During the year end and the beginning of the new year, I wrote some blog texts for our “personal” Japanese website. It’s really nothing. I’m not even sure if we should post them on our English “official” website or social media pages, because those are very personal, spiritual, and may dismay some people. However, at the same time I want to see how Automatic Translation by Mr.GPT performs for this kind of long, complex and personal texts.
So here it is. The New Year Blog Post part2 of 3.
(Originally written in Japanese, in a very personal style. This English translation might be incorrect in some parts.)
[Translation accuracy evaluation: 85%]
“EVH Revelation, Alive”
As I mentioned earlier, for some reason over the year-end and New Year holidays, I found myself suddenly seized by the urge to read articles and books about Edward Van Halen, almost as if it were long overdue.
As it turned out, I ended up reading two of the major books that were published after his death, books I had always thought I should get around to someday: Eruption and Tonechaser.
Of course, I had read his interviews many times over the years, not only in magazines but also in articles and archives across various websites.
But until now, I had never gone out of my way to actually spend money on books or special magazine features released after his passing.
What I wanted to know was not Edward Van Halen the rock star, but Edward Van Halen the musician: the pain he carried, the struggles he faced, and the inner conflicts he wrestled with as he confronted the world through music.
One reason I felt drawn to his words again, so late in the game, is probably my own suffering right now.
I am not a famous musician. I am just someone in an unknown indie band. In that sense, I think I have been lucky. I have endless worries about daily life, but I do not struggle with drugs or alcohol. Compared to major artists, my exposure is minimal, and my resources are limited, but I am far freer to make music and play it the way I want.
Even so, suffering still exists. It is the kind of suffering that no one really understands, even if you try to explain it.
Another reason is simply the current state of the world.
Honestly, sometimes I think, this is ridiculous. I do not even want to keep living in a world like this. I want to leave this rotten place behind and head straight to heaven. How many years have I been seriously thinking that? How many times have I passed through moments where everything felt hopeless? How many times have I been reborn, how many times have I started over?
I have always been the type of person who started making music not from dreams or hope, but from despair. Not from visions of success, but from a place of giving up on everything. In a sense, I faced music because I had no other choice. I never had dreams about this world. Rock was dead, and all I could see before me was a barren wasteland. That is where I played my first notes.
I think most people never really see that wasteland, but I have been walking through it for decades. It feels like a post-apocalyptic world.
And yet, even after losing hope in the human world entirely, I found God’s salvation clearly there, on the cross. So I decided, well, I might as well live according to that, at least until I die.
That is why I have always lived with the understanding that the state of the world, of society, of the music industry and music scenes, and even of religion and faith, including Christianity, is fundamentally corrupt. Humanity is soaked in sin, everything is broken, and in the end, everything is heading toward ruin.
I accepted that from the very beginning. It was my premise for living, and it has always been the premise behind the sounds I make.
So ideas like becoming successful, getting famous, and being active in the spotlight, the kinds of things many band guys and musicians think about, feel like a completely different world to me. Something distant, something that has nothing to do with me. I chose my words carefully there.
Even so, even after walking this path with my eyes open, there is still a battle. The usual one. The spiritual battle.
What that battle looks like is something only the person involved knows. Only that person and God. It is a promise that exists solely between oneself and God.
That is why I feel uncomfortable when people judge great artists from history, or musicians I deeply respect, by ordinary standards of morality, or condemn them for being humanly flawed.
I am not saying we should forgive evil or overlook sin.
But it is impossible for a great artist to be morally “complete” as a human being. That comes as a package deal. It is part of the package.
For an artist, their true self is the work itself. The human being who served as the medium is just a vessel, a straw. The body left behind is nothing more than an empty shell.
Like soldiers returning from the battlefield, or boxers who have become punch-drunk, artists who have created truly great works are almost always broken in some way.
Embarrassingly enough, I think I am broken too.
Even saying that might sound arrogant.
But that is simply what human beings are like. That is my honest feeling.
The first time I began to sense that I was slowly breaking down was probably around 2012.
I knew resisting it would be pointless, so from that point on, I started facing myself with the theme of how to become a hopeless human being as efficiently as possible.
Still, for the past few years, I have constantly felt like I was reaching my limit.
The fire I experienced in 2023 was difficult, but in a way, it may have been necessary to wake me up and bring me back to my original mindset.
And just when I was thinking last year that I might fade out of band activities and slow things down, I met the young drummer Kenshin, and suddenly my life became busy again, as I mentioned earlier.
I have always said that Van Halen is my all-time favorite artist, and I have never hidden their influence on me. But I often think that it is rare to find someone as globally famous as Eddie Van Halen who is also so deeply misunderstood and misinterpreted.
