First of all thank you for taking the time to talk to RockArea
and have a happy New Year! Last year was quite busy for you. The live
album “One Bad M.F. Live!!” was released on October 19. It is your
second live album after 10 years of break since “Exhibit A: Live in
Europe”. Why did you decided to record a live album at this point of
your career?
Thank you! I wanted to document my live show at this point because it`s a
wild and fun time for us right now. We`ve been lucky to have some
incredible nights out there over the last few tours. It`s been more than
just well executed performances, it`s been magic. You never know if or
when magic will ever happen again, so I wanted to capture this moment in
time on an album not only for us, but as a souvenir for everyone who is
coming to see us.
Your first live album was recorded during several shows in
Europe, „One Bad M.F. Live!!” during one show in South America in April
last year. On this tour you played in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and
Mexico. Why did you choose Mexico for this recording? What makes it such
an unique place and what was the most challenging about recording this
album?
We all loved all the places we played, but we chose Mexico City mainly
for logistics. The engineer I wanted to use lives in Nashville so that
was closest to Mexico, and there was also an excellent remote recording
unit in Mexico City for us. Any one of those shows would have been
equally exciting for us to record, but Mexico City was also the last
show of the tour so you might get some added emotion in the performance
knowing that you`re going home the next day.
Congratulations
on the graphic side of the album, it looks very old-school.
Characteristic folding, band photos on the back, it brings us back to
the good old Kiss-like days. How much were you involved in the graphic
design and choice of pictures for this album?
Thank you! I was very much involved with the graphics, as always. Over
my career, I have had many, many horrible album covers. Either I didn`t
care enough to work for a good one, or I didn`t have the talent to steer
it in a good direction, or I wasn`t involved in the process at all.
There is still really no excuse for them. They sucked. Since I worked on
Loudspeaker with the label`s graphic designer however, something
clicked and I learned that it took a lot of intense work-even with a
great graphic artist on board-to get a design that I can be satisfied
with. It is always a colossal pain in the ass, but I`m pretty happy with
most of my artwork since then. It`s still never easy. Inferno and Wall
of Sound were particularly painful to get right, and they took forever,
but I think they came out excellent. You forget all the hassle once the
work is done.
What’s worth even more attention is, that you managed to capture
an enormous energy in this album. Not only from you and your band, but
also from the audience. Where do you get this energy from? How do you
get so pumped for the show? In the Q&A of your fan group, you made a
joke that it’s thanks to “sex, drugs and rock&roll, without drugs”.
What gives you that contagious dose of energy?
Of course the audience gives me some energy, but I`m actually there to
give them energy. I don`t know where I get the majority of my energy
from. It`s just always there. I want people to leave the show feeling
great, feeling like they got a jolt of positive energy that will last a
while. That`s the way I felt when I was a kid after seeing a good
concert. I want to “kick them in the feels”, so to speak.
There is a little ritual at the beginning of each show. You and
your band get together chanting some kind of mantra, it looks really
cool, almost satanic and the audience seems to love it a lot! What is
the origin of that ritual and what are your pre-show rituals? Are there
any albums you are listening to before the shows?
Lots of bands do some kind of little pep talk kind of thing backstage
just before the show. We just do it on stage in front of everyone. It
does look pretty satanic. Depending on our mood it can go on pretty long
can really get us as well as the audience pumped up. I like letting
the audience join in our pre-show ritual. Sometimes I don`t see the band
at all in the day until that actual moment, so the ritual serves as a
greeting to each other, and reassures us that for the next 2 hours or
so, we are completely bound together as one entity.
Last year you were also busy working on the new Jason Becker’s
album, which was released December 7. You played two songs, the title
track “Triumphant Hearts” together with your wife, cellist Hiyori Okuda
and a solo on the “Valley of Fire” among 12 other fantastic guitarists,
such Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Richie Kotzen. Could you please tell us
more about the working process on this album? How much freedom did you
have for an improvisation?
On both songs, Jason gave me complete freedom to do anything. Of course
if he didn`t like something, he would tell me and I`d change it. When I
did a solo with Vai on one of Jason`s other records, he didn`t like what
I did and had me change it a couple times. Picky guy! So this time, I
gave Jason a few options to choose from. On “Valley of Fire” I played
about 3 minutes worth of stuff, and to be honest, my playing works
better as a “long story” than an “abridged version” so I think my full
version of “Valley of Fire” makes more sense than what finally got
edited, but that`s not what the project was about. Jason had the
enormous task of editing the work of 13 guys into a cohesive song, and
he did a fabulous job. It is unlikely that anything like that will ever
happen again, and I`m honored to be a part of it.
You
and Jason have a long music history and everyone knows about your
friendship. Lots of fans love you both since the Cacophony era, I’m a
huge Cacophony fan myself. Jason is constantly present in your music. He
played a solo in “Jewel” on your first solo album “Dragon’s Kiss” and
wrote with you “Horrors” on “Inferno”. What emotions does it brings out
to play on his new album? Your name appears in the credits, how much did
you contributed to this album also as a friend?
