Yoshiki Hayashi, drummer and creative mastermind behind Japan's biggest rock band, X Japan, is calm amid the chaos in the VIP Room at L.A.'s Club Nokia, where he is both directing and starring in the video for his band's upcoming single, "Born to Be Free." He floats past a horde of extras dressed in Hot Topic Goth and stops to examine a skyscraping woman in black vinyl leggings, her face pancaked in white foundation. He says, "The corset on the vampire needs to be tighter." No sooner does a P.A. give the corset's three belts a good yank, prompting its wearer to gasp for air, than another one approaches Yoshiki with two pairs of fangs, and offers, "This one's more jagged, this one's a little sexier." The story line calls for the vampire-cum-dominatrix to track down Yoshiki in a crowded nightclub and to sink one of these into his neck. Yoshiki studies the fangs intently. "I'll take the sexy ones," he says.
Since the 1980s, X Japan has sold more than 30 million records and packed out the Tokyo Dome 18 times, comfortably eclipsing Bon Jovi. (And you know Bon Jovi is Big in Japan.) Now, with their first-ever U.S. tour kicking off this month, to be followed by an English-language album due early next year, X Japan's legendary frontman—who endorses a plethora of products, from energy drinks to a credit card bearing his likeness; who even has his very own Hello Kitty doll, the Yoshikitty—is plotting his American rawk offensive. "Born to Be Free," which blends operatic Freddie Mercury-like vocals with the propulsive force of Metallica circa ... And Justice for All, is his opening salvo.
And yet the song still needed tweaking as recently as 4 a.m. this morning, and after 18 hours of shooting at Club Nokia, Yoshiki's lack of sleep is starting to show. Wearing tight black pants, a white wife-beater, and oversized aviators, Yoshiki settles into the director's chair and calls "Action!" The vampire, seething with anger and lust, strides purposefully through the packed club, pushing people out of the way; she's bearing sexy fangs, she's looking for Yoshiki... who, though he isn't supposed to be in this shot, suddenly bounds out of his chair without saying cut, quickly getting the rapt attention of the DP. "The shove at the end needs to be more dramatic and forceful," he says. The shot is restaged. Then, when the song starts up again over the set's sound system, Yoshiki's face looks stricken. "It's the fucking wrong version!" he screams. The sound man looks on helplessly as Yoshiki cues up the right one. "This is it," he says, punctuating his words with a jab at the button.
It seems like everywhere you look on set, there's a rock cliché being used without irony: leather-clad band members; women dancing in elevated cages; cannons shooting off pyrotechnics. Later, while reclining in a makeup chair in his dressing room, Yoshiki acknowledges that X Japan may become critical laughingstocks. "If they want to nail us to the ground, nail us," he says with a shrug. "We were always the black sheep in Japan. No one thought we could go mainstream. But we did. And now we're ready to rock the world."
Yoshiki turns 45 in November, and if he wants to become a worldly rock god, it had better happen soon. "I feel like I'm a time bomb," he says. "Besides, I've always wanted to conquer the U.S. Why not now?"
It probably can't go any worse than his first attempt. In the early nineties, after rising to the top of the charts in their homeland with hit songs like "Stab Me in the Back," "Endless Rain" and "Sadistic Desire," X Japan set their sights on the United States—first by changing their name from "X" (they didn't want to get mixed up with the L.A. punk band), then by signing a multi-million-dollar deal with Atlantic Records and holding an elaborate press conference at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. But the high-concept album that followed, Art of Life—comprising a single track inspired by Schubert's unfinished Symphony #8—held no appeal for an American teenaged public that had just been punched in the face (and liked it) by Nirvana's Nevermind. Then there was X Japan's wild, androgynous look, which, despite having spawned the popular, equal parts cute and threatening Visual Kei movement (which in turn would help launch the anime craze), only made them seem more out of touch. "None of us spoke the language then," Yoshiki recalls. "It's one thing to cultivate mystery, but it's completely different when you're mysterious only because you can't communicate properly."
