawa was close to Kanezawa, which it is not.
- They took the guys from ZI:Kill to Aokigahara later, after grabbing them unannounced after they finished another life in Tokyo. It was early in the morning when they arrived and all the shops were closed, so they ate bentos from the convenience store. Also, it was cold.
- They had come in two cars. Afterwards, Pata’s car went straight home, but hide took ZI:Kill to Yokosuka. They took a commemorative photo there, which always looked weird to Pata until he realized it was because ZI:Kill had been abducted straight after the live show, so they were still wearing their make-up. (They did have time to remove it, apparently. They just didn’t.)
- When hide and Pata had been to the Sea of Trees before, Taiji was with them. They stayed in Kawaguchiko [Note: A town at the foot of Mt. Fuji.] and the guy at the inn let them borrow his van to go deeper into the forest. Before long, the car suddenly stopped and died on them, and they all freaked out. Turns out, they had just run out of gas, so they pushed the car up a hill and then rode gravity back to town.
- At some point, they went into the forest with flashlights, promptly lost sight of the car and the street and got lost. After freaking out a little they found the car again and were happy.
- Pata knew Kyo (D’erlanger, VO) from Chiba since long before X, and at some point wondered why he hadn’t seen him around in a while. Turned out that Kyo had joined hide’s band Saver Tiger in Yokosuka, so he was rarely around anymore.
- hide and Pata were seen as a unit because they were neighbours and therefore hung out a lot. hide was usually the one with the stupid ideas and Pata the one to be dragged along.
- In a magazine that came out around the time of X’s professional debut, hide wrote “Playing with Pata” under both “Hobbies” and “Thinks I like”.
- hide was the type to annoy people without mercy when he was in the mood, but if he wasn’t, wouldn’t call at all. [Note: Alternatively: If Pata wasn’t in the mood, he wouldn’t pick up the phone. I have been unable to figure out who was supposed to be the subject of this sentence.]
- Contrary to popular belief, Pata did not move to Asagaya because hide called him there but because the people from Sony wanted everyone to live nearby. Pata did not like any of the places on offer, but he picked one anyway because he didn’t want to cause trouble. But then hide, who had paid better attention to the environment, let him know that there was a much bigger apartment above the one Pata had given his okay to, so Pata decided to take that one instead.
- By this time hide had already found a good place for himself.
- hide called a bunch of people to the neighbourhood.
- Kyo lived just on the other side of the station. They were all involved in the incident where he broke his hip. [Note: Read more about that in this interview at Nopperabou.net.] At first, they took him to hide’s place, but because he was in so much pain, they soon had to take him to the hospital, where he was hospitalized at once. It happened just before a live performance of Kyo’s band, but with willpower and a corset he was able to participate anyway.
- hide was generally the one who asked Pata to hand out. Pata usually only called first if he already had people over.
- When they were drinking together, they didn’t talk much, since Pata wasn’t the talking type. Usually, there were other people around for hide to talk to and bring life to the party.
- In L.A., Pata was the only one who did not live in the same apartment building as everyone else because he thought it would be too much to be around them all the time. Later, hide moved to an apartment that was walking distance (about two blocks) from Pata’s place.
- On the topic of memories of L.A.: A story about how Pata was abducted by hide and Co. to a theme park where he felt super pick after the first roller coaster because he had just gotten up after a night of drinking and was hungover. Things like that happened to him a lot. [Note: More about that particular adventure at the blog of bunnychuu45: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4]
- One time during one of hide’s solo tours, Pata tried to escape from the hotel in Hiroshima because hide had this no-drinking-rule the day before a performance. Pata’s plan was to have a taxi take him to the nearest bar, but security, led by Ito-san, was in on him and managed to prevent his clever escape.
- On what hide meant to him: He was the only one Pata ever considered his partner in music, even though he used to perform as a pair with just one other guy. At the point of the interview, Pata had spent half of his musician’s life with hide. Out of the members of X, hide was the one Pata had spent most time with, and outside of X as well, probably.
