Fuducky, I (and this community) owe you a million internetz for this translation. Thank you!

KANNO YOKO x GRANDFUNK Special Long Interview

VOL.01

translation by Fuducky

-Tominaga Keisuke (GRANDFUNK Inc.): You were abroad until yesterday weren’t you? Where did you go and what were you there for?

YK: I was in America on the west and east coasts for about 10 days seeing two shows a day. I saw Elton John, the Cher and Cirque du Soleil collaboration, Bette Midler, Celine Dion, David Byrne, etc… I saw quite a few but Bette Midler was the highlight out of the bunch!

I almost haven’t seen anything that amazing before.

Even though the stage was bright pink, and there were sexy dancers wearing almost nothing in the background, I couldn’t take my eyes of Bette Midler who is in her 60s! Just when the audience was full of energy and I couldn’t help laughing as she ran around the narrow stage from end to end, sat in a car seat while in a mermaid outfit (laughs), she came out in a simple black one-piece without high-heels and began singing a ballad (Rose) so magnificently… so cool! Anyway, it was amazing… It would be impossible for me to do that (laughs).

In the professional world of show business, when looks are not her selling point, it is not a half-hearted thing to pull off something like that. If you have an opportunity, you should definitely see it. I was really surprised.

-That sounds amazing (laughs). I would like to see it once.

With the new CM Yoko site and the release of CM Yoko2, it’s a new step for Grand Funk so I would like to have a long interview with you about how you got to where you are now.

Sure

-Please tell me about your very first experience with music.

It’s been reported a few times before so you know right? Oh well (laughs). On a visit to my relative’s house when I was two and a half years old, after my parents saw how unwilling I was to part with the piano that my relatives had, they decided to buy a piano for me. I can still remember that time.

Actually I recently asked my parents about it. According to them, they bought me a piano so that in the future when I became a housewife, I could teach children in the neighborhood how to play piano because I would be too busy even to drink a cup of coffee. To their disappointment, I did not become a piano teacher (laughs).

­-There’s nothing to be disappointed about since you’ve become such a great musician (laughs). I didn’t know all that. And after that?

­In my own style, I played piano and sang so loud that my parents told me to stop because it was embarrassing (laughs). The preschool I went to was Christian… I wasn’t really religious or anything but we got to sing hymns which I really loved. In the hymn collection on the first page it was written, ‘do not take the lord’s name in vain.’ Being so small, I mistook it to mean ‘don’t sing hymns in front of people.’ But I wanted to sing them, so I would cover myself in the futons in the closet and sing ‘ma~mi~noki~’ (laughs).

-For Kanno-san hymns were the forbidden fruit. So what about the first song you made?

That was also in preschool. ‘xxx-kun in the neighborhood is so cool, I like him’ –that kind of song was the first I think. My parents were strict so I couldn’t say that kind of thing, but if I made it into a song I could say it as loud as I wanted.

-And elementary and middle school?

Representing the school, I entered local composition competitions targeting students. I always won.

­-How did you win every time?

In those competitions, you were asked either to select from given lyrics and make music for it or choose a motif from a list and make a song out of it. Even though you only had to choose one, with one hour, I could do them all. I made music for all the lyrics, I developed all the motifs, and even made D-part melodies (extended part of a chorus with A, B, and C parts). I’m sure the judges thought I was a very annoying kid (laughs).

-…you were an amazing kid. Like the heroine of ‘Garasu no kamen,’ Kitajima Maya (laughs). Around that time, did you receive the guidance of any judges that were musicians like Akutagawa Yasushi?

Yes, but not really for composition. I didn’t really have any interest in theory, harmony, or composition techniques, so I didn’t learn anything from Akutagawa-sensei… What I learned then was, for example, when I played Chopin’s piano music, I would be asked, ‘What kind of sound do you want this melody played by this finger to be performed in?’ I would say I wanted it to be a resounding burst of horns and I would be told, ‘then play it like that.’ In other words, even though it was piano music, I imagined different parts for different instruments and played it that way. That’s the kind of teaching I had. And as a result of that, even though I was playing piano, in my head, different types of sounds began playing. So in that single phrase, I felt like ‘Oh that’s it!’ and I could see everything.

