Relay Interviews [Squeeze Spirits] : Lay x Mizuha
Relay: Lay x Mizuha : Part 1 [translator's notes in brackets [] ]
'Inevitability =/= Happenstance.'
Squeeze Spirits (SS): Out of Fatima, you two have known each other the longest, and I'd like to ask what were the circumstances surrounding your first meeting??
Lay: Discussing when we first met? We first met at a Lxxx Sxx concert ... (laughs).
Mizuha: (laughs) Me and the person I was with were searching for a bassist. And so we were thinking, where could we find a bassist? After thinking about it, we decided 'If we go to the Lxxx Sxx concert, surely there'll be a bassist there!' (laughs) I thought that there would have to be that "one" bassist there (laughs).
SS: That "one" bassist! That's important isn't it? (laughs)
Mizuha: Right, it's that important! I was searching for just that "one" bassist (laughs). And so, if by going to that concert ...
Lay: At Nippon Budokan, yeah (laughs). But I didn't have a ticket for the show. I thought I'd look for one, but I didn't know if I'd be able to get in. Around that time there were rumors of the band's impending kaisan, and so as it turns out, I couldn't find a ticket. So I couldn't get in.
Mizuha: So you went to go get some tea (laughs).
Lay: Right, I didn't know what else to do, so I went to a tea shop near the concert hall (laughs). And so ...
Mizuha: Me and my friend were just sort of loitering around, and we soon discovered this guy drinking tea (laughs).
SS: What! What a pre-destined meeting, huh!
Mizuha: I was already thinking, 'That guy with bleached hair has got to be what we're looking for!' (laughs). 'He came to this concert, his hair is bleached ... he's absolutely got to play the bass!!' (everyone laughs)
Lay: But at that time Mizuha wasn't there.
SS: ???
Mizuha: Well I saw you from a distance (laughs).
Lay: So at first I called out to the guy that Mizuha was with and said, "Another one of you is coming, but are you too shy to come any closer?" I was wondering what this kid would reply with (laughs).
Mizuha: Of course you'd call out to him without warning (laughs). But really, what did he reply with?
Lay: He said that you guys were looking for a vocalist and a bassist, and I saw that he had some type of recruitment application with him.
Mizuha: That's true (laughs).
Lay: And then, he asked, 'you play the bass, right?' Ah, well, I did but ... I guess I looked like I would (laughs). But the guy who was talking to me was still in high school. I had already graduated from high school. Actually our ages weren't that different, but isn't a high schooler fairly different from someone who's already graduated? But at that time I already had my heart set on being a rock star, and so that's why I'd bleached my hair. But with him, he was still going to high school, and had sort of an ordinary feeling about him. And then to say that he was looking for a bassist so suddenly ... I skeptically exchanged numbers, and then we separated. At that time I was already playing in a band back in my home town, but it was pretty lackluster. And during that troubling time I met up with these guys, and so I decided there was no help for it, I might as well see what happened with them in the studio. So we went ahead and tried out a Lxxx Sxx copy band together (laughs).
SS: Of course that'd be how you'd start out (laughs).
Lay: For the time being yeah (laughs).
Mizuha: Ah well, if it was just that we thought we could do it (laughs).
Lay: Right, right (laughs). So we went to a studio in Shinjuku. Afterwards I was like, that was really good! I was so surprised. Compared to the band I had been in before, it felt like the sense with this new band was much higher. Well, at that time Mizuha had long hair. Why did he already have long hair? (laughs)
Mizuha: (laughs)
Lay: Then I talked to him and found out that we were the same age. The other kid who was still in high school, he was Mizuha's kouhai from the school Mizuha had graduated from. After thinking about it, I thought that there might be a chance we could do this together. So we formed the band we were in before Fatima.
Mizuha: Well, the band way before Fatima, it seems.
Lay: That's right. To start with we were in the copy band. And then, the high schooler searched among his classmates for a vocalist, but they weren't that good. But since they were high schoolers, their minds were really just focused on fucking around anyway. And then about that time, Mizuha quit from the band.
SS: What, really??!
Lay: Yeah, he left once (laughs).
Mizuha: ahahahahahha (laughs).
Lay: After Mizuha left, he joined up with a certain V band. For ourselves we began recruiting again, and found a vocalist as well as a guitarist .... the vocalist was a classmate of the drummer's. With all of the members complete, we set forward, and that was the band before Fatima.
SS: Moving forward from the previous band you'd all been in.
Lay: Right. And in the band we'd formed, the two members who would come to be original members of Fatima were me and the drummer. We started doing lives, but a short time later we changed our vocalist for another. Right at that time, Mizuha's V band broke up ..... and so I told him, "Get your ass back here." (laughs)
Mizuha: Yes (laughs).
