Chapter 1: Childhood ~ My introduction to guitars

1965, I Was Born in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture.

I'm not my mom, so I don't remember the moment I was born.

My real name is Tomoaki Ishizuka. I was born on November 4, 1965, in Matsunamicho, Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture. A long time ago, my grandfather bought a plot of land in this then very empty place, and built a single detached house for the Ishizukas. It is closest to the Nishichiba train station.

The Chiba Commercial High School and Chiba High School are also located in that neighbourhood, and I often played at the Matsunami public park when I was little. The cherry blossoms in full bloom look quite beautiful there in the spring. The preschool I went to was also very close to our house, and it was managed by a religious temple. During our morning exercises, we often used to run in front of the temple’s tombstones.

Later, I was moved to a preschool closer to the Nishichiba station, somewhat farther from our house. Apparently, I began asking if I could walk to preschool by myself. I started walking to preschool all alone, but a relative was so worried about me going alone that she followed me, in secret. Like in the Nippon Television show Old Enough!, but in my case it would have been more like Old Enough To Go To Preschool!

We are a family of four. I have a younger sister, two grades below me. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my dad was a primary school teacher in Funabashi, Chiba. When I figured out he was a teacher, he had already become a vice-headmaster. Later, he joined the Board of Education, then was the chief librarian of Funabashi Library, and lastly, he became headmaster. Thinking about it, my dad got ahead in his career quite quickly. He became headmaster of a primary school while he was still in his 40s.

I went to a public school in Matsunamicho, Chiba City, a different town from where my father worked, so, obviously, he wasn't in my school. I would've hated it if I had to deal with my father at home and at school.

There was no way the teachers in my school didn’t know about my father being a teacher himself. When I was in middle school, a slightly higher-ranking Japanese Language teacher, as if joking, pointed to me in class, saying: “Since your father is a headmaster, you should definitely be able to answer this question.” I was mildly annoyed with the way he said it, as if he was envious. Now that I think about it, I realise that Japanese Language teacher was a rather small-minded person.

Even though my father was a teacher, he never told me to study at home. I was the kind of student who would pile up summer homework, neglecting it until the end of August. Some of them I have yet to turn in (laughs). But when things got bad, I would work on the pile of assignments that had accumulated, and even then, my father wouldn’t help me with a single thing. He would just scowl at me from the side. Due to things being like that, I never had him teach me anything, and I never wanted him to teach me anyway.

Teachers never have time, too. Although he didn’t come home late from work, my father would spend most of his time at home making worksheets, to hand out at school, on a mimeograph. Well, he would do that while watching TV and drinking. I remember watching the broadcast of Oh’s(Sadaharu Oh) 756th home run on TV while my father worked.

My father was a Tokyo Giants fan. Our television would be on NHK News at 7, and then switched to the Giants’ night game. When my father was home, the TV would always be on one of these two programmes.

Back then, the night game broadcast would finish at around 9, and the channel would be switched back to NHK News. Then, my father would order us to “go to bed”. It wasn’t common for children to be up after 9. I felt envious when my friends talked about shows their families allowed them to watch after 10 PM.

Influenced by my father, I have been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember. At the time, primary school kids mostly just played grass-lot baseball. I often played baseball with my friends at that park I talked about earlier.

I also enjoyed baseball anime. I remember watching Star of the Giants and Samurai Giants on TV, probably the early evening reruns. Originally, these popular anime shows would have been broadcast at around 7 PM, but there was no way we would watch anime if my father was home. He was the one who decided what channel would be on. Back then, my interests were playing grass-lot baseball, watching baseball anime and the Giants’ night games. Baseball all day, every day (laughs).

Of course, I wasn’t only into baseball. I was also obsessed with plastic model kits when I was in primary school, and enjoyed building things like military tanks and castles. At a younger age, I had a mini car collection. At the time, there was a sports car craze, and the manga series The Circuit Wolf brought a lot of popularity to cars such as Ferraris and Countachs. I remember there being some sort of exhibit at a huge car park around the neighbourhood, and going there to see many of these supercars. I also remember seeing imported cars driving around in Chiba. But you’d spot a family car a lot more easily. That’s how things were, back then.

