WE ARE X: A MUSIC DOCUMENTARY BY STEPHEN KIJAK. MUSIC BY X JAPAN. STARRING YOSHIKI AND TOSHI. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Random
drug-seeker on the street: 'Hey dudes, got any X...?'
The
Band: 'Man, we ARE X...!'
I'm a little early with this review
(for a change!) but
I just couldn't wait to watch this film. It was shown at the 2017
Japanese Film Festival at Dublin's Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield
recently to a rapturous reception, especially from my best mate who
attended and is now the band's Number One Fan. (Move
over, Kathy Bates in MISERY!)
She also
declares herself madly in love with the band's lead singer Yoshiki now and wants to have his babies and grow old with him, etc. Bemused
much? Allow me to explain...
X JAPAN, formerly
known as just X, have
been described as 'the biggest band in the world
you've never heard of...yet!' They
were formed in Japan back in 1982 by a talented but tortured young
musical prodigy by the name of Yoshiki. This documentary follows
Yoshiki and the current line-up of the band around in the lead-up to
a huge comeback concert at one of the world's most iconic venues,
Madison Square Gardens, in 2014.
Artists
like Gene Simmons from KISS, who's
a huge friend and admirer of the band's, think that if the band members
had all been born in England or America instead of in Japan, they'd
be world-famous now, like KISS themselves.
As it is, X JAPAN are
now and have been for over three decades Japan's biggest and most
popular heavy metal group.
Now
he's a famous musician, songwriter, composer, fashion designer, radio
personality and record producer but back in the day, the devastatingly
good-looking Yoshiki, X JAPAN's
founding member, was a troubled teenager desperately trying to come
to terms with his father's suicide.
Yoshiki
was only eleven when it happened and we, the public, don't know the
details as far as I'm aware. What we do know,
however, is that to this day, Yoshiki still feels the pain of his
father's actions. Unsurprisingly, it's a heartache that never goes
away.
Yoshiki
immersed himself in his music and the heavy metal band he formed with
his best friend Toshi when he was only seventeen. A few short years
later, Yoshiki formed his own record label and the band had achieved
mainstream success by the late 'Eighties, thanks to their distinctive
sound and even more distinctive looks.
The
group is credited as being among the founding fathers of the 'visual
kei' movement in music.
This involves creating a very different and sort of rebellious look
for your band. Huge free-standing multi-coloured dyed hair, an excess
of make-up, boys being made-up to look like girls, magnificent
outfits that might include gorgeous feminine kimonos, that's the type
of thing you might expect to see. Everything over-the-top and simply
fabulous and
a bit like the Glam Rock look of artists like David Bowie and Marc
Bolan. (Although neither of those ever wore kimonos onstage, to the best of my knowledge!)
The
Yoshiki dolls we see in the documentary are just out-of-this-world
stunning. They make Barbie and Ken look like a sack of s**t, seriously.
Yoshiki's look has always been deliberately androgynous. Even today
he appears sleekly elegant and feminine-looking but it hasn't
prevented an army of female fans from treating him like the second
coming of rock god Jim Morrison.
He
has his own fashion line and a shrewd eye for what looks good on him.
Even the designers of the iconic and instantly recognisable HELLO
KITTY line of
adorable fashion accessories and suchlike have created a
line of 'YOSHIKITTY' products, all featuring the singing sensation's individualistic image.
Anyway, to
get back to the band's actual history, after fifteen years of success
beyond their wildest dreams and more rock 'n' roll excess than you
could shake a stick at, the band split up
and,
in Japan, it was a bit like The Beatles calling it a day. Fans all
over the country were distraught. It was 1997 and the end of an era
for followers of X JAPAN.
But worse, much worse was to come.
The band's
lead guitarist Hide committed suicide within six months of the group
disbanding. His death hit the other members hard. He just couldn't
handle the loss of the band in his life. That's how big a deal it
was for all of them.
There's footage of their 1997 farewell concert in the documentary and it was so sad, the tears were threatening the whole time I was watching it. All the band members were in bits while they were performing their songs for what they thought was the last time.
Then,
in 2011, the group's bass guitarist Taiji followed in Hide's tragic footsteps and took his own life, even though
the group had reformed in 2007. The remaining members of X
JAPAN still consider
their two deceased members to be very much a part of their group and
they even play audio or video clips of their friends' singing or playing at their
concerts.
The band's
history reminds me very much of Badfinger's tragic back-story. Two
members of Badfinger, a folk-pop-rock group from the
early-to-mid-'Seventies with close ties to The Beatles, took their
own lives as a result of depression brought about by terrible mismanagement of
their band and their money.
X JAPAN didn't
have management problems that I know of, but the suicides of Pete Ham
and Tommy Evans from Badfinger do closely
mirror the deaths of Hide and Taiji. The two bands have similarly sad
and disturbing histories and it's understandable that the remaining
band members in both cases would forever after live in the shadows of those painful
demises.
Anyway,
Yoshiki is very much the star of the documentary. I forgot to mention
that he's the group's drummer but, far from being
pushed into the background like drummers sometimes are- to make way
for the guitarists and lead vocalists- there's no mistaking who wears the glittery kimono in this
band, haha.
Watching
Yoshiki relate the story of the band's origins from 1982 to the
present day is a moving and touchingly emotional experience. The
suicides of some of the people closest to him have left him fragile and, as
his fans and online followers would know, he now requires urgent and
possibly life-threatening surgery on his neck, to correct damage caused
by years of drumming and headbanging in time to his own music. Ah, God love him, the wee angel. We wish him all the best for the future.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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