Lay: So with Mizuha returning, we finally had five members. But soon after it just seemed that the vocalist wasn't really working out, so after recruiting again, we met Sanaka. But then after all this, the other guitarist was just really not getting along with everyone.
Mizuha: Yeah, there was various discord, huh? (small laugh)
Lay: Yeah. That guitarist was the beginning of the end of that band (small laugh). Eventually, we did the rest of the lives scheduled for the band, but then broke up after those. At that time there were four original members of Fatima. And then that's when I made "Downer" for the band. With that, I asked everyone if they still wanted to do a band after showing them the song, and it was decided we'd go ahead with it. And so it was three months after that, we were once more standing in a livehouse, and Fatima was formed! .... Well, something like that anyway (laughs).
Mizuha: (nods)
SS: Thanks so much! Were your first impressions of each other good ones?
Lay: It was a good first impression .... Though, at the tea house when I was speaking with the friend he'd brought, I had to wonder why he wasn't with his friend. But when I finally met Mizuha, it all fell into place, it was like, 'ah, I see.' (laughs) I just thought he was shy (laughs).
Mizuha: You really hurt my feelings! (laughs)
Lay: Aa (laughs) ... But my impression didn't really change that much. It wasn't a bad first impression.
SS: And how about yours Mizuha-san?
Mizuha: He went from being a rocker to a punk (laughs). At that time he was really 'rock-ish.'
Lay: Yeah (laughs).
Mizuha: That's how I felt about him (laughs).
SS: I see (laughs). So was Fatima completely different from the band you had before Fatima?
Lay: It was different. The band prior to Fatima was a so-called jari ban, and completely out of fashion.
Mizuha: hahahahahah (laughs)
Lay: We were only active for about a year. And it just wasn't cool! (laughs) But everyone has a memory or two they'd love to be able to forget (small laugh).
Mizuha: Well, before I re-entered that band I did come to see them perform once (laughs).
Lay: Ahh, right, you did! Before that band you were in broke up, you came to see us play once.
Mizuha: ..... It was amazing (laughs).
SS: ..... In what way was it amazing!?
Mizuha: !!!! (big laugh)
SS: Well, Lay-san is being scary right now, so let's just move on, shall we? (small laugh)
Mizuha: ahahahahah (laughs) ...... Somehow, it was like, how are they doing such things in the scale of this livehouse?
Lay: Aah, that's right (laughs).
Mizuha: In a sense, it was shocking (laughs).
Lay: Reckless! It was reckless! (laughs)
Mizuha: It was amazing! (laughs)
SS: Okay, I understand (laughs). So after that band was over, you tried again a second time with the same members, and that's how Fatima came about. But what changes did you want to make with Fatima?
Lay: I said it before but I wanted to get rid of the idea of boundaries, or the idea that 'We can't do it like that.' Also, up to that point our band hadn't really been a cohesive unit with everyone putting their heart into it .... I wanted it to have an industrial-feel, which was becoming popular at the time. With that type of atmosphere, I wanted the band to be stylish. I didn't want us to have pitch-black costumes and makeup or anything, but I did want the music to matter more than the costumes and makeup. ... I was really aiming for that type of feeling with Fatima.
SS: So from your first forming up, you really pioneered a new genre.
Lay: That's right.
Mizuha: We did some fairly reckless things, huh? In such small areas (laughs).
Lay: We did, didn't we? (laughs). Somehow in a livehouse, we set up a jail cell type of thing in the area between the stage and the pit where the fans were. We did things like that ...
SS: Did you do this at a live with other normal bands?
Lay & Mizuha: Yeah (laughs).
SS: !!!
Lay: We were fairly excessive (laughs). Afterwards, the vocalist cut his arm ....
SS: Huh? By vocalist do you mean ... ??
Lay & Mizuha: Sanaka (laughs).
SS: What!!!
Lay: Yeah, Sanaka still carries the scar. And then on Christmas night we did a show in medical garb, didn't we? We wore that kind of stuff around that time. By the time December came around, we were wearing medical fetish style.
SS: Is that so!
Lay: After that, that style became fairly popular.
SS: That's a pretty underground type of feeling, isn't it?
Lay: It is underground. We wanted to put forth something risky. Really, it was only our sense that was high.
Mizuha: You say only our sense (laughs).
Lay: Only our sense. Our musical performance itself was pretty low (laughs).
Mizuha: And always at that certain livehouse ... (laughs).
Lay: Yeah, the manager of that livehouse was always coming to lecture us (laughs).
Lay & Mizuha: ....... Those were the days (laughs).
SS: If you look back, there's so many things that happened, hm? (laughs)
Lay: Lots of things happened. Around that time it was pretty expensive to have color flyers, so we didn't have any flyers in color. So we were always thinking about how we could give off an impact with just monochrome flyers .... and how we could do the same when distributing them ... we thought about a lot of things.
