Translated from Pakila Music, 2007.09.26
Original Text: Tomonori Nakazawa.
After the release of the single "SPELL MAGIC", Janne Da Arc vocalist yasu's solo project "Acid Black Cherry" is releasing their second single, "Black Cherry", on September 26. Once again, this time, yasu has completed yet another explosive tune!
You're in the middle of quite vigorous activity as Acid Black Cherry, yasu-san, but can we expect your writing to continue this steadily for your new songs?
I've been writing songs thinking that I'll really give it my best this year. Even though there are more songs that I've just performed live as well as those I've actually recorded, it still isn't enough for an album, so right now I'm gradually building up my repertoire.
After only seeing the Free Lives you did in July, I got the impression that the variation between your musical pieces is quite broad.
There is a lot of variation. But, I can say that the same is true for Janne Da Arc as well, so it's not really that extreme of a change. Also, if you change the artists you're performing with, as far as your music goes, the kind of thing you bring out in those pieces with those artists are really different, tastefully, too. You can really feel that rather strongly.
The people you're working with now are all your senior contemporaries. They really bring their own wonderful impression to your work.
In my case, I really do have a lot of chances to meet with my seniors in the business, but I don't really know anyone who is younger than me. So, maybe that's why you can say that. Performing together with my senior contemporaries allows me to have a lot of chances to really study under them in a realistic setting.
Please tell us who your recording members were for "Black Cherry".
Suganuma-san is on drums, and with the bassist SHUSE-san, they made up my rhythm section in "SPELL MAGIC" as well. On guitar is YUKI-kun of DUSTAR-3. Since he also traveled with me during my secret tour, he's also been influential in my musical compositions as well.
In "Black Cherry", you start out with a jazzy, adult mood, and then you switch completely to a hard-rock sound. Furthermore, you've completed the piece with something that you've envisioned so often in your work, the idea of a dramatic piece with the lingering aroma of a very adult theme.
Honestly, I wasn't thinking that deeply about anything at all while I was writing it. If I dare to say anything about it, it's that I wanted to write a piece that gave the impression of "stillness and motion". As for the song's lyrics, I wanted to do them with a very erotic flavor. The atmosphere with the element of jazz is what ended up being derived from using words like those.
Though you've already performed the song live, how was the response to it, looking at it from your vantage point on stage?
Since I saw that everyone was really getting into it, somehow, that gave me peace of mind. (Laughs.)
The lyrics...would it be accurate to say that they're an expression of a quite adult form of passionate love? In its subject matter, one can see the real motives of a woman passionately in love, and the sort of psychological bargaining that goes on in that kind of relationship.
It might be difficult for high school-aged people to understand such passionate, adult love being put across in such a forceful way, for example, but please do read the lyrics carefully and find out for yourselves, in that case.
In these lyrics, you're writing from a female perspective. yasu, in your case, you write a lot of songs from a female viewpoint, do you not?
In my view, when I write lyrics like these from a female perspective, I don't get the impression that there's something strange about them. For example, if I was to take the same subject matter and flip it around so that it was from a man's point of view, in the act of doing so I've also made it look like it's just a glance into the life of some old pervert. (Laughs.) If I write it from a woman's perspective, however, it becomes sensual and dramatic.
Of course, that's true (Laughs). The woman that appears in "Black Cherry", despite knowing that this isn't the kind of love she asked for, still seeks out the partner she has developed feelings for. As if to falsify her own feelings, she says, "It's all right if you don't love me...since I don't love you." That's also something that happens in the mind of an adult woman, isn't it.
I think that's something that doesn't change, whether you're a man or a woman. Those times where even though you feel like "I love this person, I still love them, there's no way around it," and you can't show those feelings at all. And yet, even if you can show that you like someone on the outside, when you're looking for that person with all of yourself, there's a lot of variation in what language you use based on the question of how you perceive that person views their own aesthetics of passionate love. When you're looking at it from that aspect, in a detailed fashion, please pay close attention to how the person you're listening to is trying to simplify their feelings to the point where they can explain them.
In truth, even though the lyrics are very erotic, the way that you, yasu, bring out such a dramatic world in your lyrics is really an art, is it not?!
Generally speaking, I didn't want to write lyrics that used common phrasing...at least so that I was only assuming that talking about underlying feelings is a cliché in and of itself. (Laughs.)
And then, there's the man who is so charming that he manages to win the hearts of women one after the other. If we're talking about the man here, it's possible that he could be the vision of perfection.
