Episode 24: Leaving the Band
Around that time, an artist who had appeared on the TV show Denpa Shonen and traveled to Russia was booked for a show at Akasaka Blitz, and we were invited to open for it. Our CD was timed to be ready for that show.
The show itself was a huge success. We were genuinely grateful. The artist even gave us a guitar and an amp cabinet — they looked out for us in so many ways. The after-party was held on the second floor of Zest in Mishuku, rented out just for us. That was the moment I first got a real sense of what the professional artist's world was like.
After that, record label reps kept coming to our shows, one after another. Among them, talks were moving forward with the label T.M.Revolution was signed to at the time.
But there was a problem within the band. I won't go into the details here.
Around this time, I'd started to care more about writing songs than about being a guitarist. I still loved bands like Skid Row, LOUDNESS, and METALLICA, and part of me wanted to be a guitarist in a band like that. But writing felt like it suited me better.
Co-writing started to feel wrong to me. The moment you co-write, you drift further from the image you had in your head. I was starting to believe that expressing my own vision fully, without compromise, was what actually made a better song.
There was also the question of whether a guitarist could really make a living in Japan. Songs earn royalties. A guitarist earns nothing from that unless he writes. It just didn't pay much. That was part of it too.
In the end, I left the band. That wasn't the only reason. My thinking was: write the songs myself, find a vocalist who fit them, and bring in a bassist and drummer as needed.
Written out like this, it might sound like I left easily. I didn't. Ippei and I clashed over a lot of things, and eventually I decided there was no way forward together. I said goodbye to Ippei and left the band to chase the music I believed in, on my own.
To be continued.