I was obsessed with Van Halen and Eddie Van Halen’s music from childhood. For my generation, though, kids who were into Van Halen were already a minority. We were ’90s kids, the alternative generation, and there were plenty of metal guitar heroes who were far more technical.
As I grew older and began making and playing music in my own band, I exposed myself to a much wider range of music. At some point, I received a kind of message telling me to graduate from Van Halen, and I think I actually did.
Even in my twenties, thirties, and after entering my forties, within a limited range, within what I could realistically reach, I made an effort to listen to, learn from, and understand newer music and the music of each era. Whether that actually reflected in my own music is another question.
But now that I am this age, I have started to feel that maybe I do not need to force myself to listen to new things anymore. Instead, I want to enjoy music again by centering on what I truly loved as a boy. Of course, that is also a way of returning to my roots.
For all those reasons, I found myself thinking, well, maybe I will listen to Van Halen again.
And perhaps because I was reading books about Edward Van Halen and revisiting his interviews, something clicked.
As I was walking, messages came down to me.
I felt Edward Van Halen’s voice. His soul. His spirit. His life.
Incidentally, the music I was listening to as I walked was Fair Warning. That album really is something else.
It was a fairly short moment.
Well, he is a famous guy after all. Maybe he is busy, even in heaven.
But that was enough for me.
I felt like I understood everything.
The meaning of what I am doing.
The meaning of making sound.
The meaning of looking at history as a whole. Maybe that is something you can only really see from above, from heaven.
Things that had been bothering me for a long time suddenly felt like they had answers.
I had always wondered about this.
Say there is an overwhelming enemy. It does not even have to be an enemy. It could be an era, history itself, the future of humanity, the problems of the world. Something so massive and unavoidable that you are forced to fight it.
How are you supposed to fight something like that?
And in moments like that, you start thinking, what good is music anyway?
That is when I heard it.
Is there any other way to fight besides music?
And I thought, that is exactly right.
Rock and roll, rock music itself, is not even a hundred years old yet. Since it truly took shape, it has not even been a century.
At this stage, we still do not know what kind of power it holds, or what kind of influence it will have in human history.
It is far too early to draw conclusions.
I had been thinking that I was already broken, nothing more than an empty shell, no longer young, and that maybe it was all over.
But then I realized, that is not true.
Strength came back to me.
I felt like Eddie Van Halen was telling me, keep rocking.
Hey, what are you doing? Keep rocking.
It was not words. It was life itself.
And with that, I felt like I finally understood everything.
For example, in Christianity, there is often talk about which figures in the Bible you personally relate to.
In the New Testament, many people sympathize with Peter, who is impulsive but passionate.
For a long time, there have been two figures in the New Testament I have always felt a strange connection to.
One is Judas Iscariot. Judas, the most famous traitor in human history.
I have always thought he was probably someone like me.
Or maybe he represents who I was before I encountered rock music. Before rock changed me, back when I was still a boy. Sometimes I wonder what kind of person I would have become if I had never encountered rock music. If that were the case, I might have turned out exactly like Judas.
I believe rock saved me, that it changed me. And yet, I still think there is a Judas-like personality somewhere inside me. Besides, the name Judas sounds extremely heavy metal.
The other person I naturally empathize with is Paul.
Paul is arrogant. He lectures believers everywhere with a superior tone. But what he says is often correct, so it is hard to argue with him. There is a kind of rightness, intensity, and persistence that almost makes you want to say, give me a break already.
I remember Shusaku Endo describing Paul as someone who was too strong.
I am probably that kind of person too. Of course, I have many weaknesses, but at a fundamental level, I think I have a side that is too strong. That strength can push people away, and it can make others uncomfortable. I have grown tired of myself because of that many times in my life, which is why I resonate with Paul’s strength.
For early Christianity, Paul was a great missionary, and also a very capable salesman. I do not think I have anything like his abilities, but I feel a strange affinity with his boldness and stubborn strength, his refusal to hesitate as he brandishes the gospel from on high.
Just as Paul encountered Christ.
Experiencing a deceased musician as revived, alive here and now, is not new to me either. Personally, I think it has happened to me at least twice.
Music is eternal, so there is nothing strange about that.
In that sense, I am free to follow in Paul’s footsteps.
I can take on the role of elevating resurrected rock and roll into a new form of faith.
My faith in God is deeply intertwined with my belief in rock and roll.
I have come to understand again that, above all else, I believe in rock and roll.
If someone says that means it is no longer Christianity, I would answer that I am fine with that.
Rock and roll has no fixed form.
There is no longer any need to preach or force it on anyone.
Just play it loud.