It’s hard to understate the impact Takashi Matsumoto has had on modern Japanese pop and rock music. Known to most for his role in the influential group Happy End, the drummer and lyricist boasts a song catalog that puts him in league with the likes of Quincy Jones and Oscar Hammerstein.

Matsumoto was born in Tokyo’s Minato Ward in 1949, and growing up he’s said to have been a big fan of the Beatles. In college, he began making the rounds of the capital’s then-fledgling live-music community. He joined a psychedelic rock band, Apryl Fool, in the late 1960s, embracing a style that was at the time considered radical compared to the then on-trend “group sounds” artists that mimicked bands like the Beatles.

Apryl Fool released a single album, “The Apryl Fool,” before breaking up. Upon dissolution, however, Matsumoto and bandmate Haruomi Hosono linked up with Eiichi Ohtaki and Shigeru Suzuki to form Happy End. (Hosono would eventually go on to lead Yellow Magic Orchestra, another of Japan’s most-acclaimed acts.)

While the three albums Happy End released in the early ’70s failed to make a commercial mark at the time, their artistic legacy has been huge. The band’s decision to play American-inspired rock but sing entirely in Japanese, a rarity at the time, proved to be a watershed moment for pop music here — everything that has followed can, arguably, be traced back to Happy End. The group’s work is placed in high regard among Japanese music critics, many of whom have declared Happy End’s sophomore album, 1971’s “Kazemachi Roman,” to be the best Japanese album ever made.

“Happy End was the point of origin for everything I’d do. Whenever I would be confused or unsure of what to do, I would return to that point of origin,” Matsumoto tells The Japan Times from a spacious conference room in downtown Shibuya. Now living in Kobe, the 72-year-old says he typically comes to Tokyo once a month for work.

After Happy End broke up in 1972, Matsumoto became a full-time lyricist. He quickly became one of the most prolific in the business, and you can find his name on the credits of hit songs in every decade since the ’70s, having worked with such acts as Agnes Chan, Seiko Matsuda and Kinki Kids to name a few. He also continued working with his Happy End bandmates, reuniting regularly for one-off shows.

When he comes to Tokyo, Matsumoto’s schedule is tight — he needs to be at a restaurant a few floors beneath us right after we wrap up our chat. But he offers a little over an hour with The Japan Times to talk about his career, the Tokyo rock scene of the 1960s and how he keeps the artistic tank full.

Takashi Matsumoto says Happy End's music is a 'shared experience,' passed down through generations.
Takashi Matsumoto says Happy End's music is a 'shared experience,' passed down through generations.

You celebrated your 50th anniversary as an artist over the past year. How did it feel reflecting on this anniversary?

It was so concentrated. Like there was nothing else to focus on (laughs).

You did a lot to commemorate it, including concerts and a tribute album that found a bunch of contemporary artists covering your work. What were some of your favorite memories from the past year?

These sorts of celebrations actually started back for my 30th anniversary, and we’ve had them every five years. I remember the first time we had a show for an anniversary, it was just in a small Shibuya club, and they gradually got bigger. Last year we did two nights at Budokan.

Honestly, I loved every part of the 50th anniversary (laughs). When we did the live shows, I had the chance to play drums again. When I started out, I was the drummer in Happy End, but as I focused more on working as a lyricist, I didn’t have many chances to play. People have even joked that I wasn’t actually that good at them, like it was an urban legend (laughs). So I had to practice to prepare for the Budokan shows. People said I did well, so that made me really happy to hear.

What has your relationship with drumming been like over the years? As a lyricist, you didn’t have as much time to return to the instrument. Did you ever have chances to play just for fun?

Every 10 years or so, Happy End would get back together to play, and that would be my opportunity to play the drums.

That’s a good jumping off point to look back on your career, even before Happy End. What was the music scene like in Tokyo, or Japan for that matter, in the 1960s?

About a year before the start of Happy End, I was in a band called Apryl Fool. We’d be playing at something like a discotheque, and there were a lot of American guests ... maybe more than even Japanese fans. There was one guy who said to me that he’d go back to America the next day, and he wanted to interview me. “I’m actually from Rolling Stone magazine,” he said. I thought, that has to be a lie. But then, six months later, I got a copy of Rolling Stone — this was when it was huge — and I saw us. That left a massive impression on me.

What did the reporter talk to you about? Just about Apryl Fool?