- Pata felt that hide was far ahead of him, even though he was only one year older. He wished for hide to sleep well, knowing that Pata will do his best to make sure his rest remains peaceful.
The Fire-Extinguisher/Car Escape/Alarm-Bell/Firetruck/Bed Stealing Incident
These are the events of one particularly memorable night during which hide went out drinking with a bunch of other people from the band and the band’s staff and chaos ensued, as told in INA’s book “Kimi No Inai Sekai” (The World Without You), published in 2018.
There is another version of the same story, told by Heath ten years earlier in an interview. If nothing else, it is interesting to see where their versions differ, and what parts Heath decided to leave out. You can find a summary of the entire interview here.
The story, which must have happened in 1993, begins in an establishment in Little Tokyo, L.A., that had a bar area in the front and a more private club area with beautiful ladies in the back. INA, hide, Heath, and an unknown number of other staff members of X Japan start out in the bar area where a lot of bourbon is consumed. But the realm of the pretty ladies is calling for their attention, with INA apparently worried they might never get there. They move over to that area eventually, though it seems that hide would have preferred to just stay at the bar and drink.
Here INA gives a bit of explanation on what is known as “Hidera” – a mash-up of "hide" and "Godzilla" (spelled Gojira in Japanese), aka what could happen when hide was very drunk and started rampaging. The state came in various emotional patterns, like happiness, anger, sorrow or fun. That night seemed to be the latter. When they left the place, hide was very cheerful and sweet, waving at the girls at the elevator and thanking them in Japanese and in English and generally being like an angel until the moment the elevator doors closed. But it was like the elevator was taking their angel from heaven straight to hell and he started kicking and attacking the door with increasing violence while the others watched in astonished confusion.
The moment they arrived at the underground level, hide took off towards the parking garage. On the way there he came across a fire extinguisher that was sitting in a glass case and liberated it from said case with a Karate-chop. Glass flew everywhere and hide started running around the garage with the fire extinguisher in his arms. Everyone else ran after him yelling, eventually caught him and threw him onto the backseat of their van. Hide just started flipping out even more. A security guard came running over, alerted by all the noise, and the rest of the team kind of panicked and decided to make a run for it. As the car fled from the parking garage, hide yelled at the security guard from the car window: “What do you want, asshole? How many years do you think I have been living here?” (For some reason.)
Since the guard was American, he had certainly been living there for longer. And since hide was yelling in Japanese, he probably didn’t understand him anyway…
Their car flew from the parking garage with screeching tires, like a car chase in a Hollywood movie. And just after they had escaped, hide suddenly started wailing in pain. Now that they had a moment to pay attention to it, it seemed that he was kind of bleeding over the car seats. A lot.
As it turned out, he had cut up his left hand, which must have happened when he used it to explode a glass case. So the others were now facing a dilemma, because that hand needed some rather urgent first aid, but they didn’t have anything at hand, their apartment building was still an hour away, and they couldn’t go back to the place they had just run from.
So someone had the idea to turn the car around and go to Mama instead. “Mama” was an elderly Japanese lady who was running a karaoke-bar in Little Tokyo that the guys sometimes visited to drink. They made it there just in time before closing and after they explained what had happened, Mama kindly took care of hide. By then, “Hidera” had gone to sleep and hide was quiet and obedient. Mama bandaged and cooled his wound, warned the others to take him to the hospital first thing in the morning because that cut was pretty deep, and then pushed them out of the door.
Back in the van, on the way home, everyone breathed a sigh of relief at the end of an incident that could have ended with the police being involved. Except it wasn’t over yet. Because they had not expected the Return of Hidera.
Hide, who had been silent so far, suddenly came back to life, tried to figure out where he was, and upon being informed that they were on their way home decided, since he apparently did not want to go there, to just leave the car right away.
The car was going down the freeway at more than 100 km/h.