The Supercar Erasers I Loved to Play With

Along with the sports car craze, there were also the erasers. Just as the name implies, they were erasers shaped like cars, but no one really used them to erase things. A popular game among primary school children was to race the car erasers by pushing them out of a launchpad that was fashioned out of Boxy ballpoint pens. Everyone I knew played this.

There’s a trick to it: the cars slide better if you place some pencil lead dust underneath them, becoming faster in the races. 2B or darker pencil lead worked the best. The track we used for these races was the school desk. We “built” an oval course on our desks, and I would compete with each of my friends to see who would reach the goal first. If your car fell from the desk, you were out of the game. If you stretched the spring of the Boxy pens, your car went faster, but it was also harder to control finer movements. Another tip to win the races was to fine-tune the force used on the spring. I do think Boxy made some superb ballpoint pens, but at the time, children mostly used them as a car eraser racing tool. I had quite a few supercar erasers. I had a box filled with a number of carefully selected erasers for racing, in my school desk. There was a shop in my neighbourhood called Watanabe Shoten, it sold all sorts of things. There were two coin-operated vending machines there, I believe I bought my erasers from there. Apparently, the first person to hold me in their arms after I was born was the old lady of this Watanabe Shoten, but I digress.

Despite my obsession with this popular game, I think I was an average schoolboy. I drew a picture of a soy sauce factory we visited for a school excursion, and it was selected to be displayed at a prefectural exhibit. I also remember asking a senior-year art teacher for advice on what I could improve in my drawing before I submitted it to the prefectural exhibit.

I have absolutely zero artistic talent, but I was actually taking drawing classes at the time. My younger sister wanted to learn, so both of us went to an art school. I think I went for about two years. As part of those classes, we once went on an excursion to Mount Akagi, in Gunma. Among the art students was Katsuhide Uekusa of Shonentai, who is a year or two younger than me. He’s the son of a lumber dealer in Chiba. We got along relatively well, and we also hung out during that trip. I’m pretty sure I have a picture of us somewhere.

Speaking of lessons, I also went to organ classes. They were held by the preschool I went to, but were mostly about placing some magnetic musical notes over a five-staff line on the blackboard. It felt more like studying, not very fun at all, so I stopped going after about three classes. To this day, I’m terrified of keyboards. I don’t really understand instruments that lay flat on the side. There were other situations in primary school where we were made to play keyboards, and most of my friends could play a little, but I had zero understanding of it. Music lessons were mostly fun until we got to learning the harmonica. In the third or fourth year of primary school, we started learning the flute, and that got old quickly. I’ve been surrounded by music my whole life, but I’ve yet to understand much of life itself.

My Father as a Teacher, Through the Eyes of a Student

My grades in primary school were mostly average, with the occasional good grade. My parents never scolded me for them, but I was always afraid of showing my report card to my father. I never really viewed my father at home as a headmaster, but I still felt some degree of solemnity towards him.

Once, I found a pile of old tests in a corner, at home. Dad had just casually rolled them up and shoved them in a shelf. It was a collection of questions for teachers, so they can prepare more questions, and when I found it, I thought, cunningly: “Hey, I’ve seen these questions before. I’ve done this test before. If I look at this, I can get a perfect score!” But, in the end, I never cheated. I found that valuable treasure and quietly put it back in the same place. I’m sure that if my father caught me cheating, I would have been in deep trouble.

Teachers are also mostly free during summer recess. My father was home a lot, so we would often go on family overnight trips to Nikko and Enoshima. In Enoshima, there was a restaurant run by a former student of my father’s, where they served sazae cooked in its own shell. These were really delicious. At New Year’s, some more former students would bring him gifts and we would have some feasts at home. When I was little, his students would often find me cute and would dote on me. As the years went by, the students would get married and even bring their spouses along. My dad seemed to really have a good time with them. Another time, I spoke to one of his former students who told me that, apparently, my father would often play shogi with his students after class. We were discussing whether he took it seriously, but all in all, he seemed to be a teacher who loved his students.