I think he found it interesting that there were Japanese rock bands like us, so it was mostly about Japanese rock.

My image of Japanese rock before Happy End specifically was the “group sounds” style, which was very indebted to American and British rock. What do you remember about the live-music community then? What sounds were popular in your circles?

There were two strings of music back in the day. You had kayōkyoku, old-style Japanese pop music that had already existed, and then group sounds. There were bands tied to that latter movement like The Golden Cups and The Spiders, who were active in the Yokohama scene, which was a really interesting music community because it had a huge American influence owing to the navy base in nearby Yokosuka. Their singles would have an A-side, that was more like kayōkyoku, but the B-side would have something more psychedelic, more genuine rock.

That gap between the two sides felt strange to me and the other members of Happy End, so we decided to not worry about whether what we created would sell. We just wanted to do something original. If you make something original, it’s probably better to sing it in Japanese. That was our start.

You and Haruomi Hosono formed Happy End after Apryl Fool. What were those early days like?

Actually, even before Apryl Fool, I was in a band called Burns that was much more amateur. We covered a lot of songs, including psych rock like Cream or Jimi Hendrix, and we’d play in a club in Aoyama. A concert organizer reached out to us and said, “Why don’t you play a show for 30 minutes?” We decided to write five original songs, but at the time our bassist left. There was a rumor that a great bass player was attending Rikkyo University, so I decided to call him up. That was Hosono-san. I was 18 years old, he was 20.

The concert happened in Harajuku at a space called Concorde that doesn’t exist anymore. After that, we’d play in clubs around Aoyama, mostly doing covers. And then Hosono asked me to join Apryl Fool. That was a big changing moment in my life.

How did being in Apryl Fool influence what you did in Happy End?

Musically speaking, we were inspired by groups like Vanilla Fudge, really progressive sounds for the time. Our keyboardist, Hiro Yanagida, was getting more into music like Buffalo Springfield and the greater West Coast sound that was becoming popular. Hosono got into it too, and rather than psychedelic rock we started shifting toward that style.

We were influenced by bands like Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield and even The Grateful Dead. They were a psychedelic band, of course, but they also shifted at one point more toward country music. That’s what Happy End was linking to at the time it started.

Happy End emerged right after Apryl Fool disbanded ... we might have been the first band in the world to break up right after our first album came out (laughs). Our friendship in the band became less close, but we were actually becoming really good instrumentalists. We had to play clubs every night. At these clubs, you would have people like (singer/songwriter) Minako Yoshida, Eiichi Ohtaki ... there was a cultural circle emerging from these spaces.

It always surprises people outside of Japan, looking at the credits to older albums and seeing all these now-legendary artists together.

It’s a miracle to us, too (laughs).

Why do you say that?

We all met one another without really knowing anything about one another. A chance meeting. But talent brings more talent. That time was like a magnet, pulling us all together. Maybe it’s comparable to Paris between the two World Wars. So many artists gathered in one place, working together and exchanging ideas.

What lessons did you learn from Happy End with regards to writing lyrics?

It was the point of origin for everything I’d ever do. Whenever I would be confused or unsure of what to do, I would return to the point of origin, which was Happy End.

You’ve pretty much written lyrics in almost every decade that Japanese pop music has existed. How has your approach to writing changed with the times?

In the 1960s, I was still a student. During that time, I encountered the Beatles ... I learned artistic expression through them. In the ’70s, I was in Happy End, and that was a success artistically but in terms of sales I didn’t feel like it was quite there. We disbanded, and I was wondering what work I’d do next. I decided to put all of my focus into being a lyricist and stepped away from drumming.

What made Happy End stand out was how we used Japanese for our lyrics. From a commercial perspective, we should have maybe chosen English — you’d see groups from northern Europe like ABBA sing in English and find massive success. It’s something we’ll never know. But our legacy is that we started singing in Japanese, and that not only influenced groups in Japan but other Asian countries, too. More and more bands across the continent have embraced their own languages. Like, Korean music has obviously become much more popular, and many of them are in Korean. They are expressing themselves in their own language.

Did you guys ever seriously consider using English?

Oh, there were debates over whether we should be singing in English or Japanese. Hosono initially thought we should be doing it in English, but even if we had, there’s no guarantee we would have been able to achieve global success.

Sorry to drift away from the original question about your approach to lyric writing. So what was the experience like when you did go out on your own as a lyricist?

