Things often look and perhaps even feel different on the roof of a high-rise building. This may be why Japanese megastar Yoshiki Hayashi, known worldwide as Yoshiki, decided to serenade the sky with friends and colleagues for his intimate concert film “Yoshiki: Under The Sky”. Always with you: a grand piano and a monster of a drum set.
The multi-instrumentalist traveled specifically to the premiere of his film in a cinema in Berlin with a really large screen and correspondingly expansive sound in order to be interviewed. At first he appears like a shy deer as he slowly sits down on his spot. He speaks quietly but firmly. He describes the film as a great joy and a way to overcome pain. The expanded framework is the slowly overcoming corona pandemic, the return to music, but also the mourning for deceased people who fell victim to the virus.
Tested by life, liberated by music
Can you be an expert on suffering? At least that’s what Yoshiki is assumed to be. Pain, sadness and overload accompany the musician’s life, which he doesn’t need to mention. In 1982 he founded the band X Japan together with Toshimitsu “Toshi” Deyama. An unprecedented success story between speed metal and progressive rock. Yoshiki on the drums, sometimes drumming like a berserker. If you just listen to the music, you don’t have any doubts, if you see him at his work equipment, it seems like a miracle that this happens given his physical stature – Yoshiki comes across as an ethereal being, even seems as if he were in a manga Life slipped away – is even possible. The result was neck and back problems, and even the intensive piano playing was not without consequences, as he admitted in the follow-up conversation that evening.
But none of this compares to the torment that arose when his father committed suicide (Yoshiki was just ten years old) and his bandmate Hideto Matsumoto died under mysterious circumstances in 1998. While anger and a perhaps irrational desire to fight to take life more seriously were the reaction to the loss of his father, Matsumoto’s death dragged him into a severe depression that he never really got rid of.
From an early age, music became a way for Yoshiki to escape all these limitations of happiness. The concert film also symbolizes an impressive defiance. If it wasn’t possible to make music with others for months, then now that the coronavirus seems to be under control, we should do as much as possible together. So Yoshiki sings with many greats of the pop circus from a wide variety of genres: Sarah Brightman, Nicole Scherzinger, The Chainsmokers, SixTONES, Jane Zhang and Lindsey Stirling, for example. Cover versions, songs by Yoshiki, plus lots of pomp and melodrama. The most interesting collaborations for the uninitiated are those with the Scorpions and St. Vincent. Of course, you first have to attempt such a musical balancing act.
Yoshiki appears fearless, if sometimes too inspired by the ability to carry great emotions. “How do you deal with pain,” the interviewer asks him after the film, which, among other things, shows a touching encounter with a fan whose wife died during the pandemic and who now wants to thank the musician through his music to have gained courage to live. Yoshiki first looks serious, then he giggles briefly, takes the glass that was placed in front of him and says: “I drink champagne”. It has to be said that it is bubbly made especially for the composer. A bottle costs more than some Rolling Stones concert tickets. Useful humor and a fragile melancholy flow from the words of the Japanese, who repeatedly mentions in the concert film, but also in conversation, how important the bond with his fans is to him. Some visitors that evening have tears in their eyes to see him and hug him.
Between piano and drums
“Yoshiki: Under The Sky” is for the musician, who was already able to play the piano at the age of four and in recent years has glided back and forth between the actually separate galaxies of classical music, pop and hard rock music, but also an experience to stage yourself like never before. Yoshiki directed it and can be seen in almost every sequence. This is also a kind of solution to the pain, as he mentions that he basically had little strength or confidence to do it. However, there was support from experienced producers Sid Ganis (“Iron Man”) and Mark Ritchie (“Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé”).
Even though the filmic journey appears personal, it doesn’t want to seem too intimate. It’s about emotions: The Show Must Go On. It’s about an artist who, as a Japanese artist, can – and that’s rare enough – perform anywhere in the world, most recently at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Tokyo Garden Theater and the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. With all of these amazing facts, which are supported in the concert film with visually impressive images, it also becomes clear that this is real world music that should be understood everywhere.
“Yoshiki: Under The Sky” will be available on Amazon Prime Video in the spring. The film is on the shortlist for an Oscar nomination in the “Best Documentary Feature Film” category.