Who would’ve thought that the most hardcore band in history came from Japan?
Its name was X. Formed in 1982, this band has been generally associated to speed and hair metal, but it was so much more. It mixed metal attitude with the gender fluidity of glam rock, adding just about the right touch of traditional Japanese culture through kabuki references.
X played a style called “visual kei”. The artists that inspired the band the most were David Bowie and KISS, mostly for their defiance and rebellion against all types of social conventions.
Never has the world seen an act as eclectic and electrifying as X. Living within a society as conservative as the Japanese, the wildness of their shows, as well as their furious rock music, became a tantalizing response to the rigid norms of the country. However, not everything was metal and glamour for the band, for their history is also imbued with plenty of tragedy.
The band’s story starts with the early life of Yoshiki Hayashi, the band’s drummer and main songwriter. His story begins in the town of Tateyama, in the Chiba prefecture. He was born to a family of musicians, so his on classical music training began from childhood. One day, after coming home from school, he found his father’s corpse lying on the floor. He had committed suicide. After the traumatizing experience, his mother bought him a drum kit so he could channel his rage through music instrument instead of breaking stuff. At the age of eleven, he started his first band with a boy from school: Toshi, who would become X’s vocalist.
After several attempts to make it with a band, they founded X in 1982 and started playing gigs in Tokyo three years later. Throughout the following years, the duo would be joined by musicians from other active metal groups while their first recordings started taking shape. First, Taiji from Dementia joined as a bassist, and he was followed by Hide from Saver Tiger as lead guitarist, and finally Pata from Judy as rhythm guitarist. After this, the newly formed superband boomed.
X’s best moment was during the late eighties and the early nineties. By 1992, they even signed with Atlantic Records. Three years later, their fanbase had spread so much throughout the world that they even gave themselves the license to change the band’s name to X Japan without hurting any nationalist sensibilities. The Emperor of Japan himself requested Yoshiki to compose a song for the tenth anniversary of his enthronement.
X Japan’s rebellious and defiant flair was admired by people from all over the world. Even the cult filmmaker David Lynch directed a surreal music video for one of their most singular songs, “The Poem”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxx4Dzb3YB8
The nineties, nonetheless, came with a lot of difficulties for X Japan. In 1992, Taiji left the band due to a business conflict with Yoshiki. After finding his replacement, Heath, the band found plenty of success. But problems would continue to arise.
Yoshiki’s manic playing of the drums eventually took a toll on his health. On several occasions he collapsed on stage, but he kept going on because he thought he was “ready to die for X”. In 1996, this attitude led the band to interrupt their tour when the founder was diagnosed with spinal cord herniation. From that point on, everything went downhill.
By the next year, the lead singer Toshi decided to quit the band because being a rockstar hadn’t led to his own happiness and fulfillment. Then, X Japan disbanded. Years later, it was disclosed that the singer had been brainwashed by a cult named “Home over heart” that his ex-teen idol wife Kairo had introduced him to.
Just a year after the group’s separation, Hide committed suicide by hanging himself with a towel tied to a doorknob. This affected not only the band, but also their fanbase: on the week of his death, three teenagers took their own lives in the same way as Hide did. The media called this event the end of an era.
Ten years afterwards, the band reunited after Toshi left the cult. The band was back together but one more tragedy would take them by surprise.
After playing several of the reunion shows, Taiji, aged 45, was found dead by strangling. The official statement called it a suicide. Yet the circumstances surrounding his death remain suspicious, since several accounts claim he’d had an argument with his manager that same day.
While Yoshiki’s health doesn’t make him physically fit to keep on playing the drums, he still hasn’t stopped. The band has been active since its reunion in 2009.
In Stephen Kijack’s rock documentary We Are X, Gene Simmons, bassist and co-leader of KISS, says that if X Japan “were born in America, they might be the biggest band in the world.” At least, by being born in the land of the rising sun, they got to be one of the most wickedly insane bands.
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