#pink couldy sky

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Pink Cloudy Sky, P.S. To the Beginning of the End (Summarized)

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 07 Part 1 Part 2 Final Chapter

From the cloudy sky, as REM sometimes remembered, the warm rays of the spring sun came down.

A somewhat lazy afternoon in late spring. REM was leaning against the wall of the clinic’s waiting room, feeling the weight of the guitar in his knees as he went through the setlist of tomorrow’s live. During practice that night, he would do the final checks. He’d have to plan the timing of the MCs, the finale, the arrangement of the new songs…

Suddenly, his eyes fell on the list of that afternoon’s appointments. There were a few more patients than usual for a Saturday. Maybe he could take a nap first…

No, before those appointments, he had to practice scales.

What was to become of him and SAVER TIGER from now on, no one could say.

He was nervous about it, and impatient. Claiming anything else would have been a lie. The one thing he could say was that leading SAVER TIGER now was the most fulfilling period of his life so far. The one year in which he had put everything into fulfilling hide’s dying wish.

He could not even dream of paying back all he owed him.

But maybe this was enough?

Everything after this, he should do for himself, REM thought.

The SAVER TIGER of those days was over. This was the SAVER TIGER he had breathed new life into.

There was no point in dragging the past forward.

The end of the century, rock music, and SAVER TIGER. Those were the only things that mattered to him in this moment.

Just that, and keeping up the creation of good music, continuing to perform.

He could play the guitar like this. He could feel the strings under his fingers, feel the melody in his ears, feel the music with his whole being.

There was no greater happiness than that.

-

In the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees, the pick REM was holding in his right hand fell to the floor with a small noise. In his dream, his soul kept sliding over the fingerboard.

-

From autumn 1998 onwards, the new SAVER TIGER continued to go on tour: Starting on the 1st of November 1998 in Yokohama, they had six performances in Yokohama, Yokosuka, Meguro, and Takadanobaba until the 15th of April 1999. Then, in May, they performed in three locations in Yokohama and Takadanobaba.

The second part of their tour started in early August and took them to Osaka, Tokushima, Yokosuka, Yokohama, Chiba, Machida, Meguro, and Kumagaya in 11 shows. The final one was planned for 13th December 1999 in BAYHALL in Yokohama.

REM expresses how ecstatic he would be if those who read this book would listen to SAVER TIGER’s music. And while they are at it, they should check out their official website.

Speaking of which, it was hide who first got into the internet, and used it to communicate with the fans in a meaningful way.

And with this feeling carved into REM’s chest, he wants to put down the pen.

Appendix

Study of the dental pattern of patient Matsumoto Hideto.

At this point, REM want to attempt an examination of patient Matsumoto Hideto as a dentist. The following is based on a dental model he made, as well as things hide told him.

It was a model made for the purpose of examination. That day, it became a special thing for REM: The only memento he had of hide’s physical form. Every time REM sees the model in the waiting room or touches the examination table where hide had been sitting, he wants to talk to that white, inorganic thing.

That is why he is sharing the report on that medical examination now, resigning himself to the criticism of the other people from his field.

It would probably be terribly unreasonable to reach conclusions about hide’s entire body just from that model, the state of his oral cavity, and what he told REM. Moreover, it would be rude to hide, one might think. Others would be of the opinion that it is okay to do it, of course. REM thinks it’s reasonable enough.

But REM’s honest feelings are these: It is not a bad thing to disclose a little bit of hide’s personal matters to the public. In this moment, as his friend and as his fellow guitarist from a band called SAVER TIGER, REM wishes to do all he can for hide, utilizing his means as a dentist.

Therefore, REM informs that the following is not a true patient’s chart nor an actual medical report. It reflects only the personal opinion of one single dentist.

[Patient Matsumoto Hideto] 1) Main complaint (the patient’s acutely perceived subjective symptoms for discomfort) .. Sometimes his jaw joints are hurting. It also happens that he cannot open his jaw. Also, severely stiff shoulders. 2) Medical history (past illnesses and current systemic ailments) .. Arrythmia 3) History of present illness .. Observations of grating sounds and irregularities of temporomandibular joint at times are ambiguous

Psychologically, systemic problems are ambiguous. 4) Current symptoms .. Abnormally stiff shoulders

Since long ago, many cases of clenched jaw, jaw muscles are stressed.

Palpation of temporomandibular joint not particularly abnormal, movement of lower jaw is not irregular or restricted. No palpation of muscle occurred. 5) Symptoms concluded from model of the mouth cavity .. Extensive wear of all teeth, corresponding low occlusion.

This is what REM got from what he heard from hide and the examination of the dental model.

One week after his visit at REM’s clinic, hide went to L.A. again, with no follow-up appointment planned, no clarity on when he would be back in Japan, and with the symptoms of his jaw not being acute, REM did not interview him too extensively. He also notes that there was no time for photographs of the oral cavity or X-rays.

At this point, REM talks a little about temporomandibular joint and how it works. Compared to other parts of the body, it is extremely complex in its movements. With its position between the upper and lower jaw and before the ears, it executes a lot of movements when speaking, eating, or even during sleep for some people.

Very roughly said, there is complex movement when chewing or opening and closing the mouth: Up, down, left, right. In contrast, the abnormal occlusion comes from a way of chewing that differs from the ordinary. Damage to the teeth can also be caused by accidents and violent fights. In any case, if the teeth are worn down by chewing or grinding, the height doesn’t match anymore, which leads to irregular chewing patterns.

If that irregularity is particularly bad, it leads to pain of the temporomandibular joints and overall discomfort. This, caused by emotional stress in the first place, can lead to muscle pain, which in turn leads to more tension.

Opening and closing the mouth can create various problems. This is called temporomandibular joint disorder. Of course, when it comes to hide, REM can’t diagnose that for the aforementioned lack of examinations and tests. But between what patient Matsumoto Hideto told him and the information provided by the study model, it’s a conclusion he finds definitely possible.

The model shows that from the front to the back teeth, all the pointy bits had been worn away so that the teeth were essentially flat. This must have been caused by the teeth grinding hide had told REM about. But for the wear to be so extensive all over, the grinding and gritting must have been extremely strong and have gone on for a very long time.

Teeth grinding is a phenomenon that happens unconsciously in times of required self-control or nervousness and stress. If the grinding goes on for a long time, it often happens that normal chewing is no longer possible. This disturbs the entire system of the jaw muscles and joints and causes pain. If it gets worse, the pain can spread to the surrounding muscles, then the shoulders and fingers and even the back and legs. Also, this affecting the muscles is often the cause for stiffness of the shoulders.

According to the model, the size of hide’s jaw (the gap between the upper and the lower jaw) when chewing was a lot lower than it used to be due to the wear, and the bones inside the joint no longer fit the normal position. The wear is so extensive that REM assumes the pain spread past the environment of the jaw to parts of the body far away from it.

And thus he concludes this meagre investigation.

Finally, there is one more episode REM wants to add in line with this report.

This is how he remembers it:

That day, hide asked him, “How do I get my teeth back to their original shape?” after he came to REM’s office for consultation.

After the examination, they had, of course, gone for drinks, and this is when hide brought it up. REM said, “For that, I would have to fix all your teeth, I think. There is no time for that now, and there is a risk that the shape of your face is going to change. One day, when we are both old men, and there is time to spare, and visuals no longer matter, I can fix them for you.”

Hide said, “Since my teeth are one source for my stiff shoulders, I want to have them fixed. Just, right now, there really is no time for it, but please do it one day. After all, you are to be my attending physician for the rest of my life.”

As attending physician, REM could have been of some help. Even now, that thought sometimes shoots through his mind.

Afterword (1)

With the irresponsible reports and information going around after that certain day, REM wants to detail his days with hide as precisely as possible. And he wants to let as many people as possible know the truth.

That kind of thought is always with him.

“Hey, REM! Please.”

Every day they have this conversation inside REM’s mind, when he listens carefully for hide’s words from beyond the sky and replies, “Hey, hide. How can I help you, so you can rest easy?”

This is a book that has been created as a joint project by REM and Nakamoto-san of Yokosuka, who goes by the name of BENZO, over the course of half a year.

The aim was to write as accurately, truthfully, and diligently as possible about REM’s life as a musician, the historic band SAVER TIGER as made by hide, as well as REM’s irreplaceable days with his sword friend hide, and the enthusiastic rock scene of Yokosuka.

He was aiming to be accurate, but there are probably points where his memory is off, or his perception differs from others. In that case, he is sincerely sorry.

In the light of the close bond he shared with him who has gone beyond the sky, he hopes it can be forgiven.

Finally, he thanks a great many people, starting with hide’s parents, his younger brother, the people from his office, the former members of X JAPAN, the past members and staff of SAVER TIGER, the members of UNITED, AMIT, Doppel Ganger, LAFERIA, and 4th Dimension, Kuriji-san, and then the people of Zushi Dental Clinic, Takeshi-san, Arakawa-sensei, Nakano-san, Someya-san, and many others. Above all, BENZO, who has become a drinking buddy for life and without whom this book would not exist in this form. All these people have helped him greatly, and he takes this opportunity to express his deepest gratitude.

He dedicates this book to his mother, who went to heaven first and may have met hide there, his father, who is still practicing as a doctor on Shikoku, his older sister and his younger brother, his wife Miwa, and their son.

And of course, he wants to dedicate this book, and the next words that come from his heart, to him, who has gone beyond the sky.

“hide, thank you.”

-

1999-05-02   His first birthday above the sky.

-

Afterword (2)

28 October 1999, Thursday, cloudy sky, 10:30 AM.

The night before, REM drank with his bandmates in their usual place, “99”, but their condition wasn’t bad. The window was wide open. Feeling the comforting wind and the morning’s aroma from his fingertips to his hair that once again reached his shoulders, REM went down the national highway No. 134 southwards, towards the coast of Miura. There, on a small hill, different from the rest and seemingly removed from the reality everyone else is living in, is hide’s resting place.

REM wondered if he was plotting new ideas in this place of rest, and if those were now flying around freely through the air…

As always, REM reported about live performances and new songs, and the state of the band, and then made his way back home along the coastal road. There was one tiny thing he noticed:

As REM was talking to hide, a feathered life-form about the size of his little finger’s nail (some kind of insect) was flying through the air around him and the others. At that time, they didn’t particularly care… And now, that life-form was inside the car.

There was no telling if it was the same creature from before, but form and size were identical.

REM calmly closed the window and, without thinking anything, he turned on the car stereo and stepped on the accelerator.

When he got home and left the car, the line between the ordinary and the extraordinary was crossed again.

Several days had passed since then.

It’s the 6th of November now, and with the image of this feathered little life-form flying freely around in his home, REM decides to let the story come to an end.

[impossiblepackage]

Ocean pink beach couldy sky

[lauraaufstpauli]

Wohlwillstrasse, St. Pauli (2017)  “Good morning St. Pauli”

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Pink Couldy Sky, Final Chapter – Recovery (Summarized)

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 07 Part 1 Part 2

Before REM knew it, that year, too, arrived at Summer.

The weather forecast on TV spoke of high temperatures, but REM didn’t feel the heat at all. The days continued without sound or smell. Everything felt like it was happening on a distant star. REM’s senses were closed off and he didn’t sense or feel anything. With its long rains falling from black clouds, the gray droplets lingering remains of the rainy period, Summer was simply the season following after spring.

-

REM got warm support from too many people to count. His bandmembers, his friends from Yokosuka, Professor Arakawa. According to Arakawa, Takeshi-san was also concerned for REM. In August, REM and Takeshi met in Tokyo for drinks. REM doesn’t really remember what they were talking about, but he has a faint memory that it was very peaceful.

It was like swimming through a daydream. Of this summer, only the faint outline of a memory remains.

There weren’t a lot of things he could do. Only move his body. Play the guitar on autopilot, lose himself in the music. Everything else was beyond his capabilities.

His only outlet was his determination to fulfil, one by one, all his promise to hide that were yet unfulfilled.

Sometimes, something hide used to say some ten-odd years ago when they were practicing with SAVER TIGER all day flashed like lighting through REM’s mind:

“I want to become the best performer in Japan! Therefore, you have to become Japan’s best guitarist!”

On top of it all, REM lost another irreplaceable music friend that year. A vocalist named Otoya died of a heart attack just about one week after hide left for the sky. Otoya had been the vocalist of RANDY, the band that performed at the first live REM went to see after coming to Yokosuka.

The livehouse in question had been ROCK CITY and the second band REM had seen there was SAVER TIGER, led by hide.

On the day of hide’s funeral, REM and his music buddies got together for the first time in a long while to drink in his memory. Otoya had been there, too. They talked to each other for a bit, away from the others. They hadn’t met in 3 or 4 years, and when REM asked Otoya what he had been doing lately, Otoya told him that he had stopped doing music after RANDY disbanded.

In the face of hide’s sudden death, the conversation remained subdued and they did not exchange more than a few words. A few days later, REM learned about Otoya passing away.

REM remembers him as a vocalist with a unique charism different from hide’s, and a rare singing voice that he will forever remember shouting furiously into the microphone.

After a long, humid rainy season, dawn finally came on 11 July 1998.

That night, the new SAVER TIGER had their first live on stage after the revival. It was a concert called “Memories of hide” that they were able to give thanks to Rolly joining them as a guest vocalist, in hide’s beloved livehouse PUMPKIN. To them, it did not feel at all like a memorial live. It felt like a live they did with hide, a live where hide came to watch them.

They couldn’t believe that he was gone.

They had not yet grown familiar with the thought that they would never meet him again.

All of them – REM, Kosuke, Jimmy, and Rolly as well – felt that hide should have been there to watch them, listen to them, and witness the new SAVER TIGER become real.

It was a humid night, the hot wind blowing in from the sea.

Inside the narrow interior of PUMPKIN, people were filling in the dim gloom. No one spoke. Everyone was losing themselves in the atmosphere and the rock music.

REM wanted to scream out his tears across that crowd.

He wanted to howl his remorse.

Otherwise, he felt like hide would not forgive him.

Then, in this place on Dobuita-Street, in the middle of the night, in this atmosphere of sweat, tabaco, and alcohol, he is certain he saw something at the edge of his field of vision.

