I used to go to music school and present my songs on the live stage
there in the early ’90s. The presentation event was held once a month
where the students sang their own songs in front of the renowned music
producers and the top artists of the time, who gave their suggestions or
impressions of the songs. I tried to seize the opportunity for a break
and made a new song every month for the event by writing, arranging and
recording the accompaniment until dawn with cutting down on my sleep.
Though I was picked as the best of the class and the producers and the
artists were impressed at my song on every stage, nothing further ever
happened. I had imagined that people in the music business were looking
for songs of good quality so that I could sign a contract only if I
provided them, which wasn’t how it worked as it turned out.
In those
days, my partner with whom I created music together worked part-time as
an attraction cast at the theme park which host is the famous mouse.
Since our music career hadn’t been going as we had expected, he
constantly brooded over his future as a musician. He couldn’t get rid of
anxiety out of his mind and felt at a deadlock. One day, too much
distress caused him a panic attack during work at the theme park and he
suddenly pushed the stop switch without thinking. His operational error
made the entire attraction aborted and the guests had to leave the
attraction. Fortunately the matter was settled by submitting a letter of
apology and he was spared from being fired. Nevertheless, he thought he
couldn’t go on with such a mental state of his and quit voluntarily. To
recuperate mentally, he was walking for a couple of hours every day and
rented a movie at a rental video shop that existed at the time to watch
one film per day. Now that he had gotten time to spare, he looked up
music producers of Japanese record companies, copied my songs that I
presented at the music school on cassette tapes, and sent them out to
the producers.
While he had been sending to thirty or forty producers
each time I completed a song, some of them contacted us and we had a
meeting. In those cases, we were nervous but extremely excited at the
same time to picture that this could be a break. We visited the
high-rise shining building where the major record company resided and
met quite a few producers there. The best meeting for me was with the
one who worked for the very band whose songs had been the decisive
reason why I became a musician. He told me that the artist of the band
of whom I was an avid fan had actually listened to my song and admired
it. In another case, a producer even promised to prepare a studio for us
to rehearse the recording. After that meeting, my partner and I opened a
bottle of champagne at home. The thing was, they would stop contacting
us after the meeting without exception. Although all the meetings
seemingly went so well, everything stopped right there and no further
progress occurred. They never called us again. No matter how excited the
producer sounded when we received a call from him, his passion
dispersed once we met face to face. It seemed that their sweet offers
were only to avoid conflict and end the meeting peacefully. When we
called them day after day persistently to ask how things they had
promised were going, they were always out. They apparently dodged us.
Then I finally learned that it was our looks and uncompromising music
business model. What they were looking for was good-looking musicians
who would give in to any demand from the producer. On the contrary, we
had determined what our working style as musicians should be and
expressed we had no intention to change that, while my partner wasn’t
handsome and I wasn’t pretty. No matter how good our music was, they
regarded us as useless the minute they saw we weren’t beautiful puppets
whom they needed. I was circling in a tormenting loop where I completed
the best song in my life, sent it to producers, had meetings with them,
and lost contact.
During those unrewarded years, I had searched for a
way to fill the gap between what the music industry wanted and what I
wanted. Although I couldn’t find the way, it was a shame to give up
because I was confident of my songs’ quality. An unbreakable heavy wall
appeared in front of me who had simply thought that making good music
would lead to a contract with a major record company. Back then, I was a
young musician who had believed making a big hit meant success. Sadly
and foolishly, it was decades later that I finally understood the notion
like that was all wrong and what success truly meant.
