Make Believe Mailer #110: Happy End On Happy End

No, Not The First One, The Last One

This week, The Guardian published a feature I wrote about the legacy and linguistic importance of Japanese band Happy End. This was a month’s long process, featuring quotes from all three living members of the pioneering Japanese rock band, highlighted by a two-hour-plus conversation with drummer / primary lyricist Takashi Matsumoto late last year¹. My goal with it was to look at the importance the band truly had — and hear about it from the artists involved directly, while also learning about how it all came to be.

Part of this was looking at Happy End’s whole career — from how the project emerged from the psych-rock ashes of Apyrl Fool through to the decision to break up. The Guardian piece largely focuses on Happy End’s first two albums, its eponymous debut and Kazemachi Roman, along with the fallout and eventual critical praise both got.

What only gets mentioned in passing, however, is the band’s final album, another self-titled set of songs released in 1973. In telling the story of Happy End, it’s easily the most inessential of the group’s works…so when it came time to tighten this story up, my editor² correctly removed multiple paragraphs about this LP. The importance of the band and everything it accomplished can be told without dwelling on its final offering, especially in the context of an article introducing its story to a wider audience.

However, this newsletter is totally different, and REVELS in detours like Happy End 1973. I mean…I did talk with Matsumoto about this album and the bizarre recording experience in Los Angeles behind it for a while, and my original draft had about 700 more words exploring this period of Happy End’s existence. So for this week’s essay…let’s flesh out those leftovers to look at the often overlooked finale of the Happy End discography.

The members of Happy End knew they had hit on something special with Kazemachi Roman. The 1971 album marked a moment where every individual in the band — Takashi Matsumoto, Haruomi Hosono, Eiichi Ohtaki and Shigeru Suzuki — took a step forward artistically, bolstering their confidence. Even before wrapping up what would become their masterpiece, signs of restlessness were emerging. Ohtaki, beginning to envision solo ideas, didn’t show up for all of the recording of Kazemachi Roman. By the time it was out in the world, Happy End agreed to break up in the near future so everyone could pursue personal projects.

Then came an opportunity to record in the United States. Producer Koki Miura invited Ohtaki out to America, who in turn asked the rest of the band if they’d want to go. That prompted Miura to push them to record a whole album across the Pacific, believeing that going to a country whose music had long fascinated the members of Happy End would be the only way to get them to create one more album.

“I did not want to go to the US for the recordings,” Matsumoto says, pointing to the fact they had already decided to disband as reason for his hesitation. “But I looked at the other three, and they definitely wanted to go — they wanted to experience the best available in the world. Everyone seemed motivated, so I went along with it.”

“Recording in the U.S. was a dream come true,” Suzuki says. 

Yet by the time they got into the studio, Matsumoto says it was clear everyone was focused elsewhere. “A good example of that is, I told everyone before we left, write the lyrics to your music before we go. Except for Suzuki-san, I would help him write,” Matsumoto says, before laughing. “But Ohtaki showed up with no lyrics. It was understandable, because he was working on a solo career and really focused on those songs and albums.”

While the member’s minds might have been elsewhere, it has been recorded that Happy End were downright giddy at first because of where they were recording. “We used a famous studio called Sunset Sound Studio. There was a red brick wall, and The Beach Boys had recorded there before, to make Pet Sounds,” Matsumoto says, adding that shared favorite Buffalo Springfield also worked in this LA spot. While Happy End changed the course of Japanese music history by leaning into their mother tongue, musically all four members loved West Coast rock sounds, importing pricey LPs to stay in the know and shape their sound. Perhaps this was why Miura envisioned Sunset Sound Studio as the only place Happy End could put a bow on their time together — it was, after all, where many of its own inspirations created.

The locale also helped with some unexpected musical encounters. “The person who organized the recording told us there was this really good band that had not debuted yet. We were told they had a keyboard player, so we could ask them to join us for the sessions,” Matsumoto says. “That turned out to be Little Feat. It was a great experience…and a big coincidence. We would be doing like 16 takes, and they were so energized the whole time.”

