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Bin the year 1969 student protests were taking place Japansuch as anti-university, anti-war and anti-government mixed with class boycotts and boycotts. “Students were very violent,” recalls Makoto Kubota of Kyoto’s Doshisha University, leaving his studies in trouble. But when quiet, magnetic fellow student Takashi Mizutani invited Kubota to the first performance of his band Les Rallizes Dénudés, their deafening psych-rock became his calling. I had never heard such a volume of words.
Les Rallizes Dénudés, which Kubota recently joined, have become rock legends: a mysterious, uncompromising group whose use of early distortion has won fans from the Osees’ John Dwyer to Lady Gaga. As the band’s only member since its inception in 1967, Mizutani’s secret guitar playing and aversion to recordings have meant that their story is still included, and their music is widely distributed as live bootlegs. This realization led to international festivals following the group’s last gig in 1996, and Mizutani and Kubota reunited in 2019 with plans for a reunion – cut short by Mizutani’s death later that year. In his memory, Kubota is restoring and releasing their music, including a mysteriously lost song.
Months after that first gig, Mizutani’s friends left. Speaking from his studio in Tokyo, Kubota said that the first members were very interested in student politics, especially bassist Moriaki Wakabayashi, who “began to be heavily influenced by the Red Army”. Armed with samurai swords, Wakabayashi joined these brave communists in the hijacking of Japanese Airlines Flight 351 in March 1970. “I heard they wanted to go to Cuba. Instead, they ended up in North Korea.” After finding safety, their settlement was involuntary – Wakabayashi says he’s still there.
In late 1969, Kubota remembers Mizutani inviting him to join them. “He was already familiar with American music,” he says, showing Kubota LPs with the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground, although how an unaffiliated student found this in Japan at the time “is a big mystery”. Together, they went to a university studio one night in February 1970 to record a symphony of emotional people: “When we finished, it was dawn.” This was released on the 1991 album Mizutani/Les Rallizes Dénudés, along with the single The Last One, recorded at their first meeting in the early 1970s at the Doshisha student hall. It started with the group singing those quiet songs. Then, Mizutani “suddenly pushed the fuzz pedal”, leaving Kubota trying to join him on lead guitar and pickup. “I went to my amp and switched it to full, which is the same thing but worse – more screaming!”
It became the first Kubota show to melt many ears. He played continuously with les Rallizes Dénudés for three years, but left when his career began to settle. Landing Record acts as a soloist and with his rock group Sunset Gang (later Sandii & the Sunsetz), eventually touring the world with the likes of Talking Heads, INXS and Eurythmics, while the unfriendly company les Rallizes Dénudés – as far as they can confirm – has not been played outside of Japan.
He rarely heard from his former bandmates. But in 1991 Mizutani requested permission to release Mizutani/Les Rallizes Dénudés as one of three albums on the Rivista label, along with ’67-’69 Studio et Live and ’77 Live. Combined with old recordings (mostly from the show) and a limited release on CD, this became the only official, official collection of Mizutani’s life. “Rallizes was a band, not a recording studio,” says Kubota, noting that Mizutani couldn’t find producers who could record their music. “They were very loud, and unruly.”
One night in 2010, Kubota was at Tsutaya, a movie and CD rental he likens to Blockbuster. He said: “I saw 10 black CDs labeled ‘Rallizes’ from 1 to 10. “The first thing I thought was: ‘Mizutani finally got it, he got a lot of money!'” But others had the responsibility: “Oladas.” Fans who recorded their shows released many worthless bootlegs. Scorned by Mizutani, “they crossed the ocean to America and Europe, and then local pirates started taking them”. With titles such as Heavier Than a Death in the Family and Blind Baby Has Its Eyes, these impressive recordings became collectibles for Western thinkers and rock fans alike. One was Julian Cope, who wrote an entire chapter in his 2007 book Jap rock sampler for the group is “sonic executioner” Mizutani. The story is interesting and fictional, but it’s clear how the group adopted Western ideas: “Bootlegs, bootlegs, and more bootlegs.”
In August 2019, Mizutani called Kubota again. By this time Kubota was a traveling musician, and Les Rallizes Dénudés found fans all over the world. He asked Mizutani: “‘Why don’t we give them your live music, and official records?’ He liked the idea. ” For Kubota, “it was as if he came to me in 1969 and said ‘let’s sing a song together.’ Even though we had been together for 30 years, I loved him very much, and he always thought of me.
But soon, Kubota stopped hearing. A friend of Mizutani went so far as to say that he died in December. “He knew the ideas we discussed, and he agreed that we should preserve the legacy of Rallizes.” Mizutani saved “hundreds of tapes”, and helped find the records of The Last One Musicque to restore and release.
Recently, he revealed Mizutani’s plans from 1991 for an unreleased album created from the archives. He had recorded some of his tapes and reels open to record the fourth music and similar written material, which helped Kubota restore and release what Mizutani called Disque 4. A mix of live footage, reruns and rare studio footage, it includes two real game changers – footage from the fabled Virgin show. In 1976 journalist Aida Akira produced episodes of Les Rallizes Dénudés at the Tokyo Big Box studio. “He was a big fan of Rallizes’ music, and he wanted to get to know Virgin,” says Kubota. He claims that Mizutani was unhappy with the division due to a “lack of production methods”, but Akira was allowed to take the show to the British label – which is known for producing left-wing stars such as Mike Oldfield. While they were negotiating, the label was pouring resources into signing Sex Pistols, and the deal never materialized. “It was just unfortunate.”
Big Box’s music helps explain Akira’s vision of how les Rallizes Dénudés could achieve commercial success. The Night’s live cassettes, Assassin’s Night on records like ’77 Live are proto-shoegaze monsters, but the Disc 4 version reveals its funky wave roots. The real gem is Pure Dreams Awakening. A few Kubota restorations exist – a back cut from The OZ Tapes, a 10-minute treat on Citta ’93 – but the Disque 4 version is brilliant, brilliant. It shows a soft side to Mizutani, proven for a long time by his association with the distortion of fear and terror. “He was a great musician,” says Kubota.
When Kubota continues to restore the music of les Rallizes Dénudés, he feels the weight of his friend’s expectations – “he was really, selective” – keeping a picture of Mizutani with his mixing desk, “always standing next to me, watching how I’m doing”, he laughs. “I hope they like my work.”