Undeterred, hide pulled open the sliding door of the van and tried to throw himself out. The staff, who were in the back with him, pulled him back in. hide pulled the door open again, tried to throw himself out. The staff pulled him back in. Over and over. By the time they arrived at Oakwood Apartments, where they lived, everyone was bathed in sweat.
Once at Oakwood, they got out of the car and before doing anything else decided to see hide to his room safely. As they climbed the stairs to the right floor, Hidera spotted something on the wall that caught his attention: A sign with the words FIRE ALARM.
Politely accompanied by the instruction: PULL DOWN
And Hidera was like “Don’t mind if I do!” and ran down the corridor where a number of such fire alarms were conveniently located. And he pulled down
every
single
one of them.
All this happened at about 3 in the morning and the result of hide’s drunken, inexplicable attraction to fire fighting devices was a noise that INA describes as “JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN, JIRIRIRIRIRIRI…..” Except louder.
At this point, everyone kind of panicked. A brave, alcohol-fueled attempt to stop the noise by putting the levers back into their original positions failed, and so they reverted back to Plan A: “Escape!” They tried to hide in hide’s room but couldn’t find the key. Meanwhile, more and more of the other residents of the building stepped out into the hallway to see what the fuck was going on. Having lost their hiding place (hide’s apartment), they turned to the only safe place they had left: Heath’s apartment, which was on the same floor. They all stormed inside, locked the door, and then turned off the lights and pretended not to be home.
There was one bright idea that penetrated their alcohol-soaked brains, and that was to call X Japan’s current manager, asking him to come at once.
As they sat in the pitch-black room and waited for the manager’s arrival, the sound of the alarm eventually stopped. In the silence that followed, they pressed their ears against the door and heard a voice outside say: “They went into that apartment! It was that guy!”
And from outside they could hear the incoming sirens of no one, not two, but four fire trucks.
“Eh?” someone asked at that point. “Where is hide-chan?”
hide-chan, as it turned out, was in bed – in Heath’s bed, that is. After fighting the elevator, stealing a fire extinguisher, picking a fight with a security guard, causing a Hollywood-esque car escape sequence, bleeding all over the car seats, disrupting Mama’s night, repeatedly trying to throw himself out of a speeding car, ruining every single neighbor’s night and causing the dispatch of no less than four fire trucks, hide-chan had apparently decided that his work was done and just gone to sleep. With his limps spread out as wide as possible, to take up all the space on the bed that the bed could give.
At this point, all INA could do was laugh. Except, no.
The manager arrived. And then, just after they had given him a quick report on the events leading them there, someone else arrived, and knocked on the door, and they looked out though the peephole and saw a fire fighter in fire-proof clothing standing outside the apartment.
So the manager said, “You guys stay out of sight. I’ll take care of this.” And the guys hid in the other room and peeked out from the doorway as the manager slowly opened the door and the fire fighter said, “The guy who caused the alarm went in here, according to the other residents. Is that true?”
And the manager was like, “Hahahaha, I don’t know. I am Japanse. I don’t understand.”
And he got away with that.
There was some more back and forth, but in the end the fire fighter left and INA rejoiced their rescue. Now that the danger was over, the manager said, “Since hide-san is asleep, everyone should go to their own rooms and go to bed.” Which they did. Except for Heath, who was already in his room and had no available bed to sleep in. And the next day, he had to go to the studio and record the bass parts of Art of Life…
hide, on the other hand, had to take a break from recording while his hand healed. A few days later, when he visited INA, he complained that while the wound healed well, the itching was driving him crazy. And he couldn’t scratch it. He was going up the walls.
And somehow, because of that, no one could be angry with him for all the chaos he’d caused.
Published in the hide BIBLE (by Akemi Oshima) 2008
Note: The usual. Still not good at Japanese. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong about something.
Heath first met hide in May 1990, when X was having a two-day performance at the Budokan-stadium. Heath hadn’t yet left for Tokyo for good. He was there to visit someone and they suggested going to the stadium to see X. It was a really big place, though, and there were a lot of people there. The first time they really met was when Heath was in a band in Osaka. His bandmates told hide about a bass player in Osaka and they were introduced at an afterparty. When Heath mentioned that he wanted to go and do something in Tokyo, hide offered to introduce him to some people and immediately did introduce him to quite a lot. Even though they had only just met for the first time, hide pulled Heath by the hand and they left the party together.
Heath wasn’t in a band at that time and wanted to see what Tokyo was like.
He knew about X and hide before, of course. He had seen X perform when there were still only four of them and had even participated in an event with them. But that was before hide joined.
He’d never seen hide live before, but there was an Iassakaya where you could play videos for a few coins and “Kurenai” was popular, so Heath saw hide on video quite often.
Before Heath ever met hide, a lot of mutual acquaintances had told him about how kind and caring hide was and how almost everyone adored him. When he really met him for the first time, Heath found hide to come off a bit strict and stern, but at the same time, he was also very calm, not harsh or arrogant at all, listened earnestly to those around him, and plenty of adoring people came to get his advice on various matters.
At this occasion, hide also gave Heath his phone number, telling him to call if he needed anything. Heath did call several times, but usually for no particular reason, so they just exchanged gossip and hung out on the phone. One day, Heath told hide that he was thinking about going to Tokyo for good, since there was nothing for him to do in Osaka, and hide suggested he should just do it. So the next day, Heath got on the Shinkansen with his suitcase and two bass guitars and upon arrival at Tokyo asked a friend to let him crash at his place for a while. Then he called hide to tell him, “Hey, remember how you told me to move to Tokyo yesterday? Well, I just did that.” hide was a bit surprised by this rapid development, but he invited Heath over to his place for a drink at once.
Right away, Heath started to look for a band to join in Tokyo and ended up with the indies band Media Youth. Apparently, there were a lot of stories about them, but to Heath they were fun people.
He did get quite good at drinking while living in Tokyo.
Eventually, Heath got a job at a bar in Roppongi through someone from another band. Hide often came by to visit him in the morning when there were no other customers, chatting with Heath while drinking his drinks.
His previous job he got through hide. One day, hide called him to the Extasy offices, saying he wanted to “show him how to do something”. Once Heath arrived, hide pointed at the piles of records of the Jealousy album and said, “Here, pack these!” So Heath got his first properly paid job in Tokyo packing boxes with the album to ship, all the while thinking about recording his own music, doing lives etc. So far, he had only recorded something once.
Heath had participated at one of the Extasy Summits, but not as a performer. He was one of the people carrying banners during the “Anarchy in the UK” performance, where hide was also singing. The band had asked him to do this during an urgent meeting just before. Thigs with X were always urgent.
By that time, Heath wasn’t with Media Youth anymore. After leaving them, he joined a band called Majestic Isabell, but was only with them for a very short time.
In the end, there was only about a year between him coming to Tokyo and him joining X Japan. In this time, he and hide stayed in casual contact. Eventually, X lost their bassist and started looking for a new one, even advertising for it in magazines. One day, hide called Heath and asked him if he was aware of the band’s bassist-issue, which he was, of course. Hide then invited Heath to the studio, giving him 5 X-songs to practice. Since the word “audition” was never used, Heath was pretty relaxed about the whole thing and didn’t even bother to properly tune his bass.
The songs he had to play where Blue Blood, Kurenai, Weekend, Endless Rain, and something fast he couldn’t quite remember anymore – probably Celebration or Joker.
He copied the songs off cassette tapes, because that was a long time ago.
The day before the date at the studio, Heath was once again invited to drink with hide. He initially hesitated, because the trip there was rather long, but then it did seem like a good idea to loosen up a little for the next day. In the end, he didn’t really relax, though, he just got drunk. He drank with hide until 9 MA, and even though hide advised him to get some sleep before the appointment, there was no time for it. Heath went home, dozed for an hour or two, then grabbed his bass and left again.
