Jackey Yoshikawa and his Blue Comets -- Sayonara no Ato de（さよならのあとで）

 

Is it Group Sounds or not?

That was the question that I had in my mind when I listened to Jackey Yoshikawa and his Blue Comets'（ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ）14th single "Sayonara no Ato de" (After the Goodbyes) which was released in October 1968. "Sayonara no Ato de" also has the distinction of being the Blue Comets' first single following their declaration that they were no longer a Group Sounds band. 

According to the J-Wiki article on the band, this situation apparently occurred earlier that year when the Blue Comets were invited to the United States to perform on television's famous "The Ed Sullivan Show" to perform their most famous hit "Blue Chateau"（ブルー・シャトウ）. However, while they were there, Blue Comet and future prolific songwriter Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, later to take on the stage name of Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）, was floored by the rock and pop that was emanating from America at the time, so when they all went back home to Japan, Inoue was ready to break up the Blue Comets but surrounding intervention prevented that from happening, leading instead to the No More Group Sounds declaration.

So, out came "Sayonara no Ato de", a song by lyricist Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）that had perhaps more in common with the genre of Mood Kayo. But then again, when I first heard the combination of the vocals of Inoue and youngest member Tsunaki Mihara（三原綱木）, I'd just assumed that this was another GS ballad which has made me wonder how close the two genres actually were in terms of melody and arrangement at times. But with repeated listenings, I can understand the use of the Mood Kayo label.

The J-Wiki article on the song itself includes some fairly harsh assessments by the late Susumu Kurosawa（黒澤進）, a music critic who was also a specialist on Group Sounds. He basically described "Sayonara no Ato de" as a problematic song which spelled the (beginning of the) death knell for the entire genre following which he couldn't stand referring to The Blue Comets as a GS band. Well, the band did declare themselves as no longer a GS band but it sounds like Kurosawa blamed them for bringing the entire castle down. In any case, Inoue who had composed "Blue Chateau" had already been lamenting the end of the era even earlier as mentioned in the KKP article.

Regardless of the supposed tempest surrounding the song, though, "Sayonara no Ato de" was another hit for the group as it hit No. 3 on the shiny new Oricon weekly rankings. It later became the 43rd-ranked single for 1969.