Today the barriers to translation may not be as great, as social-networking tools have made it easier for bands to communicate directly with their fanbase. (While he professes no interest in Facebook or MySpace, Yoshiki finally opened a Twitter account during the run-up to X Japan's U.S. concert debut at Lollapalooza in early August—and garnered more than 12,000 followers in less than 12 hours.) Another reason for optimism lies in a larger cultural shift, wherein Japanese artists have proved ever-more adept at appropriating bits and pieces of American culture and returning them in new and exciting forms. "We're in an age of mashups, fan sites, bit torrents and YouTube," says Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. "A culture that mastered the art of imitating and copying original ideas is right in tune with the 21st century."
The Gap begets Uniqlo, Disney begets anime. And now the cycle of appropriation is starting to go in the other direction. "Japan has always been a source of great inspiration to me, and X Japan is a big part of that," says My Chemical Romance frontman and award-winning comic book writer Gerard Way. "Because of my love for manga and Japanese animation as a boy, I was able to connect with the music, the emotion, and the visual intent." And that's precisely the recipe that Marc Geiger, the band's booking agent, hopes to duplicate with fanboys across the country. The bet is that X Japan can find greater success than their J-Rock predecessors—Dir En Gray, Boredoms, the Kurt Cobain-endorsed Shonen Knife—by catapulting Yoshiki into becoming an anime superhero with the help of Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee. (The project was slated to be announced at New York Comic Con in early October, but it has since been delayed.) "For any kid under the age of 14," Geiger says, "anime is huge. It makes sense for them to come over now."
Yoshiki and his childhood friend, Toshi, were 17 years old when—covered in blood-spattered makeup with fuck-you attitudes to match—they arrived in Tokyo as self-described "cartoon monsters." But the initial seed of their rebellion—and ultimately of X Japan—was planted seven years earlier when Yoshiki came home from a music lesson to find his father, a kimono-shop owner, dead from suicide. Up to that point, he'd been listening exclusively to classical music. But in the wake of his father's death, Yoshiki's tastes took a sharp, screeching turn toward heavy metal. He wore out the grooves on Kiss' Alive! and was able to convince his mother, who'd been teaching him classical piano since he was 4, to take him to one of their concerts at Tokyo's Budokan arena. "It was shocking to me," he says, "but I loved every minute of it. My mother, however, was a little worried." Soon he'd moved on to Led Zeppelin, then the Sex Pistols, proving that rebellion through rock and roll works pretty much the same in Japan as it does in the States. "I went to a very conservative junior high school, and I started dying my hair," he remembers. "One time a teacher held me down and shaved my head. The next day I came back with a different color."
X Japan's garish looks and rebel ways struck a chord with Japanese youth. Yoshiki and Toshi didn't just trash hotel rooms, but entire hotels. Eventually, various restaurants and bars in Tokyo started posting "No Yoshiki" signs outside. The music propelled them to superstardom, but if you've ever seen "Behind the Music," you already have some idea of what led to their late-nineties flameout. In this version, Toshi leaves the band to join a cult, and the guitarist, Hide, is found hanging from a towel tied to a doorknob. And that's when Yoshiki's career really takes off.
The former rebel morphed into something more palatable—and marketable—releasing several classical solo albums to great acclaim, collaborating with Sir George Martin, and catching the ear of Emperor Akihito, who commissioned Yoshiki to write and perform a song to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his reign. "I knew there would be some controversy, and maybe years ago I wouldn't have done it—but to rebel against the rebellious was appealing," he says. It wasn't long before the endorsements started flowing, but he's adamant that they do little to dilute the Yoshiki brand. "I cut myself onstage, yet I have Hello Kitty. I like the contradiction," he says matter-of-factly. "I don't worry about it. I'm still mysterious. I don't even know who I am anyway."
