Q012:
How did you meet Higashi?
A012:
I've known Higashi through thick and thin now for over 15 years. He first showed up at an audition I was holding for a band I had back then. We hated each other at first sight. We ended up playing together for about a year, but then our ideas became completely opposite, and he started playing with some ex-members of Cosmos Factory. [NB: Cosmos Factory were Japan's most famous heavy-prog band, releasing four albums between 1973 and 1977, when they finally split up. They reached the giddy heights of opening for the Moody Blues and Humble Pie. Some members were later spotted in Stomu Yamashita's live groups.]
After that we met up several times, but we'd always end up fighting and vowing never to meet again. He went off to live like a hermit in the mountains to pursue his own music. For Higashi music is definitely a way of life, and rather than learning through listening to records he prefers that his music is created from his own lifestyle. We met up again after a long break and decided to form Tsurubami this was the first time that I realised that we shared a very similar view of the world. We both travelled very different paths, but our final destination ended up being the same. Maybe you could say that we're like Yin and Yang. As a player sometimes he often reads too much into something and we end up going round and round and going nowhere. But I trust his ears implicitly, because they're the end result of his way of life.