There, at the very back of seating area, in front of the wall smeared with graffiti, and close of Kiyotou behind the counter grumbling about the fucking heat, was a single man with a hat drawn low over his eyes.

In a perfectly clear pocket of air, a single leaf was slowly falling down.

The wind going through the building in the derelict warehouse district was already chilly.

1. November.

On this day, a music festival in connection with hide opened in Yokohama’s BAYHALL, and REM went to Yamashita pier in order to perform in it with SAVER TIGER.

It was the second live of the revived SAVER TIGER. In December, they were going to perform in Takadanobaba, and from February through Spring 1999 in a bunch of other places.

They also had plans to record their music.

As for the open position of vocalist, since the turn of the year, REM’s close friend Tony from Yokosuka joined them as a new member. Another friend from Yokosuka, Ken, became their manager.

The new SAVER TIGER finally took shape.

And REM felt like a was paying hide back at least a little, feeling a little better for it, like he could breathe deeply again.

The pavement was covered in scattered, dry leaves.

Feeling the dry leaves crumble under the soles of his work boots, REM chased the afterimage of that man he had seen in front of the wall at PUMPKIN that night. He wondered if that had been hide’s apparition.

No, that’s not it.

He is certain that hide has been there that night.

He’d rushed over to see the reunited SAVER TIGER perform on stage that night, in his beloved Yokosuka.

On Dobuita-Street, that he always returned to. Just for a moment, as bare-faced “Matsumoto Hideto”, he had returned to his friends.

“Welcome home, hide.”

That’s what REM murmured while looking up at the contrail cutting straight through the clear sky above.

P.S. To the Beginning og the End

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Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 07 – Letter (Summarized) - Part 1

Note 1: Once again, the chapter is split into two parts. This first parts has the majority of it, but the secong part contains a long section that is actually, directly translated, and I will need more time to edit it properly. I hope to have it up before the year is over, but I can make no promises.

Note 2: This post contains pictures. I am not happy with how tumblr is sizing/cropping them on my screen. Click on them if they are not shown in full.

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Part 1, Part 2

Under Professor Arakawa, REM’s days of acquiring knowledge as a dentist continued after graduation. He joined Arakawa’s study group where he gained practical experience on various cases and worked very hard on becoming an actual dentist. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to justify himself to his late mother, nor to hide and the other members of SAVER TIGER. Those feelings were his main driving force. The other members of his dentist-band AMIT also joined Arakawa’s study group and they pushed each other forward.

To REM, who was practical by nature, this study circle was very helpful. He learned about the technical aspects from a medical point of view, and also about mental self-discipline.

In this time, again thanks to Professor Arakawa, REM also met Beat Takeshi, aka Takeshi Kitano [born 1947, actor, director, comedian etc.].

He vividly remembers the first time they went drinking together. They met at Takeshi’s place and he took REM to a snack bar in Roppongi’s underground. Takeshi was in a good mood and sang a lot at karaoke. His way of singing was exactly as REM had imagined it would be. Song after song he got on the floor and fired off jokes in rapid succession.

Takeshi seems blunt, but REM thinks he actually has a direct and kind personality and is very aware of his surroundings. When REM showed him a photo from is SAVER TIGER days, Takeshi laughed and said, “You really were a dentist already. Time didn’t change you.” Then he got serious and said, “But it’s interesting. Do your best.” The timing and the delivery were exquisite. [Note: I’m guessing that there was a joke in there that I fail to make sense of.]

When they talked about hide and discussed music, Takeshi pulled out one creative idea after another.

“When Doctor REM does a live, I’ll secretly enter the stage with no announcement, sing one song, and leave again without saying anything.”

It was a very fun night of drinking. They separated with REM excitedly promising to make that song for him.

Come to think of it, this was just one week before that unfortunate accident befell Takeshi. [Note: This is likely referring to a near-fatal motor scooter accident on 2. August 1994, which may or may not have been a suicide attempt.]

After this, they met several more times, with Takeshi also coming to Yokosuka for drinks, and continued their exchange. Takeshi would probably scold REM for embarrassing him if he read this, but he truly is a generous and warm person.

-

Hide continued to call REM about once a month. When he called from overseas, REM had the habit of taking notes on his calls in his diary-substitute-notebook.

For example: “31. August. Call from hide in L.A. at 6:30 AM. Today, it seems Megadeath came to the studio and he listened to their rehearsal.

He chatted about various things with the former guitarist of Cacophony, who apparently speaks Japanese.

When they went to a Japanese-style iszakaya afterwards, Ron Wood was drinking there…”

Beyond that, he would always contact REM when he returned to Japan, come directly to his apartment from Narita airport, and drink until morning to combat jet lag.

In the first half of the nineties, “X” turned into “X JAPAN”. In this time, hide rapidly grew not only as a guitarist but as an artist in general.

In 1992, he showed his talent as a visualist with the publication of his solo-photobook “Mugongeki”. His stage turned from Budokan to the Tokyo Dome to the world. REM, on the other hand, having given up music, turned into a normal dentist.

However, whenever hide returned to Yokosuka, they would go drinking at Dobuita together – as drinking buddies, as best friends, as music companions who would forgive each other for every stupid thing said.

In a sense, it was a pretty strange connection.

Now, REM wonders if it wasn’t obvious that he was holding back around hide for fear of bothering him. To say nothing of the fact that the bitter feeling of not having been there for hide when he needed him most would not leave him alone.

But – and he thinks it may sound pretentious to put it like this – REM wonders if in this town of Yokosuka, where hide had been born and raised, all the cloudy hesitation and misunderstandings and strange fears weren’t blown away by the constant salty breeze from the sea.

REM couldn’t help but think that way.

When they drank at Dobuita until morning, there were no obstacles between them.

Hide always listened intently to REM’s silly music stories. Is that artist good or not, which CDs are cool – he always had an earnest discussion with REM about these things.

Looking at hide’s carefree smile, REM always heard a voice deep in his heart, saying, “Now I owe him again…”

Without his noticing, that murmur changed to, “No matter how, I want to pay him back. No matter how many years it takes, one day I will…”

One day when hide was in Yokosuka, REM went to “Parkside X” together with Professor Arakawa. He’d been thinking that he should introduce hide to Arakawa, so when they happened upon him, REM introduced him with the words, “Arakawa-sensei, this is hide.”

And Arakawa smiled and stood with, “My pleasure, I’m Arakawa.”

Hide, also standing, looked a little nervous, and said, “Likewise. Thank you for always taking care of REM. I’m hide.” He removed his trademark hat and sunglasses and gave a quick bow.

Then, he slowly put them back on and apologized for being impolite by wearing those things while drinking, and sat back down.

REM was astonished that he had taken them off at all, because at that time, he never did that in public. It seemed that hide was particularly respectful towards Arakawa because of the relationship he had to REM, and REM’s surprise soon turned into deeply moved gratitude.

After a night of drinking together and talking about all sorts of things, Arakawa also praised hide as a young man who, striking appearance aside, had firm opinions and was very polite. The way in which hide expressed his friendship that night had been typical for him.

-

In December 1995, REM announced that the was leaving his bachelor life behind and got married to a woman named Miwa. [Note: At least, that’s what I think her name is. REM gives the kanji for her name, but not the reading, which might differ drastically from the common (or even any sensible) reading of the characters.]

For the wedding reception, they reserved a cozy restaurant for their few dozen guests, which included family and only their closest of friends. One invitation was handed to hide, who was happy as if it were his own wedding and confirmed that he was definitely going to attend.

On the day of the wedding, REM was nervous and embarrassed like never before in his life. This was no fault of his bride’s, he simply had a raging case of wedding nerves, and it defeated him. As soon as the nerves hit him, he would drink any alcoholic beverage he could get his hands on. He honestly thought that since it worked on stage, it would work for getting married.

Hide had sent them a large bouquet of flowers in the name of “X Japan hide” but was nowhere to be seen in person.

In fact, it seemed that hide had chosen his timing well, considering the commotion that might have happened at the gathering place if word had gotten around that a member of X Japan was present.

An hour into the event, hide was there, just sitting casually in the front row in his hat and sunglasses. He grinned when he handed more alcohol to REM. At this point, REM was already blazingly drunk.

Hide for his part was fidgety and restless, talking to Jimmy and pointing out that it was time for the afterparty.

Then, during the preparations for said party, those two kept whispering to each other about something.

The wedding reception was not unlike a live show, with plenty of music buddies present. There were former members of SAVER TIGER, Hikaru, who used to be the bassist of X for a while during their indies days, and the current, much more famous X Japan-bassist heath.

SAVER TIGER served as the lead act. With hide jumping in, it was like the illusion of a SAVER TIGER revival session. The song they played was “Double Cross”.

The title of the song seemed a bit too fitting for the situation, but they chose it because it was representative of SAVER TIGER.

So REM, unsteady and hugging his guitar, started to play (“Ei!”) with the timing he was used to, only to be met with perfect silence from everyone else involved.

Thus, he declared, “It can’t be helped, you’re all doing it wrong,” regained his composure and started playing the phrase again.

Once again, hide and the others met him with grinning silence.

And REM thought, “I’m being deceived!”, finally realizing that he was falling victim to a prank, and that the prank smelled strongly of hide. Surely, hide and Jimmy had set this up when they were whispering to each other before.

In that moment, the room erupted into laughter and hide smiled earnestly at REM while looking very satisfied.

REM’s memory of the events after this point are essentially nonexistent.

Among the things that he vaguely remembers are heath getting up on stage and accepting a trophy he had won at their bingo tournament with a smile, and hide’s younger brother Hiroshi being delighted about having won a guitar.

From what REM could put together from the stories of his wife and the others, hide gave a musical performance that day, looking truly happy. This was not X Japan’s hide, this was an amateur at a free-for-all, lost in the spur of the moment, strumming his guitar with a relaxed smile on his face.

“At least, he was grinning as he played and looked like he was truly having fun.” That’s what Jimmy always murmurs when remembering that wedding reception.

[December 1995: REM's wedding reception. Photos exist for when your memory doesn't. (Click on the image for full view if tumblr cut it weirdly.)]

Due to REM’s work, the newlyweds couldn’t go on honeymoon right away. Only in the following year, in spring 1996, was he able to take the time off for it.

REM and his wife immediately agreed on the destination they wanted to visit. They both recalled at once how hide had told them to come to L.A. at least once, so that was where they wanted to go for the occasion of their once-in-a-lifetime, somewhat late honeymoon: The L.A. where hide was.

REM called hide over there at once. When he told him, “We’re thinking of travelling to L.A.,”, hide said, “Wait a second, I’ll call you back,” and hung up.

He had probably gotten a call for work, was certainly busy right now… REM and his wife speculated such while they waited, but when hide called them back after only a sort time, he gave them a list of the major hotels in Los Angeles, with information on their rating, how far they were from the airport, the price, if it was okay to smoke in there, what attractions were nearby…

After hanging up on them, hide had researched all that at the speed of light. REM and his wife were nothing but grateful. Hide, for this part, was very enthusiastic about their upcoming visit.

“What do you want to do when you’re here?”

The two of them told him they wanted to watch a Nomo Game [Note: Probably referring to Japanese baseball pitcher Hideo Nomo, who was playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers at the time.], visit the Universal Studios, and other things. And hide said brightly, “I got it! You don’t need to take care of anything, just make the reservations for the flights and the hotel…”, and then quickly hung up the phone.

The weather in L.A. was clear.

They arrived at the hotel they had picked from hide’s list, checked in, and rested in their room for about an hour before hide arrived, going “Yaa, yaa, yaa!”

Hide was in the middle of recording his solo single “Misery” at the time and hadn’t slept in three days, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he acted. He was wearing his usual hat and sunglasses, and his usual smile that lit up his whole face when he said, “So, what’s the plan?” He pulled out pen and paper and wrote down the schedule for their stay in the city, while asking REM and his wife for their wishes. Then, he asked, “How do you feel about Las Vegas?” and added his own recommendations, arranging everything from flights to hotel reservations.

He also insisted that REM’s wife, pregnant at the time, had to eat! And handed over a bundle of ten onigiri that he had brought for her.

Her due day happened to coincide with hide’s thirty-second birthday. Whenever he stroked the bulging stomach of REM’s wife, he would tell the unknown baby to better get born on schedule, so they could share their birthday.

In any case, to REM and his wife, hide was the world’s best tour conductor, taking care of every aspect of their journey. His thoughtfulness, attentiveness, kindness and warmth were extraordinary and he made sure that they got whatever they wanted. REM and his wife could only be grateful and impressed by his warmth that asked for nothing in return.

It was thanks to him that this trip became one of the best memories of the couple.

One day, after hide had left for recording, his manager at the time, Kudo-chan, took them downtown for dinner. After parking the car, they waited at a traffic light, discussing where they wanted to eat.

As they waited, REM spotted a man waiting at the opposite side of the road who looked like a musician to him, from the way he dressed to the way he wore his long, lustrous hair. Then, the signal turned to “WALK”, they did just that, and as the guy came closer, REM thought that his face looked like he had seen it somewhere before…

It couldn’t be. Here, on this giant continent of America, in the middle of this giant city of Los Angeles…But damn, if that guy did not look exactly like…

And so it came that REM and heath embraced right there in the middle of that pedestrian crossing in L.A., celebrating their unexpected reunion. Babbling along the lines of:

-“Hey, what are you doing here? No, this is where I… Where are we, anyway…”

-“N- no, I heard from hide-chan that you were in L.A., REM, but that I would meet you here…”

Since the time heath came from Osaka to Tokyo, REM had often gone drinking with him. Their meeting here was as much of a surprise as when hide had told REM that heath had joined X.

Thanks to this prank of the gods, they all went to a Japanese restaurant together, chatting happily. It was a day full of surprises and deep emotions.

Just two or three days before REM and his wife were to return home, hide invited REM to the studio and asked him to play the guitar solo of “Misery”. So REM borrowed hide’s guitar and contemplated the song’s guitar phrase there in that place.

And after he played it, hide said, “Well, REM-chan, let’s have you record it before you go home!”

Somewhat incredulously, REM agreed.

However, the next day, something urgent came up with X Japan and the recording of “Misery” had to be interrupted.

