GARNET CROW Hirohito Furui Interview: “The musician to the musician”

In "the musician to the musician," we explore artists' musical roots and the works that influenced them. Usually, in this column, we ask the artist to name several artists or works and then speak with them around those points. This time, however, we took a slightly different approach and asked Mr. Furui to talk about his relationship with music from childhood up to the present. Furui is GARNET CROW's keyboardist, and outside GARNET CROW he is also active as an arranger for many different artists. The arrangement work he has handled so far crosses genres and is extremely varied. This became a fascinating interview in which we could understand the reasons behind his broad musical knowledge and the abundance of ideas he draws from.

-- What first brought you into contact with music?

Hirohito Furui: I took a little Electone when I was in kindergarten. I do not remember it myself, but apparently I was the one who said I wanted to try it. But once I actually started, I was not good with the female teacher... (laughs). When you are little, those things happen, right? So we tried looking for a class with a male teacher, but we could not really find one. In the end, I quit. After that, I would only play around with it when I felt like it, but by junior high I had started to admire synthesizers, and I remember saving my allowance very hard so I could buy one myself (laughs). Then I entered high school expecting that I would surely be able to do music more freely, but unbelievably, the high school I entered did not have anything like a light music club. So I thought, if there is not one, we should make it ourselves! By chance, the guy sitting behind me also wanted to do music, so we got excited talking about it. First we had to gather the required number of people to start the club, so we desperately invited even friends who could not play instruments, and in the end we created something like a society.

-- Were you in charge of keyboards in high school too?

Hirohito Furui: Once you are around high-school age, you start longing for "necked" instruments like guitar or bass. I had an acoustic guitar that an acquaintance gave me in junior high, so I practiced in my own way, but my fingers would not move the way I wanted. And by that age, there are already people who are really good at guitar. I thought I could not compete just by trying it a little (laughs). After that I moved to bass and played it for a while, but then it happened that the people playing keyboards were gone, so I said, "I'll do it," and in the end I went back to keyboards.

-- During your student days, did you never awaken to sports and simply devote yourself to music?

Hirohito Furui: I was tall, so I had always been invited to play sports, but in the end it was music all the way. In high school, it was really nothing but music.

-- Around when did you start thinking about becoming a professional?

Hirohito Furui: I agonized over it a lot in high school. There was one senior, a year above us, who joined our society. He is someone who still sings anime songs now, but by the time he graduated from high school, he already had some small professional opportunities, so he was far ahead of us. I felt pressure from that, and in a good way it also stimulated me. I thought, "I cannot stay like this." But I had no idea how to become a professional musician. Now indie activity is natural, and people can casually make songs on computers and put them out there, but in those days even MTR home-recording equipment was expensive. We were doing incredible things, like modifying the erase head on a cassette tape recorder so it would not erase, then layering recordings on it (laughs). In many ways, I was searching then.

-- What kinds of songs did the band you had in high school cover?

Hirohito Furui: Each member would bring songs they liked, and we did all kinds of things, Japanese and Western music alike. Among them, Southern All Stars and Motoharu Sano had solid piano parts, so I remember personally enjoying those. I also liked Kiyoshiro Imawano, and I have a memory of going to see him live at Nippon Budokan right after I entered high school. People who were into Western music often basically did not listen to Japanese music, but I was not like that at all. With the guys who were fans of Western music, I would get excited talking about Western music, and if I joined a group of people who liked Japanese music, I would get excited talking about Japanese music. I did not listen by genre or by artist name; it was more like, "This song is good!" So you could say I was broad and shallow. I had that kind of flexibility from long ago. Also, once I became a high-school student, we started playing originals that I had composed myself.

-- When people think of you, the image of keyboardist and arranger is strong, but you also compose, don't you?

Hirohito Furui: In GARNET CROW the division of roles is clearly fixed, so I do not write GARNET CROW songs. But even now, as a hobby, I make songs when I feel like it.

-- Around when did you start composing?

Hirohito Furui: Around high school, I guess. There comes a point in a band where you start thinking, "Don't we want to do our own originals soon?" So we began playing songs I had made. But I had been doing things like recording melodies that came freely to me while playing keyboards from around junior high. It happened naturally. I suppose they were what you would call instrumentals, but I enjoyed making them by myself (laughs).

-- Were you also arranging from the time you were in a high-school band?

Hirohito Furui: It was nothing as grand as "arranging"; in student days it was what you would call live arrangement. And for example, if I consulted the drummer and said, "I want this kind of drum rhythm," he would suggest, "How about this?" It was a very dependent form of arranging.