The following year after Happy End’s disbandment, I wrote the lyrics for a hit song called “Natsuiro no Omoide” for the band Tulip. And then after that, Agnes Chan’s “Pocket no Ippai Himitsu.” Actually, I’d worked with a different folk group, Itsutsu no Akai Fuusen, on a song called “Endan.” With that group, though, it was never about commercial success. But with Tulip and Agnes Chan, it was a serious project that needed to sell. They did well, though. Once that happened, one of the biggest composers in Japan at the time, Kyohei Tsutsumi, called me up and said, “I want you to be the lyricist for every song I work on in the next year.”

Those are all obviously big moments for you — and maybe one of those songs meet this criteria — but are there any specific songs you see as particularly defining your career?

Those would be Yoshitaka Minami’s “Slow Na Boogie ni Shitekure (I Want You)” and Shinji Harada’s “Teen’s Blues.” Those come to mind instantly. They represent a confusing time artistically, where I wanted to step away from modern trends in favor of the more simplistic, boyhood-like lyrics I did for Happy End. Those became successful, and that shaped a song I worked on the year after with Akira Terao called “Ruby no Yubiwa.” That was a mega hit.

Oh, at the same time I also worked on Eiichi Ohtaki’s “A Long Vacation.” That was pretty important for me moving forward, too.

I mean, everything you are mentioning is widely celebrated in Japanese music history. What was life like for you then? Did you ever get a break?

(Shakes head, laughs) It was just like, “Go for it!” — always keep going forward. I thought, maybe one day the gasoline would run out and the car would stop. That was my mindset.

Did the gas ever run out, so to speak? Were you ever like, my tank is empty, I can’t write anymore?

In the 1980s, I wrote for Seiko Matsuda on many of her songs. When that slowed down, I started working with a bunch of newer artists like CCB, Yuki Saito, Miho Nakayama, Minako Honda ... all of them became humongous. I thought, if I were to write all the album lyrics in the way I had for Matsuda or other artists, I’d overwork myself to death. Like, seriously. I needed to take a break.

By the time the 1990s came around, there had been a boom around Onyanko Club and Tetsuya Komuro. I decided I didn’t want to fight against that. I sort of decided to pass the baton to a new generation of creators.

I became much more interested in the classic elements of Japan, like kabuki and noh. I had given up learning about those things because I had no time, but I decided to pick those back up. Same with classical music. It was still the economic bubble then, so you had huge names from around the world coming to Tokyo to perform at places like Suntory Hall. I’d go to those shows all the time.

I’m curious, what contemporary Japanese artists do you think have an interesting approach to lyric writing? Who stands out to you?

A few come to mind. Hikaru Utada is one. Their songs are almost like personal novels, they have very personal stories. Like, it might sound initially like a love song, but in reality it’s about their mother. That touch they bring to their music is really unique.

I’ve also been struck by the lyrics of Hiroji Miyamoto and Kaze Fujii.

Happy End has become this critically acclaimed and important group in Japan, even with critics and writers overseas. What do you make of the group’s legacy?

As you said, people think the songs and music of Happy End were great but the sales weren’t that high. But it was never something where I thought we’d be representing Japanese music or be a huge Japanese band. Rather, we just focused on making something great.

From a lyricist’s perspective, you anticipate most pop music staying trendy for about three months, but what we did in Happy End has persisted. We never worried about that, though. We were just making something we thought was great in the moment.

Which is probably why it has persisted.

There’s usually a wall when you start doing something between Japanese and English, or between any languages. But a lot of Japanese art — from photographers or artists, or even conductors like Seiji Ozawa — has done really well abroad.

I think Hosono-san had the intention of wanting to do something that would go beyond just Japan. And you could see that with Yellow Magic Orchestra. For me, I wanted to share something that was good about everyday Japanese life. That was the basis of my lyrics. It’s something that’s interesting to people even beyond Japan, but I actually think it would have needed a really good translator to connect. Like, the author Yasunari Kawabata needed a really good translator and, because he did, he won a Nobel Prize.

Little by little, Happy End gained more of a reputation. We literally had no promotion, and they stopped selling our albums shortly after they came out — everything afterward was a re-issue. But the important thing about Happy End is that parents show it to their kids. Older workers show it to new co-workers. The older students share it with younger classmates. That’s how our music has passed down. It’s a shared experience.

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