­-I see, it was the beginning of your arranging.

Right.

-In college you moved on to the Literature Department right?

Yes, but I only went for a week (laughs).

-You joined ‘Tetsu 100%’ at that time didn’t you? Tell me how that came about.

I joined a music circle in college and one day, Tetsu 100% entered a contest and they needed a keyboardist. So I had just met them but we won the contest. The prize for the contest was a contract with a record label. But at first it seemed like the contest was already fixed. Another band was already promised a contract beforehand. They were also given the best slot, second to last. We performed third but we left the other groups far behind. The audience took to us so much so that it became difficult to refuse us the prize. So after that we debuted on Sony.

I was only meant to be a temporary member for the contest. So I was supposed to be done with a simple ‘good work’ but the songs they wanted recorded were the songs we won with, so like that I became a member. From there I did there brass arrangements and started making songs for the band as well.

-After that you were in the band and making game music at the same time. How did that come about?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure, it was when I was doing backup for Onyanko Kurabu, the director recommended me.

-What! You were doing backup for Onyanko Kurabu!?

Oh you didn’t know? Yes. At their farewell live at Yoyogi Stadium, I was hammering away on the piano on the last ballad (laughs). Because it was their last concert, I remember all the members were crying and couldn’t sing out, so in the intro I had to keep playing on and on (laughs). The members of the band at that time are pretty much the same people I’m working with now.

-Haha, is that so?

From that I ended up doing a lot of backup band work for many tours. Kudou Shizuka, Imai Miki, Kohiruimaki Kahoru. Because of my ties to other band members, we ended up touring with a lot of people. We maybe did 60 shows a year. Live shows are so fun.

-I see. So the director introduced you to video game music. Your representative work in game music, Nobunaga no Yabou, has many great songs on it.

Games at the time allowed only two sounds at a time to be played simultaneously (laughs). ‘Oh, you can only make this much sound?’ was my reaction. But we managed somehow to be expressive. At that time, Sugiyama-san…

-You mean the famous composer of Dragon Quest, the great Sugiyama Kouichi-san?

Yes yes, Sugiyama Kouichi-san praised my music and invited me to talk with him. After that, with his patronage, I joined the JCAA (Japan Composers & Arrangers Association). Haneda Kentarou, Maeda Norio, Miyagawa Hiroshi, etc… were all there, all great masters. There were JCAA concerts, in which every person presented one song, sometimes there were themes we followed. I also participated several times. As composers we don’t get to meet each other and talk very often because we don’t all occupy the same studio at once. So it was a very rare and interesting experience to chat with great composers in a musical environment. I hadn’t studied pop music at all then, so I got a hold of Haneken (Hanede Kentarou) and asked him, “How do you balance four-voice harmonies?”

“The top part is strong, the middle is light, and you control the strength with the bass.” Oh! I get it (laughs). And I also learned from listening there that even though it’s the same orchestra, it can sound completely different depending on the arranger.

-That’s where you first learned the techniques of professional composers and arrangers. Still that was quite a room to be in.

There were people who were huddled in the corner finishing work for a deadline the next day, people chatting, drinking, and enjoying themselves, quite a funky room to be in (laughs). I was the person of lowest rank, so I would go around greeting everybody, asking things like how much should I charge for performance fees (laughs). It was quite a learning experience for me socially. I also got to know several composers of my generation such as Tanaka Kouhei, Senjyu Akira, and Watanabe Toshiyuki. It is a great group of composers that I really like.

-Then you met GRANDFUNK and CM work. How did that happen?

I first met Kanehashi-san (Music Producer, GRANDFUNK Chairman of board of directors) when I was called to work as a backup studio musician for a violinist. After I finished the accompaniment, Kanehashi-san asked me “Do you write music?” Well, how should I put it? It kind of felt like I had been scouted somewhere in Shibuya (laughs). [Note: Shibuya has many talent scouts on the streets who solicit people they think would be good for modeling, acting, and other less dignified entertainment industries.]