"I'm very scared of myself," he continues. "Suicide has crossed my mind. I can't sleep and I can't relax. I'm very fragile when I'm alone. But when I leave my house, I feel stronger and nothing can stop me."
For the last twelve years, Yoshiki has lived in Encino—the pinnacle of L.A. suburbia—on the street where Michael Jackson once resided. When he's in Japan, he has a 24-hour bodyguard detail, but here he's remarkably lax about security. He moved to L.A. to escape the incessant hounding. "I enjoy going to the grocery store and buying ice cream," he tells me while relaxing on a hotel-room couch the day after the video shoot. Dressed in a white linen shirt with black pants and winklepicker boots, his wavy hair tickling his shoulders, Yoshiki's still working the androgynous angle pretty hard. Yet if he's incredibly thin, almost to the point of being frail, it isn't entirely a matter of style: Yoshiki suffers from chronic tendonitis, and last July he had to have major neck surgery to relieve bulging discs—the result of too much head banging. Afterwards he spent two weeks in the hospital undergoing a battery of tests, and his doctor warned him that his neck "may only hold out for two years. He told me not to play the drums. Fuck that. I may become paralyzed—so what?" Yoshiki has always been the screaming, stick-twirling sort who likes to bash out his demons on the kit—but these days he has to gut out shows in a neck brace.
Yoshiki spends most of his time either at home in the company of the 20 people he employs, or in the studio he bought in 1993—the one where Metallica recorded their eponymous album, popularly known as Black Album. (Metallica producer Bob Rock had the space booked for his next project, but Yoshiki dropped a few million, renamed it Extasy Recording Studio, and kicked Rock out.) He says when he drinks, he drinks, though he's careful not to make a public display of it like he did during the glory years. Now he ventures out only once a week for business dinners at, say, Matsuhisa, before unwinding at clubs like Bar Sinister, a Hollywood Goth nightspot, with one of his four assistants. "One of us is always with him," says primary assistant Lauren, a skinny doe-eyed beauty dressed in short shorts and black thigh-high socks. "He doesn't talk to too many people." He used to have a girlfriend, Julia Voth, an up-and-coming Canadian model/actress, but he broke up with her in June after six years together. "I was too busy," he says without emotion, waving his hand dismissively like a petulant teenager. "I mean, I want to get married. I think. I guess. I don't know."
"When he says he doesn't have any good friends, I honestly believe him," says Phil Quartararo, Yoshiki and X Japan's manager, who, as then president of Warner Bros. Records, signed Yoshiki to a solo deal in 2000. "He lives for the mystery and cultivating that myth." Yoshiki might like to walk the aisles of Ralph's in anonymity, but when the ego needs a shot, he likes to make an appearance where he's sure to get recognized, including the occasional movie premiere. (This is It, most recently). But when X Japan goes out on the road, will Yoshiki be able to keep the adoration at arms length? (Will he even want to?) Either way, the prospect of widespread success in the U.S. remains an iffy proposition. Anime might have a massive following among 12 year-olds and the downtown hipster class, but that doesn't necessarily translate into fondness for an unironic brand of bombastic arena rock that can sometimes sound about 20 years behind the curve. For every Rush (Canada) and Phoenix (France) there are hundreds of Tragically Hips and Noir Désirs—bands you've never heard of for a reason.
Yoshiki is well aware of the obstacles that face any foreign rock outfit trying to make it in rock's birthplace. Still, X Japan's 50-minute, five-song blast at Lollapalooza was lauded as one of the weekend highlights by both fans and critics, and Yoshiki plans to keep that momentum going. "We played heavy songs—I didn't want to lose people with the ballads," he tells me on the phone a couple weeks later, following two enormous stadium shows outside of Tokyo. "I know what I'm doing. And now, after Lollapalooza, I want success in the U.S. more than I ever did. It's a long, winding road. But we're going to run, not walk."