Looking regretful, hide told REM over and over that it would resume the next week. But REM’s work did not allow for the delay. And so, with painful reluctance, REM and his wife boarded the plane home.

The day before their return, hide somehow managed to take them out for dinner despite his busy schedule. Since REM’s pregnant wife couldn’t drink, REM and hide drank beer and wine for three. Afterwards, they returned to hide’s apartment building, hung out on the roof at the pool, and continued to chat while looking at the giant, illuminated HOLLYWOOD-sign.

At some point, without anyone noticing, hide had taken off his sunglasses. Hide, who had returned to bare-faced Matsumoto Hideto, and REM, who had returned to bare-faced Araki Masahiko, continued talking with a beer in hand for a long time.

It had been more than ten years since REM had first come to this city as a middle school student. Now, the L.A. night breeze was as fresh as it had been back then, and so dry they could basically hear it.

[2 May 1996: Last night in L.A.]

The next day, hide was driving the car himself when he picked up REM and his wife who were puking all over due to hangover and morning sickness respectively and took them to the airport.

Hide seemed to enjoy himself when he looked over his shoulder at their pale faces in the backseat and asked with a smile, “Honored passengers, how did you enjoy your trip?”

That kind smile of hide, that rare entertainer, was swaying before their eyes.

Hide had been serious about what he had said at the studio in L.A., as REM came to understand that the afterparty of the secret live hide and his band gave at the Yokosuka Art Theater that autumn. He had really meant for REM to play the guitar for “Misery”. REM had been baffled, and felt that now there was another major depth he was owing hide.

He murmured those words as he watched hide’s cheerful form fussing around. His wife, who had heard him, nodded in agreement. She was approaching her due date.

“He’s really supported us at every important point, hasn’t he?”

And so he had. When REM and his now-wife had been dating, it was hide who had looked at them and declared that they absolutely had to get married. He kept saying it. He even said it on New Year’s Day of the year they did get married, just like hide had predicted.

In that moment, REM and his wife likely had the same mental image: Of hide, cheerfully playing guitar at their wedding reception with a mischievous smile on his face, or his kind hospitality in L.A., happily going along with everything they wanted. REM’s thought of, “I want to repay hide for all he’s done” turned to “I must repay hide” turned to “No matter how many years it takes, one day for certain,” and finally arrived at “I must start at once.”

On the sixth of December, 1996, about one week before hide’s birthday, REM’s wife gave birth to their first child without problems. It was a boy, and they called him 柊衣. [Note: The Japanese names strike again. This is probably read either “Hii”, “Toui”, or “Hiragi”.]

Hide came to meet their beloved son the following year, in February 1997.

Hide loved children. Even now, REM remembers how hide played with their son tirelessly all day. He passionately gave this baby, only two months old, rhythm training and taught him how to hold a guitar pick.

This was another day when hide took off his sunglasses. It is their absence that REM blames for the fact that hide, holding the baby in his arms, looked so innocent and vulnerable it hurt.

Continued in part 2

[turtleations]

PINK CLOUDY SKY, Chapter 05 - Fleeting Dream (summarized)

Chapter 00 - 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2

SAVER TIGER broke up not once, but twice. The first time was in 1986. It was the result of various circumstances and was not a formal disbandment. The second one in March 1987, unfortunately, was.

The band had a lot of member changes through the years, because their leader hide was a perfectionist with a strong drive to constantly improve and reach an even higher level of musicality. In order to reach that level, switching out members was unavoidable. But it was something that always tormented his heart. His instincts as a musician and as an artist kept screaming, “I want to make even more perfect, more awesome, cooler music!” But at the same time, he was by nature kinder than most, and watching the lost members leave made his heart ache and left him to wonder if it was really okay to aim that high if this was the price they had to pay for it.

But hide was not the type to only think and not act, even if he was tormented by his decisions. He was the kind of guy who acted quickly once he decided something and was hardest against himself in order to make his dreams a reality.

“I hesitated a lot. But now that it’s decided, let’s do it!”, hide would say and just sprint off at once. But REM thinks that in his heart, he took a lot of damage and suffered deep wounds, even when the band broke up the first time.

The practice methods and the nature of their music at that time did not work well with the band members just then. Personally, there was no problem at all, they were all good guys and they got along well. But reaching the next level in their band’s musical development just wasn’t possible with that lineup.

But hide absolutely didn’t just want to kick them out. His solution to that dilemma was, “Let’s break up and separate from everyone, and then find new members and start over right away!” And so, under those circumstances, SAVER TIGER briefly disbanded in 1986.

Getting back together to form the new band, they kept the name SAVER TIGER, for no other reason than that they had grown attached to it.

Bassist Jimmy quit at that time for various reasons, but he stayed a close friend to them who kept in contact. In 1999, he is an important member of the new SAVER TIGER. Back then, he called himself “Japan’s No. 1 SAVER-Freak” and drove his beloved “Demon Z” to the studio just to see them practice.

Looking back on those says, Jimmy talked about how one day, after a live, hide, in the passenger seat of Jimmy’s car, suddenly put a tape into the car’s stereo and their song “19” started playing. Jimmy thought that song was really crazy.

“19” was an original song from that era, which REM and hide had created together.

Jimmy was a good adviser and an important friend to REM and hide even after leaving the band.

Of course, right after that first break-up, hide and REM started to vigorously look for new members. First, they selected drummer Kosuke and bassist Tokihiko, both of whom had found hide’s approval when they participated in “Break out the Rock” as members of other bands.

But they couldn’t find a fitting vocalist and continued rehearsing without one for the time being. Meanwhile, hide and REM kept looking for their ideal vocalist in various live houses. They also joined afterparties, basically just yelling “Isn’t there any good vocalist around?” into the room.

At some point, REM casually suggested that hide could take over as their vocalist, at least temporarily. since he had done pretty well on that tape he had made for REM when he joined the band. REM thought it would be better if hide did it than if they settled for a bad vocalist. But hide got embarrassed at the suggestion, just looking down and murmuring something about how he couldn’t do that because he was exclusively a guitarist.

To put it shortly, their new vocalist eventually became kyo, whom hide had zeroed in on. Kyo lived in Chiba at the time; he was invited to the studio to with them just once, and then got an answer right the day after.

One week later, hide took kyo along to “Rock City”, where Jimmy was still working behind the bar.

They drank while talking about different topics, like kyo’s beloved Mihael Munroe, and their favorite bands KISS and Hanoi Rocks. After a while, kyo somewhat timidly asked hide and REM, “How about it?” and they both said, “Let’s do it!”

They were all happy about this development and had a great night – REM, hide, kyo, as well as Jimmy behind the counter.

The following week, kyo started his time of doing Chiba – Yokohama round trips along the Kanto Bay coast. Whenever there was practice, he would come from his home in Chiba to Yokohama, where the studio was. As mentioned earlier, practice was two to three times a week from night till morning. Afterwards, he crashed at REM’s place until noon and then went home again. Repeat next time. Although he never said anything, it had to be tough, and REM admired him for keeping it up for so long. He wouldn’t have been able to do that if he hadn’t been such a passionate artist from the start.

The songs they made during kyo’s time with them were “19”, “Sadistic Emotion” and “Spady Madik”. They also practiced covers of songs like “Chinese Rock” by Johnny Thunders, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper, or “Evil” by Merciful Fate.

At this point, REM talks about SAVER TIGER’s recorded discography a bit. The first songs the band ever recorded were “Double Cross” and “Gold Digger”, which were released by EXLOSION RECORDS on flexi. [Note: In July1985, before REM joined the band.]

[Note: REM actually writes that it was released by the EXTASY Label, which I can only assume is a misprint.]

Next was the song “Vampire”, which was included on the omnibus album “HEAVY METAL FORCE III”. On that album, a song of the indies band “X” was also included. [Note: Namely, “Break the Darkness”. The Album was also released by EXPLOSION RECORDS, in November 1985. Recording must have happened a few months earlier, however, as it still featured NICK on guitar instead of REM, who had joined the band in September of the same year.]

Finally, the songs “DEAD ANGLE” and “EMERGENCY EXPRESS” were included in the omnibus album “Devil Must Be Driven Out with Devil” by the Label “Hold Up”. [Note: February 1986] Then-indies band UNITED was also represented on this one. By this point, the band had made the name change from SABER TIGER to SAVER TIGER, but not only did the album mistakenly call them SABER TIGER on the jacket, they also somehow managed to misspell REM’s name so badly it turned into “NICK”, so a lot of people think that REM wasn’t involved in the recording even now.

He often gets asked for the reason why they listed NICK instead of him. The reason is that it was a misprint.

While on topic, REM then writes about the reason for the band’s name change: There was a band of the same name in Hokkaido. It had nothing to do with their Doppel Ganger legend, but it was still an unfortunate coincidence. To avoid confusion, magazines and leaflets often distinguished them as “Yokosuka SAVER TIGER” even after they had changed their name.

Meguro LIVE STATION held an “SAVER vs SABER” event on 26 November 1986. For that event, they gave an interview for a Hokkaido music magazine and also got to talk to SABER TIGER’s leader. [Note: Kinoshita Akihito, born 1961, guitar, still active with the same band, which was founded in 1981.]

SABER TIGER was also an amazing band that had already released a number of records, and the SAVER TIGER guys worked hard not lose against them.

With their strong team of new members, with kyo on vocals, Tokihiko on bass, and Kosuke on drums, they were off to a good start. But not along after this event, choices regarding their members once again troubled hide’s heart.

Bassist Tokohiko was impeccable. His musical talent, technic, rhythm, were all perfect. He loved to say that he respected guys with longer hair than him, and there was no better bassist to be found in their environment. With him around, hide’s long-standing dream of turning their band into a super band seemed within reachable distance.

Compared to someone like that, their new drummer Kosuke could only lose. After joining SAVER TIGER, Kosuke became better and better, but his rhythm was a bit lacking here and there, and REM and hide also got the impression that he was the least enthusiastic about practice.

Or maybe that was not quite the right expression. Their practice lasted five to six hours in the middle of the night, after all, with one ten to fifteen minutes of break in between. Since the drums required more stamina than the other parts, this practice left Kosuke severely exhausted, to the point of emergency, and REM and hide both soon felt that he might be better off not drumming. To continue to do so seemed somewhat unreasonable to them.

To Kosuke’s credit, he was a good drummer. Excellent, even. That’s why he is also the drummer of the current SAVER TIGER.

He went on and was a part of many different bands throughout his musician’s life. He’s got an ear for many different genres of music and has becomes an important support for the band. Above all, he is friendly and kind and just overall a good guy.

But that first time with SAVER TIGER was unsatisfactory from a perspective that was always looking for perfection.

At that time, hide had found an extraordinary drummer named TETSU. They met for drinks, and after he listened to the demo-tape TETSU gave him, hide was convinced that he was a talent that could stand next to Tokihiko. Both hide and REM decided, “With TETSU and Tokihiko, we can have the strongest rhythm in Kanto. No, even our dream of a super band can come true!”

Only, they did not share that train of thought with Kosuke.

Before long, they were to play at the campus festival of REM’s university, and TETSU came to visit their rehearsal. How they came to accept that gig is a bit of a funny story on the side: The rector of the university contacted hide and REM with the request to perform at the festival, and their response was somewhat chilly. They felt that Yokosuka’s No. 1 band and college fest didn’t mix well, and REM initially gave some half-hearted response about how hide certainly wouldn’t give his okay to this.

But the rector kept repeating his request them, eventually saying, “I don’t know the common market price, and I’m sorry if this is a rude offer, but I was thinking of a payment of around 100.000 Yen…”

[Note: I don’t know the conversion rate in 1986, nor can I account for inflation, but today (July 2023) that would be around 650 EUR or 710 USD.]

The moment he said that, hide’s eyes lit up. Their eyes met. REM nodded, then said to the rector with fake indifference, “Well, we cannot make that decision on our own. We need to talk to our manager about this…”

And once the rector had left, they danced for joy. For an amateur band like theirs, 100.000 Yen was an unheard of amount. Thus, they threw themselves into rehearsing for this event with great enthusiasm.

On the day of the rehearsal, hide still hadn’t talked to Kosuke. At some point, Kosuke took a long toilet break, and while he was gone, TESTU took his place at the drums and they continued to rehearse like this. Eventually, Kosuke returned, and just listened to TESTU drum in silence. After a while, TETSU returned the drum sticks to him and Kosuke resumed practice as if nothing had happened.

And hide looked away and didn’t say anything. But, of course, Kosuke sensed that something was up.

The performance at the campus festival was a roaring success, and afterwards, TETSU, who had come to listen to their performance, joined them for the afterparty at a place called “Banya” (Guardhouse). All the while, hide and REM were restless, exchanging glances, murmuring to themselves about how they really needed to talk to Kosuke. But somehow, once again, they didn’t.

And then Kosuke said out of nowhere, “I’m quitting SAVER.”

Startled, REM looked first at Kosuke, then at hide, who was pale and hung his head, pressing his lips into bloodless lines.

Kosuke said: “When I watched TETSU play that time, he was so good. Because SAVER is a band that has the potential to go major, I think TETSU is the better choice for it. Even though I am a limitation for this band, I love SAVER, so please do your best and become professionals for me as well…”

Hide ran from the room before he could finish. REM rushed out of the building after him at once, but even so failed to find him in the darkness outside. Eventually, after searching through the night for him, he discovered hide at the back end of the place’s parking lot, where he was cowering on the ground, crying audibly, sobbing, “I’m done! I can’t betray people like this anymore!”

This hide, REM forcefully dragged back inside. There, Kosuke was crying. Hide was crying. REM was crying. Everyone else who was there also cried.

It was a sad, hot night.

And so, SAVER TIGER arrived at the final constellation before their break up: TETSU on drums, Tokihiko on bass, kyo on vocals, forming hide’s ideal band, and both he and REM felt that like this, they could absolutely go major.

They rapidly picked up the speed of creating songs. They worked thoroughly and with attention to detail. Their rhythm section and vocals were quick to understand what was required, and everyone worked hard and eagerly. They perfected their practice and with that, of course, also improved their live performances.