Of course I`m honored to play on the album, but I think it`s deeper on a
friendship level than on a musical level. He sent me a lot of the rough
versions of the songs I didn`t play on and wanted my opinion about many
small details, regarding arrangements, performances, sounds, melodies. I
was glad to help him even if he just needed a sounding board to hear
his concerns. It`s a lonely and hard process for anyone to be making an
album with your name on it. You want to be sure that everything comes
out the way you want to represent yourself. Sometimes it seems
impossible to get something to turn out the way you hear it in your
mind. There are not a lot of people in the world I would want to bring
my concerns to while making an album. I do send stuff to Jason and he
sends stuff to me. We both respect each other`s opinions a lot and
neither of us gets angry when we ignore each other`s advice. We are
probably like girls in that respect-we don`t necessarily want a solution
but we want someone to rant to.
Last year was very special also for other reason. On August 8
was the 30th anniversary of your first solo album “Dragon’s Kiss”. In
one of the interviews you said that if DK have been recorded nowadays it
would sound like “Wall of Sound”. How do you feel about „Dragon’s Kiss”
now, when you are listening to it? What would you change about it, if
anything at all? At your shows you still play the iconic “Forbidden
City” and “Dragon Mistress”. Any other songs from this album that we can
hear live in the near future?
There is nothing that I would change about DK. It`s good for what we had
to work with. We did it in 2 weeks in a good studio with a young and
inexperienced but very talented engineer. It might have sounded better
with a more seasoned engineer, but the guy we had was very musical, and I
remember us pushing each other and coming up with some sick stuff that
might not have happened with an older guy. Believe it or not, at the
time I was on a rhythm guitar kick and I mixed the album with the
rhythms so loud that you could barely hear the solos. I loved the mixes,
but the label went ballistic and had me go back and remix it with the
solos much louder. I`m glad they did that, because that rhythm guitar
kick lasted only a few months.
More musicians lately are putting on a big show. Joe Satriani
uses some visualizations, Steve Vai always invites few people on stage
to build a song together. Also, you added an interaction element to your
concerts, where you ask a random fan from the audience to jam “Dragon
Mistress” with you on stage. What is your opinion about the direction
where the music performances are going and about the necessity of such
„big shows” elements?
As a fan, I love that interactive stuff. I love to see the genuine joy
that happens when you involve people from the audience. That is common
in Japan. From my side though, actually doing it can be nerve wracking
because you can`t control the outcome, but nothing interesting happens
if you don`t take a gamble sometimes.
This year begins for you intensely. You will hit the road again
in couple of weeks and tour US in January and February. What fans can
expect on this tour? Could you please reveal us some secrets about the
support act and the set list?
The set list will change a lot since the last tour. The previous set
list is really strong so we hate to change it, but we`ve got to try to
top ourselves. We`ll do more Wall of Sound stuff, and I want to give the
rest of the band even more room to shine on their solos. I`m going to
try to up my MC game too. On my first live album, my stage banter was so
horrible, I had to edit it all out. When I was mixing “One Bad M.F.
Live” I noticed that I had improved somewhat and I didn`t have to edit
my talking at all. It`s taken a while since then to go from horrible to
acceptable, so there is hope for me to someday go from acceptable to
pretty good. I`d be happy with that.
What
about Europe? Last time you played in Europe in 2014, it’s been a while
and lots of fans can’t wait to see you again. What are the tour plans
and which countries would you like to visit?
When the right tour package and time frame presents itself,. I`ll tour
Europe. I can not wait to do it with this band. We have all been to
Europe separately, but not together as a band yet. Hopefully soon. For
now I will go to Europe in March to do a few weeks of masterclasses and
then the Larvik Guitar Festival in Norway.
You live in Japan for about 15 years now, you are an ambassador
of Japanese heritage and you are well known from your appearances in TV
shows and movies. Last year you wrote and recorded a soundtrack for an
anime series “B: The Beginning” and composed the Japan Heritage Official
Theme Song. That’s very impressive! Where do you get the inspiration
from and what are you currently working on in Japan? What would you tell
the fans interested in Japan and in seeing you there live? What is so
cool about Japan?
I`m a workaholic, and I always need to be making new music and I always
need to feel like I`m evolving. In 2019, I want to play live as much as
possible, be it with my solo band or other projects. I`ll play the
opening ceremony for the Tokyo Marathon for the 3rd year in a row in
March, but I want to play the Wall of Sound material live for every
corner of the world before I start working on any new solo material. I`m
also working with a new band called DPS in Japan that will be going
places fast. I even had them tour Asia with me doing a combination of
their songs and my solo songs. What`s cool about Japan? Japan is a whole
different planet, there is nowhere else like it in the world, and it is
impossible to be bored here.
Interview & photos: Katarzyna Kozioł