-(Laughs) I also asked Kanehashi-san about when he first met you. He said he felt a rare talent in your chord progressions. Because he’s also a keyboardist, he said he could feel it right away.

Wow. Thank you for finding out. He told me to let him listen to a collection of my work, but I didn’t have anything like that, so I let him listen to songs I had just made for Nobunaga no Yabou and suddenly, without even small scale projects to test me on, I was given big CM projects. Actually, it wasn’t my first time doing CM work. I had done 2 other CMs before that. It’s just that I didn’t have a very good impression back then. There was that somewhat tobacco stench of the industry, arrogant people with attitude, so I thought I wasn’t cut out for it. So I thought when work came from GRANDFUNK, that if it was like that I wouldn’t like it, but Kanehashi-san was completely not like that, so from the start I took great care in my work.

­-In actually composing CM music, how do you go about it?

I try to completely have a blank slate and don’t think about anything before directly meeting the client. It probably doesn’t help much to study up before then. So most of the time I go to meet the director and the people involved with the project and after listening to their thoughts begin to think about it. Well, sometimes I will make the song while sitting there in the meeting.

-There are actually quite a lot of people who are surprised in the meetings when someone is talking and you suddenly look down and start writing music notation (laughs). The other day at the Shiseido meeting too, the director was showing the storyboards and explaining it in many words when you said, ‘oh, I have about 5 songs in my head right now.’ The director looked dumbfounded. Five songs, I wouldn’t even know how to compile that (laughs).

It’s like being a psychic then you know. The director will have a world he wants to create, so he/she expresses it using words and attitude, and I concentrate until I can translate them like an automatic scribe (laughs).

-With your work with GRANDFUNK, you were able to make your break and become a very popular person in the CM world. Tell me about how it was like during that time.

At the busiest times, I did seven CM recordings in a day (laughs); I would start at the Ginza studio at 8:30 and work all the way until midnight. Of course when I was on a tour, I would get back very late at night and without sleeping, go to the studio, and then seven songs… it was quite amazing…

-That busy? Unbelievable (laughs).

Well, seven was only during that time. Usually it is 3 songs per day or a double header. Also at the time it was different from now since it was all recorded live. Progress was a lot faster. We’d record one after another and get the client’s ok. I think that was the maximum amount we could do while maintaining quality. But after key input was introduced into the workplace, it’s become impossible to do that much.

-After Pro Tools, everything has to get fixed right?

Yes, the detailed adjustments all happen later. Also, this isn’t my story but, in another composer’s CM job, even in the middle of recording with a 60 person orchestra, the client in the control room said, “This song is no good”! Isn’t that horrible? They had conducted and recorded most of the orchestra parts already, when the arranger told everybody to wait and he went to the control room. Through the glass they could see them arguing with really disappointed looks on their faces (laughs). When he came back, they began collecting everybody’s music. “We are temporarily disbanding; we will regroup in an hour. During that time we will rewrite every part.” In those cases recording on a different day could double or triple the budget, which is impossible… We have to do whatever it takes to finish before the deadline so there are many severe situations like these. Actually I had a 40 person orchestra recording with the same director. I was anxious that the director might same something, and sure enough he really did come along and say, ‘not quite.’ So we changed it and got through it. So if you’re small hearted the job will end while you’re still recovering from shock. Looking at it that way, I’m quite a veteran (laughs). I’ve become quite accustomed to receiving sudden orders like ‘we need a song by tomorrow.’

-You’re doing a lot of recordings overseas aren’t you?

I’ve gone several times to New York, the Czech Republic, Warsaw, also LA, San Francisco, and even a recording for HITACHI in Cambodia.

More often than not, it’s a difficult schedule, usually a 0 nights and 3 days kind of stay (laughs). I usually arrive at the airport and head straight for the studio, record, and head back with the finished work, without ever checking into the hotel I had reservations at.

Even among these, quite memorable was the recording in Korea we did for “GREEN (96’ Suntory limited Kyougetsu GREEN),” on CM Yoko2 this time.

The Korea at the time was not as open to Japanese people as it is now.

At first, the plan for the CM music was to do an arrangement of a Korean folk song (Ariran) and have someone from Korea sing it. So we were preparing for it but after thoroughly researching it, we found it, the song bore the experiences of war between Japan and Korea.

That came to light the day before the recording, and we thought it would be culturally distasteful.

If the music were to play in a CM aired in Japan, it would end up having a strange connotation.

At the eleventh hour, we were wondering what we should do…

Yet the singer had already been booked and the arrangements for the recording had already been made. At any rate, the music producer and I headed to Seoul to work out a plan while, behind the scenes, we were on standby for the client’s decision. At 9:00pm the night before the recording, we received word from Japan, “Please do not record the folk song after all. Instead please make an original song.” I said ‘what! Make a song right now? The recording starts at 10 tomorrow morning!’ (laughs).

We were already in meetings with the Korean singer’s people. 15 people from the office were already involved.

It was easy enough for the music producer to tell the other party, ‘We are sorry for asking suddenly, but we would like you to sing a new original song…’ but wait, it’s a song right? What are we going to do about the lyrics?

The producer said, ‘oh…’ (laughs). Even If I were to write a song by tomorrow, the lyrics wouldn’t be done in time. In that case, the producer said, ‘We’ll have the singer write the lyrics. I will tell everybody to wait a little bit, so could you write a song within the next hour? Please. Well then, I’ll go tell everybody.’ Hey, hey! So this is what I wrote there in that hour.

- (Shocked)… I can’t possibly believe that it was written in such a difficult situation, being such a polished and beautiful song

Also it was like a miracle that the singer could immediately write the lyrics right there.

By the time we assembled everything, it was already midnight.

We hadn’t eaten anything yet and since we had come all the way to Seoul, the producer and I went to get a bite to eat.

There was but this one restaurant that was still open at midnight, so we went in not knowing what they might serve (laughs). Without even saying anything, a big boiling pot came out and even though we didn’t order it, meat came out as well. We ate it without even knowing what kind of meat it might be and didn’t even figure it out in the end (laughs).

The Korea at the time was not as open to Japanese people as it is now.

The city streets were still dark, there was a mutual racially-based alienation you could feel, and then the beautiful voice of the singer…

Now that I look back on it, it was a very memorable overseas recording.

For most overseas recordings, I am not accompanied by Japanese performers, but even though our words may not get across, I still work with the local musicians, having to resort to body movements and hand motions to direct, and manage to get it done (laughs).

I am quite a veteran at that (laughs).

-When you can’t communicate with words, you’ve still shown a talented ability in communicating. I would feel safe being brought along on a trip to any country (laughs). In CMs but especially anime, you frequently use the Warsaw Philharmonic…

For this and that, I’ve been to Warsaw about 50 times… I know all the members so we really have a close trusting relationship. At first Poland was still socialist, the atmosphere was dark, there was also the language barrier. The orchestra was great, but when I greeted them, they didn’t really respond. It was like that for about the first 10 times. After that socialism broke down and as information became accessible, everybody became more fashionable. It has changed quite a bit. The Polish are very serious, shy, work-less-if-praised-type, and very good warm people. Maybe like Japanese people.

In America, if you don’t praise people, things may not go very well, but in Poland if you do, they can take it easy. When I was small I had a period where I wanted my own orchestra, one like the Paul Mauriat Grand Orchestra. The Warsaw members told me, “If it’s for Yoko’s orchestra, we will do it anytime. You can even become our regular conductor.” I could not be happier since my dream has come true.

-Wow, so the Warsaw Phil is now Kanno-san’s “My orchestra.”

You’re probably the first Japanese person to be so honored by Warsaw.

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• New CMYoko Website Launched
• CMYoko2 Debuts in Oricon Dailies at #16
• CMYoko2 Vocalists
• CMYoko2 Review
• Yoko Kanno CM Compilation CD: CMYoko2

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