Ryuichi Sakamoto in Three Gigs

In which I eulogize my favorite musician of all time

Ryuichi Sakamoto was my hero. He may well have been the first. I mean, I can remember the day I heard The Beatles for the first time - Revolver, start to finish - in an office up the street from Tower Records in Hollywood. I was three years old. Conversely, I can’t really remember a time I didn’t know about Sakamoto or his band Yellow Magic Orchestra, thanks to my father having tour managed YMO in the early 80’s. I can remember humming songs from the Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence soundtrack at nursery school. It sounds strange, but it’s absolutely true. At age 10, I wrote Ryuichi a fan letter - basically one of two I’ve ever written in my life - and he sent me back a nice set of photographs from his studio that he signed. What a guy.

(I still don’t know what “Anü Scummy” [sp?] means or who “Robert” is. Capture by my mom.)

Consequently, there is no objectivity possible in my discussing Sakamoto’s staggering body of work. I can’t tell you why he’s good, or musically valid, or important because for me, he is a metric by which music’s goodness, validity and/or importance is measured. To me, he was the consummate musician: a hardworking, inventive and devastatingly talented man who always managed to deliver compelling and distinctive work. As a young boy, I had all kinds of romantic notions about him dreaming up ideas in some fantastic electronic wonderland. Only a couple years ago did I realize such a vision was not too far from reality, thanks to the Tokyo Melody documentary from 1984, showing the artist at the peak of his powers.

So, rather than some boring intellectual discussion of the person who literally inspired me to be a musician in the first place, the reason I so much as took piano lessons, here are remembrances of the three times I was lucky enough to catch him live - little glimpses of the artist’s many facets, and anchors of time for me: childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Palace, Los Angeles, 1990

Ryuichi was touring Neo Geo and Beauty, possibly his biggest gambits to break into the American pop market. On the former, Sly Dunbar and Bootsy fucking Collins were the rhythm section and Bill Laswell produced. It featured “Risky,” with vocals from Iggy Pop, which ended up being a minor chart hit, but my favorites from the LP featured a Japanese female trio who sang folk melodies in unison over the funky background:

(See, even now, I can’t contain myself. Look at how fucking cool this is. Look how fucking cool he is. And he knows it! He just owns it. It’s a fantasy of his, fully realized. Anyway...)

I have a pretty good memory, but one can only remember so much from being three years old. I remember being excited to see my hero play songs off Neo Geo, which was probably my favorite album at that time. (The soundtrack for The Last Emperor was a close second.) The concert, however, is just an exotic blur. I remember he had those singers as depicted in the above video. I think. I remember the vast cavernous black and red of the theatre, the seats, the metal bannisters. I remember loving the music. Always I loved the music. It was all new and strange and wonderful, as so many experiences are for a young child - but how marvelous it was for this to be one such experience!

Contrast my fuzzy, happy memory of childlike wonder to the Los Angeles Times panning the concert.

Morelenbaum2/Sakamoto, The Knitting Factory, Los Angeles, 2002.

It had been a rough summer afternoon. In the middle of our driving lesson, I cut too close to the cars on the right for my father’s liking, and he lost his temper with me. 6th Street always got a little tricky around Miracle Mile as lanes appeared and dissolved. Dad told me to pull over, and on we continued to Hollywood Boulevard with him behind the wheel in my stead.

We were on our way to snag tickets for a last minute show at The Knitting Factory - Morelenbaum2/Sakamoto. Sakamoto had teamed up with a married Brazilian duo to cut Casa, a cover album of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s work - in Jobim’s house, featuring the very grand piano Jobim had used, no less. The result was gorgeous, if not exactly Ryuichi’s most exciting venture for me. It was a little puzzling as to why he briefly suspended his own compositional ambitions to pay tribute to a master. But perhaps I just answered my own question in the preceding sentence.