At that time, the rehearsed in Roppongi, and often, after practice, REM and Tokihiko marched through the night in their jerseys to grab some Gyudon at “Yoshino-Ya”. It’s a taste he can’t forget.

Meanwhile, hide’s energy reached its maximum. He certainly felt that this was it! After all the pain every time there was a member change, shedding the blood of the lost members and his own, they had finally found the band that would make it.

Hide immediately went about making plans for recording, securing a studio. Let’s make a photo album! Let’s make all kinds of promotional material! We should quickly create new songs! Every day, he was talking like this, excited like a child.

But as the saying goes, after the light falls the shadow.

One night, hide called REM at home, dead drunk and on the verge of tears.

“We should disband SAVER,” was all he could mutter when REM asked him what was wrong.

REM was shocked, but only learned what had caused this when he met with hide in person: One of the band members was leaving them. And hide was heartbroken.

But what he had to say about it was: “This is where I have to pay the bill for what I have done. You betray people, you get betrayed in return.”

REM’s view on this was quite different. As far as he was concerned, hide had never betrayed anyone, he’d merely made unavoidable decisions that a band leader has to make. But hide strongly felt in his heart that he had done people wrong. And the fallout was terrible.

Even though they met to discuss this a week later, the mind of the member who wanted to leave was set. And so, SAVER TIGER disbanded.

After the meeting, the four remaining members walked to the “Buffalo” with heavy steps. Jimmy was working there now, waiting for them behind the counter. He had lived up to his reputation as “Japan’s No. 1 SAVER-Freak” and now stood witness to this turning point in their history.

To Jimmy behind the counter, hide, who was drunk, said that he was going to enter a normal profession, giving up his dreams of becoming a professional musician.

This was in March 1987.

And just like that, the history of SAVER TIGER, who had been fighting tooth and nail to lead the rock scene in Yokosuka for five years, came to an end.

The tiger had fallen into a deep sleep.

Outside, the wind was blowing violently through the cold night.

Chaper 06

[turtleations]

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 06 – Crossroads (Summarized) - Part 1

Note 1: This chapter is once again split into two parts, the second, longer one following tomorrow. Note 2: Whenever someone is talking about “America” here, they specifically mean the United States. Note 3: I have decided to put warnings about things like fatal accidents, illnesses, parental death etc. into the tags, so pay attention to that if there are things that can be expected to show up in an autobiography that you would rather avoid reading about.

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05

REM and hide felt the same way: The didn’t have the energy to assemble all new members. They also couldn’t image making a band other than SAVER TIGER. So, looking desolate, hide told REM, “I’m going to quit music and become a beauty artist in America.” REM, too, strongly felt like he should just go back to studying. And if he were to quit the band, he felt like he should quit music altogether.

Having reached this decision, he held a “retirement ceremony” in his apartment and cut off all of his waist-long rocker hair. Then he didn’t touch his guitar at all for an entire year.

Most of his guitars, his amps, he sold. The money he got for that disappeared into three or four days of binge drinking.

He didn’t listen to music either.

He had given up his dream. Threw away anything and everything. And now, he would become a dentist.

Later, REM would talk to the member who had left SAVER TIGER and led to the band’s break up. By then, ten years had passed since that day.

REM never knew it back then, but it turned out that apparently one of the reasons for that person leaving had been the fact that REM continued to go to university.

That member absolutely wanted to go major, and he needed everyone else to give it their all to reach that goal as soon as possible. And he didn’t think REM was doing that, as long as he was still enrolled in university.

Hide never said anything about REM continuing with his classes. And REM though that he was getting the same understanding from the other band members as well.

It was a pity he was not given the chance to convey this to the one who left, but REM shared the dream of going pro with SAVER TIGER and would have dropped out of university as soon as it came true.

In those days, hide often asked REM if he would quit his studies if they made it, and every time REM answered, “Of course!” From the moment REM joined SAVER TIGER, he had the feeling that, as long as he was with hide, they could do anything, make any dream a reality. But in the end that border was never crossed.

REM and that other band member talked openly about it all when they met again a very long time later. Now, REM thinks that for this guy, the choice was an unavoidable one. He cannot blame anyone for it, and does not plan on doing so.

His former band member chose the path that seemed best for him on the shortcut to success. To reach his goals, he did all he could. In that, he was no different from REM or hide.

They all walked down the path they chose for themselves, just unexpectedly in different directions. Who could blame a friend for something like that?

[Note: REM never identifies the band member in question, but by now it has been revealed that it was TETSU.]

Hide was with REM for every day of his binge drinking. Then, several days after the disbandment, Yoshiki from the band X invited him, telling him that he absolutely wanted hide to join them. At that time, X was a forceful band that was rather famous in the indies scene.

Hide and Yoshiki had met through the recording of the aforementioned omnibus album and hide had previously invited Yoshiki to SAVER TIGER at an afterparty.

Now, hide was very torn about that invitation. He meant to quit music! He didn’t dislike X, but it wasn’t the kind of music he wanted to do! But Yoshiki’s enthusiasm and sincerity eventually won him over.

Hide’s decision to join X hardened. There was only one condition that he had: He insisted on twin guitars.

Yoshiki readily agreed. When it came to the guitar, he left everything to hide, who then invited REM to join them, arguing that REM was the one he could harmonize with the best. With those words, he passionately tried to pull REM over. But REM had cut off his hair, returned to university, and given up on his music dreams. His last remaining guitar had been carelessly deposited in its case in a corner of his room, and he hadn’t touched it once since the dissolution.

Even so, his heart was swayed by hide’s invitation. But in the end, he stuck with his decision. The disbandment of SAVER TIGER had been a shock that had done a lot of damage.

REM could no longer invoke the feeling he had when first starting music. So, after some hesitation, he said, “I’m still becoming a dentist,” declining the invitation. Seeming heartbroken, hide ended the call.

After this hide found a fantastic partner called PATA and started to play a very active part in X. X quickly left the indies behind and not only went major but started to climb to the top.

Though he turned from SAVER TIGER’s leader into X’s guitarist, hide ran up the stairs towards his dreams in one big leap. Soon, he left Yokosuka and started living in an apartment in Tokyo. Since the disbandment, about one year had passed. In this time, REM also managed to get over the shock. He even started to sometimes engage with his guitar again.

In this time, hide sometimes called him on the phone. But while they gave each other updates on their recent lives and talked about music, REM couldn’t get into it like he had before.

“Ooh, hide really went pro! I’m glad! I’m jealous!” But even as he thought that, it was like that part of him was far away.

It was probably during this time that REM thought for the first time in his life that music wasn’t everything.

His instincts informed him that he no longer had the passion for music that he had a year ago. So now he put all of that passion into becoming a dentist.

Therefore, it often happened during their calls that REM only listened and left the talking to hide. Still, hide always seemed to enjoy calling him and ended with the worlds, “Next time I’m in Yokosuka, let’s go to Dobuita Street and drink until morning!”, laughing.

The other members of SAVER TIGER also joined other bands and stayed on the path of music. Kyo and TETSU went pro with a band called D’erlanger, Tokihiko joined a band called Dementia. One time, Dementia came to perform on Dobuita, and REM went to watch Tokihiko play for the first time in forever.

Tokihiko had changed his appearance a lot since his days in SAVER TIGER, and it was a refreshing sight to see him play progressive music in jeans and a t-shirt. He, too, had found his own way, REM thought, a little maudlin.

One time, when REM was visiting hide at his place in Tokyo, they also contacted Tokihiko. Until then, they had spoken on the phone a few times, but never made it to the point of having a drink together. This time, things came together and the three of them went out drinking together for the first time in a while.

They met at a place near Meguro Rokumeikan, Tokihiko coming in with his long, glossy, well-maintained jet-black hair. The three of them drank until morning without running out of stuff to talk about.

REM still vividly remembers what hide said to Tokihiko that day: “One day, I want to work with you again. I want you to play the bass on a song I wrote. Even though the music we want to do and our styles are different, I want to have your bass in my song.”

After thinking a little, Tokihiko replied. “I am not satisfied with the things I can do in today’s Japan. Therefore, I think I want to go to America. For that, I want to further raise my level as a musician. But I don’t know when I can go to America, because I have no money. As long as I am in Japan, I’ll be happy to work with you whenever you want. In any case, your words made me really happy!”

REM was deeply moved by those words. This was a Tokihiko who had grown a lot in both personality and music since the days of SAVER TIGER, when he had been young in many ways. He clearly formulated his goals and was able to communicate what he wanted to say.

Then, hide said passionately to REM and Tokihiko, “One day, I want to record with the members of SAVER TIGER! I really want to make an album with you!”

At his words, something hot welled up in REM, and doubtlessly in Tokihiko as well.

A peasant wind was blowing; it was a good night in May.

-

A few years later, in August 1995, when the swelteringly hot summer nights were going on and on, REM was on the other side of Lake Kawaguchiko at a camp of his university “Pops Club” when suddenly his cell phone rang. It was past midnight.

Tokihiko had died in a motorcycle accident. What REM learned from the band man from Yokosuka who called him was the following: In those days, Tokihiko has joined a team of bikers who often went on tours together. That time, they had come back from their tour without incident, separated in the early morning, and Tokihiko died in an accident on the way home.

REM was so stunned, he didn’t even feel sad. He called hide in L.A. and hide, too, didn’t know what to say. Between the two of them, they had no words.

REM soon ended the call because there were other friends from the music scene he wanted to inform. But when he reached them, they said, “I just heard it from hide-chan. I cannot believe it...”

Hide kept calling their acquaintances, including Yoko from UNITED, who was surprised to receive any call at all since he wasn’t even home, being in the middle of a tour. REM thinks that hide felt that was all he could do for Tokihiko at that time.

This is what REM thought when hide returned to Japan a little later and the two of them visited Tokihiko’s house, talking to their friend who smiled at them from the photo as if nothing had ever happened: That after that incident immediately after entering university, he once again got a harsh reminder of how fleeting a human life could be.

Summer turned into Autum. A memorial event for Tokihiko was held in a live house in Yokosuka called “Panama Red”, where the bands he’d been connected with gathered in his honor. Hide was at the studio that day, but even though he was in the middle of recording and kept saying that he had to rush, he was on the phone with REM for an hour, constantly asking who was on stage, who had come, what were they doing.

It was after midnight when hide finally managed to get away from the studio and made it to their meeting place. He came in, got all the tequila in the house for those assembled, and disappeared like a storm. It was a very hide-like way of expressing his grief.

Outside, the threes were covered in morning dew, the leaves on the ground scattered. The clear atmosphere made the darkness in the alleyways all the deeper. Far above the people drinking at “Panama Red”, an orange moon was silently drifting along its orbit. Another season was coming to an end.

Continued in part 2

[turtleations]

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 07 – Letter (Summarized) - Part 2

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 07 Part 1

July 1997. REM, Jimmy, and Kosuke finalized their decision to remake SAVER TIGER. It had been ten years since the break-up.

“One day, definitely…” The idea that had existed within him all this time finally took shake the year REM turned thirty-four.

It had been a long decade. But those ten years had been necessary for REM to overcome various obstacles and reach the point where this step was possible.

The former members of the band had kept doing casual lives at parties every year. After the dissolution, REM had stayed in contact with Jimmy and Kosuke, and they finally agreed to get serious about their wish to perform together as SAVER TIGER again.

They started rehearsing and writing songs again. Afterwards, they wanted to get the opinion of hide, as SAVER TIGER’s birth parent. By then, it was October.

When hide returned to Japan after a long absence and at long last they met again in Tokyo, REM had thought long and hard about how to tell him about their activities and plans, taking the advantage of the clarity of late nights. However, any worry he had on the matter was blown away the moment hide took one look at REM’s hair that had returned to the length of days past and exclaimed, “Amazing! You grew out your hair! Just like in the old days!” He seemed excited like a child, and so REM relaxed a little and said, “I have been thinking about making music once again,” while watching for hide’s reaction.

The moment hide heard his words, he beamed. Then he asked, “To what degree are you planning to?”

And REM said with a serious face, “To the degree that I’ll rent a room in the neighborhood of your apartment in L.A.”

Hide broke into laughter and said, “Thank God! I’m so happy!”, emitting joy from his entire body. REM also felt happiness from the depth of his bowls and the two of them toasted to this development over and over.

After a while, as if suddenly thinking of it, hide asked, “Do you have a second guitarist? What about the vocals?” and started pushing out his ideas like a machine gun, all the while smiling with his whole face.

REM, infected by his laughter, asked him, “Is it okay if we use the name SAVER TIGER?”

SAVER TIGER had been hide’s band after all.

Now hide looked at him like he couldn’t believe he even asked and said, “By all means! SAVER was a cool band!”

Then, “Since we don’t have our own songs yet, may we play the old band’s songs?” and hide said, “Do it! I’ll come to listen to you!” with unbridled joy, and REM started to get nervous.

“For now, there’s just Jimmy and Kosuke, so let’s see what comes of it,” he said to put on the breaks a little.

Looking at that innocent, defenseless smile, REM confirmed to himself in his heart over and over, “Really, I am glad that we are reviving SAVER TIGER.”

At the same time, he thought with a feeling of tension, “After this, we cannot be careless about it.”

-

During autumn and winter that year, as well as spring of the next, SAVER TIGER dedicated their time to practice and the creation of new songs. By and by the realized the sound they were going for in their new music. The feedback of all the bandmembers was positive.

At the same time, they were kept auditioning for a vocalist. But luck was not with them in this regard.

During this time hide, dealing with the break-up of X Japan on New Year’s Day, threw himself into his solo activities with full force. Aside from “hide with Spread Beaver” he also started his band “Zilch” aboard, their innovative sound and artistical promotion shots going through the rock scene like a whirlwind. It was plain for everyone to see that hide was getting to a whole new area of activity. In order to realize his dream, he once again stepped forward and put everything into it.

-

The year 1998 passed as if in an instant.

Fall and winter ended and turned into spring, the cherry trees blossomed, and before long, everything was covered in petals. Soon, the seasons changed, and early summer blew in on a cool breeze.

Eventually, even without a vocalist, the new band finished a number of songs they had enough confidence in to let people listen to them. Immediately, they called hide to invite him to come watch their rehearsal.

