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[in Japanese] I'm Yoshiki.
I will share my feelings about music
and how I was inspired by Disney's films and music.
Please enjoy, Disney, My Music Story.
Shall we begin?
I work on a plane.
Composing.
I'm used to driving on this side of the road.
This is my studio in Los Angeles.
I was into Punk rock.
Hitting it as fast and loud as I could.
That's all that mattered.
Not technique.
People envision harmony horizontally, but for me, it's vertical.
Various sounds resonating with each other.
OK.
I don't like it. Let's extend it.
They get stuck in my head.
I tend to hum Disney tunes.
For this opportunity,
I want to add a beautiful Yoshiki style to it.
[piano music playing]
If you take away music, I'd be an empty shell.
Music helped me live.
It's like air.
[In English] Nobody can survive without oxygen.
So same thing with music. I don't think I can... live.
[instrumental music playing]
[In Japanese] Hello.
Yes, let's hear the strings.
OK.
[plays piano]
YOSHIKI'S ENCOUNTER WITH MUSIC
My parents bought me a piano.
I was four when they gave me a piano.
That was my first encounter with music.
My father played jazz piano.
I played classical piano from the start.
That's low.
Let's make it an octave higher.
Second violin, try it.
[violin plays higher]
That sounds better.
I don't mean to brag, but I got good grades.
But I missed classes when I was hospitalized.
I suffered from poor health because I had severe asthma.
Compared to others, I only attended two-thirds of the classes.
I was hospitalized a lot.
So my father would buy me biographies.
I read about Beethoven a lot and was amazed by his life.
After reading Beethoven's biography,
his music sounded even more powerful.
In addition to beauty,
I felt his pain through his music.
PLAYING THE PIANO WAS THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE FROM ASTHMA
I made my room pitch dark,
the only light being a desk lamp.
I played forever like that, all by myself.
[piano music]
I was given the opportunity to perform Disney songs.
Ready to try it?
Okay, let's try again from seven.
[plays piano]
I can't remember.
My first Disney film?
Movies like The Lion King...
touch your heart, don't they?
Didn't Elton John...
Yes, that's right.
I love that song.
Can You Feel the Love Tonight is a memorable song.
How long ago was it?
I first listened to it in London.
I thought it was beautiful.
The song as well as the story of The Lion King,
I can really relate to it.
It's like watching myself.
YOSHIKI AND SIMBA LOST THEIR FATHERS EARLY.
The father's death, especially,
because I lost my father, too.
My father... ended his own life.
The sadness and pain I felt.
What should those who are left behind do?
Why did he make the decision to leave us?
I felt anger, in my case.
But I didn't have an outlet.
It was painful to watch my mother crying every day.
My mind couldn't digest it.
The one thing that stayed by my side during that time was music,
whether it was a sad song or a loud song.
Music wrapped my emotions like a blanket at all times.
BOTH YOSHIKI'S LIFE
AND THE LION KING ARE
THE STORIES ABOUT FIGHTING AN EMOTIONAL "SCAR"
Simba must face and conquer various obstacles.
I don't think I'm the only one who can relate to the story of Simba's life.
There are many ways the song can be arranged,
but I want to add a beautiful Yoshiki style to it.
To touch people's hearts.
The original song is wonderful, but I'll make it even better.
One more time.
I did most of the arrangement process inside my head.
My version consists of a piano and strings.
I actually first designed it in an epic way, for an orchestra.
Then I changed it into a quartet.
OK.
We don't need the viola's lower octave.
I listened to it many times
and found that the tempo fluctuates between slow and fast.
It's nice because nowadays, tempos tend to stay the same.
That was a new experience.
It's interesting that the singers
express each chorus differently.
[instrumental music playing]
OK.
That wasn't pretty. Let me think...
Can we make 50 an octave higher?
Too high.
Yeah, it's piercing.
Let's not do it.
One more time.
I am meticulous about music.
People envision harmony horizontally, but for me, it's vertical.
Various sounds resonating with each other.
This placement of the piano, strings, vocals, etc, is called "voicing."
Those vertical lines create horizontal lines.
I want to perfect the notes in each vertical line.
[plays piano]
OK, good.
I think I was inspired by a lot of great films.
Like The Lion King, because I can immediately recall the song.
