B'z interview (after a long long long time)
From the rare journal entries that describe my life, comes an even rarer mid-length entry concerning B'z, an interview no less! (well, bits and pieces of it anyway). Hopefully my fellow B'z fans like it. I do apologize for the lack of B'z updates, guys!!


B'z: The Circle etc.

Bewith In the new album "The Circle", you excluded last year's releases of "Banzai" and "Arigato". Did the album's concept come out before or after production?
Tak Concept... Why does everybody keep asking about concept, concept? There's no such thing!
Bewith Eee?! (laugh)
Koshi He said there's no such thing!! (laugh)
Everybody (laugh)
Tak Ok, maybe the concept was developed while working on the album.
Koshi I don't know when.
Bewith But you get asked this question by writers right?
Tak Un. Magazine's writers would. But we don't live everyday thinking about concept, do we?
Bewith (laugh) Hai.
Tak We don't think about, "Ok, today I'm gonna do this and that this way!!", right? (laugh)
Bewith Sumimasen (laugh).
Tak No, you can't ask about concept. Maybe we should maintain this policy from now on (laugh). (That day, B'z were going to be interviewed by several magazines after this Bewith interview)
Koshi "Please don't ask us about concept?" (laugh) We should do this nation-wide, "Do you think you should be asking us about concept??!" "Please think it over!!" (laugh)
Tak (seriously) Concept is something that we build slowly along the process of the production of an album. We get the feeling of it and then it becomes solid.
Bewith And a keyword 'circle' was born from it.
Tak Sousousou.

Bewith There's a big mood gap between the verse to chorus in "Icarus".
Tak "Icarus" was recorded last year. It was with just normal melody that we came up with from start to end. Then this year, when we 'fixed' it again, the tempo became much much faster. As a result, the arrangement gradually became like what you hear now. Sugoku yokatta. I don't think it was that good at all before.
Bewith Inaba-san, you were reading a book about Greek mythology. Is that in any way connected to "Icarus"?
Koshi We had a tie-up song with last year Athens' Olympic, right? Well, "Arigato" was decided as the tie-up song in the end, but before that when we were trying out a bunch of songs for that, I thought, maybe something in the line of Greek myths could be interesting. So I bought that book and "Icarus" was the result. Although the context of the song itself has nothing to do with Olympics (laugh).

Bewith The last song "Brighter Day" is in English. The last full-English lyrics B'z song in a CD was "Real Thing Shakes". Was there a special reason why you included this song in the album this time?
Koshi Actually we were going to conclude the album with the 12th song "Black and White". The last song we did for the album was "Ai no Bakudan" but after that, we started to record more songs. "Brighter Day" was one of them. It was sorta completely natural for the song to be all in English... Then we started to talk about putting one last song to conclude the album. When we listened to the whole thing, as last song, "Brighter Day" didn't ruin the atmosphere instead it gave a positive ending. Ok, maybe some people would ask, why do you put an English song in a Japanese album? Well, it's interesting, isn't it? That's how we came to include it in the album. It's quite possible that we might do the Japanese version in the future. Although at this point, it's not clear yet.
Bewith Do you envision the releases of English songs from now on as well?
Koshi It's definitely one of the things that we would like to do. We might challenge ourselves on that.

Bewith Was the chorus just Inaba-san this time?
Koshi In the end, it became just me, myself and I! (laugh) Hai.
Bewith Was there anybody else to do the chorus as well?
Koshi Oda-kun who went on tour with me (Koshi's ~en~ solo tour) has a pittari voice that suits mine very well. So he was a possibility. But anyway, when I thought of something for the chorus, I could quickly do it straight away, so I felt that it's much faster if I paaato do everything myself (laugh).

Bewith Naruhodo (laugh). In "X", the Kanji characters "kantan" （邯鄲） I think those are never used usually.
Koshi It's also my first time using those characters! (laugh)
Everybody (laugh)
Tak What's the meaning?
Koshi "Kantan no yume" （邯鄲の夢） or "Kantan no makura" （邯鄲の枕）... How do you say, when a happy moment or a wonderful dream ends...
Tak "Kantan no yume" （邯鄲の夢） ne. Like a fleeting moment?
Koshi Sou da ne. In China's Warring States Period (403BC-221BC) or Spring-Autumn Period (722BC–481BC), there's a capital city named "Kantan", I think.
Bewith Sou desu.
Tak How do you write the Kanji of "Kantan"?
Koshi I can't!! (immediate answer)
Bewith (laugh) Like this (showing lyrics book)
Tak Aaaa. Can't write this ne. It's very much like 蝉 (semi=locust, cicada). It makes good use of 甘 character in 甘い (amai=sweet) as well.
Bewith Are there a lot of lyrics which were very difficult to write?
Koshi Yes, heaps. I had to go into much details on them.
Bewith Was there a song whose lyrics completely changed when you finished?
Koshi There were even songs which lyrics in the chorus changed all the time. Often I thought, "this can't be put together" or "too bad I can't use this word". That was a mistake.



Well, I hope that wasn't too much of a kanji mambo-jumbo. It was very interesting for me that Koshi reads about Greek myths and knows some Chinese history. Also I think it's interesting to see how THE NOISES in "Brighter Day" came about. And how about him saying that B'z might challenge some English releases in the future? EXCITING!!!


Interview taken from Bewith magazine | Translated roughly and badly by Keen | Scanned and sent to Keen by Tamashii-chan ^__^ Arigatou ne!