REM looked forward to that day with anticipation, and so did Jimmy and Kosuke.

But hide was certainly the most excited one of them all. Somehow, at that time, REM was convinced of this.

-

Shizuoka-ken, XX-town, XX-district, XX number

H.M.-sama

How are you doing? This is REM.

I am terribly sorry for my reply being so very late.

The end of last year was busy, and while I kept thinking that I must write this reply, I am bad at writing letters, and I kept procrastinating. I am sorry.

Thank you for checking out the new SAVER TIGER homepage.

As you know, I started doing music again the year before last – precisely, in August 1997 (Actually, for myself, I made the decision to return to music in May of the same year, exactly one year before hide went beyond the sky.) and in the beginning we used the old songs, the songs hide and I made together.

We started making new songs as “NEW SAER TIGER” the winter before last, this year we resumed band meetings to discuss the wishes of the band members, and around the time we finally figured out the direction of the band, on “the second of May”…

That day, I was working at the clinic. (By the way, I was the only doctor there. Even though I was an employee, I was also the temporary director.)

Friends with connection to the band often came there for treatment, and that day, too, three friends were waiting in my room (the director’s office).

They were waiting for me to be done with work so we could go drinking together. Then, sad news came in from the hospital.

They consoled me when I fell into a panic and decided that, never mind anything else, for now, we should go to see hide…

Finding out where to go from my constantly ringing cell phone, that day, somehow, I met hide.

He was lying in a long, rectangular box and looked just like he always had, but from now on, no matter how often I said, “Let’s go for a drink together,” he would never answer again.

Thinking about it now, I can’t help but feel like this second of May was the first time since he was born that he slept completely at ease in mind and body, without any thought or worry.

Regarding H-san’s question, I don’t know if I can answer truthfully, but I’ll tell you what I think.

Just like the live information put on the homepage at the end of last year reveals, my life is determined by the preparations for lives and recordings, the creation of new songs, and later also things like promotion methods.

To be honest, one and a half years after reviving SAVER TIGER, I still can’t sleep at night. The terrible time is at about three hours, when I lie on my bed in the dark room with all sorts of things going through my head.

Is the arrangement before the guitar solo of the new song okay that way, would it be a mistake to move around parts of that song etc. How should we handle the promotion? How to organize the live? What about the contents of the homepage? The guitar sound?

If I sleep now, I’ll forget. Oh, I wanna do it! I want to do that…

hide… hide… hide…

Because my body is exhausted, my nerves are in overdrive and I can’t sleep.

I did not have such problems when I did SAVER TIGER with hide thirteen years ago.

Even though we made songs together and I was always with him, hide was the one who did all these projects, and because he made so many amazingly original and extraordinary things, he always surprised me.

In fact, making music with that guy was so thrilling that I felt like anything was possible.

Even though I don’t have a hundredth, not even a thousandth of the hide of that time, I now have to handle SAVER TIGER as the leader.

Even at this time that would usually be considered late, I think about music, write into my notebook any phrase or project idea that comes to my mind, practice until the middle of the night, and when I am completely exhausted and ought to sleep, I have to think about what’s after the next live, in a month, in half a year, in a year from now…

I live a life of little sleep, even if I don’t think about bad things, and once I wake up, I go about realizing my plans.

But, hide had always been at the top and had aimed for even higher.

Therefore, he certainly never got to relax, neither in sleep nor in waking.

With things being as they were, he couldn’t simply sleep soundly. Lying in bed was painful, I believe.

I wonder if the only time he could relax and let go of all these memories was when he was drinking.

But I also think that was probably not the only reason…

[The rest of the letter is omitted.]

Final Chapter

[turtleations]

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 04 – Howl (Summarized) - Part 2

Chapter 00 - 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04 Part 1

At that time, practice was always at the “Pentastudio” in Yokohama. They always went there in bassist Jimmy’s worn out white Fair Lady Z 2-by-2 T-bar roof, much like the model REM’s university friend was also driving. Except Jimmy’s model was lowered and had wings and was extremely flashy. Also, the classmate’s car was new and shiny and Jimmy’s car was old and on the verge of scrapping.

Those who know something about cars would know this, but the car was originally meant to be a two-seat sports car. Jimmy’s car, being a 2-by-2, had four seats, but the backseats were originally meant for children, presumably. They were hellishly narrow.

This car was filled with four grown guys and the trunk with their equipment. [Note: Since the band had five members, I can only assume that either REM meant “four guys in addition to the driver” or that they tied one person to the roof.] The people on the back seat always had to sit slouched over. Hide, who was weak to moving vehicles, always went onto the backseat first for some reason, only to groan that he wasn’t feeling well the moment they took off. One time they were on the way back from a live in Tokyo, when hide suddenly opened the window with a pale face and puked onto the express way. Another time they went to have a barbeque on Sarushima, an island in the bay of Yokosuka. The ferry ride only took seven minutes, yet hide turned white as a sheet and complained about feeling ill.

That same hide absolutely loved Jimmy’s crappy car.

He would say something about how one day he, too, would ride up to the livehouses in a Jaguar or a Ferrari, abandoning his guitar, but for now, the Z is it! And then he would climb into the narrow backseat.

That said, it was a pretty awesome car for a musician with no family. They called it the “White Demon”.

At some point, they figured that the maximum speed of the Z was 120 km/h, provided you still wanted the breaks to be effective. And that you shouldn’t drive it if you couldn’t estimate how long it would take you to stop if you didn’t want to tailgate the car in front of you. One time, Jimmy drove all the way back from Chiba using only the engine break, because the break-pedal was broken.

Jimmy, who calmly drove that “Demon Z”, was perhaps a genius driver who put Ayrton Senna to shame.

In that white Z, they did a lot of tours to haunted places, or to Mount Fuji in the middle of the night. Usually, those were hide’s idea. He loved planning stuff like that.

Three o’clock in the morning. Dobuita-Street. Hide: “Let’s got to the Fuji!” or “Don’t you want to go to the sea?” or, “I learned about a haunted place we absolutely must check out!”

So of course their rowdy bunch, including REM, piled into their “Demon Z” near daybreak, and went to the foot of Mount Fuji, the sea at Shônan, or haunted locations in Kamakura or Kannonzaki. By the time they arrived, the sun would come up, but they were all cheerful as if infected by hide’s energy and fooling around.

One day, they were on a haunted tour with a group of about 15 people. As usual, hide was the one who suggested going to a popular “Monster Mansion” in Kamakura. Between SAVER TIGER, another band, and some female fans, there was an entire army on the move. It was a cold winter’s night with heavy snowfall, and they did not care one bit as they got into several cars and drove from Yokosuka to Kamakura.

When they arrived, they found the ruin of an old house inside a Shinto shrine. The tin roof was rusted, the walls full of holes. It was the kind of place that made you feel like you should leave. As they timidly moved closer, someone in the group suddenly screamed, “Something came out!” and they all ran away, screaming “WAAAH!”

REM got taken by surprise, lost his orientation, slipped and fell. Seeing his miserable appearance, covered in snow and mud, everyone freaked out and one person even fainted, apparently. REM spend the drive home in a mood of “I should quit this band already.”

Eventually, car-loving hide got them their own equipment van. Up to that point, they used the wagon car of the student council of REM’s university to get all their stuff to the livehouses when they did a show. They could rent it for 3000 Yen every time, which was fortunate. Less fortunate was that the vehicle had the words “Kanagawa Dental College Student Council” written on the side. SAVER TIGER used to cover the words with camouflage tape and wrote their band name over it.

The pattern of events was the same every time: After the live, they returned to Yokosuka for the afterparty, which lasted until six or seven in the morning. REM and hide would then return the van to the campus, and REM would bring hide home on his bike.

Their bodies were exhausted, the heads heavy with fatigue and alcohol, their hair fluttering in the wind. But REM still vividly remembers him and hide riding the bike together along the coastal road, the sea glittering in the morning sun: The light of hope that knew nothing of shame.

As the number of lives increased and this method became increasingly impractical, the topic of getting their own van came up. But everyone in the band was poor, so there was absolutely no money for that kind of thing. In the end, their brainstorming on this problem resulted in hide getting a Hiace Long with money he gradually paid back to his parents.

The day their shiny new vehicle arrived, REM and hide got emotional and spend the entire day driving around pointlessly. That night, hide said, as usual: “Let’s go to Disneyland!” So the two of them drove to Uruyasu. However, Disneyland is a harsh place for two musicians who love alcohol and didn’t bring any. They hung out with their “My Fair Hiace” on the gigantic parking lot under the light of the mercury lamps, then drove back to Yokosuka and – as goes without saying – got determinately drunk on Dobuita Street.

Before they got the van, hide and Jimmy once got into a fight on the way back from a live in Tokyo. For some reason, hide really wanted to drive the Z that day. Jimmy, being Jimmy, wanted to drive it himself. Neither wanted to give in. In the end, Jimmy was the one who did the driving, since it was his car.

That day, they had a live at the livehouse “Rokumeikan” in Meguro, and since they had no money, they endlessly tracked along the country road instead of taking the expressway. The entire way until Kawasaki, hide and Jimmy sulked and didn’t even look at each other. Then, near Oppama, where they planned to stop for a drink, hide said, “Sorry, Jimmy, it wasn’t a big deal,” and just like that, they were friends again.

Going from sour faces to everything being alright from one moment to the next was typical for hide.

The next car-related story happened after SAVER TIGER’s rhythm section changed and Kyo joined them as their new vocalist. At that point, hide and drummer Kosuke were the only ones with a driver’s license, so it was always them who had to drive the band to lives or to rehearsals. In order to help them out, REM and new bassist Tokihiko decided to get their driver’s license as well.

The place they chose for this endeavor was a training camp in a town called Kobuchisawa at the foot of the Yatsugatake mountains in Yamanashi prefecture. [Note: The town was merged into the city of Hokuto in 2006.] They had the plan to practice guitar and bass and create music at night after the driving lessons, hugging their instruments on the train ride to the camp. They should be able to combine lessons and practice in one go, and moreover, it would be a change of air and a separation from their usual, unhealthy lifestyle. However, their plans were shattered soon after they arrived.

Because their friends arrived shortly after. Led by hide, a group of people otherwise consisting of Kyo, REM’s former LAFERIA-bandmate Shiomi, as well as hide’s childhood friend Yoko, leader of the band UNITED [Note: Yokoyama Akihiro, bassist, 10 September 1964 – 13 May 2014] came to visit them in their isolation. In the end, they were hardly ever at the camp at night.

Hide and the others stayed for quite a while. They slept in the car while REM and Tokihiko had their lessons and enthusiastically dragged them across the area at night. They got chased by spirits on the local cemetery, went down haunted roads facing certain death… And then went to the picturesque town of Kiyosato for the next trip. Off to Shinshû! From all they had heard about it, Kiyosato seemed like paradise to them, and they were excited about going. Kiyosato was famous, but none of them had ever been there and so they were not prepared for how much of a fairy-tale village it really was, completely unsuited for the likes of them.

Having explored the mountains far from human habitation for a while, they were eager to get to a place full of people. What they found, though, was a pastel-colored nightmare of a cityscape, were girls were floating around with fluttering lace in their hair…

The guys all had long hair, were dressed in black leather pants and boots. Just a bunch of rockers from Yokosuka walking down the candy-sweet, picturesque main street, floating around sadly. Feeling uncomfortable and dazed, they even forgot to call out to the girls, who seemed like they didn’t even come from the same planet as them.

Then, suddenly, they couldn’t believe their ears:

In this unlikeliest of places, they heard a familiar rock-beat: Their own song DEAD ANGLE, blasting from the radio of a random car. So they went and enthusiastically shook hands with the owner of the car. Kiyosato is a magical place, after all. Not long after, their training was over and they triumphantly returned to Yokosuka with hide and the others who had stayed in their “Car Hotel” until the end.

In any case, hide’s power to create events was different from that of an average guy. And his love for mischief received a power-up when he was drunk. That wasn’t always a good thing. His usual energy and drive towards random trips got raised by several levels.

An example: One night, they were once again drinking with several people at REM’s place, when he carelessly showed hide the Calpis in his refrigerator. It was the classic, undiluted stuff that had to be diluted and refrigerated. By the time they all noticed that hide was suspiciously quiet, it was too late: hide had mobilized every glass in the room and used up the entire bottle of Calpis, which they had been drinking cluelessly until everyone got heartburn.

Not long after that night, hide, who was worried about REM’s health because he put all of his allowance into alcohol, stuffed a bento-box full of his mother’s homemade food and brought it along when he visited. As usual, they spend the night drinking, and then slept in a pile. When REM got ready to rush out in the morning to get to his first university lecture of the day, hide, who had gotten up first and had been rustling about in the kitchen for a while, handed him a small package. It was a bento hide had made for REM from the leftovers of the food he brought before. He had gotten up early in the morning with a hangover just to make a bento for REM to take to class.

What to say… hide was a person who never forgot to be kind, and caring, and considerate. REM still has that bento box. It’s a small, scratched, and worn thing that has the characters 松本秀人 [Matsumoto Hideto] written on it in childish letters, so it probably dated back to hide’s elementary-school days. But to REM, it is an important treasure, stuffed tightly with the memory of what hide has really been like.

A little story about Dobuita-Street: There used to be a store called “Ichifuku” near the entrance to the shopping district, where REM and hide always went to eat (and drink). It was a rustic, cheap restaurant run by a lady of about 80 years. (REM sends his apologies in case she was, in fact, younger than that.) One day REM and hide were there once again, snacking on granny’s food while REM got drunk. (The darker the Japanese Sochû, the faster he got drunk, it seems.) For them, who had no money and were always hungry, this store was a paradise comparable to Disneyland or Hawaii.

Some of it remains even today, but back then Dobuita-Street was a wild and dangerous place where violent incidents were common. All it all, it was rather representative of a base-city like Yokosuka.