Perhaps because of how I witnessed that side of my father, I was under the impression, during primary school, that I also wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. Now that I think about it, there’s no way that would have worked. Obviously, teaching is a great occupation, but it’s definitely not for me. I also know how busy and difficult it is, and most importantly, I’m terrible at teaching.

Sometimes, I do wonder, “what are my friends from school doing now?”. Having a class reunion would be fun, but since then, my family moved to another house, and I found out that my good friends’ houses aren’t there in the neighbourhood anymore. I also don’t know how I would contact them… Well, as a musician, I have a website, and it seems like I’m probably the easiest person to find (laughs). Still, there are times I wish I could meet with those friends again.

That reminds me, the house next to my parents’ was the house of the president of the local Children’s Association. Years later, I heard from his mother, that her son was playing in a band. He was the drummer for Hikashu, Toshiro Sensui. Apparently they used to hang out a lot at ra:IN’s michiaki’s (Michiaki Suzuki) Yokohama club, and once he asked me: “Pata, do you know Sensui-kun?” I told him that my parents lived close to his house, but that I didn’t really know him due to our age difference.

Later, at a David Bowie tribute event, I met Saeki Kenzo of the Pearl Brothers. When he told me he was from the Nishichiba area, we had a fun conversation about our hometowns, backstage. I was surprised to learn that Saeki went to the highest–ranked public school in Chiba Prefecture, Chiba High School. I went to high school, but was almost never there. Well, I’ll talk more about that in a bit.

My Life in Danger?! AKA, "The Soba Incident"

There's another episode from my primary school days that I must tell you about. It’s about the soba incident. This is more my mom’s fault, though. You probably know about the New Year’s soba tradition. In the Ishizuka house, it was said that if you didn't at least slurp a single strand of soba, you wouldn't be able to "enter" the new year, so every end-of-year, I was made to eat the soba. However, when I ate the soba...... I always felt awful. As soon as I ate, my entire body got increasingly itchy and I broke out in hives. I would start having trouble breathing, as if having an asthma attack, and eventually, I would pass out. That continued for three years. These were clearly symptoms of a buckwheat allergy, but back then, even the word "allergy" itself wasn't very well-known. My mom would see me struggling and she thought I simply just did not like soba. I don't think one would start to suffocate and collapse just from eating something they disliked... New Year's soba is often eaten with the wish of living a long, healthy life, but I wonder what would have happened to me if she kept making me eat it. Later, when talking to my mom about it, she simply said: "I didn't know". It is what it is…

As a result, as a child, I used to hate walking past standing soba stalls. Because of my traumatic experiences passing out, it became ingrained in me that "buckwheat = bad". In my school days, whenever I had to walk past a soba stall, I would hold my breath whenever I got too close to it. It's not as bad nowadays, I have the feeling soba stalls don't smell as strongly as they once did. I've heard that soba stalls don't use as much buckwheat flour now in order to keep prices low.

As an adult, once there was news of an incident where a small child with a buckwheat allergy was forced to eat soba as part of their school lunch, and as a result, couldn't breathe, and it ended up being fatal. When hide saw that news report, he called me and said: "Pata! You should never eat buckwheat!" I had to reassure him over and over that I was allergic to buckwheat and I would never eat soba. Well, I believe he got very concerned about it after seeing that report.

There's an izakaya I go to regularly, and the owner often makes his own soba. It never occurs to me that I should have a taste or anything, but I've got better to the point that I don't mind if the person seated next to me is eating a bowl of soba. When I'm with the members of X Japan, Sugizo, who likes soba, goes out of his way to ask me: "Excuse me, is it okay if I eat soba?", and I always say: "Sugizo, don't worry about me, haul in the soba."

And that is how buckwheat is my "natural enemy".

Going to Middle School. Joining the Tennis Club

After graduating from primary school, I started going to a public middle school within the Chiba City school district. Many students join a club at that point, and for some reason I chose to join the tennis club. Maybe because at the time, the anime Aim for the Ace! was being broadcast, and it was a big deal. For some reason, there were no second-year students in that club. According to stories from many different people, the third-year students bullied all the second-year students in the previous year, when they joined, and they all ended up quitting. Since the third-year students had become infamous for the bullying, they left us newcomers alone. So, they actually treated us very kindly.

Tennis club was interesting. At first, it was just practise-swinging the racket, then retrieving the tennis balls, and gradually we were taught how to hit. We did soft tennis, so one has to hold the racket with an Eastern Grip (you hold the racket as if doing a handshake from the reverse side of the surface to be hit), and only use the racket on one side. For the backhand, twist the racket with the wrist to hit the ball.

We were playing on two-player teams with a forward player and a back player. When I joined the club, I was a little taller than the others and because of that, I was appointed as a forward player. Sometimes I would move back and hit the ball, but fundamentally I was mostly volleying near the net, and occasionally hitting a smash. It was kinda like swatting flies.

As I mentioned, there were no second-year students in the club, so when we became second-year students, automatically, as club rules go, we were able to regularly participate in matches. But since our opponents were third-year students, it was impossible for us to win. There is a huge skill-level difference. As first-year students, the third-year teams were overwhelmingly strong, but when we became our own team, we were just a weak team.

Still, we diligently trained after school, and in the mornings. And there were matches even during summer break, so we couldn't skip any training we could get. Therefore, there were basically no breaks for those of us who were in school sport clubs back then. It was common to eat lunch at your club, but our tennis club didn't have a specific room. There was a small concrete space below the school that we used as a clubroom, where we ate lunch and also used as a dressing room to change into our gym clothes. We often left our lunch boxes on the concrete in midsummer temperatures..... I don't know how we never got food poisoning (laughs). That was in the second year. When the school got a renovation, many holes were dug in the tennis court, and as a result, we couldn't use it for practise. The students who took it more seriously would run laps around the building, or do other training such as weight training.

But, we were just messing around, and would actually play pretend-war, using our rackets as machine guns, and the holes in the tennis court as trenches. We felt like combat troops. The holes were perfect to hide in. We forgot about our club activities and played like primary-school children. We would "shoot" our machine gun rackets, and shout to each other: "The bullet hit you!", but still have to throw the tennis ball with the racket and "hit" the target. That way, it was still some sort of practise. And since we also had to run to hide, we also had some kind of leg training...... I guess I'm just making excuses here.

We Really Were a Bunch of Idiots

There were many other such silly games we would play. There was an unused high jump mat in the school's gym warehouse, we would use it as a "ring" to play pro wrestling. At the time, pro wrestling was very popular, and New Japan Pro Wrestling matches would be broadcast every Friday at 8 PM. At school, you could divide students between two groups: Those who watched Kinpachi-sensei, and those who watched pro wrestling. I watched pro wrestling, of course.

Back then, there were many stars in the NJPW. Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Seiji Sakaguchi. Stan Hansen as a villain wrestler. There was also the All Japan Pro Wrestling, which aired on Saturdays at 5:30 PM. AJPW had Bruiser Brody, Mil Máscaras, Abdullah the Butcher. We even had international pro wrestling that was broadcast on the Tokyo 12 channel. A little later, Tiger Mask from NJPW also appeared.

That was the golden era of prime-time pro wrestling broadcasts. Many boys my age were into pro wrestling. My favourites, after Inoki, were Fujinami and Choshu. Fujinami's signature move, the Dragon Suplex, was so dangerous that schools banned students from imitating it. That's how popular, and strong, Fujinami was.

Also, Butcher used Pink Floyd's "One of These Days" as his theme song. The song is originally from the 1971 album Meddle, but I believe at the time there was a single release with Butcher's picture as the cover. That probably sold well. I remember thinking it was so cool when the wrestlers made their entrance with a song. It's very similar to when a band goes on stage with a background song. Mil Máscaras' song was the striking "Sky High" by Jigsaw, which was also super popular at the time.