-- Your image as an arranger is strong. How did you come to do arrangement work seriously?

Hirohito Furui: There are many roots. For example, I encountered TOTO and learned how cool it was for studio musicians to form a band, and through that stream I encountered Jeff Porcaro and David Bowie. Then, as I learned that David Foster was producing Daryl Hall & John Oates and all kinds of other artists, I started to feel a kind of admiration for producers. With Janet Jackson, among the various producers, I became interested in Jam & Lewis and listened to everything they had worked on, and I thought Babyface was cool... Instead of thinking in terms of whose song it was, I started running toward the question of who was involved in the song. I felt that was something connected to the company I belong to, Being/GIZA. There was a period when I insisted that I wanted to continue as a band, and I also entered auditions with an amateur band, but the more we did that, the more we hit walls. In other words, in this world you cannot keep going on friendship alone. At the time, if possible, I wanted to keep working with the same members, but it was difficult to have an entire band accepted as it was. Eventually, as an individual, I reached a situation where I could not keep marking time forever. At that moment, a director at the company I now belong to said to me that since I seemed to be doing programmed music with machines, why not think seriously about arrangement? That was when I thought, "I have to think more seriously about building sound myself," and from there I began arranging in earnest. So my start may have been rather late. Also, once I began, it was very deep and not something I could do easily. Fortunately, I had a lot of equipment I had slowly accumulated, so I kept challenging it through trial and error. It was a time before things like Pro Tools, and Macintoshes were expensive, so I was using a piece of equipment called a sequencer. But as I kept going, I thought, "Professionals really do use Macintoshes," so I forced myself to buy one. I remember thinking it was incredibly expensive but the screen was so small (laughs). With many people helping me in various ways, I honed my skills. Then, after doing it for a while, I started to think, "If you are an artist, you need individuality." As I said earlier, I was not the type to love one kind of music or one artist in a standout way; I was the type who liked a wide range of music broadly and shallowly. To put it another way, I had no individuality. For example, even if I arranged dance music, I felt I could not compete with someone who devoted themselves solely to dance music. I did not have a defining feature. I think it was hard to see what people should ask that guy to do. So there was a period when I deliberately devoted myself to the AOR world. Eventually people started saying, "If you let him do something AOR-ish, he is pretty good." At that time I felt as though I had cleared one challenge inside myself.

-- Why did you choose AOR there?

Hirohito Furui: I thought it contained many elements, or rather, a broad range of genre qualities in many senses. Some of it leans very much toward rock, while some leans a little toward Black music, so I thought it might make the best use of the way I had faced music up to that point.

-- Since then you have truly done all kinds of arrangements. And now you are also active as a member of GARNET CROW.

Hirohito Furui: It feels strange. This applies to arrangement work too, but I feel very strongly that I have come this far because I was blessed by the people around me, because everyone treated me very well. With GARNET CROW, for example, before that I had appeared on television as support or been called in as a support member for live performances, but that is different again in terms of responsibility. Gradually, I came to feel the weight of responsibility of being one member of a band.

-- GARNET CROW reached its tenth anniversary last year. What do you think is the secret that allowed you to continue this far?

Hirohito Furui: Everyone takes pride in their own position, and there is also a sense of competition among the members. But in a sense we are adults, and there is also a cool-headed side... I really feel that we could not have continued if it were not these four people. For example, Hitoshi Okamoto can write songs himself, but in GARNET CROW's works he is involved strictly in his role as guitarist. He protects that area, that policy. Each person feels responsible for their own part. Usually, if a band is going to do something, you need a meeting at the beginning, right? But we do not have those at all (laughs). Yet it is not that someone has absolute authority. There is an unspoken understanding, and rather than merely being careful around each other, there is a feeling of consideration. I think it was good that we were able to continue that way.

-- What kind of activities would you like to do from here on?

Hirohito Furui: When I receive requests for arrangements and so on, of course I want to be of help to everyone, but I also have the desire to make works that express myself. There are no concrete plans at all, but if there is an opportunity, for example, I would like to try making various tracks, to stimulate myself creatively. I am always wondering if there is something new I can do inside myself.

-- Finally, when making music, what is the one thing you cannot compromise on?

Hirohito Furui: Maybe this is not good if you look at it as work, but I do not want to put out something I would not want to listen to later, something I am not satisfied with. Of course, when time passes and I look back, there are things I think, "Ah, that was like this." But in the moment when I am making something, no matter whose work it is, I do not want to draw a line because of time or anything else. Since it is work, naturally there are deadlines and restrictions. But in terms of feeling, I want to keep putting out things I am satisfied with, without compromising with myself.