But, it's also possible that for someone who makes real women out of people, he's awfully good at playing the field, too. (Laughs.)
You've really accomplished a nice blend of jazz and rock in a song about a fascinating, adult love in "Black Cherry". Is this what you wanted to bring to the table as a single?!
It's not really that strange to me. When I'm writing songs for Janne Da Arc as singles, there are times when they're done in relation to the tie-ins that we do with them. Though it starts out fundamentally as ours, sometimes we accept the request for certain lyrics or subjects by the people we're working with. It's not that it's the difference between good and bad so much as doing something like that which makes use of our individual personalities is quite professional. Of course, when we're bound by something like that on the one hand, it makes it easier to write the song and stuff like that too. In regards to Acid Black Cherry, I'm composing things without those kinds of restraints at all, and with that I can decide what suits a single. I think I've really been blessed to be in a place where I can have that kind of freedom.
As for your activities in Acid Black Cherry, you haven't decided how long they'll be limited to, right?
For the time being, it's undecided. Right now I feel that since I've started with Acid Black Cherry, I want to really pursue it with all my might.
Right now, you're also looking toward working on an Acid Black Cherry album as well.
I do want to release an album eventually. But, for right now, I'm just having fun writing songs one after the other. I'm going back to something we mentioned a little while ago, but since the musicians I appear with are always fresh, I'm having a lot of fun with being able to do something that no one can predict in the same way as they could with Janne Da Arc, saying that "Well, if it's Janne Da Arc, they'll do it this way" or something like that. It seems as if this is true of the musicians who have been so kind to assist me as well, that being able to be a part of Acid Black Cherry has allowed them to open new doors for themselves and garner new results, as they've been telling me "Doing performances like this, with this kind of musical taste, is something I've never done before." To be able to do something like this that allows us all to mutually revitalize ourselves is a really wonderful thing, I think.
On your last release, you did a cover of LOOK's "Shinin' On, Kimi ga Kanashii". And then, with this one, you did a cover of Kozo Murashita's "Hatsukoi". Selecting those really was perfect.
Even though "Black Cherry" is such a sexual song, I put it together with the very Japanese-style "Hatsukoi", after all. (Laughs.) I finished it with acoustic guitar, because I wanted to revive the melody and feel of the original.
In your single recordings, are you going to continue with a series of covers?!
That's right. Originally, I was going to only release one song at a time. But then, people started talking to me, saying "It's so much for just one song, you should put a coupled song with it." But, to me, I'd worked so hard on these new songs that they shouldn't just be coupled songs for singles, they should go on the album. That is, I didn't write these with the intention of putting them on singles, rather I've been working under the pretense of progressing to an album release. It's such an opportunity to put so much effort into solo work, and to really bring my roots forward in my work...and so I'm doing that by performing a series of covers of these songs from my youth.
Looking at "Shinin' On, Kimi ga Kanashii" and "Hatsukoi", they have that sort of new music/pop ballad kind of sound and world view. That's where they come in as being part of your roots, yasu, right?
I really like popular songs a lot. Of course, I listen to hard rock too, but the songs I listened to before that were always the popular ones they played on CRT or something. So, in my case, I know a lot more about popular music than I know about hard rock songs.
Oh, really? I suppose that's why we can see the pop-song influence in the melodious style of Janne Da Arc from your side of things.
Ah, maybe so.
With the limited edition pressings of your single, there will be the PV for "Black Cherry" included. What kind of content did you put in there?!
This time, just like "SPELL MAGIC", it's the same kind of comedic style with that cool and stylish sort of feel. That is something that's quite pronounced in the planning of videos that I do, actually. Also, the other members are all the kind of people who would allow themselves to appear in such a comedic piece. So, this time too, we're going down this kind of wicked path together...as for what's in it, well, look forward to watching it (Laugh).
The impression I get from watching Acid Black Cherry is that you hope to pull out all the stops in your personal expression, and bring out your true feelings in expressing the basis of that.
Right now, I don't feel any stress at all. Of course, there's still the pull of things that I'm sensitive to, but being able to work with a five person group and just write one song at a time to release is both interesting and something that I like a lot. So, like this, just being able to bring out the emotions and expressions that I feel and make it consistent in the work that I'm doing in terms of composing songs...it's fun to be able to do that kind of thing again.
By the way, where is Acid Black Cherry going from here?
I'm still just vaguely considering if I'm going to keep releasing singles, do an album, and do a tour in addition to all of that, but I'm thinking at the moment that I'm going to go and have a little bit of fun making progress along that line.