Milestones

Boøwy

Name: Boøwy – Just A Hero
Item: Just A Hero
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Just A Hero

1986 (Eastworld)

new wave

by Federico Romagnoli

Boøwy were one of the two most iconic Japanese rock bands of the the Eighties era, rivaled only by Anzen Chitai in terms of popular success, critical acclaim and influence on other musicians.

During their early years, the group, then a six-piece, was known as 暴威 (transliterated as Boui), meaning "Tyranny", a name that was changed during the recording sessions for their debut album to make explicit reference to David Bowie exploiting the phonetic similarity between the two names.

Bowie was their yardstick, admired for his well-known traits: his exploration and innovation across multiple musical genres, his experiments with the visual side of music, his irreverent attitude toward the media, and his ability to keep audiences engaged despite the drastic stylistic shifts in his output.

Their point of reference on the domestic scene, however, was RC Succession, the band led by Kiyoshiro Imawano and active during the the Seventiesand Eighties, moving through folk rock, blues e punk, with an iconoclastic attitude that captivated a good chunk of Japan's underground culture at the time.

After releasing "Moral" (Invitation, 1982), their debut album, Boøwy shrank to a quartet, dropping the saxophone and second guitar and settling into what would remain their classic lineup: Kyosuke Himuro (vocals), Tomoyasu Hotei (guitar and backing vocals), Tsunematsu Matsui (bass) and Makoto Takahashi (drums). Their rise was far from easy: in the early days the band survived thanks to the members' part-time jobs as salesmen and waiters, with Himuro and Hotei frequently getting fired due to their constant misbehavior. Both came from Takasaki, a mid-sized city in the heart of Japan, where they had reputations as young delinquents, between fights, school expulsions and the like. Moving to Tokyo to try their luck in music did nothing to smooth out their rough edges. Fortunately, Matsui and Takahashi proved more responsible, holding things together during the toughest financial moments.

Even once their recording career got underway, things didn't take off right away, partly because the band tried to break free from the promotion agencies tied to the record labels, a move that was not well received. Their first two albums sold only a few thousand copies each, and the four were forced to play live constantly just to cover costs. Their relentless touring, however, managed to grow their cult following, eventually earning them a contract with Eastworld, part of the EMI group: their third album, simply titled "Boøwy" (1985), reached number 48 on the Oricon chart and became their first to sell over 50,000 copies. Cult-band numbers, giving no real hint of the phenomenon mainstream that was about to explode shortly after, but which finally brought in a decent financial return.

"Just A Hero", recorded in autumn 1985 and released on March 1, 1986, is their mature masterpiece, thanks in part to the budget from a label that finally backs them fully, allowing them to realize the complex, layered work they'd always aspired to: particularly in the case of Hotei, the band's creative hub in his multiple roles as composer, producer and arranger, while Himuro mainly handles the lyrics.

Their sound has always fallen within the realm of new wave and post-punk, but if their early sound was skeletal, that of "Just A Hero" is lush and dense with detail.

The tracklist opens with "Dancing In The Pleasure Land", whose catchiness risks overshadowing an utterly unusual structure. The verse appears only once, right at the start of the song, driven by a galloping hard rock guitar, while the chorus decisively defuses the tension, veering towards new romantic: what follows is a section in which a chorus of voices repeats the song's title over and over, acting as a hybrid between the verse (from which it borrows the guitar and aggressive tone) and the chorus, to which it seems to serve as a sort of echoing coda. An interlude with a brief guitar solo leads back into the chorus and its coda, which repeats until the final fade-out.

"Rouge Of Gray" is a technological funk rock track that, after an aggressive guitar driven by an electronic sample, softens into an atmospheric sound marked by the separation of the guitars across the two audio channels (on one side a dry, choppy rhythm, on the other delicate jazz-tinged harmonies and arpeggios), as well as by the drums' angular interplay (notably the halting stop-start break between 1'04" and 1'07").

"Wagamama Juliet" is one of the few tracks on the album written by Himuro, though as ever arranged and produced by Hotei, and it was chosen as the lead single, sparking skepticism among some Emi staff: being a soft-toned love song, it wasn't seen as representative of the image Boøwy had projected up to that point. That said, the musical construction is extremely refined, with Hotei applying every trick necessary to avoid any excess sweetness: the rhythm stays consistently driving and even turns martial from 2'06" and again from 3'48" (this happens during a section that is, again, hard to pin down: a second chorus or a bridge?), the sound of a marimba insisting on the natural F and C notes, creating a dissonant tritone effect (from 0'17"), and the keyboard arpeggiating the notes of an E major seventh chord, weaving intricate harmonic interplay with the underlying chords (from 3'04").