There are films and songs that are regarded as masterpieces.
They have the ability
to transcend time.
The formats may change,
but they live on and continue
to hold a place in people's hearts.
I think it's all about the power
and potential of the song.
I often arrange songs
into a classical format.
I thought they fit together beautifully.
The melody is truly wonderful,
so it can still be arranged in many different ways.
My father's death is still painful and disappointing.
I can't affirm it.
But if you look at my life objectively,
you'll see that I had all the elements
that you need to become a rock musician.
I learned the basics of music. I discovered rock.
I also had the emotion of anger inside of me.
That's thinking about it positively.
YOSHIKI'S ENCOUNTER WITH ROCK
Record shops let you listen to a record before buying it.
When I was walking past the rock section,
an album cover of guys
with outrageous makeup caught my eye.
"What the heck?"
I listened to it.
"Oh, so this is what they call rock."
I was shocked.
I was a young boy who only knew classical music,
who had lost his father to suicide.
So it hit me especially hard.
My mother bought me a drum set.
I spent all my time playing drums.
It's not like I had a teacher.
I played the piano, so I could read music.
I'm self-taught.
I bought a lot of textbooks.
Actually...
I grew up in the countryside.
I'm not from a big city.
You don't see many people there who are in rock bands.
So I asked my friends, "Wanna try playing bass?"
I persuaded them, "Try out this instrument."
Some bought guitars and basses and we started a band.
At the time, I was into punk.
Hard rock first, then heavy metal, then punk.
I was thirsty for louder music.
In addition to the music itself,
I fell in love with the punk lifestyle.
WHAT WAS SO INTRIGUING ABOUT PUNK?
When I went to high school, I became rebellious.
A so-called "delinquent."
I bet I was feeling the pain and anger of losing my father.
People who liked rock music were labeled as delinquents.
I was growing out my hair.
Longer than other people.
But not super long.
My junior high had rules that your hair couldn't touch your ears.
But mine was.
I was into David Bowie at the time,
but the hairstyle broke the school rules.
The teacher took me away, pinned me down, and shaved my head.
It would be an issue today
if a teacher forcibly shaved your head.
Boy, I cried.
The more I cried, the angrier I got.
That incident probably propelled my rebelliousness.
For a while, everything I saw looked like my enemy.
I wonder why.
Our band became "X" during the second year of high school.
We were writing our own songs.
YOSHIKI HEADED TO TOKYO, DREAMING OF BECOMING A ROCK STAR
It was near music academies.
I lived in... Ekoda.
I needed a room where a piano was allowed.
MUSASHINO ACADEMIA MUSICAE
There were lots of music academy and university students.
My hair was dyed blond.
So...
I didn't fit in.
It was like I didn't belong there.
I was constantly searching for members.
I was determined to create the world's best band.
So I needed the world's best members.
I headhunted Taiji, Hide, and Pata,
who were band leaders and told them,
"You're destined to join my band."
Just out of the blue.
They probably thought that I was nuts.
A guy comes and tells you, "You're destined to join my band."
But you barely know that guy.
There were some issues, but they finally joined my band.
I wonder why, because their bands were more famous.
Once we had all our members...
we filled clubs wherever we played.
[Naoshi] At the time X was a really loud band.
NAOSHI TSUDA MUSIC PRODUCER, SONGWRITER
They were all about being loud and fast.
They were awesome.
So energetic.
But they needed "something" to fulfill their dream,
which was to become a world-class band.
As a producer, I wanted to find that "something."
I was obsessed with loud rock.
The louder, the better.
Hitting it as fast and loud as I could.
That's all that mattered.
Not technique.
As for double bass drumming, this is about 100 BPM.
At 60 BPM, each quarter note would last one second.
So 120 BPM would be double that.
I practiced going faster and faster.
I started from like 90 or 100 BPM
and kept going faster until I reached 200 BPM.
You can say I trained like an athlete.
ALWAYS FIGHTING SOMETHING THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE
Our music had no genre. And we wore makeup.
We were shunned.
Even before debuting,
I said we'd play at Tokyo Dome and sell a million tickets.
HIS "ANGER" GENERATED SPEED
People probably thought this blond boy was talking nonsense.
THE SONG THAT BECAME A TURNING POINT
At the time, we had a director named Mr. Tsuda.