On that night, when the two of them were at Ichifuku once again, washing down their food with alcohol, they heard some commotion happening right outside, thought “Eh, another fight,” and continued drinking without thinking anything of it. About an hour later they went home, and on their way out they saw two figures stretched out on the ground in front of the building. They judged them for drinking themselves unconscious right there on the street and moved on. The next day, they were shocked to learn from the news that two people had been killed in a violent fight on Dobuita the night before…

Another time, REM went home early because he wasn’t feeling well. After he was gone, hide and the others went to a place called “Yoshino-ya” to get some Gyudon to eat. A guy by the store who looked like a hooligan sneered when he saw them and spat “Beggars!” in their direction. The next moment, hide threw his gyudon into his face, like the sensible person that he was. Another moment later, about ten of the guy’s friends came rushing over to hide and beat the shit out of him. The next morning, hide couldn’t remember the incident and was genuinely surprised at the state of his swollen and scarred face.

When he was drunk, the destructive impulses hidden deep in hide’s heart woke up more and more. REM thinks that everyone probably has such a part that they cannot control in certain moments.

Sometimes, when they drank until morning, they would sit on the rotary in front of Yokosuka Station and watch the people with normal jobs rush to work. Sitting on the cold concrete, they somehow enjoyed the sensation of going against the flow and being isolated and ill-fitting in the crowd.

Of course, they also drank in livehouses like PUMPKIN and ROCK CITY and other places that no longer exist. And when they drank, they drank all night. Getting thoroughly wasted has always been SAVER TIGER’s style, then as it is now.

After hide joined X and left Yokosuka, REM often went drinking on his own in a place called “99” near the city center, which later had a connection to the revived SAVER TIGER, and at POPPEYE’S on Dobuita Street.

POPPEYE’S was a bar with a strong American touch that belonged to a former nuclear engineer called Tak, who had a wild and dramatic personal history. The patrons were mostly American soldiers, sometimes accompanied by their Japanese girlfriends, and its interior décor was amazingly ugly and tasteless.

Sady, REM never got to take hide there. It was his favorite bar and he always promised hide to go there with him one day, but with hide’s busy schedule, the opportunity never came up.

It is something REM regrets even now.

Chapter 05

[turtleations]

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 04 – Howl (Summarized) - Part 1

Chapter 00 - 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Note: This chapter is broken into two parts due to length. I hope to have the second part up before next week.

Note 2: Just a reminder that when the text talkes about "currently", "now", or "today", it's doing so from the perspective of REM in 1999.

At the time REM joined SAVER TIGER, hide was not only a musician but also a hairdresser. He worked – or rather, helped out – at his grandmother’s “Beauty Parlor Midori”, located at the back of Yokosuka Central Station, where he washed hair or gave haircuts. This had a strong influence on his sense of visuals and esthetics.

When it came to the appearance of the band, hide especially focused on hair and make-up and he used his experience and knowledge to advice his bandmembers on hairstyles and cosmetics to get them on the same visual level as him. The band mustn’t look uncool, after all.

Before he joined SAVER TIGER, REM did not wear a lot of make-up on stage, but thanks to hide’s guidance in these matters, which was both patient and thorough, he came to recognize the importance of hair and make-up.

A stylish sound should be wrapped in a stylish look. The performance isn’t cutting it if it doesn’t satisfy the eyes of the audience as well as the ears. This mindset was a SAVER TIGER tradition that the current members inherited. All the concepts used by the bands representing the VK-boom of the late 90s were naturally put into practice by hide more than ten years ahead of them.

One more thing that changed for REM was that he got a stage name, as until that point, he was not actually going by “REM”. The person who named him was, of course, hide. The name is based, somewhat semantically incorrectly, on REM-sleep, because REM had a tendency to fall asleep. It’s the name he is still known by in the music scene.

REM follows up with a memory he has of hide the beautician: After REM officially joined SAVER TIGER, he and hide wend out to Dobuita-Street almost every day. One day they had plans to go again, but before they were to meet, hide called REM to inform him that work at the beauty parlor was taking longer than expected that day and asked him to come over and wait for him to finish. So REM went to the Midori, sat on the waiting seat and looked through the weekly women’s magazines he would usually ignore while he waited for hide to be done. He also watched hide being a hairdresser and found that he quite enjoyed doing so. When hide was done with his current task and saw the result of his efforts, his expression would turn soft, and REM thought that this was hide turning back into pure, unstyled Matsumoto Hideto. It was nice to observe that.

After the last customer had left and the store was tidied up, it was time to leave for their nightly drinks. Before they left, however, hide suddenly asked, “REM, should I wash your hair for you?”

REM thought it was a bit weird to have his friend wash his hair, but he had no real reason to refuse and also found the offer kind of charming. So he lay down on the hairdresser-chair and looked at the ceiling while above him, hide’s face changed into his hairdresser-face, which was different from what REM was used to.

While hide himself always protected his skin from the sun, he now said things like how REM, who had quite the tan, should get an even darker tan, while he was expertly washing his hair. The sensation was so nice that REM relaxed more and more until he finally fell asleep right there in the middle of getting his hair washed. Even today, he still remembers how good it felt.

That night they went out with REM’s hair all smooth from hide’s magical hands.

Jumping forward to February 1997, REM tells how hide, accompanied by his younger brother, came to the dental clinic REM was director of to get his dental calculus removed before going to Los Angeles. The staff had already gone home and REM took care of the treatment himself. As hide was lying down in the dentist’s chair and closed his eyes, in REM’s mind the image overlapped with the memory of himself in the hairdresser’s chair 12 years earlier, and he wondered if hide remembered that, too. Now he cannot ask him anymore.

To give an easily understandable example of hide’s focus on visuals, REM explains how hide poured more passion into the graphic design of their band’s posters and flyers than anyone else. He made them all on his own, and since computers weren’t common back then, he made them from scratch. It was hide who noticed that the abandoned car near drummer Ken’s house was pretty cool! So he made photos of the band with the rusty, junky car as a feature in it. He put the photos together on drawing paper, added cut-outs from magazines as a collage, and then the time and place of their upcoming shows. Since there was no color-copying either, he took the enlarged posters and colored them all by hand. The small copies became black-and-white flyers.

Hide was lively and cheerful while working on the designs and seemed to really enjoy it.

Those posters and flyers are still hanging on the wall of REM’s recording room (i.e. the 8-Tatami room in his family’s house that is just for his own use). Interestingly, those flyers started with the words “VISUAL LOUD & CULT”. Even in the mid-eighties, hide already naturally used those words. REM speculates that the design of the pamphlet for hide’s first solo tour was probably also his idea: An elaborate design based on the kind of power book that hide used at the time.

When REM joined SAVER TIGER, the band had about one live per month at the live house ROCK CITY in Yokosuka. REM’s first live with them was also at that location. Since drummer Ken and bassist Jimmy both worked at that place, the band got to practice there every Sunday afternoon. Afterwards, they all gathered at the house of hide’s family. What they were after, there, was his mom’s plentiful and delicious homemade food.

It was really good, and there was enough of it for their (financially) poor, hungry inner beasts starved by the harsh training to be fully satisfied. Vocalist Rolly always said, “Let’s stuff ourselves!” and have a second helping.

Their favorite dish was Mama Matsumoto’s homemade gyoza. Even now, REM can’t forget the taste. If he thinks about it, his stomach growls automatically. Anyone who ever went to “Parkside X”, a pub hide’s parents would later run, and ate their famous homemade gyoza-dish, would certainly understand.

But Parkside X also doesn’t exist anymore.

[Note: It is difficult to find anything about it, but from what I could gather, Parkside X was in business until the 1st of May 1998.]

Hide’s parents have taken care of successive generations of SAVER TIGER in other ways as well, but it was thanks to his mom’s cooking that the band got its power even in the present.

Unfortunately, those loving parents and hide also fought about the fact that he wanted to devote his life to music. Sometimes, REM would want to drop by for a visit only to run away again when hearing the sounds coming from hide’s 2nd floor room, sounding like a rebellious rampage. Even when coming across them now, REM thinks that hide’s parents just had a very normal way of thinking, and were worried that their beloved son would waste his life on such an insecure and intangible profession as the music industry.

When they met for dinner at hide’s home, his mom’s favorite advice to all of them was, “Please get a normal job!”

REM thinks that such feelings are very normal for all parents, especially now that he is a father himself. Even so, he also knew that with hide’s personality being what it was, he would never have given up the path of music that he had chosen for himself.

After hide later started to climb the ladder towards being a professional musician with the very successful Budokan-performance, his parents started to support him with a positive attitude – though REM isn’t sure if this is because they were finally at peace and stopped worrying now that things were going well, or if they had simply resigned themselves to the fact that this was really happening and there was nothing they could do to change that.

When REM visited hide and saw the love his father and mother had for their son as they chatted casually about his current circumstances with him, he couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.

SAVER TIGER practiced a lot in those days. And since their leader was perfectionist hide, the practice was also hard, of course. They practiced two to three times per week, starting at night and going on until six in the morning. In that time, they only had te10 to 15 minute breaks, but even during those, they – and especially hide – would continue to talk about music: What to do here, if it wouldn’t be better than change that, etc. So, it was like going until morning with no break at all.

Consequently, by the end of it, they were all exhausted, and no one more so than REM. But on the other hand, they improved a lot, and it was ultimately a fun time.

There are bad band leaders who cannot get the members of their bands to follow them, but hide was a natural in that regard. He saw the strong points of each member and managed to pull out their best.

He was also considerate.

When REM had only just joined the band and struggled with the unfamiliar songs, hide gave him a cassette tape one day. On this tape were all of SAVER TIGER’s original songs, with hide singing along to his guitar and giving a narration on various parts regarding what to do there. A full commentary on all songs. It was very well done. Hide must have put a lot of time and effort into it.

REM can only admire hide’s willingness to devote time to making good music and his care and attentiveness towards his bandmembers.

REM is SAVER TIGER’s leader now, and it often makes him think of hide’s skill in getting the best out of the band, as well as the hardships of the position that are hidden from view.

When there was no practice, hide would often visit REM at his apartment. In winter, he would slip under the kotatsu [Note: heated table] and spend all evening playing guitar. Then, suddenly, he would put a radio cassette recorder on top of the kotatsu and record the phrase or melody he just thought of. He would then ask REM for his opinion, and they would discuss what to do here or there until morning. On the days they didn’t see each other, hide would still call REM to discuss their songs or what to do with their guitars at their next live, so in regard to music they basically met every day.

REM’s weekly schedule at the time was as follows:

2-3 times practice.

At the same pace, band meetings that doubled as drinking sessions. Those lasted until morning as well and always ended on Dobuita-Street.

On the other days, he and hide created songs in his apartment.

REM and hide also often went to see the lives of indie bands that got famous, to form connections, do promotion, and get references for songs and stages etc.

While REM, as expected of a guitarist, always looked at what the guitars were doing, hide always looked at everything: Ensemble, harmony, rhythm, etc., but also things like guitar technique and sound. Even then you could catch a glimpse of the qualities of an excellent music producer that hide possessed.

As a little side story, REM tells of the t-shirts that SAVER TIGER also produced at the time and sold at their lives. That wasn’t exactly a common thing for indie bands to do. Hide had an admirably professional mindset when it come to things like promotion even then. This showed even when they went to the lives of other bands as well.

The guitar REM mostly used then was a white Stratocaster with “Flying V” in black on it. He also had a Les Paul for lives, but mostly he used the Strat.

Hide’s favorite was the Mockingbird. He also brought a substitute to lives, in case the strings broke, but if he had the choice, he would choose the Mockingbird, claiming that other guitars were hard to play.

What set them apart from other indie bands were the double leads of REM’s and hide’s twin guitars. REM doesn’t know for sure when it comes to the entire country, but in the vicinity of Yokosuka, there was no other band with guitars like that. It had already been that way before REM joined: Back then, the twin leads had been hide and another guitarist, whom REM replaced.

It was generally more popular to have one lead guitar and a side guitar, because twin leads required the guitarists to work together and harmonize perfectly. In that regard, REM, who identified fully as a guitar-artist, was probably perfectly compatible with hide, who used to say, “Even though I play the guitar, I am not a guitarist.”

He said that while he was a guitarist in the band, he would leave the solos outside the twin parts to REM, since he was doing other stuff as well. It showed that even then he jumped out of the frame of being a guitarist and was just generally an artist as well.

At the time, beyond the quality of their music, hide also had an awareness for entertainment and always considered the looks and staging of their performances as well.

There were many things that REM realized suddenly about hide through the years, and one of them was that even during their amateur days, hide thought like a professional musician.

Another thing hide used to say was that their appearance and everything they did on stage was one whole. He strongly believed that all aspects played together to create one big picture, and he wouldn’t allow himself to have even one damaged part in it.

This principle is the origin for the focus on his way to becoming a vocalist and the stylish staging of his promotional videos, REM thinks.

What made him so charismatic in Yokosuka were the sharpness of his expressions, the abundance of his ideas, and the speed in which they pulled them out. His mind was like a surprise box, and he had the strength of will to immediately materialize his ideas. This, combined with the lightness of his performances, made up the artist hide.

Those things brought a sense of urgency, tension, and anticipation to SAVER TIGER’s performances, which was found in no other band in Yokosuka.

When REM had watched SAVER TIGER perform that first time, he thought, “It’s like watching a theater play.”

And that was it for the serious side story. Back to the fun part!

Speaking of which: When REM praised hide’s diligence too much, hide would get embarrassed and tell him to stop. When it came to things other than music, he also loved fun, interesting stuff and often made plans that were extremely, if innocently, naughty.

When it came to song titles and the like, hide had a unique sense for words.

He organized everything on his own: Live house booking, member schedules, communication with the bands they performed with, or against. When it came to music, he was an extremely energetic person.

As soon as the live was decided, hide would gleefully begin to create the flyers. He included the pictures of the members, then their names, and the other info. At one time, SAVER TIGER had a new drummer names Kosuke, who is also SAVER TIGER’s current drummer in 1999. And for whatever reason, instead of putting his name as “Kosuke” under his picture, hide spelled it as “KILL WITH POWER”. Nobody ever called him that. Maybe hide thought it had more punch. REM didn’t know about it and didn’t pay attention.

At that time, REM’s apartment was the SAVER TIGER OFFICE, because he was the only one living on his own. His phone number was their official contact number as well. So one night the phone rings and the voice of a young girl says, “Uh, is KILL-san there? I am a big fan of KILL-san. KILL-san!” Completely oblivious to the fact that REM’s heart raced and he thought he was about to get murdered.