He wasn’t hungover for his studio session with X, because he didn’t get any sleep for the hungover to settle in. Instead, he was still kind of drunk.
The session itself was unproblematic. Afterwards, Heath went home, got some sleep, and then hide called the same day to ask how he liked it. Heath told him it had been great and thanked him for the opportunity. hide informed him that the others had liked him, too, and asked him what he thought about it. And Heath was like, “…about what?”
Heath had just agreed to return to his very first band and didn’t want to let them down, so he declined the invitation to join X. hide understood, but asked him to talk to Yoshiki first, saying, “You might change your mind.”
Heath agreed to meet Yoshiki, determined to just reinforce his decision to not join X. Yoshiki picked him up at the station and took him to his home, where they talked about their plans and prospects for a while. Eventually Yoshiki showed him X’s newest work, saying, “This is the new song we’re recording, it is 30 minutes long.” Finally, Heath gave in and agreed to join.
The others appeared suspiciously quickly after Yoshiki called them to raise their glasses to their new bassist. hide did seem rather smug that his prediction had come true, though he refrained from going “I told you so!” on Heath.
After joining X, Heath’s life didn’t really change. At that time, X was basically an indies band again, having separated from SONY just before. And there was a long time between Heath deciding to join and it being announced, so he had to keep it a secret.
He didn’t introduce himself to hide’s friends as hide’s bandmate. One time hide had an appointment at a radio station. Heath went there with him, but if he had gone inside, there would have been rumours, so he had to wait outside in the rain among the fans that had gathered there. Afterwards, hide took him out for drinks.
There was about a year between Heath joining X and it being announced. In this time, they didn’t just stay in Japan, but also moved to LA. But to keep the others’ activities from leaking out, Heath had to travel ahead alone. Eventually, the others came and they finally united.
It was the first time Heath left Japan and he was a bit nervous and lonely about it. At that time, hide predicted that since Heath was easy to influence, they would probably be covered in tatoos by the time they left. Getting his plane ticket, Heath was somewhat worried that there might be no one who looked like him over there, and that he wouldn’t be able to communicate. But then he saw a lot of people who were just like him in the lobby, which was a relief.
His first apartment in LA was right next to hide’s, so he had fun every evening.
He wasn’t really anxious about working with X because he didn’t have the time to be. In that sense, he considered himself lucky to have been so busy back then.
In those days, hide would warn Heath to be prepared for what was to come. They would go from Roppongi to Yokosuka and end up in one of the establishments frequented by foreigners, where they and the bar staff where the only Japanese, and hide would tell him that there would be many things from now on that would seem astonishing to him but were actually pretty normal. And then, “As you make music (for the band), keep putting in more and more, as if making your own material. I am doing the same." He told Heath to get good at absorbing things and turning them into ideas, since LA offered a lot of inspiration, but also warned him that he needed to be able to store those ideas if he wanted to be able to keep them.
Even after Heath joined the band, the others were still his respected seniors and his relationship with them did not really change just because they were now making music side by side.
Heath liked living in LA – at least at the time when hide was there to take care of him. hide would make sure he ate well, recommend places for him, take him on trips in his car.
There was one particular incident with a drunk hide that made it to Heath’s top 3 drunken misadventures. Heath and some non-specified others had a favourite bar/club in downtown LA, which hide had never been to. He also wanted to go, though, so one day they decided to take him. Except there was some worry about it going to go well, since hide had already been drinking quite a lot of bourbon before. So to be save, they left the place early and once they were in the elevator descending to the underground parking garage, hide started to rampage. He ran around the garage with a fire extinguisher he had gotten from somewhere, with the others running after him until they managed to catch him and shove him into the car.