We went to a club and he saw me play the piano.
"Oh, you play the piano?"
"I bet you can write a great ballad."
I'm like, "Really?"
When I first listened to the demo tape of Vanishing Vision,
I was shocked.
Amid the melody that Yoshiki created, I heard Beethoven.
I discovered beauty within the loudness.
I made it clear to Yoshiki.
You have loudness.
Combine that with beauty and you'll be world-class.
That's what I told him.
What I wanted Yoshiki to create at that time
was a ballad in a major key.
I was edgy back then.
I did play classical music,
but I was completely immersed in rock.
I didn't care about ballads.
But I gave it a try and wrote Endless Rain, my very first ballad.
[instrumental music playing]
I thought the melody was pretty nice.
At the time, I cared about being as loud and fast as I could.
But I realized that my body was generating melodies.
It was surreal.
When I considered who I wrote songs for,
they were for myself, too.
At the time, my philosophy was to walk the path toward destruction,
so I realized that I had created a song that comforted such emotions.
THE SONG REVOLUTIONIZED JAPANESE ROCK
When our band released the album,
it wasn't a time when rock musicians
could sell over 100,000 copies.
I think we were one of the first
to sell close to a million copies.
I had confidence when it came to music.
My classical background is one thing.
And no matter if we wore makeup or how wild we performed...
or what people said because our band was different...
I had confidence that nobody would beat me in music.
What do people mean by "common sense"?
It means having to follow conventional methods.
That wasn't for me.
LIMITS ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN
THAT PROPELLED HIM TO KEEP PUSHING
AND SO, YOSHIKI TOOK A LEAP INTO THE WORLD
I haven't driven in Japan in forever.
I'm used to driving on this side of the lane.
I can't drive in Japan.
My first trip overseas was to London and Paris.
London, Paris, New York.
When we decided to record an album overseas,
I think I proposed London.
Everyone else said Los Angeles.
I'm the leader, but...
by majority vote, we decided on Los Angeles.
So we recorded an album here.
I don't want to say it out loud, but this is a place that I own.
I love the location.
I always had the world in mind.
We came to LA right after our debut.
So I began aiming for the world...
about 30 years ago.
At the time...
I was focused on recording the album.
People tried to give me advice,
like we should make it closer to American hard rock.
But I didn't listen.
If I listened, X Japan wouldn't have been the band you know now.
But still...
we haven't reached our goal yet.
People would keep saying,
"In America, you must follow the American way."
"This is how things are done."
Our record label would say their opinions and give us advice.
But we're not here to
take on an American style.
We wanted to bring our music as is.
No need to change our style.
All we needed to do was to study English.
The only barrier was language.
I bought a recording studio.
Before recording the drums, the engineer said,
"There's the world's best studio for recording drums."
I told him to book it,
but Metallica was recording The Black Album.
I asked if we could record after them.
But it was fully booked for another year.
It was an extremely popular studio.
The best in the world for recording drums.
We couldn't book the studio...
so I bought it.
What did we do after we're done?
I don't really plan ahead.
I used it too,
and there were multiple rooms, so many artists recorded there.
Michael Jackson used my studio, too.
I sold that studio a couple of years ago.
My current studio is even better than the first one.
This is my studio.
When I'm in Los Angeles, I spend most of my time here.
These synthesizers produce various sounds.
This is the waiting area, so they're for display, too.
I'm an avid collector, right?
But these can all be put to practical use.
[sound fluctuates]
[in English] OK, shall we go to the studio?
[in Japanese] Welcome to my workplace, the studio.
We do recordings here.
I've spent hundreds of hours here.
The majority of my life is spent in a studio.
I bought a house in LA because I had a studio.
That's how my LA life began.
We're doing the mixing for that performance we did.
It's my Disney arrangement.
[chuckles]
Like that.
[in English] Do you wanna just try the...
- what you've been working on? - Sure.
You didn't do the remix?
Yeah, we'll get down on the sonnet right now.
- Is it live? Can you play that? - Yes.
[instrumental music playing]
Do you wanna skip it at 16 ballad or something?
[In Japanese] When you add a seventh chord...
You wanna sort out strings?
[In Japanese] ...it produces a sense of melancholy.
[in English] The C-string.
