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THE ARTS/MUSIC | MARCH 9, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 9 |
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The Day the Phones Died The rockers Glay are stealing teenage hearts and disrupting Japan's communication system By HANNAH BEECH /TOKYO
Control over Japan's phone lines, however, is not what makes Glay, in Inoguchi's understated words, "different." The four have shaken up the musical scene because they did what few bands in Japan have accomplished before: defy the assembly line that produces instant pop idols. Instead, Glay made it the old-fashioned way, papering cities with posters and playing cramped bars and smoky clubs--sometimes for drunken, single-digit audiences. Glay banded together in 1988, when vocalist Teru, 26, (blood type O, says a fanzine that focuses on such details), lanky composer Takuro, 26, (type O), hyper guitarist Hisashi, 26, (type O) and baby-faced bassist Jiro, 25, (the misfit, type A) were in high school in Hakodate, a city in northern Japan not known for its music scene. Soon after graduation, the foursome headed south to Tokyo, where they developed their sound, a punk-rock bite leavened with melodic interludes and philosophical lyrics. "We don't want our music to sound like everyone else's," says lyricist Takuro. "So we draw from lots of people." The hard-rock edge jarred some listeners, who had grown up on a diet of cotton-candy lyrics mouthed by school-age darlings. But Glay's original riffs, worldly wise demeanor and ample mascara attracted fans. It also seduced Extasy Records, an independent label that was in the vanguard of a growing backlash against saccharine pop stars. Glay's competition came largely from these interchangeable cuties, who appear from nowhere and, just as quickly, disappear. "You can be a Japanese teen-age idol and make it at 16 years old," says entertainment writer Satoru Morioka. "But by the time you're 17, everyone's forgotten that you even existed." Still, many of these teenagers will trade anything to gain those fleeting moments of fame. Talent schools have sprung up to teach wannabes how to sing, and lines wrap around city blocks at auditions for star-search TV shows. The trade-off is that these stars have little musical credibility: they don't write their songs or control their careers, and their manufactured images make even the Spice Girls seem original. Much of this musical puppetry is the work of one man, whom Glay deliberately avoided. Entertainment tycoon Tetsuya Komuro (blood type O) was responsible for seven of Japan's top 10 singles at one point in 1996. His factory regularly churns out pert wonderkids, including sugary songstress Namie Amuro, techno-rappers TRF and glitzy band globe--bringing the 39-year-old Komuro a reported annual income of $16 million. He boasts lucrative contracts with big-name music firms Avex DD and Sony, and he also runs a scouting agency that trolls Asia for marketable youngsters who will dance to his signature techno-driven beat. But producing a hit a week has its costs. "Some people began to think that all of Komuro's music was starting to sound the same," says critic Hideki Take. "I think people wanted something fresh and new. They wanted real people, not a product." Osaka radio station FM802 sensed the trend late last year and promoted a Komuro-free "Hot 100 Special." Topping the music list was Glay. Fans seem to agree with the station's choice. Glay's best-hits album, Review, has sold more than 4.17 million copies since its release in October, making it the top-selling album ever in Japan. Up to then, the champion was an album by Komuro's globe, which had sold 4.13 million copies. "Glay's really, really cool," says Mika Kohno, 19, a Tokyoite who nabbed a concert ticket with her fleet-fingered dialing. "They've gone through lots to get here, and you can hear it in their music. Plus, they're really cute." How long they will remain a favorite of Japan's fickle fans is unclear, but Glay already has two major accomplishments: paralyzing Japan's phone system and proving that guys who wear eyeliner can be cool.
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hen you're cool, so cool that you're four guys who can get away
with wearing make-up, so cool that--like Pele or Madonna--you're
known only by your first names, trifling details like bad
spelling aren't going to cramp your style. In fact, if you're
the Japanese band Glay (as in "neither black nor white but
something in between," according to a publicist), you don't
really care what people think. "They know it's not how you spell
the color in English," says Platinum Records executive producer
Hirohiko Inoguchi. "But it's their way of being different." The
rockers are so popular that Japan's entire telephone system was
put out of action the morning of Feb. 15 as thousands of
teeny-boppers tried to book tickets for Glay's spring concert
tour.