A “tough looking black security guard” was alerted by the tumult and not amused by what he saw. Hide started yelling at him from the car window, something along the lines of “How long do you think I’ve been living here?”. He had indeed been living there for a long time by then, but he was yelling it in Japanese, so it was unlikely that the guard understood him. The others did their best to apologize, while also trying to calm hide down, telling him that they should just go home to enjoy some more drinks there. On the ride home, there was more uproar, however. To Heath it felt like the drive took three days.
At the apartment building everyone involved lived in, hide chose the emergency bells as his next target. The alarm system was activated by what looked like breaker handles. There were several of them lining the corridor and hide ran off and pulled every single one of them.
All the alarm bells started blaring. It was incredibly loud, and it was also 3 AM. So while hide pulled down the last of the breakers, everyone decided that it was time to run. Heath wasn’t that drunk in comparison and managed to get his own apartment open, while hide failed to unlock his door because he had lost his key in his drunk state. Seeing Heath’s door open, he escaped into Heath’s room (as did everyone else), while a number of fire trucks appeared in the distance. The other residents of the floor, who had been summoned by the alarms, saw them go in. Hiding in the dark behind the locked door, they could head them tell the firemen, when they arrived, “It was the one from this apartment!” And so Heath suddenly turned into the main suspect!
There was a knock on the door and peeping through the key hole, they could see the silver clothes of a fire man while they kept pretending not to be home. Again, they heard the neighbours go, “No, it was definitely that guy!”
When they looked around they found that hide had relocated and was now fast asleep in Heath’s bed, his limps spread out to take up all the space. At this point their coordinator (manager) arrived and took care of the situation.
Heath was scheduled to record the bass-parts of “Art of Life” the next day, and he would rather have liked to get some sleep. Unfortunately, hide had left no space for him on the bed, so Heath had to take the couch. In the morning, when Heath had to go, hide was still sleeping soundly, so Heath left him a note saying, “Take it slow. I’m off to the studio,” and left.
The recording was done without any issue. When Heath got back home, hide had returned to his own place. He didn’t remember what he had done the night before and just cheerfully asked Heath how recording had gone. Heath did tell him about the events he was missing from his memory – at least about the funny parts.
[Note: I wrote down this story as Heath told it in the interview, even though he left out a few rather significant details. If you are interested in a more complete version of the same story, you can find it here. This is how INA, who had also been with them, described the events 10 years later in his book “Kimi No Inai Sekai”.]
Heath eventually moved out of that apartment, but this incident wasn’t the reason. In the beginning, Toshi and Pata also lived in the same building, but people moved out one by one until only Heath and hide were left.
hide bought a barbeque-set and often held barbeque-parties on the building’s roof, where everyone would gather and be noisy. If he had to go to the recording studio the next day, Heath would try to decline the invitation, but hide would keep calling him and tell him that they couldn’t end the event until he had shown up, so he ended up going anyway.
hide was someone who easily got lonely. Consequently, he was also someone who was good at taking care of people and he was very kind. During their conversations, he would often say things that moved Heath’s heart without even meaning to.
When asked for his opinion, hide would look at the matter from different angels, consider various view-points and also take people’s feelings into account.
After the press conference in New York, during which Heath was announced as the new member of X Japan, they were invited to “The Phantom of the Opera”. Having heard that you needed to dress up to be allowed in, Heath wore a suit and tie. Hide showed up wearing a flashy white-and-grey outfit that definitely stood out from everyone else at the gathering place. They wondered if he would even be allowed in like that.
hide always seemed like a fashion-leader whom everyone tried to imitate. Heath would always wonder what kind of outfit he would show up in this time.
In terms of fashion advice, hide would say things like, “Hi-chan, you should bring out of the lines of your body more.” Or, “Won’t you cut your hair? I will, too.” And then Heath got a short hairstyle. Before the Last Live, hide asked Heath to cut his hair for him, but that was too much responsibility for Heath to take on.
Overall, it was up to Heath to dress as he wanted, since they were a band with no common dress code. hide was someone who liked to express himself through shocking looks, so he worked with a wide variety of clothes.
