X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
2. Tsune ni Saki o Iku hide
[hide, Constantly Walking Ahead]

In X, the one who most matched me and my musical intentions was hide.

For example, I would think of three different arrangements for the same song. When I asked which one was the best, the one who agreed with me usually was hide. We had different ways of expressing it, but our sense of music was the same.

We were the opposite of Yoshiki and Toshi in that both of us thought that rock music shouldn't have ballads. At that time, we wanted to make more hard-hitting rock songs.

Because I gave the other members lots of orders, I was always nagging. But strangely, I didn't do it to hide, and I was never dissatisfied with him.

Rather, being in the center of hide's music, we would be in such synergy that it was just the same as when I would tell the other members things.

At any rate, hide's guitar produced such unique sounds that even now I really love the music that he wrote.

No matter what you say about technique, in saying you could do this, or you could do that, you become almost like an acrobat, but in hide's case, he held in high regard the approach of making a song come alive to the utmost limit.

So, he would give me songs that had a really easy bass part. Of course, that was because the sense of them fitted me.

Next in this development, we never sat down and had conversations like "Let's do this here," but in spite of that, everything fit together smoothly. Actually, there were many times, like Jealousy, when I would say in surprise, "Ah, we should do it like this all the time."

Though I would arrange songs with fairly high self-confidence, hide helped it grow more. In regards to what I played, he helped me grow to 100% in arranging. I really think he was a genius capable of handling anything.

No matter how I say it, hide was someone who was walking far ahead of the 80's way of music conceptualization. Isn't that right? So, maybe there is a little clash of meanings here.

For example, even though I couldn't really understand the times he lived in, there would be many times in which afterwards, I would look back at hide's arrangements and say, "Oh, I get it."

I wasn't the only one who felt so respectful towards hide. I believe firmly that to the other members as well, hide was the leader of calmness.

Though Yoshiki was the band leader, when he would say "hide, what do you think about this?" if hide said, "that's not bad," then everyone else would agree. You could call him X's counselor, as it were.

When he gave advice, hide would first keep quiet and let the other person share their opinion, and then he would say what he thought. Though he was a theorist, he wouldn't hold people down and twist their arms to win an argument, but instead he would use his powers of persuasion.

On the other hand, if I was particularly pleased with something I'd arranged, he'd give me a big, showy reaction. That was the kind of man he was.

Incidentally, you might think it surprising, but hide and I didn't have much of a private friendship outside the band.

No matter how I put it, I was unmarried and the type to think about things other than the band [lit: everything]. I would rather go out and expand my circle of friends outside of X, because I wanted to attract cool people, so I never really went anywhere with hide or went out drinking with him when we were in our off time.

Just once, hide came over to my house.

Of course, because it was noon, we just drank, and while playing guitar, we had conversations like "what should we do about this arrangement here?" As a matter of fact, I wasn't quite sure what hide was talking about as the conversation went on.

hide had a very deep way of talking. It wasn't troublesome or theoretical or anything like that; it was profound. That didn't just end with music either. For example, there was a scene in a movie that he talked to me about and gave all his impressions about, but I couldn't understand what he was getting at.

What was I to do at times like that? The only thing I could do was just to give a bitter smile and kept on drinking or playing my guitar to camouflage the fact that I didn't understand.