Episode 45: I Am an Artist

Around that time, I had a lot on my mind, and from about 2015 I decided to step away from music for a while.

I had even stopped being sure whether writing songs for idols was something I had really wanted to do in the first place.

When I first started playing guitar, my goal was to follow Akira Takasaki of Loudness and become a second Akira Takasaki. Yet somewhere along the way, I had become a composer for idols.

Even so, I'm deeply grateful that my songs were chosen and released into the world, but...

At that point, I felt I needed to rethink what I really wanted to do, so I set my guitar down for a while.

Some time later, in my forties, a feeling slowly began to well up inside me.

I love hard rock and heavy metal, and I had always vaguely wanted to repay the guitarists who carried me through my teenage years.

I am an artist. As long as it has to do with music, I can repay them even without a guitar.

And as a teenager, I was strongly drawn to the leather, the concho belts, and the straps worn in the '80s by David Coverdale of Whitesnake, and by Warrant, Winger, Skid Row, and W.A.S.P.

So I started wondering whether I could repay them through leather.

And then, in 2022...

To be continued.