Tetsuji Hayashi -- Back Mirror

 

As I said once before, I missed a chance at getting singer-composer Tetsuji Hayashi's（林哲司）"Back Mirror", his 2nd album from 1977, when I was in Japan on vacation in 2014 but I did finally acquire this seminal City Pop/J-AOR classic some time afterward. One of the tracks, "Rainy Saturday & Coffee Break" was covered almost three years ago, and I did mention that it was a standout track (which it still is), but I think some of the others are also worthy of mention.

The above video here is for the entire album so I'll be providing the time stamps as required. Of course, while Hayashi was responsible for performing, composing and arranging the songs, Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and Kiri Kawamura（河村季里）provided the lyrics for them. Now the reason for me taking on the album proper stemmed actually from a request by Rocket Brown from "Come Along Radio" last weekend to translate the updated liner notes from the album as provided originally by music journalist Toshikazu Kanazawa（金澤寿和）who's the expert on all things City Pop and J-AOR.

I was more than happy to do it and I found out some interesting information, but first allow me to provide the translation of Hayashi's comments for "Back Mirror", after Kanazawa was able to get a hold of him for an interview:

When I first heard that “Back Mirror” was being put onto CD, I was tremendously thrilled. This was the one album from my back catalog that hadn’t gotten onto compact disc, so fans were ripping copies onto CD-R. 

Looking back, I can say that this album shaped the music that I’ve been doing now and it has become the foundation for my work. My first album ("Bruges", 1973) simply expressed my Beatles’ influences but “Back Mirror” is a lot wider, showcasing a feeling of American Pop and the hit parade. However, my capability of just totalizing things such as sound and an album theme hadn’t come about yet. I think the motifs for each song such as the melody and arrangement were there, but they hadn’t yet been completely sublimated through my own filter. It was a time when as soon as I was influenced by someone, I quickly incorporated it and dashed it off just like that. I couldn’t come up with my own artist’s image so I went by trial-and-error. 

What brought it all together was through “Summer Wine” (1980) onwards with the AOR and my encounter with David Foster. Even so, writing the songs, getting the studio musicians together and getting up to the finishing of the scoring arrangements…that was all done for the first time with this album. Also, since these were the songs that had come into being before my songwriting style developed, when I listen to the album now, my wild uninhibitedness is once again on display. In that way, “Back Mirror” was certainly the starting point for who I am now as a composer. They may be works showing off my youthful indiscretions but they truly show that I passed through here.

As well, Kanazawa in the notes revealed that although "Back Mirror" had been released after Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）take on "Rainy Saturday & Coffee Break" through her April 1977 album "Rainbow", it was actually Hayashi who had recorded the song for himself first. It was just that because each song on "Back Mirror" had been completed and recorded and processed one-by-one, it took the better part of a year to have the entire album done.

In any case, following the instrumental of "Marci (I)" and "Rainy Saturday & Coffee Break", there is "Yoru no Owari"（夜のおわり...The End of Night） at 5:12 which Kanazawa compared to the works of 1970s George Harrison and Wings-era Paul McCartney. To be honest, I don't know enough of either of their works back then to give a really informed observation (although I know Wings' "Band on the Run" and "My Love"), but there is something there that reminds me of the band Off-Course（オフコース）when they did their soft rock stuff in that decade.

At 9:27 is "Kanojo no Nagai Ichi Nichi"（彼女の長い一日...Her Long Day） sounds very 1970s and NOVO perhaps because of that electric piano as the woman in the lyrics just seems to want to let go of everything and flee it all. There's some very nice city sound in the arrangements given that further oomph thanks to that saxophone solo. I'd probably posit that the lass lives in New York City. Incidentally, the chorus in "Kanojo no Nagai Ichi Nichi" includes Junko Ohashi and singer-songwriter Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）.

Speaking of keeping things in the Big Apple, Track 5 at 14:10 is "Moerutsuki Hi Made"（燃えつきる日まで...Until The Burning Day） which comes across as if it had been inspired by many days and nights on the top of brownstones and skyscrapers overlooking Manhattan at sunset. Do love the galloping rhythms, the sax and that feeling of Santana and Al Stewart. For some reason, it's with this song that Hayashi's vocals really come out to me.

"Letter"（レター）at 21:55 stands out since it sounds like a theme song for a Japanese cops-and-robbers show. There is that boss brass-and-racing percussion that pretty much energized any such program on either side of the Pacific during the 1970s, but Ryu's lyrics have to do with some poor fellow waiting for some sign from most likely a now ex-girlfriend.

One more song that I'll write on is "Tori no Se ni Nori Tobetara"（鳥の背に飛びのれたら...If I Could Ride the Back of a Bird） at 34:27 which is about as Boz Scaggs as one can get, and for that matter, I have to say that there is also something of the Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）included in the overall feeling, too. There is some of that lushness in the piano and the strings which remind me of both artists. 

Referring back to Hayashi's own comments above and looking through my own comments on the tracks covered, I think, yep, the composer was inspired by the various hooks and styles of the popular singers at the time from the United States and the United Kingdom. I'm pretty sure then that the other Japanese acts mentioned also got their own inspiration from the West.

I would also agree with Hayashi that "Back Mirror" was perhaps the album to show a fresh-faced composer taking on the music world as he tried to absorb and glean melodic insights from some of his heroes. Although he still kept on singing and putting out albums with his own material, well into the 1980s, I consider him as more of the composer in that decade and the songs that he provided for other singers such as Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）, Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）and Anri（杏里）possess that Hayashi style of alternating disco and his own form of rich balladry. The filter was finally fully formed and in place.

March 15 2021: Rocket Brown has got his review for "Back Mirror", so have a read of that, too!