Continued in part 2

[turtleations]

PINK CLOUDY SKY, Chapter 00 - 01 (Summarized)

Note 1: First of a series about a book called "Pink Couldy Sky", published in 1999 and written by REM, aka Araki Masahiko, who used to play guitar in hide's band Saver Tiger and revived that band in 1997. Each part is going to cover one or two chapters, depending on length.

Note 2: This one is a little stange to call a summary. It's certainly a detailed one. In places if borders on a translation, albeit one that moves from first to third person. In other places it is less detailed because things like the weather can be summed up in a few words. And ocassionally, it will be vague, because I struggled to make sense of the source material.

Chapter 00 – Into the Sky of Falling Cherry Blossoms

The book starts with REM making his way to his dentist’s office in Yokosuka in spring 1999, describing the pink cherry blossoms in front of the grey-blue sky, the smell, the strong breeze from the sea. He lets himself in, greets the staff when the show up, and goes to the waiting room to change into his white coat. In the room there are two guitars: One a carefully packed memento of a friend, the other one the one he uses the practice during his breaks. Looking at it he switches from Musician-Mode into Dentist-Mode to start his day.

He has to think of the first time his friend visited his clinic and exclaimed, “You really did become a dentist!” It was such a typical thing for him to say, as he was someone very honest and frank, yet terribly shy and always ready to take you into his heart.

Outside, spring is slowly changing into early summer, and REM cannot believe that it has been a year already. He wonders if the wind has been this strong as well on that day, carrying the scent of flowers and inviting his friend along to the sky with the drifting leaves…

There is also a dental imprint that he once made of his friend, the only thing left over of his physical form that remains close to him. It seems to speak to him now, saying, “Hey, do your best, because you have a dream to fulfil!” Reminding him of a promise they made to each other.

Looking out of the window at the pink and the clouds, his mind moves back to those days.

Chapter 01 – 13 December 1998

The first stop down memory lane is not that long ago: About half a year earlier, REM was in Tokyo for the first time in a while, to participate in a multi-band event in an underground livehouse. The city feels cold, grey and unwelcoming as he takes a stroll while waiting for his band’s turn after their rehearsal.

It’s December 13, 1998, and the event is held in honor of hide’s birthday. Or of what should have been hide’s birthday. If he were still alive.

As he gets back to the location, there are a lot of people waiting outside the doors. A lot of young girls, many of them sporting pink hair or hide-like make-up. Also, a lot of young boys sporting pimples. As he opens the doors and is welcomed by the sound of the electric guitar of the band currently rehearsing, REM’s bad feelings disappear and he feels right at home in this place of rock music.

Aside from REM’s own band, SAVER TIGER, plenty of other bands from as far as Osaka have come, as well as fans from all over the country, to celebrate hide’s birthday. The custom at events with multiple bands is that the band going last rehearses first. SAVER TIGER is the third of five bands to play, and was the third to rehearse. The young band to first go out is rehearsing right now, their sound unrefined but promising. Hearing their music ring out to the still empty audience seats, REM is reminded of the good old days he spent with hide, when nothing scared them even though everything was scary. But this is not the time for dwelling on the past. He can do that later, just like he would go out for a drink later, with hide, who should have been here, too.

First, their performance. There is a tension in REM, like something is waiting to come down on them. SAVER TIGER’s line-up consists of REM himself on guitar, drummer Kosuke and bassist Jimmy, who had both been members of SAVER TIGER before, when it was still hide’s band, and Shiomi, a vocalist REM had been in a band with even before he originally joined SAVER TIGER, now helping out because SAVER TIGER hasn’t found their own vocalist yet. The first song they perform is called “Hidebound Wild Beast”, one of the new songs made after the band’s revival. They start slow, build up the music and the tension, REM loses himself in the performance…

…and then, halfway through this first song, his guitar stops working.

The effector broke. It’s a random accident, a one in ten thousand chance that something like that would happen. And the first time ever that it happened to REM. All he can do is close his eyes and let the others finish the song without him.

There is a twenty-minute break during which the staff attempts to fix the problem, but to no avail. The others have to play the other two songs – “Sweeper” and “Spady Madik” – without the guitar.

REM can’t help but think of his previous premonition that something would happen, and then this random unlikely misfortune occurred, and they had to leave their song incomplete, on this live in honor of hide’s birthday. It seems fitting, as hide was a guy who seemed to call out for trouble to come.

After they finished, REM is suddenly overcome by the need to deliver a message to the fans of hide in the audience – one he has been carrying in his heart since that fateful day. So he calls out to them, telling them that hide’s death was definitely an accident, that he would never take his own life. He should have turned 34 years old today, should be preparing for a live performance right now, so if any of them absolutely wants to meet him, killing themselves is not going to get them to him. As he’s speaking, he feels like hide is speaking through him.

Memories begin to appear and disappear in his mind, and this, too, he thinks is a gift from hide, who he imagines came there tonight. REM’s best, sworn friend: Always kind, never forgetting to look out for people and take care of them, sending his wishes this way.

Chapter 02

[turtleations]

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 06 – Crossroads (Summarized) - Part 2

Chapter 00 - 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Part 1, Part 2 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Part 1

The story returns to the end of the eighties, the early nineties. After a year of not touching his guitar, REM tentatively started playing again and became part of a newly formed band called “AMIT”, playing covers of artists like Rush or Van Halen. However, he saw his musical activities as only a hobby. His focus for the future remined on becoming a dentist.

Still, since it was in these days that he bought the equipment needed to record his own songs at home, it seems that he was not quite ready the completely throw music away after all. Only, he had no concrete aim for it. Deep inside he still thought, no, he was certain that one day the time would come when he wanted to earnestly do music again.

Here, he wants to talk about the members of AMIT a little, who were his moral support then and still are his very close friends and band mates. Back then, all of them were students of dental medicine, and the name of the band was just the initials of their names being lined up. Today, they are all practicing dentists, and a weird, self-proclaimed “wedding-party band”.

The “A” in AMIT stood for Araki, REM’s family name. “M” was their drummer Mikami, “I” bassist Ishikawa, and “T” the other guitarist Takamichi. At first, REM tentatively doubled as a vocalist, but eventually they were joined by a vocalist called Nakamaru, who was a dental student as well back then and by now has opened a dental clinic in his hometown of Hiroshima. REM still has email exchanges with him. The other members all work in the neighborhood of Yokosuka and often come to the new SAVER TIGER’s lives.

Forming the band had been the idea of Takamichi, thanks to whom REM once again became active in a band. Doing some casual music, he found, wasn’t so bad…

And through AMIT’s activities, REM could stay in shape, musically. 

-

During those day, REM continued to be in contact with hide. Being guitarist of an established band, hide spend a lot of time aboard, to the point of setting up residence in Los Angeles.

“X” had an extremely successful live at Budoukan, soon changed their name to “X JAPAN”, and started aiming for an international market.

Still, hide often called across the world from L.A., laughing and saying that once he was back in Japan, they should go drinking on Dobuita together! And when they did drink on Dobuita, they did so until morning. Afterwards, rather than staying at his parent’s house in Yokosuka, hide always returned to his place in Tokyo. When he was drinking, hide was cheerful and happily talked about the ideas he came up with.

“I want to get an elephant on stage, how would I do that?” Stuff like that. It was typical for hide; he was like a surprise box of ideas.

He didn’t really talk about himself.

Even though REM had given up his music dreams, hide always listened attentively and seriously when he did talk about music, or gave a status-update. If REM, for example, talked about a new guitar he had gotten, or a live he had seen, or a live he had given, or if he went to Tokyo to drink… hide always seemed to share the happiness or the regrets from REM’s trivial stories.

It was in those days that REM and hide had their first and last fight ever.

In that year, REM was to finally become a dentist. To graduate from university, he was desperate to break through the barrier called “final exams”. During that phase, hide called REM a few times to invite him for drinks, but REM always declined to focus on his studies until the exams were over.

Becoming a dentist was the goal he had been working for to the point of giving up music for it. To the detriment of his music friends, starting with hide. And then the day of the exams that he had been learning for so fervently came, and it did not go well.

On the day the exams ended, REM got a call from hide who had been genuinely worrying about REM’s success. But REM was feeling down because the exams went badly. And on top of that, he had been informed, once they were over, that his mother was in the hospital.

Her condition wasn’t good, but REM’s father, who was a doctor after all, assured him that it would be okay, so REM figured it couldn’t be that bad. Still, he worried.

With all of that piling up, he was half-hearted about meeting with hide that day. All the same, since he got so enthusiastically invited, they met for drinks in Yokosuka after all. They met at “Parkside X” and then moved on to their usual place, “Buffalo” on Dobuita Street.

Yet, however much he drank, REM couldn’t get drunk that day. He still wasn’t over the shock of learning that his mother had been hospitalized without him knowing about it, or the shock of failing such an important exam. He wasn’t able to ban those things from his mind and his mood was dark. He couldn’t help himself.

Eventually, trying to cheer him up, hide said, “Let’s go to my office in Tokyo after this! I’ll show you around.” And, “After passing your finals, you’re going to start working. The first floor of my office building is empty. You can open a dental office there!”

Hide talked about this idea with bright eyes and child-like enthusiasm.

His proposal wasn’t just about the dental office. He wanted REM the musician by his side.

REM thinks that around this time, beyond being X’s guitarist, hide was thinking about starting solo activities. Bit by bit, he had begun to write songs and lyrics for that purpose.

He wished for REM to support him in that. To help with the creative process, to play the guitar. If possible, he wanted them to write songs together again. That was hide’s proposal.

“Because I am at a critical state right now, I really wish you’d come to the office with me today.”

However, that night, REM just couldn’t crawl up from the deep pool of darkness in his heart.

“…I can’t go.”

“Let’s go, right now, okay?”

“No, I can’t.”

“All the more reason to go!”

In that manner, they went on and on.

Looking back, REM thinks that hide had been really serious about it.

And REM was in the worst mental condition he had ever experienced. He honestly couldn’t help himself.

Hide’s proposal had made him happy. That hide had expressed to him how genuinely important REM was to him, that he was so serious about this. But fact is that REM just wasn’t in the mood to go to Tokyo just then. And so, he continued to decline.

It continued like this, back and forth, for about an hour. Then hide suddenly stood, yelled, “Why can’t you fucking go! And I waited for you all this time!” and ran from the building.

When he heard the words “I waited for you,” REM jumped up as well, feeling like someone had slapped the back of his head. Frantic, he ran after hide, but it was too late. Hide was nowhere to be seen. REM searched for him until he was dripping with sweat, but he couldn’t find him anywhere.

The moon was barely there, the night was pitch black. It was like hide’s retreating form had melted into the darkness and been swallowed by the Yokosuka night.

When REM returned to his apartment after giving up his search, he got a call from hide’s mother.

“What happened? Did you have a fight?”

After hide ran off, he had ended up at his parents’ place, and he was so violently upset that his mother became worried enough to call REM.

The next day, hide was the one calling him, asking, “Did I say something last night?”

Deep in his heart, REM felt a pang of gratitude at hide’s thoughtful kindness. Clearly, he remembered everything that had happened. But REM thought that it was out of consideration for him that hide pretended to have forgotten.

Thinking about it now, REM comes to the conclusion that up until that point, hide must have been convinced that REM would eventually return to the music world. He had been waiting for the time when the two of them could make music together again. And what he had really been saying that night was, “REM, come back already!”

-

Contrary to his expectations, REM actually passed his exams. To celebrate, he once again went out for drinks with hide. Only this time, hide did not say a single word about inviting him.

Now that he was calmer, REM had been able to consider hide’s proposal and started to think that practicing as a dentist close to hide in Tokyo wouldn’t be so bad. Except that, when hide had needed him, REM hadn’t been with him at all. When REM thought about how desperately hide had asked for him only to be turned down, he couldn’t say anything.

It had been a night full of regrets. Even now, he sometimes thinks that. The slight differences in human hearts, leading to misunderstandings…

 It was a moment that contained an eternity. A crossroad of destiny.

Not long after, REM undertook the state exam for his profession. The event took place in Tokyo on two consecutive days and REM stayed in the city overnight.

At the end of the first day, REM called his parents’ home to inquire about his mother’s condition, and his older sister brightly told him not to worry. Momentarily assured, REM attended the exam the following day, which he finished without any problems.

After finishing, all the students returned to Yokosuka by bus together so they could hand in the self-scoring for the exam before returning home. On the bus, REM used his cell phone to once again call his parents’ number, overcome by a strange uneasiness. Again, his sister picked up the phone. This time, she was different from the night before. This time, she was crying.

“Mom is in critical condition. She’s lost consciousness. Until your exams were over, she didn’t want us to tell you about it, that’s why I couldn’t say anything last night. I’m sorry…”

REM ended up being the only one to not submit his self-score that day. In a stupor, he went straight to Haneda Airport. But when he arrived, the last plane to Shikoku had already left. With no other choice, he camped outside the airport, not getting a moment of sleep, and got on the first flight the next morning.

Once he arrived on Shikoku, he rushed to the hospital his mother was in, but it was already too late. His mother was unconscious and kept alive only by a ventilator. Thirty minutes after REM made it there, silently and as if drifting to sleep, she passed away.

Half a year earlier, his father had examined her and known that there was no saving her anymore. The tumors in her body had grown out of control. And she was already in a condition where surgery was no longer an option. All REM’s father could do as a surgeon was choose his wife’s medication and make sure that she could spend her remaining days as peacefully as possible.

That his mother would be the first to go came as an unexpected shock not only to REM but to his father as well. Because the one who had wandered the line between life and death twice before because of cancer had not been his wife, but him.

The first time had been more than twenty years before his wife’s death. Diagnosed with rectal cancer, REM’s father underwent major surgery and was given a 50 % chance of survival. What had helped him in his miraculous recovery was the selfless care of his wife.

The second time had been a year before REM’s mother had so suddenly left them. Once again, REM’s father faced a cancer diagnosis. This time it was lung cancer, and while surgery was possible, the attending physician informed him that his chance of survival was only about 30 %.

