Solo careers by X Japan's surviving members followed. Toshi started a band. Yoshiki furthered his musical pedigree by composing Japan's best-selling classical album, Eternal Melody, with Beatles producer George Martin and teaming up with fellow Japanese rock stars Gackt, Miyavi, and Sugizo (who would later become X Japan's new guitarist) in the super-group S.K.I.N.
But X Japan wasn't over.
Photos by Jonathan McNamara
X Japan, moments before taking the stage at Lollapalooza 2010, their first-ever U.S. show.
X Japan loyalists invade Lollapalooza.
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"Toshi, the vocalist, and I . . . We didn't talk for seven or eight years after the breakup," Yoshiki says. "But then we started talking. The beginning was just fixing our friendship first, then Toshi said, 'You know we have fans all over the world now.'"
For years, Japanophiles and anime fans have been trading J-rock albums at conventions and online. Some fans are music pirates who stumbled upon the band on Napster. At least that's my story. More than a decade ago, I was attempting to "acquire" a soundtrack for an anime flick called X/1999 when I downloaded the song "X" — in all its speed-metal glory — by mistake. I had to have more. I battled eBay bidders for imported copies of Art of Life; I watched Region 2 DVDs of live performances on a Japanese PlayStation 2, and I plunked down more than I could afford to get to Lollapalooza.
I wasn't alone.
In January, more than 8,000 screaming, banner-waving American fans descended on Hollywood Boulevard to witness X Japan lip-synch shots for four upcoming music videos filmed on the rooftop of Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.
The mayhem was no different at Lollapalooza 2010. Countless posters were held aloft and thousands of X Japan T-shirts covered sweat-drenched American and Japanese fans who'd waited hours in the hot August sun just to get the best view of X Japan's show. From the band's first note to its last, the fans screamed the lyrics in unison.
"When I told [my friends] I was coming to Lollapalooza and X Japan was here, they shat their pants," says Paul, a fan from Seattle. Paul was with Raquel, who journeyed from Portugal, and Lisa from California, who sported an X Japan tattoo. These X acolytes had waited years to see the band play. Now that they have, they believe mainstream American success is inevitable — even if X Japan doesn't get radio play.
"Good metal never gets on the radio," Paul says. "Fuck the radio. We have the Internet. This shit is going to spread like crazy."
In the days following the Lollapalooza show, X Japan continued to receive press. On August 9, Time Out Chicago thanked Perry Farrell for including X Japan in this year's Lollapalooza. "Thank you most of all for X Japan. Engineering the first stateside import of Japan's (mostly) quadragenarian metal monsters was the coup of the festival, and as expected, faces were in fact melted," wrote Doyle Armbrust. On August 10, ABC aired the segment it shot in Chicago. Then, on August 16, X Japan announced their North American tour dates.
The story of whether or not X Japan will be able to rebuild their Japanese superstardom on American shores will play out at those shows, in those venues. All we can do is wait.
