Haruomi Hosono 50th Anniversary Exhibition: 1969 – 1973

Haruomi Hosono joined “Apryl Fool” in 1969 at the request of Hiroyoshi Yanagida, who was the brother of Hosono’s then-bandmate. He accepted the offer because Yanagida told Hosono that his band already had a contract to record a full album. It materialized as an album titled “Apryl Fool,” which reflected Yanagida’s passion toward physchedelic rock such as Iron Butterfly and The Doors. But Hosono was interested in the kind of music played by the American West Coasts bands like Buffalo Springfield, or Laura Nyro. He quit the band after the album was done and formed “Happy End” with Takashi Matsumoto (Dr. and lyrics), Eiichi Ohtaki (G., vo.), and Shigeru Suzuki (G., vo.). Happy End had a clear agenda: make rock music in Japanese. It was considered too ambitious as Japanese thought their language lacked rhythm, proper accents or crispness to go with 8 beats, 16 beats etc. But Hosono wanted to create something truly unique and original.

As Hosono named this era “music of aspiration,” Hosono wanted to what Buffalo Springfield was doing with Happy End in Japan, and in Japanese. The band released three albums: Happy End (in Japanese hiragana) in 1970, Kazemachi Roman in 1971, and Happy End (in English) in 1973.

Takashi Matsumoto did a fabulous job of writing lyrics that elevated highly poetic Japanese sensibilities into rock music. (He became the top lyricist in the 80’s.) Hosono and Ohtaki, the John and Paul of Happy End, brought very different approaches to the band (Ohtaki considered himself as a “conservative” classic pops fan and never thought about trying something like Buffalo Springfield). Suzuki was an 18 year-old guitar prodigy when he joined Happy End, and grew tremendously during his tenue.

Happy End wasn’t a huge commercial success, but it is considered the pioneer of Japanese rock. Their last album, which was recorded after they decided to disband, was produced in LA – the city of music for Hosono. “Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon,” the last song of the last album, was co-produced by Van Dyke Parks, who happened to be around the studio they were recording.

In his early career, Hosono wasn’t yet used to write and sing his own songs, so he just had to try hard to pull off what he thought he could. He especially wasn’t sure about his voice, and it took him many try-and-errors to finally feel comfortable with how he would write songs and sing them by himself. It was struggles rather than fun, Hosono later recalled, but you can hear how his songwriting and singing evolved over the three Happy End albums.