[Jo_Kittie]

So this is my 200th post, and I wanted to dedicate it to hide, and make it a tribute to his death. This is a text written by morganlight on everything2.com:

The Quintessential Rock Star

hide? Who's that? Everyone's always reminiscing on the day John Lennon died, and Kurt Cobain, and other rockstars. What about the day hide died? He affected millions of people, just like them. The obvious problem is many people's (perhaps unwilling) ignorance of his existence. The general superiority complex is `oh, it's just the Japanese people with their thing, but my bands are REAL bands.' Aside from educating people about hide, I hope to make it clear that there are musicians from other cultures, that they MORE than hold a candle to our own, and that hide was not just a Japanese musician - he was a musician.

Just Everything

Hideto Matsumoto was born on December 13, 1964, in Kanasawa, Japan. He went by simply `hide' (pronounced hee-day) throughout his life and musical career. When he was just a little kid, hide fell in love with the guitar. He dragged his Gibson around primary school, playing it to classic rock songs - mostly Kiss.

His first band was called Saber Tiger, in which he wrote most of the music and played lead guitar. hide was still in high school , and his band's activities were banned from playing at the school. Saber Tiger released some recordings, then dissolved. Although most of the band was dismissable, hide's solos and songwriting stood out.
However, in light of the frustration experienced with Saber Tigers lineup changes and general fizzle, hide stopped playing music and went to beauty school. Hideto Matsumoto planned to be a hairstylist.

The X Japan Legend

hide had graduated beauty school and was on his way to becoming a beautician for a living when he got a phone call from someone named Yoshiki. Yoshiki said something like this: "Hey, Toshi and I are forming a band, and we need a really good guitarist; would you like to play?" The band was X, later called X Japan, who became the country's most legendary rock band. Lucky for the whole world, hide accepted.
X had an incredibly successful career that lasted for more than a decade throughout the 80s and 90s. They pioneered current trends in Japanese rock, and were the first Japanese artist to sell out the Tokyo Dome, which is about the size of a baseball stadium. Yoshiki and hide were great friends as well as bandmates. Yoshiki played drums, piano, and wrote most of X's songs, and anything he didn't compose, hide did. It was very Beatles-esque, and led to some of the most memorable songs and melodies ever. Americans may even recognize some of the motifs used in classics like Forever Love, Endless Rain, and the thirty minute rock symphony Art of Life. Songs like Dahlia are both epic and accessible, both hard-rocking and beautiful.

Personality, Philosophy, Musical Prowess

Eventually, hide as a solo artist became nearly as popular as X the band. His personality was infinitely more evident as well, and he stretched and exaggerated it to its full extent. He didn't just reach out to people, he ATTACKED them, albeit always playfully enough to hold their interest.

In sync with this idea was hide's general philosophy of fuck everything, including the censors. During his performance of Dice on a prominent television show, a bunch of very naked people held onto a cage and groped him as he sang. However, hide was never into shock value for the sake of itself. He was always either brutally honest or utterly sarcastic with everything, trying to make a specific point. It didn't phase him if people got offended, whether he sang about graphic sex, abuse, or what have you.

hide was an overtly sexual human being. That's often a cliché in reference to rockstars, but with hide it's really true.

My friend Matt once described him as the `boob-grabbing-est man in show business' - and that included real ones or the fake styrofoam his bass player wore as a woman. hide sings in the classic Beauty & Stupid, "I just wanna make love... I don't wanna fall in love." It was all about sex and partying with him, but he somehow managed to avoid the cliché and make it mischeivous and endearing. For all his offensiveness, hide was simultaneously very childlike. Bouncing around, groping his bandmates, making kissy faces at the camera - the best word to describe him would be `omnisexual'. (Only hide could get away with singing you belong to me completely to a boy.)

No-one looked or sounded like hide, in style or in personality. He was instantly recognisible, thanks mostly to the great mop of hair that saw many a shade of pink in its day. This crop top was his main identifying feature, but he also had a beautiful, elfin, baby face that could contort itself into so many classic expressions. He made countless things his very own trademarks.