Once again, his wife gave him marvelous care. The surgery was a splendid success. But after-effects remained.

It had been hard for REM to see his strong-willed father lie unresisting in a hospital bed, breathing through a tube in a hole in his throat. But thanks to the devoted care of his wife who looked after him tirelessly and ignored her own needs, he managed to make another miraculous recovery.

Looking back, the tumors must have already been growing in REM’s mother’s body. And if they had been discovered then, there should have been at least a little chance to save her.

But it seems that during the care for her husband and his rehabilitation, she didn’t have the time to take care of herself or listen to her body’s signals.

When his life slowly returned to normal after half a year of fighting his illness, REM’s father noticed that there was something wrong with his wife’s condition. He then discovered the cancer in her body, but by that point it was already too late.

Half a year later, as if trading places with her husband, REM’s mother left the world because of that cancer. Strangely, it was lung cancer she had suffered from, just as her husband had before.

Holding vigil over his wife’s body, hunched over and talking to no one, REM’s father murmured, “It feels like your mother has been carrying all the misfortune…”

At this time, REM didn’t worry about his state exam at all. Even though he did not do the self-score, he had been convinced the moment he finished that he had passed. At the same time, he did not feel happy about it. The shock of his mother’s death had left a large hole in his heart.

So it was without emotion that he received the confirmation of his success.

All this happened in the hot summer of 1993. REM hadn’t given any thought as to what to do after his graduation. He wasn’t able to. The sense of loss affected him beyond all expectations.

In the end, he stayed in college. He started working for a former teacher of his, Professor Arakawa, who had been one of the few teachers during his student days who had shown him understanding and encouragement. He was worried about REM who was so shaken by the loss of his irreplaceable mother just at the time of his graduation, and told him the following: “Let’s work together. Get back on your feet. Then you will also be able to play your beloved music again.” And he invited REM to the General Medine Department that he was a part of.

It was not just Professor Arakawa. The bandmates from his college band DOPPEL GANGER and the guys from AMIT called him just about every day to cheer him up. The warmth of many friends melted his frozen heart, and he was eventually able to choose a path for his future.

At this point, hide spend most of his time in L.A. and only occasionally came back to Japan. But when he did, he always went out for drinks with REM.

REM still regretted that he had done nothing when hide had needed him the most. He kept hearing hide’s voice from that night, calling out to him.

Therefore, to REM, hide and him were only drinking buddies now, if good ones. Drinking with hide was all REM felt he could do. It was all he was good for. That’s what he kept thinking deep inside.

Then, one night, hide showed up at REM’s apartment with some ten-odd people in tow. REM had moved to a new place after starting to work at the university. Hide, who had been drinking at Dobuita, marched there with his group of people, some of them foreigners whom REM didn’t know at all. It was quite the uproar and must have been annoying for the neighbors, but for REM and hide, it was finally a good night again.

At the end of the night, REM took hide home, and on the way, he told him, “That time, I was very happy that I was so important to you. It’s just that I was dealing with some private problems… I’m sorry.”

Then, hide said, “…it’s okay. I absolutely want to play with members of SAVER’s successive generations on a solo album. So, keep playing the guitar every day. Because when the time comes, I’m asking you…”

He stopped talking. REM looked over to see what was wrong and saw that he was crying.

After he stopped crying, hide said to REM, “It’s all good. Because from now on, we can do anything.”

Suddenly, the vision of REM, who was driving the car, turned cloudy.

It wasn’t raining.

Chapter 07

[turtleations]

Pink Couldy Sky, Chapter 02 (Summarized)

Chapter 00 - 01

Chapter 02 - Awakening

In the second chapter, REM describes his childhood and his way to rock music. He was born in Nagasaki. The exact date is never given, but he occasionally mentioned his age at specific points, from which I figured he must have been born between September 1963 and April 1964. He had an older sister, and from the thank you to his supporters at the end of the book, I learned that he also had a younger brother who is never otherwise mentioned. His father was a doctor.

When he was one year old, the family moved to a small town in the deepest province of Tokushima, Shikoku, where his father worked at the local hospital. Since his parents thought that musical education is important, he had to learn the piano and came to the conclusion that he actually hated music. This, however, changed when he was nine and his sister got a guitar. As it turned out, he only hated practicing the piano.

So, REM switched to the guitar and enjoyed it a lot. At the time he was only playing folk songs, because that was all he knew, and eventually, his interest died down again. Until three years later: When he was thirteen, during the summer vacation of his first year of middle school, his parents sent him on a trip to Los Angeles with a boy scout program. For about two weeks he stayed at the home of one of the American boy scouts and participated in a bunch of events and activities meant to lead to cultural exchange and gathering personal experiences. For REM, the country boy who had never even visited Tokyo, to take his first trip alone all the way to the United States and a mega city like L.A., this was pretty exciting.

He made friends with one of the American boys despite obvious obstacles with their communication. The time came to exchange culturally significant gifts and REM gave his friend a 5-Yen coin, which was much appreciated because of the hole in it. His American friend, in return, gave him a cassette tape to listen to with “Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple on it. And hearing that intro, his life was changed forever. Except that the cassette tape was not labelled, which led to a major misunderstanding on his part that would dominate the next several months of his life.

Visiting his friend, the friend showed him his favorite album, which was by the band KISS. And since REM had no idea who had made the song from the cassette tape or what it was called, he just assumed that it was a KISS song as well.

He copied the album from his friend, assuming the song to be on it, only to find upon listening to the whole thing that it was not. Coming back home, there was no one in his neck of the woods who could have corrected his assumption, and his family had a music deck but no radio, so he spent all of his pocket money buying all the KISS albums, looking for that elusive song while spending the evenings listening with his headphones on. Of course, he never found it. But while looking for it, he came to like KISS’s music more and more.

Eventually, his parents bought him a cassette deck with a radio of his own and one day he was listening to some late-night radio program when suddenly there it was: The phantom song he had been looking for for half a year by then.

Afterwards, the radio host introduced the song and REM was pretty shocked that he had spent all his money looking for it on the albums of the wrong band. But since by then he was quite the KISS fan, that wasn’t actually too bad. And that is the story how he found his livelong musical idols by searching all of their albums for a song of someone else…

REM’s idol was KISS-bassist Gene Simmons and his father one day bought him a bass-guitar, so REM actually started his musician life as a bassist. He copied the bass and guitar parts of KISS’s songs by ear on his electric bass and his sister’s gut guitar. That he had such a good ear for notes was, ironically, thanks to the hated piano lessons his parents had forced on him, so he had to be grateful for them in the end after all. As before, he put all of his money into record and music magazines. He loved hard rock and progressive rock and got into bands like Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols and Rush. In fact, by the time of writing the book in 1999, Rush’s “Moving Pictures” was still one of his all-time favorite albums. Neil Peart was his favorite drummer, although he also had to mention his own current bandmate Kosuke, whose sound and play style was similar to Peart’s.

Eventually, REM was no longer content just to listen to music and play songs in his room. He wanted a band of his own, but being in the deepest province, fellow rock-loving musicians were impossible to come by and there was no one around who owned an electric guitar or a drum set. In his second year of middle school, at the age of fourteen, he finally managed to get a band together by more or less forcing some friends from his Kendo-club into it. Not only did he love making music together, but on top of that this band finally united him with the instrument of his heart:

The friend he had assigned the role of the guitarist to got an electric guitar, and he let REM use it one day. The effect this had on REM was similar to the moment he heard Smoke On The Water for the first time. He knew, this was the instrument for him! So he just held on to it tightly, informed his friend that he was going to play it and the friend was the bassist from now on, and never stopped to think that he was being a bit of an asshole. Being young is terrible…

Unfortunately, this memorable, historical band never got a name as they broke up before they could think of one. They only performed once: On the middle school graduation party. They played songs by KISS and Twist, and the reaction of their teachers made it very clear that the province of Shikoku was not the place for this kind of noise. Not that REM cared.

REM’s next school was a high school in Wakimachi, were he immediately joined a band as a bassist. The Band was called “Fourth Dimension” and consisted otherwise of third-year students. Due to those graduating, there were frequent member changes, but the band kept going through them all, and was quite popular. When they played in the school’s park, there were plenty of people watching them. They did hard rock and heavy metal and copied songs by Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Scorpions etc.

Due to the band’s leader graduating, REM got the role of the leader soon after joining, and he upheld the tradition of recurring member changes with passion: Whenever he thought that someone’s skills weren’t enough for his band, he ruthlessly kicked them out. Those were carefree days in which he did not fear anything that might be ahead of him, but looking back he is sorry for all the hurt he must have caused back then without thinking about it.

At some point he met with a former bandmate who had since graduated. The guy laughed as he talked to him but then suddenly stared him right in the face and pointed out that coldly firing band members he found lacking was something becoming of a big city band aspiring to go professional, not something for a provincial high school cover band, and that REM was quite unbelievable.

If, on the other hand, REM heard a rumor about a good musician he immediately checked them out.

He practiced a lot those days, as did his bandmates, some of whom he is still music-friends with at the time of writing, like the former drummer/bandleader Oomori, and the vocalist, both of whom are now running businesses in Tokyo.

He also discovered a weakness for motorbikes in those days, through the leader of a biker-gang whom an older classmate introduced him to. The guy had lost his parents at a young age and dropped out of school to support the grandmother he was living with. He liked rock music and at some point during their conversations he showed REM his prized bike.

It was cool, but ultimately, REM’s passion here remained shallow. He remembers those days as a time where he absorbed a lot of experiences, but also as a time when he was rather lonely. He did not really feel a deep connection to any of his so-called friends. The time where he was able to open his heart to people had not yet come.

He could have become a delinquent at this point in his life, and the main reason why this didn’t happen was because there wasn’t really room in his head for anything other than music.

When he was sixteen, The 4th Dimension-band recorded their first independent album. It was called “All in All” and was an LP will all original songs. REM contributed to it on the bass, but his heart continued to belong to the electric guitar. Being self-taught, he practiced tirelessly and completely absorbed.

When he was seventeen, the point came where he started to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. And his idea started to form when he visited the house of a friend in his neighborhood. The house happened to belong to a dentist, and there were plenty of expensive cars in the garage whenever REM looked inside. He thus came to the conclusion that being a dentist was pretty profitable. And he wanted a profitable job so he could one day own the Gipson Les Paul he was dreaming of, and have a studio to make music in in his own house. Meanwhile, the idea of becoming a professional musician never crossed his mind here. Or rather, while the wish did exist somewhere deep inside of him, he kept it locked away there, as the province of Shikoku around 1980 was not a place where it could prosper.

In other words, he had no idea how to go about his existence as a musician. On top of that, his parents wanted him to enter a medical profession, and he never really put that into question. But he absolutely did not want to become a doctor like his father, who often left late at night for some emergency only to come home when REM was about to leave for school, looking haggard. A dentist, however…

REM used to hate going to the dentist as a child. Still, by the time he was eighteen, his mind was made up, but he also approached the whole plan with a certain naivety and when the time came to take the entrance exam to university, he promptly failed it.

Nothing to be done about that. He consulted with his parents and then went to a prep-school in Tokyo to prepare for the next attempt. It was a boarding school where everyone lived in dorms, and his guitar was not allowed there, but REM smuggled it in anyway and hid it under his bed. Thus began his days of playing his forbidden guitar, drinking alcohol, and betraying the hopes and expectations of his parents, who had taken a mortgage on their house to pay for his failed entrance exam and then to send him to prep-school.

His main emotional support in those days was Akiyama, a friend from his high-school band, who also went to prep-school in Tokyo for some design related career and who offered REM mutual encouragement and support in every aspect of his life. It was around this time that REM started creating original songs of his own, which he would let Akiyama listen to on his Walkman, and during the summer holiday, Akiyama helped him create his songs in their studio back in Tokushima.

The studio in question was a wooden shed on top of a mountain that belonged to the family of 4th Dimension’s bandleader Oomori. During his school days, REM and his bandmates would go there to practice and record during the summer holidays as well. They stayed there for about a week, bringing sleeping bags as well as provisions in the form of instant ramen, potato chips and cola. They also waged a never ending war against the mosquitos.

Going back there now to record with Akiyama filled him with nostalgic happiness and he felt like he was creating the songs for their old band. Those days were the happiest memories of his prep-school time, which he describes as hard and painful, in a Tokyo he could not get used to living in.

Winter came. REM was nineteen. He took the university entrance exam again and once again, he failed it.

This time, he was absolutely shocked and crushed. He was not prepared for this situation, didn’t know what to do. He was shocked to the point of giving up his plans for the future. Right now, he just wanted to get away from Tokyo and from everything…

…and ended up in Osaka, crashing at his sister’s place.

REM’s sister was an art student. REM literally fled to her apartment and spend the next period of his life hating himself, who had taken advantage of his parents like that with nothing to show for it. He was physically and mentally crushed and had no idea how to approach his own future now.

During the daytime, he would hang out at a music store whose staff he came to know well. At night, he went to the live houses. Overall, he wandered the city aimlessly, and a drank a lot, and when he was done, he drank more.

The one thing that made this time of his life bearable in any way was practicing the guitar, which he did eight to ten hours per day. Without that, he feels now that he would not have managed to recover and get back out of that hell.

But he found a goal again, and he found it in the live houses. There were awesome bands playing here, like X-RAY, Marimo, 44-Magnum, and of course Loudness. They managed to push REM back into action, because he wanted to make music – but not their kind of music.

Given time, and if became friends with musicians from the area, REM was sure he could have gotten into Osaka’s style of rock music as well. But something wasn’t quite right for him. He wanted to make the kind of music found in Tokyo.

And for that he needed to get back to Tokyo – as a student. Because if he just simply got a job there, he would not have enough free time for his music. On top of that, he did have the desire to gain expertise in something, to have some kind of profession. And so, in autumn, he expressed his feelings to his parents and started to get back into studying for the entrance exam. And this time, fortunately, he succeeded: The following year, he got accepted into not one but two universities – not in Tokyo proper, but Tokyo-adjacent in the Kanto-region. Kanagawa and Saitama were the provinces he could choose from and finally leave the seemingly endless bad times behind.

In spring 1984, at the age of twenty, REM went to meet the good part of his youth.

Chapter 03