Es VOL.18 The musician to the musician plus 第 11 回 Hitoshi Okamoto(first half)

●○○From music freak Es Vol.18

Vol.11

The musician to the musician plus

Hitoshi Okamoto (HITOSHI OKAMOTO)

［the musician to the musician］ explores the musical roots of artists and the works that have influenced them. For the eleventh installment, we focus on GARNET CROW guitarist Hitoshi Okamoto, who also pursues solo activities under the name SUPER LIGHT! This time, we bring you the feature in interview format.
（INTERVIEWED BY YUKARI MATSUBARA）

●What originally led you to become absorbed in music, and how did you first encounter it?
Okamoto: It was when I was in middle school. It was around the time of the band boom, when Hokoten and Ikaten were popular, and a few of my friends were starting to play instruments. I followed along with that trend.

●Were you interested in guitar from the beginning?
Okamoto: No. At first I wanted to play drums, but my parents strongly objected: “Where are you going to put them?” (laughs).

●Why were you interested in drums?
Okamoto: I would turn on the TV and see bands performing, and the drums looked like the most fun part. It was a very simple impression.

●So after giving up on drums, you first picked up a guitar in middle school.
Okamoto: Yes. I bought a Yamaha Stratocaster with my allowance. It came as a set with a guitar and an amp, the kind of thing that says, “With this, you can start right now!”

●Did you begin by playing covers?
Okamoto: I did. I looked at a beginner’s instruction book and tried playing along with a CD as instructed. I remember thinking, “Wow, you really can do it properly this way” (laughs).

●What music were you listening to and what artists were you covering at the time?
Okamoto: Rather than one particular artist, I mostly listened to the major acts everyone in my class was listening to at the time—The Blue Hearts, Unicorn, BOØWY, X, and so on. I listened to Western music too, but when it came to playing covers, I started with Japanese music.

●Did you start a band after entering high school?
Okamoto: Yes. I was in a sports club too, but we would form a band around the time of the school festival. I was not a guitar fanatic, so at first I did other things as well instead of making music my only focus. But halfway through high school I said something like, “I’m quitting sports next year” (laughs), and shifted completely to music.

●I imagine the works you brought today became part of that story. The first surprising choice was Off Course.
Okamoto: I did not listen to them by my own initiative. My mother liked them and played them at home a lot. I think I was in the lower grades of elementary school. She played them in the car too.

●Since you listened to them so much as a child, do you feel they influenced you strongly?
Okamoto: I am not sure. If you ask whether I was influenced by them, honestly, I do not really know myself. But if you ask what my musical roots are, this was definitely where they began. After that, when I was in the upper grades of elementary school, there were Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson, which my older brother listened to.

●Did you listen to Off Course thinking that they had good voices or good songs?
Okamoto: Of course I still think they made good songs. Even then, no matter how many times the same song played, I never found it painful, even as a child, so I suppose I did not dislike them.

●Following the timeline, does Nirvana come next?
Okamoto: Yes. There is quite a gap between Off Course and Nirvana, but Nirvana is the next one among the works I brought today. I listened to them a lot from around the middle of high school through the time I was preparing for university entrance exams.

●That is a very famous album.
Okamoto: I am actually not good at features that ask you to explore your musical roots (laughs). I could have tried to look cool and choose a broad range of music, but I did not really want to do that either (laughs). If I chose the records that honestly hit me right between the eyes, I could not leave out Nirvana’s *Nevermind*. It is a world-class—or maybe earth-class—masterpiece. It is an unbelievably good record. I think everyone my age listened to it.

●What about it resonated with you?
Okamoto: There was a grunge boom at the time, and I listened to Pearl Jam and others besides Nirvana. I think I liked the pop-like, easy-to-understand melodies, the heavy guitars, and the feeling of overflowing energy. In Western music at the time, there were bands like Extreme, Mr. Big, and Bon Jovi—the music that anyone who played guitar was expected to listen to—but Nirvana had a different kind of appeal.

●Did you want to try making music like that yourself?
Okamoto: I did not want to do it as original music. Nirvana had already brought it to completion, so I thought there was no point trying to imitate them.

●Do you still listen to *Nevermind*?
Okamoto: I do not listen to it now. But for me it is an album I want to keep stored away on a shelf forever. It is truly an album from my youth. It overlaps with the time I was taking entrance exams, so when I listen to it while feeling like, “Ugh, nothing is going to work out,” it connects with those memories.

●When you were preparing for entrance exams, did you already want to pursue music professionally in the future?
Okamoto: No, I only started thinking about it realistically after entering university. At that point, I mainly wanted to get into university safely and be free to make music!

●Next is Summer Camp, I assume.
Okamoto: Yes. This is a record I became deeply absorbed in after entering university. A friend who loved music recommended it to me. At the time, artists in this vein were often described as power pop.