We admired the wrestlers, and would try to copy their best moves. We could manage some back drops, but double arm suplexes are very difficult. You need some friends to help you with the double arm suplex, but you often end up getting it wrong and injuring yourself. Same thing for the German suplex. A brain buster is just a funny way of throwing yourself to the floor. But, back then, we were quite eager to copy these moves.

As you may have noticed, the members of the tennis club and I were all just a bunch of idiots. We became an extremely weak team, since we just did that sort of thing instead of training.

Since I've been talking about club activities, I'll say a few things about school itself. In middle school, Arithmetic became Mathematics, and English was also added to the curriculum. My English teacher at the time was a scary man feared by all, rumoured to have been a former military police officer. As we did our morning training, that teacher always came from the back exit of the school, and walked past us. He would say: "Teikyu club, time to wrap it up". The volleyball team also trained behind us, and he would also tell them: "Haikyu club, time to wrap it up." Despite being an English teacher, he would always, without fail, use the Japanese names of the sports. He would never simply say 'tennis' or 'volleyball'. As one would expect of a former military police officer.

And since I did not particularly like that teacher, I did poorly in English. Maybe the only subject I got fairly decent grades in was Maths...... But, I honestly do not remember. Still, I don't think my grades were too bad until my first year of middle school.

My Introduction to Western Rock Music and Guitars

By the third year of middle school, I wasn't going to school all that much.

The reason for that was due to my father's death, which happened in the middle of my second year. It led me to start skipping school. I was always at home, playing an acoustic guitar that my parents bought for my sister. That was when I started playing the guitar.

Another important happening, before that, was my introduction to western music. In 1977, I was in the 6th year of primary school when I watched NHK's Young Music Show broadcast of KISS' Budokan concert. That left a huge impression on me.

There was also the TBS music variety show Ginza Now!, that did a "Top 10 Western Music" segment on Fridays, where I could watch lots of music videos, starting with KISS, then Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, Queen and so on. A friend's older brother also had KISS albums in his record collection, and we listened to them.

That's how I became a KISS fanatic. I was ecstatic when I bought an issue of Music Life magazine which had KISS on the cover, but my father threw it away after my mom found it in the bookshelf by my bed. In those days, the kind of rock music that KISS pioneered was considered a "bad influence on children".

But, even before that, I already had some western music records. The first I bought was The Beatle's single Rock And Roll Music, and I also had quite a few of their albums. I probably bought them at the record shop near Nishichiba station. My sister loved Godiego, so she had their singles, albums and live albums. My father had The Carpenter's Top Of The World. I was allowed to listen to The Beatles at a louder volume, but when I tried to listen to KISS, it often turned into a huge issue. I would listen to their records without turning the volume up, bringing my ear very close to the record player's needle so I could hear the very faint sound. I would secretly listen to KISS like that.

With KISS as the gateway to my interest in rock music, the band that impressed me most was Cheap Trick. It's no exaggeration to say that seeing Cheap Trick was what made me start playing the guitar. I was so excited for their 1979 album Dream Police, that I went to a record shop in Nishichiba to buy it on the release day. I also remember getting a special sonosheet that you had to order in advance.

I bought many other Cheap Trick records in that same shop. One thing that is also memorable to me about that shop, was the enormous Angel poster on the farthest wall. Despite being a shop that specialised in Japanese music, they also had a great selection of trendy western music. I believe the shopkeeper was an Angel fan as well. I remember buying Jeff Beck's 1980 album There & Back, and Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door at that shop.

I would hop on my bicycle after school and go there to buy countless albums on their release day.

My Father's Sudden Passing. My Treasured Guitars

Rewinding the story a little, a lot of things happened in my middle school years, and a lot of things were set in motion as well.

The biggest happening, as I mentioned previously, was my father's passing. He died of cancer, just when our family house was being rebuilt. On one occasion, dad was discharged from hospital, and the house was finished, it was nice to return home with everything brand new. However, he was later readmitted to hospital, and passed away.