Just before the band stepped onstage, the MC appeared to announce no dinner would be served during the concert; clinking glasses and silverware would interfere with the delicacy of the show. The show was indeed delicate and beautiful, as one would expect from a small group of brilliant musicians playing Jobim’s music in a relaxed setting. Dick Clark sat two tables away from us and coughed loudly as the show went on. The Morelenbaums teased each other mercilessly during the set breaks, but the comic and musical highlight for me was Ryuichi’s star turns duplicating Jobim’s whistling and piano unison parts perfectly. He’d simply draw the microphone to his mouth for the appropriate “solo” section, then gently brush it back away. I could have sworn this took place as they played “Águas de março” (You know the song even if you don’t know the title) but I can’t find any record of this being so; the trio didn’t even record that tune. But I certainly remember this, the set’s closer:

In the coming years, in addition to learning to drive without my father’s assistance, I started to dive into more aggressive, sloppy music that opened up new vistas for me as a music fan and budding musician: Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, Guided by Voices and Sonic Youth, to name a few. These artists couldn’t have been further away from the gentle sounds Dad and I enjoyed that night at the Knitting Factory, but I never lost sight of my earliest musical obsession. In fact, something “sounding like YMO” was always a Good Thing as I discovered new artists.

Yellow Magic Orchestra, The Warfield, San Francisco, 2011

I had to tell a little white lie. I had no choice. My band had a small West Coast jaunt planned and I begged off, claiming I didn’t have enough PTO left at my job. That was only half-true. The real reason was I wasn’t going to miss the only opportunity I’d ever had to see my favorite band of all time. Yellow Magic Orchestra was coming to MY town, one night only, and I wasn’t going to miss them for anything.

2011 was a weird year for me. The inevitable disappointments of early adulthood had started to rear their ugly heads. Supporting myself outside the home for the first time in my adult life had led me to working a job I loathed. A major relationship had ended in a spectacular fashion. Money was tight, and my health wasn’t great by any metric. There were many “what the fuck am I doing” moments. Even that day I’d had a pretty major letdown: I’d invited my crush, also a major Sakamoto fan, to the show, and she’d agreed, only to get cold feet and turn me down hours before doors opened. Instead, my roommate tagged along. Nice of him to keep me company, but it wasn’t the evening I’d hoped for.

As showtime neared, another disappointment, and not just for me: the venue was only half-full. YMO had sold out Hollywood Bowl earlier in the week on a stacked bill that included Yoko Ono and Cibo Matto, but here in San Francisco, promotion must have been lacking, to put it mildly. For years after, I would mention this gig to Bay Area musicians only to see their eyes widen and jaws slacken: “You saw what? Where??” Before the house lights went down, I thought: This is it. They’re never going to come back here again. Sadly, I was right. Three men in their late fifties who were worshipped like royalty in their home country playing to a half-full house across the Pacific; who would blame them?

Thankfully, no such disappointment was to be found with the show itself. It was magical, nearly everything I could have dreamt from the band who defined music for me in the first place. Drummer Yukihiro Takahashi and bassist Haroumi Hosono carried a serious vibe, dressing in stately, dapper suits, but Ryuichi, wearing a black hoodie, set a far more playful mood. Sporting a mushroom-shaped haircut, he bounced around joyously behind his synth setup, even hamming it up with a megaphone for the verse sections of “Taiso.” Hosono and Takahashi’s harmonies brought Technodelic’s droning “Graydated Grey” alive for me, reverberating the years of deep love I’d held for this band. Chills run up my spine as I remember the band launching into “Lotus Love” - which I knew they would after the stage left guitarist had pulled out an electric sitar - one of their most powerful, moving pieces, now in 3-D before me.

No, I never saw the Beatles, but God damn it, I did see YMO, and for that I feel beyond blessed.

Yuki’s passing in January blindsided me; very few knew he was sick. Conversely, Ryuichi had been public about his illness over the years - there’s even a documentary about his earlier bout with cancer - making the news perhaps less surprising, but no less sad. It’s devastating to realize that as of April this year, only one member of YMO is left standing. However, I strongly suspect time will only deepen music fans’ appreciation of these three genius musicians and the unique sound they generated together; the recent popularity of “City Pop” and Hosono’s solo reissues on Light in the Attic speaks to such a trend. How lucky it is that they left such a generous offering of their innovative music behind for those ready to partake.