During recording with X Japan, there were a lot of times when there was no one else around.
When they recorded SCARS, hide heard Heath’s footsteps outside his place when he got home, so he called him immediately to ask if he had gotten the tape, and then came over so they could listen to it together. He made suggestions on what Heath might do here or there, but ultimately they only worked on nuances, without hide telling Heath he absolutely had to do something this way or that.
Since hide and Heath listened to similar music at that time, they understood each other quickly.
When Heath was recording his solo works in Tokyo, hide came to the studio to bring provisions. He appeared with sweets and a smile on his face, but Heath had asked him not to come and now sent him home again, because he absolutely wouldn’t let hide listen to his songs until they were completely finished, so as long as he was there, Heath couldn’t start. Hide left, looking lonely.
After Heath finished recording, hide slid a letter under his door, full of praise for his work, which made Heath very happy. He kept the letter, as it is important to him.
Face-to-face, hide didn’t say anything about it, probably embarrassed to express himself in words.
When it came to his solo performances, hide didn’t give Heath any advice. The first time he had to do a solo corner for X, it was decided that Heath should go first, since he was the youngest. Just before the performance he fired himself up, only to be told, “Heath, you’re going to be okay. You’re from Kansai!”
In the end, he just went out and did it. It was probably for the best that he was the first to do his solo corner, since like this he didn’t have time to hesitate and think about it. Time didn’t flow normally.
When hide finished his own solo music, he called Heath into his room and let him listen to it. Before he started his solo career, when they were in LA, he also showed Heath the video he did with Tusk, and eagerly asked Heath for his opinion. Heath gave his opinion honestly, sometimes in detail, sometimes he simply thought it was cool.
If Heath said something positive, hide would smile, if he said something negative, hide would say, “Is that so?” and the smile would disappear.
Heath and hide went to the live performances of other artists and orchestras together when they were in LA. They didn’t just go for fun, instead it seemed that hide always took something home from the experience, observing, for example, how other artists did the performance of industrial music and learning something for his own performances. He was very attuned to things like that, even though he didn’t go to those shows for that specific reason. And Heath came to understand that hide didn’t just finish his creations within one day due to some genius input that came from heaven, he worked very, very hard for what he accomplished, to the point of collapse. Heath had a lot of respect for that, and was also motivated and inspired by it.
Heath office was also at hide’s company HEADWAX, and he got a glimpse of hide as the person in control of the company there. LEMONed had been created because the focus of the company were people who were different from other people, and this didn’t just exist as an idea in words, but was really lived there, and Heath saw hide time and time again as someone who had the power to move the company and the people in it. Heath didn’t have the impression of a company head, though, but saw hide more as a creator who was focused not only on music but also had a sense for fashion, visuals etc.
Heath knew about Zilch – he could hear the noise often in his room in LA. Hide once said that he could do Spread Beaver because Zilch existed. It probably created a balance of the different things he wanted to do.
They didn’t really talk about the dissolution of X Japan. But hide said things like, “Even though it’s over, it’s not over”, and “Until the reunion, good night.” Because of this, Heath understood that even though it was over, there was still a future. After the Last Live they participated in an NHK New Year’s event, and afterwards, in the dressing room, hide said, “For the time being, this is it,” and “Why does it end in this NHK dressing room?”
The question whether there was anything he was angry at hide for, Heath answers with a resounding “No.”
There were, however, plenty of moments where he would go, “hide-san, please stop!” Even though he was a guy, there were just a few things hide would do that were pretty cute. When everyone would make a fool of themselves, he would remain serious. One time they went to the bar of an acquaintance, and hide was asked to spring some tasty alcohol. So he threw his bag on the chair, sat down, and said in a low voice, “For now, Cola.” The staff of the bar all fell over. Whatever he did, he was a person you couldn’t hate.