Yet the actual experience comes off as less than fun. In talking with the members, I found everyone remained mostly positive in their memories, if perhaps a bit mixed on it all in the case of Matsuoto. Japanese interviews and articles about it, though, paint a slightly rougher image. According to these features, Happy End initially felt awkward in the studio, and didn’t gel with the American staff, who told them to cheer up or get out. Whatever happened, it’s fair to say this wasn’t like the band’s previous sessions, both in terms of physical location (being on the other side of the world will do that³) and how they each approached the songs that would make up Happy End.

“I feel it was created when everyone was thinking of the next step in their career. I think that comes across clearly in the album. Hosono was starting the studio musician group Caramel Mama, and I wasn’t really interested in that. I preferred writing lyrics. Ohtaki wanted to go solo, Suzuki wanted to go solo. It wasn’t a bad thing at all — it was natural. We all have our own dreams,” Matsumoto says.

Happy End, then, can best be viewed as a sampler of sorts of what was to come next. Whereas Kazemachi Roman was the four largely being on the same wavelength to create a love letter to a vision of Tokyo slowly vanishing⁴, Happy End spotlights individual growth that would soon bloom more. Hosono offers a preview of the country-fried funk that would shape his Hosono House (“Aiaigasa”) while also flexing his own lyrical prowress (“Mufujoutai,” itself a metaphor for the end of the band itself). Ohtaki had the chance to iron out the sound he’d bring to his own Niagra releases. Matsumoto, fully aware he wanted to focus on lyrics writing, leaned into that. Perhaps the biggest creative growth came from Suzuki, who wrote more origianl songs and, according to Japanese reports, helped keep everyone focused and upbeat. Tellingly, Suzuki came right back to California a couple years later to record his solo debut, like he wanted to channel that energy one more time.

It’s ultimately the band exploring and interrogating its own complicated relationship with America. Post-war US imagery plays a huge role in the artwork of “new music” and city pop, with Ohtaki in particular taking a liking for a ‘50s style visual that already felt retro by the mid ‘70s (one his friend and collaborator Tatsuro Yamashita would dig into even further). Happy End’s artwork — meant to resemble the end of a movie, like how this was the end of Happy End — is the first prominent use of this style. Yet the experience itself was a rollercoaster, and for every emboldened Suzuki wanting to go back, you had a Matsumoto who decided he never really needed to create art in the States ever again.

The whole odd feeling Happy End leaves is captured on the closing song, “Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon.” Once again, luck played a role in that — Van Dyke Parks was just in the studio one day and worked with Happy End to make the song. As Ohtaki and Matsumo have recounted however…dude was drunk out of his mind, talking to them about Pearl Harbor and generally coming across as a bit of a weirdo based on these accounts. Yet he still helped them come out with something all their own.

“It was basically improv put together by Van Dyke Parks. He told me to hit the drums this way, and when everything came together, Parks asked me to write very short lyrics on the spot. It came together very quickly, but I believe the song leaves a good message,” Matsumoto says.

That being — “We had already given up on Japan, and with ‘Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon,’ we were saying bye-bye to America too—we weren't going to belong to any place,” as taken from Michael K. Bourdaghs book boasting the same name as the song. Happy End marked the end of Happy End…but also allowed everyone involved to set out on something new, offering a final wave farewell to the project that brought them to this point.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies

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1. This was my second interview with Matsumoto ever, meaning I’ve now spent around four hours talking about his incredible artistic life.

2. Shout-out Laura Snapes, one of the best to do it.

3. And nearly messed up everything. As Matsumoto recalls, with a laugh at the end: “We decided that after we recorded, we would mix the album in Japan. So we took all the recordings back to Japan from LA, and we were trying to do the mix. But we realized the sound was totally different. It was a humidity issue. That changed the sound. That was a big surprise once we got back.” 

4. Theory in progress: one of the reasons nostalgia and memory is so central to “new music” and “city pop” — both at the time and from listeners today — is because this album, generally seen as the starting point for this lineage of Japanese rock, is itself about nostalgia for a fading, somewhat imagined Tokyo itself.