T-BOLAN -- Bye For Now

 

On Tuesday night, there was the usual episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）which I'm happy is hanging about in a current period where the leadership of NHK has been getting rid of a number of long-running shows. However, I don't think there was much worry about this particular show getting axed since the kayo program on the national network has basically been a staple for decades and whenever there has been a change, it only entailed the title and the hosts. I'm still wondering about the fate of the Kohaku Utagassen, though.

In any case, a band appeared on Tuesday night for the first time on "Uta Con", and it's a group that I had always wondered about but never really got to know. At the very least, T-BOLAN has a name that did intrigue me. Well, it turns out that at least some of the members were inspired by the rock band T. Rex and its vocalist Marc Bolan according to their Wikipedia article.

In 1987, drummer Kazuyoshi Aoki（青木和義）offered vocalist Arashi Moritomo（森友嵐士）who was attending Tokai University at the time a place on this new band called Prisoner（プリズナー）, a predecessor of T-BOLAN. Near the end of the year, Prisoner ended up winning the grand prize for the 2nd annual BAD Audition sponsored by the entertainment company Being Inc. By the summer of 1988, Prisoner changed their name to BOLAN and released an EP "I Waited for a Time" under the indies wing at Being; the band also performed over a hundred concerts that year so they definitely earned their chops.

However, due to differing musical directions, Moritomo left BOLAN but continued his career by testing the waters to make a new band. He met up with future members guitarist Takashi Gomi（五味孝氏）and bassist Hirofumi Ueno（上野博文）who were working with other groups, but in the meantime, BOLAN ended up disbanding. In 1990, though, Aoki, Moritomo, Gomi and Ueno got together as T-BOLAN.

The song that T-BOLAN performed at "Uta Con" was their November 1992 6th single "Bye For Now". Written and composed by Moritomo, the inspiration behind this song was a reliable staffer who had decided to quit her position and head over to New York City to tackle something new overseas. I can only imagine how she felt if the band had played this for her at her farewell party. She probably would have dissolved in a puddle of tears.

Listening to "Bye For Now", that is quite the smashing keyboard intro (it comes back in the outro) before the song goes into an inspirational melody line that definitely fits what I would usually hear from a band or singer employed at Being. I think that the early 90s were a peak period for any of those groups so not surprisingly, the single hit No. 2 and became the 17th-ranked single for 1993, becoming the band's first million-seller. It is also a track on T-BOLAN's 4th album "Heart of Stone" from May 1993; it hit No. 1 for three weeks and became the 9th-ranked album of the year. The song was also used as the theme for the 1992 Fuji-TV drama "Woman Dream"（ウーマンドリーム）.

T-BOLAN has disbanded and reformed a number of times over the past few decades but they have been back together since 2017.