Be With! Vol. 95 (September 2012)

Be With! » Be With! Vol. 95 (September 2012)

B'z Interview

Interviewer:		This time, we’d like to talk about the digital album you’ve released world wide on July 25th. First of all, why did you choose “B’z” as title?
Tak:		We’ve been making a name for ourselves in Japan for many years now, but it’s our first time releasing something world wide, so we thought it’d be easy to recognize if we named it after the band’s name. It’s the same concept when we started this band.
Koshi:		That’s right. It’s more like a theme we’ve been following, less like an actual concept, though.
Interviewer:		How did you experience the world wide release of your first digital album?
Tak:		How many times was it downloaded? Well, what we do from here on out is what counts.
Interviewer:		You’re going to tour North America soon, after all. What is the reason, why you chose to release it digitally?
Koshi:		It wasn’t enough material to release it in a full package, and they’re just English versions of already existing songs, after all. And considering that, we thought it’d be best to offer a digital download of what we’ve produced. It’s comfortable for everybody to get it and we were able to release it quickly. It’s also a good way to see how we do on a global scale.
Tak:		There seem to be a lot of people in Japan demanding a CD release. But there aren’t that many CD shops overseas. Especially in the U.S.
Koshi:		That’s because nobody is buying CDs these days.
Interviewer:		Do you think it’s good for artists to be able to choose between a digital release and a CD release?
Koshi:		It’s an advantage for their listeners, I think. The ratio of digital vs. CD releases is going to change, I think. The state of that change depends on the country. There might be countries where a lot of people solely purchase digital releases. The way we produce music and such as well as how we do music change in the same way for new generations and musicians.
Interviewer:		And with digital releases, you’re able to release the songs shortly after you’ve produced them.
Tak:		It also shortens the time to distribution.
Interviewer:		Do you also use digital downloads when you purchase music?
Tak:		I don’t really purchase digital downloads.
Koshi:		I do it regularly. It’s very easy to search for music using the software.
Tak:		I make use of digital downloads to gather material for work. That’s because it’s so easy to use. And as I said, places where you can buy CDs are disappearing. Instead, I’ve gone back to LPs. Somehow due to Barry’s influence. Some time ago, I was talking to Barry and he had brought a lot of LPs with him. We talked about how he frequently listens to them in his house.
Koshi:		There are LP stores, right? Because there’s so many fans collecting LPs. You’ll find them if you look for them.
Tak:		It’s been 20 years since the LP was replaced by the CD, but yet it still continues to exist. There aren’t a lot of LP stores, but they have a huge sortiment of LPs. It would take you about 2 hours to browse the whole store.
Koshi:		There are a lot of good places in Japan, right?
Tak:		Yeah. Japan is a better place to buy them than in the U.S. Barry also told me he buys LPs in Japan and takes them home with him. Actually, there are some places near our studio in L.A. and on Hawaii, but they’re all scattered. In Japan, there are stores which have been selling LPs for countless years! And you can also buy some mint condition LPs there.
Koshi:		You’re proud of yourself when you find what you were looking for, right? And the rare ones are really expensive!
Tak:		But actually, normal LPs that don’t come with a bonus are even cheaper now compared to back then! During our times, an LP cost you 2500 Yen, but now it’s no more than 2000 Yen for a record. If you’re looking for an original European version record, it’ll cost you 5000 or 6000 Yen, however. The Beatles’ “WHITE ALBUM” was with 25,000 Yen the most expensive record I’ve ever seen among the ones I looked at!
Interviewer:		25,000 Yen!!
Tak:		I’m not that much of a collector, so I’m not going to spend that much on a record.
Koshi:		Even though CDs might be gone at some point, LPs might always be around.
Tak:		Maybe. Because there have been fans for so long~
Interviewer:		When did you think about producing an English album?
Koshi:		Around the time when the North American tour was coming around last year. At the time of last year’s tour, we already started working on it.
Interviewer:		I always thought that Tak winning the Grammy gave you the motivation to work on an English album. What do you think?
Koshi:		We started talking about it at a party over drinks. After the ceremony. So yeah, that’s somewhat true. In the past we’ve worked with a lot of producers on our English songs and we haven’t produced any for quite a while, so while we were having a great time, enjoying our delicious drinks, we decided it was finally time to do so. We’re in a different situation now compared to back then, and now we have different people we consult with. At that point, we realized we wanted to do it. And that’s when we started working on it.
Interviewer:		How did you go about the production of the songs?
Tak:		Basically we’d start with Koshi’s part of the work. We’d change the lyrics while listening to them and I’d fix the melody here and there, but this time it was mostly about the lyrics.
Koshi:		Concerning the lyrics, I finally discovered that I could have the same degree of freedom compared to when writing lyrics in Japanese. That’s when I returned to the same concept and started working on the lyrics. Then Shane helped me out when picking out songs and gave me pronunciation advice. I spent most of my time working with him.
Interviewer:		Were Shane and Cory Churko doing the mixing for all the songs?
Koshi:		There’s a balance to who did what. It depended on who was working how much on each song.
Interviewer:		When did you decide to entrust Shane and Cory with the mixing process?

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