Of course, I was saddened by my father's death, in the very middle of my teenage years. But it didn't make me depressed, nor did I feel burdened with a strange sense of responsibility. It must have been tough for my mom. My mom started working during the day, so the house was empty all day long. I thought that was a good thing, and started skipping school since I just couldn't be bothered to go. I particularly hated Music and English classes, so even on days that I did go to school, I would go only after those classes ended.

When I didn't go to school, I would be home playing the guitar. I started learning the intro to Cheap Trick's "Dream Police" on my sister's acoustic guitar. That guitar was something like a knock off model by the Martin brand. Compared to an electric guitar, there's a considerable gap between the strings and the fretboard, and the string tension is also tight. It was so difficult to play that my fingers would ache, but I still played it obsessively. By the way, I still have that guitar at home. I've had it restored, and I keep it safely stored.

At that time, playing guitar was maybe what brought me the most joy, and it wasn't because I was trying to run away from the reality of school, or to forget about the grief of my father's death. I didn't even consider it to be "practise". My school friends and classmates never gave me any lessons. No one ever taught me anything about guitars, and because of these beginnings, there are minor details I still don't fully comprehend (laughs).

Initially, the acoustic guitar was fun, but since all I listened to was western rock, I soon started wanting an electric guitar. I believe my mother bought me the first one. I always believed it to be a Tokai strat model, but for this account I've been thinking hard about it and remembered it was actually different. Back then, there used to be hundreds of ads in music magazines for very cheap electric guitars for beginners, priced at around 10,000 yen. I believe my first electric guitar was an Explorer model from one of these ads. Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick was my biggest inspiration in my second year of middle school, so I picked a matching Explorer model for that reason. I believe the colour was also the same: sunburst, just like Rick's. I still think it was very bold of a beginner like me to have chosen such a strangely-shaped guitar, but in my mind, there was no other choice other than a guitar like Rick's.

Guitars made today, even those in the 10,000 yen price range, are of much better quality. Back then, the guitars you could buy at that price were all pretty terrible (laughs). Octave tuning never matched, and I would look at the frets and be like, "What the hell is this?". I'm exaggerating here, but the neck also looked as if someone hammered in some metal rods to a tree log.

I have no idea where that Explorer guitar is now. It seems like it was found in the rubbish by a waste disposal worker, not too long after I moved out of the family house. This worker was apparently an X fan and knew that was where I lived, so he asked my mother if he could have the guitar since it was going to be thrown away anyway. Having no reason to refuse, as it was going to the rubbish anyway, my mother gave him the guitar. So, my very first electric guitar is in that person’s hands. If he still has it, I hope he's taking good care of it because that guitar is very memorable to me.

Back to the story, I learnt to play many bands' songs on that Explorer guitar. Queen's, however, were very discouraging. Brian May often records multiple layers of sound, guitar orchestrations and arrangements, making it impossible to replicate them by yourself. I remember browsing through a Queen scorebook at an instrument shop and noticing that a tab for a guitar solo I wanted to learn had something like three levels. You would need at least three guitars layered in order to replicate it. When I saw that, I quietly closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

I also loved Led Zeppelin. But Jimmy Page uses so many cumbersome riffs that I couldn't be bothered to play their songs. I didn't have the slightest idea about the foundations of rock and roll guitar playing, so it was very difficult to play those rhythms and grooves. I was having a hard time with Jimmy Page's style, so I gravitated towards Deep Purple's easy to understand style (laughs). Ritchie Blackmore's main riffs from the intros are easy to follow as a beginner, and I always felt proud of myself for playing the intro to "Smoke on the Water".

A while after Graham Bonnet(vocals) joined Rainbow, when I was in the third year of middle school, they came to Japan. They played three nights at the Budokan, in Tokyo. I really wanted to go, but didn't. Around that time, I remember the Michael Schenker Group also released their first album. Once, the first song off that album, "Armed and Ready", played at my school, and I remember people coming up to me to ask: "What is that all-guitar song?"

By then, I had completely left the tennis rackets behind, and replaced them with guitars.