Make Believe Mailer 20: Carl Lewis' Japan-Only Music Debut
Part 2 In The Olympic Series
Carl Lewis won nine gold medals over the course of four Olympics, making him one of the most celebrated American athletes to ever take part in the Games. He’s also long held an interest in a musical career, as evidenced by his 1984 novelty single “Goin’ For The Gold” and this goofy Los Angeles Times article from 1985.
The 1988 Olympics were in Seoul, for the curious…same continent, good job!
Nobody associates Carl Lewis with music unless they are talking about his rendition of the National Anthem…a Sportscenter staple for all of the 1990s and some of the 2000s…or his semi-infamous 1987 attempt at sports-meet-pop “Break It Up.” Before any of that though, Lewis released a whole-ass album of electro-funk songs with his band Electric Storm…only available in Japan, but thankfully preserved online.
Idaten might be a better example of the lavish environment of Japan in the 1980s than any performer enjoying YouTube-powered attention today. Alongside Alessandra Mussolini’s (granddaughter of Benito) city pop album, Lewis’ Japanese debut full length reminds that money just flew all over the place, and some truly idiotic ideas got the green light because, ehhh, why not burn a bunch of yen?
That goes all the way back to the label responsible for letting this exist. Kiyoshi Sagawa created Riv.Star Records in 1982, but this was more vanity project than serious dive into the Japanese music industry. Sagawa founded Sagawa Express in 1957, which has gone on to become one of the most important (and profitable) transportation companies in the country. By the early ‘80s, Sagawa had the sort of money at hand to indulge in whatever fleeting idea crossed his mind. He started Riv.Star because, based on info floating around the web, he loved the enka singer / actor Yukio Hashi. That’s it. He just wanted to put this guy’s music out, to the point he made Hashi vice president of Riv.Star Records.
This is from the ‘60s, well before Sagawa could act on his omega fandom.
Thing about having a music label is, you probably require more than one artist to fill out the catalog, especially amidst the booming sales of the bubble era. Riv.Star mostly leaned into enka, but used other slots to get daring. Most ambitious was Saint 4, a pop project that appears to have literally been “Flashdance, but idols.” Yet the need to round out a roster also had them going international, releasing music by Spanish child duo Antonio Y Carmen and Taiwanese singer Teng Li.
And…Carl Lewis.
I don’t need to engage in “research” to know why Riv.Star would allow Lewis and his band Electric Storm to put out an album. Lewis’ success at the 1984 Olympic Games — matching Jesse Owens by winning four golds in track and field events — was a massive achievement all around the world, including Japan. Very quickly, Lewis achieved the holy grail of business in the 1980s…being invited to be a spokesperson for Japanese products, with companies willing to shower him with money to plug for Suntory’s sports drink NCAA…which is a Pocari-Sweat-like beverage using the name of America’s NCAA as branding.
Part of the appeal appears to have also stemmed from America’s disinterest in supporting Lewis on the commercial front. A 1985 interview with Lewis in Jet finds him speaking on how he could make more money in Japan than the U.S., citing both the perceived hubris he showed recording a novelty single about winning a bunch of gold medals before doing so (but then…actually doing so) and rumors that he was gay.
Worth noting that, according to Robert Whiting’s You Gotta Have Wa, Lewis was the rare exception, and that most Japanese companies didn’t want to align their brand with black athletes, including the popular ones playing professional baseball in the country. Said players could, however, release their own novelty sports singles.
Check that last line to get a preview of Idaten, Lewis’ debut album for Riv.Star, which did arrive several months later in 1985. The “bi-lingual” part did not prove true (thankfully?), but this really did come out, and exists as a testament to the power of ‘80s Japan. It falls somewhere in the middle of the “big in Japan” music race, between Mussolini’s city pop album (which found a team of Japanese songwriters and producers trying to turn a fascist oddity into something — including Hiroshi Sato, which unfortunately makes it a must for completists) and Kenny Loggins’ beer ad song. The absurdity of allowing Lewis to release music is part of the draw, but he wasn’t hopeless like Mussolini (oh my god what a dumb sentence).
Idaten features him and his band doing their thing, and while the latter’s contributions haven’t entirely aged well — that keyboard gloop smeared all over “Takin’ That Second Look,” while the saxophone solos scattered about the album should serve as a solid litmus test for when the sax has pushed over to “too cheesy” — the songs mostly sound good (especially when they loosen up on the big single stabs), or at least good enough musically.
Oh but Carl Lewis’ voice…it’s not good. It’s…interesting? He has a delivery that is just off even when conga-lining along with the funkier numbers here, which might have been able to get lost in the shuffle if he wasn’t so intent on trying to hit high notes. That everyone involved in this thought “what this aspiring singer clearly needs is not one, but two ballads where his vocals are just right up in your ear” is a massive failure of group thinking. At his best, Lewis sounds like he’s reading off of flash cards. At his worst, he sounds like a vaporwave vocal sample after being slowed down.
Follow up Riv.Star single (yes, they followed it up) “Love Will Do” (above) is actually way better than anything on Idaten, as is b-side “ Love Triangle” despite an extremely pained math metaphor and the lyric “can’t turn threesomes into two.”
I don’t think any of this is hubris as much as someone who earnestly (or at least opportunistically) wanted to give a music career a go finding a safe space to practice, knowing a Japan-only record probably won’t find its way to American shores anytime soon. And he’d still make money off of this creation from an audience hungry for anything Lewis-related, so why not bust out the boogie and try to sing along?
Torpedoing this theory is that Carl Lewis kept releasing music, including in the U.S., culminating in the aforementioned Star Spangled Bungle in the ‘90s. He cut the audio adventures out after that.
Save for a sponsor-related bump in the road in 1991, Lewis status in Japan remained strong in the following decades — he starred in spots for canned coffee and tires in 1996. He still gets attention in the country, and he lent his support to the Tokyo bid for the 2020 Olympic Games.
Idaten will not be remembered in any conversations about Lewis, Japanese music from the ‘80s or even sports-related music releases. Yet it’s an interesting curio, one reminding of how entertainment in the ‘80s functioned and just, like, how much Japan loved the Olympics. Light In The Attic, stay far away, but it’s a time capsule all the same.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies