Would you buy the soundtracks for Japanese films as well?
Of course - monster movies and stuff like that. [laughter] When I was kid they didn't release the Godzilla soundtracks. That came later, when the films became cult viewing. Most of the soundtracks in the shops were for Western films.
Did you learn any instruments when you were a kid?
I went to piano lessons. Any time there was an event at school I had to do a piano piece, because I was the only one in the class who could play. I remember hating being forced into that kind of thing.
Was there any specific musician or record that was a turning point for you and made you want to become a musician?
Not really. I was a strange kid with no ambitions. How I became I musician was sort of the opposite to everyone else. I didn't bother writing it down on my profile, but I had a band in high school called the Kangan Zenji Band. It was an acoustic band, like the Holy Modal Rounders, or The Fugs, The Godz.
Were the ESP records widely available in Japan?
I'd managed to get hold of secondhand copies of The Fugs albums. Virgin Fugs was the first one I found, I think. I just happened across it somewhere. At the same time I was listening to all the normal stuff too. Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Yes, Genesis. Basically I listened to everything I could find, but the stuff I liked best was the weird stuff. Stuff that wasn't straight. It was probably the influence of listening to all those soundtracks. I'd always preferred the odd stuff played by jazz musicians to the sweeping string arrangements. The kind of thing you'd hear in Le Samurai or The French Connection. The jazz stuff sounded cooler than strings to me as a kid. And the spaghetti Western soundtracks
[12] too, with the electric guitars - they were cool. And that's probably why I've loved listening to psych guitar and jazz all these years. I think that all those soundtracks I listened to as a kid have had a really powerful impact on me. Even though I may have not understood them at the time.
How easy was it to get hold of weird records in Japan at that time? Now Tokyo is like an Interzone where all the rare and weird records of the world eventually appear. I don't know about the States, but it's so much easier to get hold of stuff here then it is in the UK. What was it like back then, when you were in high school?
The stuff was available, but the main problem was the strength of the dollar. Imported records were really expensive. When I was a kid, one dollar was 360 yen [note: it's now 110 yen, which accounts for the vast expense of Japanese CDs], so imported stuff was very expensive. Even compared to the inflated prices of Japan-pressed records. So if I was buying a new record, it had to be a Japanese pressing. That was what I was buying right through high school. But then I heard some punk stuff on the radio, and I started buying imported records. If I wanted to buy imported records, British and American stuff I had to get on the train and travel for about an hour - if I wanted Japanese records it was only ten minutes. So that was what I did. I'd work part-time jobs and spend all the money on records.
Presumably there were no 7-Elevens back then. Where did you work?
Factories making threads. Restaurants. All kinds of stuff.