Yoko Minamino -- Aki kara mo, Soba ni Ite（秋からも、そばにいて）

There's been a certain piece of classical music that I've often heard in motion pictures since I was a boy. It was used at the very beginning of the original "Rollerball", the 1975 sci-fi film starring James Caan.

Then I heard a brief snippet of it whenever the character of Dr. Van Helsing popped up in "The Cannonball Run" to great comic effect (I remember laughing my guts out because of his appearance and the music). Dramatic or funny, Johann Sebastian Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" always heralded to me something quite sinister was afoot. Didn't even know the title of this iconic organ piece until today; just considered it "creepy organ song used in movies". This was the sort of music that a depraved but sophisticated villain would play in his monstrous mansion on a pipe organ the size of a two-story building.

So, it made me wonder why composer Tamaki Ito*（伊東玉城）would place a variation of "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" in the intro for 80s aidoru Yoko Minamino's（南野陽子）2nd-biggest hit and 13th single, "Aki kara mo, Soba ni Ite" (Stay with Me from the Fall) from October 1988. Well, obviously, the song was a great success but still I'm rather mystified.

In any case, "Aki kara mo, Soba ni Ite" then goes into a lovely jaunty melody with those strings that I've often associated with some of the aidoru tunes in the late 1980s. Again, I envision the aidoru in a huge billowing dress, this time being Nanno, in some European castle near a bluff making out like some princess pining for her Prince Charming. The lyrics by Megumi Ogura（小倉めぐみ）take things, though, back down to Earth as a high school girl finally gets the boy of her dreams in the autumn after a number of seasons admiring him from afar. Not going to let him get away easily.

The song was also used for a Glico commercial starring Nanno herself. With arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, "Aki kara mo, Soba ni Ite" was the 8th in her consecutive string of 8 No. 1 singles dating back to her 6th single "Rakuen no Door"（楽園のDoor）, and was 2nd to "Toiki de Net"（吐息でネット）in terms of records sold, selling a little over 270,000 copies. It eventually became the 30th-ranked single for 1988.

*Once again, I've come across a first name that I'm not sure about in terms of its reading since I couldn't find any verification online. I'm going with Tamaki here for now but once again, if any of you know the correct way to read it, then please let me know.