One thing's for sure - with hide, you must expect the unexpected. When I first saw a hide concert on video, hide pulled out a comb and started to run it through his hair, and I went, "What the hell? Why is he combing his hair?" And my friend Jack answered, "He's hide. He can do whatever he wants." That pretty much sums it up. Expect band members to periodically crossdress, expect topless gogo girls to shake their boobs everywhere... expect random songs about masturbation.

Even all of this notwithstanding, the fact remains that hide was a phenomenally talented musician. He was a brilliant songwriter, whether writing James Bond-esque big band pieces like Psyence, industrial grooves like Sold Some Attitude, or tragically beautiful ballads like Flame. He was a downright BADASS guitarist - he licked those strings in a way no-one else could, soloed insanely, often in harmony with one or even two other guitars. His behind-the-scenes talents included production and arrangement - and let's not forget hairstyling!

A little quote, which summarises so much of what hide stood for and tried to teach the world, is 'kiss your misery'. It's from the last track on his second solo album Psyence, called Misery. With a title like that, you'd expect it to be some angsty, mopey song. In fact, it's just about the happiest, bounciest, most melodic thing he ever wrote. It's joyful about suffering - as in, how low can you go, and yet still `stay free'.

See You, Space Cowboy...

hide did not die of natural causes. He committed suicide. The year that he died, hide had begun a post-X project called Spread Beaver. They released one single, Rocket Dive, before his death. The date of release of the second single, Pink Spider, was set for the seventh of May. The video had been completed. Looking back on his suicide, the song and video are terribly haunting, metaphorically describing an escape through death. hide's best friend Yoshiki had nicknamed him `Pink Spider' because of the famous tousled pink hair.

In the early morning of the second of May, hide was out drinking with friends. He returned to his home in Japan at around six o'clock am, and his roommate put him to bed. When she checked on him at seven-thirty, hide was not in bed. He was sitting, propped against his bathroom door, unconscious, a towel around his neck and around the doorknob, ripped in half and tied together to form a kind of rope. hide was rushed to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival, due to asphyxiation, at 8:52 AM, May 2, 1998.

Over 25,000 people attended his funeral at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo on May 7, 1998. Streets in Tokyo were closed off, and police sent boats, helicopters, 100 officers, and 170 security guards to the temple to deal with the emotional crowd. By the end of the first day, twenty-six people had been hospitalised. CNN did a piece on hide's funeral. Apparently, hide's music didn't reach America, but his heartbroken fans made enough noise to get across the ocean.

The New York Times ran the following obituary on May 18, 1998: DIED. HIDETO MATSUMOTO, 33, idolized, ultra-punk former lead guitarist of the defunct group X Japan, after hanging himself; in Tokyo. Following a decade of eclat with the rockers, who broke up in December, "hide" pursed a solo career to the rapture of fans, 25,000 of whom thronged to his funeral. The grieving swarm formed a line more than 2 km long to lay flowers. Though former band members pleaded with fans not to copy the suicide, by week's end at least three had decided they could not live without him.

hide's death did not only affect his fans. Even after X Japan stopped making music, hide and Yoshiki had been planning to work together again, some time around 2000. hide had many other friends and projects in the industry, with J of Luna Sea, Hisashi of GLAY, Marilyn Manson... his Zilch album was remixed by well-known artists such as Lords of Acid, Ministry, Beck, and Nine Inch Nails. He had unfinished projects with Zilch and Spread Beaver, and planned tours with both Spread Beaver and Manson. In short, his death left the musical world in complete shock. Many rockers dyed their hair pink in hide's honour. A bunch of artists got together and created a tribute album called Spirits. At hide's funeral, Yoshiki and Toshi got together for the last time to perform a tear-filled version of Forever Love, a beautiful X ballad.

So. Who's hide?

Wacky, crazy, fun, loving, outgoing, omnisexual, beer-guzzling, chain-smoking, party going, fuck-it-all-ing, truthful, painfully honest, disturbing, embracing, adorable, playful, sexy, beautiful, badass, sarcastic, always mocking, in-your-face, shocking, boundary-challenging, anything-goes-and-if-it-doesn't-I'll-MAKE-it-go.
- morganlight

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Watashitachi to tsuneni aru. Watashi haanataoyobianatano utao yobi ongaku aisu ru. Watashi no tenshi desu.

Notame.

waRey