[In Japanese] Adding a touch of an orchestra style to the strings
changed it a lot.
[in English] The piano.
Rather than something that simply makes your heart happy,
I want to express both joy and sorrow.
That's because my life is filled with sadness,
but I keep pushing forward.
I convey that through my songs.
MUSIC BORN FROM KNOWING SADNESS
Hide's death.
I came to a standstill when Hide died.
I came to a complete stop.
Why did my life turn out like this?
I'm the one who invited Hide to our band.
I changed his life when I said,
"Come with me to be the world's No.1 band."
It breaks my heart that we lost him before we reached that goal.
If I hadn't invited him, maybe he'd still be alive.
I blamed myself day in and day out.
I was going to quit being a musician.
HE CONSIDERED TO STOP PERFORMING
But I've been doing music all my life,
so I couldn't quit music.
I wanted to be a songwriter and stay behind the scenes
and never go up on stage.
That's how I felt.
A SONG WAS BORN DURING THIS HEARTBREAKING TIME
I wrote that song right after we lost Hide.
That song was my way of...
parting ways and saying goodbye
to X and X Japan in my heart.
I thought we had to go our separate ways.
HE THOUGHT HE'D NEVER BE ABLE TO PERFORM WITH HIS BELOVED MEMBERS EVER AGAIN
BUT HE HAD TO KEEP PUSHING FORWARD
I haven't got over it.
I have to fight a never-healing scar for the rest of my life.
Usually, your scar would be covered in a scab, right?
It heals.
But an emotional scar will never heal as long as you live.
You have to deal with it as it continues to bleed.
LIFE AS AN ARTIST
An artist is an individual who can digest sadness and anger.
No matter what...
you cannot affirm a person's death.
But being sad or shedding tears won't change a thing.
So I'll turn that into art.
And hopefully, my art would, in turn,
help someone who is struggling.
I'll keep pushing forward to show how great Hide was.
The more successful we get, the more the world will know his greatness.
EMBRACING ALL OF HIS EMOTIONS
That is what's motivating me now.
YOSHIKI MADE A COMEBACK
HE ROSE UP TO THE STAGE AGAIN
AIMING FOR GREATER SUCCESS IN THE WORLD
I want to keep pushing forward.
That's my message for my rendition of "Let It Go."
It's beautiful in many ways.
It's a world of ice, but it's beautiful.
The song comes to my heart.
The song sticks to my ears. You will never forget once you listen.
[in English] One, two, three, four.
["Let it go" music playing]
- [in Japanese] Okay. - [music stops]
I can arrange it like this...
[plays piano]
I want a D.
Second violin, give me a D.
[plays a few keys]
I found various renditions
and noticed the chord progression.
Hit songs have a norm,
but I was amazed at this song's progression.
For example, there's a part that transitions.
It's where the strings come in.
That was eye-opening.
[in English] One, two, three, four.
[in Japanese] Hey, isn't this mezzo forte? That sounded mezzo piano.
It can be louder.
[instrumental music playing]
Wait, hold on.
[music stops]
That's bland.
Let's add something.
It didn't cross my mind when I was just listening to the song,
but when I arranged it, I noticed interesting chord progressions.
I was pretty amazed.
[music plays]
- Okay. - [music stops]
I don't like it. Let's extend 49.
Extend this note for the 1st violin.
[music playing]
I think it's fine.
Good.
Okay, let's prepare for the take.
Every song that I've listened to
has given me inspiration.
I've acquired various senses
that I didn't possess a long time ago.
People around the world love Disney songs,
so I'm excited to learn how this experience will inspire me.
[music playing]
THOUGHTS AFTER PERFORMING DISNEY SONGS
They have a lot of touching films
that are more than poetic or beautiful.
They give you the chance to reflect on yourself.
The themes are epic,
but they're carefully thought out.
WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR YOSHIKI?
I'll probably continue putting my life on the line.
Even during my saddest moments, music never left me.
So I want to create that kind of music...
for people who helped me, my fans, and everyone else out there.
To give them strength.
I believe the reason I'm alive is to fulfill that mission.
DON'T MISS THE FULL-LENGTH PERFORMANCES AFTER THE CREDITS.
[instrumental music playing]
WATCH "THE LION KING" AND "FROZEN" ON DISNEY+.