The tone turns feisty again on "Justy", with a verse power pop that spills into a chorus where Hotei's guitar produces high-pitched tones recalling some of his favorite fellow guitarists, such as Steve Howe of Yes and Bill Nelson of Be-Bop Deluxe. At 2'06" there's even room for a flamenco guitar solo. A month after the album's release, the song became the theme tune for the popular variety show "Ikinari! Friday Night".

La title track is perhaps the most complex track of the bunch: it opens as an atmospheric slow number, driven by a keyboard ostinato, while the verse features an electric guitar so cleanly toned it could pass for an acoustic, and the pre-chorus is brushed by electronic whistles that thicken the texture. The real chorus only kicks in at 2'38", when the drums suddenly break into an unexpected gallop, before slowing down again in the finale, marked by bass glissandi.

“1994 (Label Of Complex)” is the track that best showcases Hotei's obsession with Bowie, featuring aguitar guitar in the style of “Fashion”, while the backing vocals that between 0'46'' and 0'54'' descend from falsetto to lower tones borrow a trick from “Fame”. Curiously, the funky edge of the interlocking guitars driving the track resembles the riffs backbone of “Need You Tonight” by Inxs, released a year later.

Placed at the close, “Welcome To The Twilight” is an airy heartland rock ride driven by electric arpeggios and sweeping keyboard glides: ears accustomed to American rock might link it to Bruce Springsteen e Tom Petty, but in Japan the more direct reference is probably Motoharu Sano, a giant of the local rock scene.

While the instrumental backbone is entirely handled by Hotei, Himuro's contribution is nonetheless essential: his voice, able to adapt to the baritone tones and artsy affectations of the new wave, as well as to play with falsettos and veer into the most aggressive rock, remains the band's media drawing card. His lyrics matter too, conjuring evocative imagery and mystical suggestions across the most disparate themes.

Romantic anguish is at the heart of “Wagamama Juliet”:

On your tear-stained face a smile fades as you dance in the rain,

you've missed the point, selfish Juliet.

If a love in which you hide your smile becomes an obstacle for you,

you'll end up being hurt by your broken dreams, won't you?

In pieces like a grieving pane of glass.

“1994 (Label Of Complex)” is instead a science-fiction tableau tackling social themes through the lens of dystopia (the title is, not by chance, pushed forward ten years from George Orwell's classic):

My life is a negative metropolis,

exhausted and nostalgic,

the line whispers,

teenagers dance to the rhythm of journalism.

A dream worth 4 points,

a laughable democracy,

the fixer's murmur is a blues night,

capitals made only of matter,

a true democracy,

the smile of the proletariat,

an angelus in a punchline. Oh, 1994…

“Welcome To The Twilight” is instead an ode to escape, from oneself or from past situations that turned out to be toxic:

Tonight the reminder on the table sways faintly in the soft light [coming] from outside,

I left it in the corner of a room that seems small,

I don't intend to blame the lies piled one upon another,

for so long I dreamed of a city like this one, tinged with grey.

Welcome to the twilight, the crowd passes us by,

a chilling twilight, a moment when I feel myself drowning in solitude.

"Just A Hero" is the album that reveals Boøwy to the wider public: it reaches number 5 on the Oricon chart and sells 178,000 copies during its time on the charts. It will only be the start of a triumphant climb that, from the following year on, will see them repeatedly hit number 1, with studio albums, live records and compilations consistently selling above half a million copies.

The breakup will come at the peak of their success, in the spring of 1988, leaving fans in shock, but both Himuro and Hotei will instantly launch their respective solo careers (the latter will also be part of another major band, Complex, between 1988 and 1991), both achieving a long string of hits and keeping the Boøwy myth alive in the decades to come.

The band is today generally credited with the proliferation of rock bands that swept Japan following their media breakthrough, as well as with the major labels' growing interest in the genre. major Despite there being no concrete proof of this cause-and-effect relationship, the fact that this belief has taken hold among local music fans is in itself symptomatic of just how much Boøwy defined their era.

The visual keimovement itself, one of the most distinctive to shape Japanese rock music between the late Eighties and the dawn of the new millennium, can be seen as an offshoot of theirs: although the band was not directly linked to it at the time, in retrospect their fusion of new wave and muscular rock, paired with a look of elegant clothes and flamboyant hairstyles, can be considered a forerunner of what X Japan and Buck-Tick.

In 2011 Hotei was voted by users of the Goo search engine as the second-greatest Japanese guitarist of all time, surpassed only by Matsumoto Takahiro of B'z. In 2012 a poll held on Recochoku.jp, one of the most important portals dedicated to local music, named Boøwy as the band Japanese fans would most want to see reunited, more than any other.

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07/04/2024

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition