兄弟 追憶のhide

Author: Matsumoto Hiroshi
Translation: w_b

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Rocker = Hooligan?
p. 50-53

Three months had passed, yet hide still was as hard on me as ever.

What amazed me however is that hide was just as hard on himself. I hadn't known just how serious of a person he was; on many occasions I felt as if I were looking at a stranger.

Back when he still lived at home and had started his band, I used to think that my brother was dense and a slacker. That however was probably nothing more than a false impression on my part.

I had entered senior high at the time. My brother hardly ever came home anymore after starting his band, and so I arbitrarily wrote him off. To me, you simply never knew with his kind where they were, what they were doing, and how long they had been doing it for.

It may also have been my own personal preconceptions and prejudice against rock.

The reason being that ever since I was a kid I used to look at the KISS fan club magazines lying around my older brother's room. And inside those magazines there used to be photos of the KISS members laughing and surrounded by golden-haired women.

My biased impression of the world of rock had been gradually reinforced. I assumed that 'rocker = hooligan', that 'rock = flamboyant harem'. I used to think that they weren't people to whom words expressing society's common sense, words like 'serious' and 'decent', applied.

Whereas now, hide managed his daily life more strictly than anything else. He admonished me as follows concerning his way of 'greeting' me with a tongue lashing that sometimes ended in a punch.

"Listen, as a human being, the bottom line is that you're either flawless, or you're useless. With your head, and the type of job you're doing, you won't make it unless you're flawless. You'll get ridiculed."

As a matter of fact, hide was incredibly humble.

Though he was commonly hard to work with, that part of him would vanish in the presence of artists and musicians, and he always showed his business partners great respect by letting them see his face without makeup, hat or sunglasses.

Plus he was exceedingly strict about being on time.

I was given the privilege of managing hide's schedule, but when he noticed that I was being a just a little bit lenient in the way I organized his plans, he flew into another rage. Whenever he was going in to work, he had to be on location at the latest ten minutes before the appointed time. He always required that I count down to the starting time, and that I be proactive.

Being late by even one minute was strictly prohibited. I think it was due to hide's natural self-awareness as a professional.

"Listen to me, Hiroshi. For one, when I'm late it impacts the quality of my work. Get it? And I end up wasting the valuable time of dozens, hundreds of staff. When I do that, the mood at the location slackens, and that ultimately impacts back on my work. Don't you ever forget that."

After I heard hide say that, I made it my goal to arrive about an hour before I was due to pick him up. I knew that if I parked the car in front of his house or his workplace and waited for him that early ahead of time, I'd manage even if by some chance he made last minute changes to the appointed place and time.

Once I started discovering hide's disposition towards work, I began to feel contented with my own work as well. All of a sudden when I looked around me, I noticed many staff members who had also gradually grown competent at their work despite getting chewed out when they had first started.

Once I started seeing the senior staff in this new light, I grew more eager to master my own work.

Yet even though I had downright undergone a change of heart, hide continued to give me his pep talks in front of the staff. The punches and kicks flew at me mercilessly.

If anything, there were even signs indicating that the pep talks were increasing in frequency as I grew accustomed to my work.

Well, the fact is that I also failed at my job in some spectacular ways.

It was in '95, during the 1995-1996 Dahlia tour. hide had asked me to give his guitar a coating of fluorescent paint.

I felt a surge of eagerness, thinking to myself that this was such an easy job! I coated every inch of hide's guitar with a thick layer of fluorescent paint, but then...

"You idiot, you painted over the strings!"

I got chewed out by hide but somehow he managed to use that guitar on stage. The end result was alright.

After the show he told me, "You know, that worked out better than I expected."