About the reunion of X Japan, Heath notes that it is a fantastic band. They didn’t do anything together for ten years and then just got back into it within three days. It wasn’t just a reunion concert, it also carried the story of those ten years. There aren’t many bands who can give a concert like that. The stories of the five members in those ten years accumulated in the form of X Japan. Tokyo Dome was a truly great place for it, not just because of the sound but also because it gave the concert itself a sense of vitality.
Even though hide is gone, Heath felt the entire time like he was right there. When Heath played something, hide’s sound would answer. Since he never looked to the left side of the stage, he could ignore that it was empty. During Rusty Nail, they had a live-size image of hide projected with them, but it felt more like hide himself. Not only there, but in various places it felt like hide was there to tell them they did a good job.
It’s too vague to say that hide was like an older brother to Heath. He was a rocker in sound and in the way he lived. What he was no Heath goes beyond being a good older brother, but going into it more deeply would make the interview too long, so that answer will have to be enough.
Forever amused by that story about how during X’s indie days, Yoshiki took George (AKA Sexx George) to a SAVER TIGER performance in Yokohama, telling him “Today, I we are going to pouch hide for X!” and George was like “Today we are going to what!” and Yoshiki was like “Exactly!”
And then the went to SAVER TIGER’s afterparty and Yohiki went “hide! Join X!” and all the other SAVER TIGER members were like “Seriously? Right in front of our salads?!”
And George went, “Dear Yoshiki, please do shit like this in private or at least not when I am around to get murdered along with you!”
But everyone was too drunk to commit any murders that day and the whole thing went kind of nowhere.
That time hide, Heath and Akemi Oshima went to a gay club in 1992 (SHOXX 1999/6 translation excerpt)
[T/N] context: In 1992, Akemi, Heath, hide (and presumably some unnamed friends) were hanging out around The Limelight nightclub in New York.
At that time, the only thing in that place was the remodeled church building. It had a lot of small rooms, so hide, brimming with curiosity, was like "Wow, what's over there!?" and immediately wandered off somewhere. I don’t remember what day of the week it was exactly, but the number of people was tremendous and despite us trying not to get lost in the crowd, it was really frantic…
Having been there before, I seemed to recall another building connected to that one, with a smaller club called “Shampoo”. Everyone was like, “Alright, then let’s go check it out!” and so we began to roam around restlessly in search of the entrance. Instead of us going dancing, it turned into a little expedition of sorts (laughs).
We wandered about for some time, getting lost here and there, until finally we discovered the entrance to “Shampoo”. However, as we went inside, we realised it was a perfectly gay club! What’s more, it was a 4-store building, and with each consecutive floor, the density of gayness increased. On the first floor you could still sporadically spot some girls and the gay couples were keeping it tame. But throughout floors 2 and 3, the aura of obscurity gradually thickened. At some point on the third floor we got a little scared, so we were like “Hey, hide-chan. Let’s stop here”. But he was like “Nope, we’re making it to the top no matter what!”, and contrary to our pleas, he started moving forward even faster than before.
Just as expected, the condition of the 4th floor was terrible. There were only men; half-naked shredded men exposing bare muscles, men wearing skin-tight leather bodysuits with countless studs, anyway, with just one glance you knew for certain that they were all a part of that world. Even so, hide was completely unbothered by it all, he swiftly made his way to the counter and ordered a beer. It was difficult to be there for our girl gang, but as for Heath, who was clad in black enamel, he must’ve been taken for a man of the same tastes, because everywhere he went, he attracted inviting voices (and hands), it was quite a scene.
After leaving the establishment, we confirmed that, save for hide, every single man, with no exception, had been approached by someone in the club. Hearing that, hide made a puzzled expression. “Why am I the only one who didn’t get hit oooon?” He made a confused face, but apparently there was no one in that club brave enough to approach him as he sat there calmly sipping his beer, staring intensely and scrutinizing the men around him.
"Oh, it makes sense”, we all agreed in unison, but hide alone kept questioning it till the end, tilting his head to the side in confusion: “But why?” (laughs)
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