05 Alcohol, Tears, hidezilla, and the Fire Engines

"hidezilla". I don't know who came up with that name, but it was what we called hide when he drank and transformed into a rampageous monster. This episode has been told many times in more humorous ways. However, it wasn't funny for those of us who witnessed hidezilla in real time. I could even say it was hell.

After having a meal and a drink at the izakaya we always went to, we went to a large upscale Japanese-owned lounge bar in Little Tokyo. That day, it was me, hide, a few staff members, and Heath. It was a well-known restaurant where people from the Japanese entertainment industry would book private events when they went to LA in business trips. As soon as you step into this establishment, there's a bar area. Further inside, there's a club area where beautiful women look after the customers.

We started by drinking without incident in the bar area, but our interest in the area with the ladies grew in proportion to the amount of bourbon we drank. Is this the tragic saga of men?

"Well, we should go there then."

hide calls an employee wearing a black suit over and whispers something in his ear. And then we rushed into the club area.

It should have been a fun night, if only hidezilla hadn't made an appearance…

It was not my first run-in with hidezilla, in fact, I had been one of his victims many times before. And there was a pattern that predicted his appearances. The triggers could be anything ranging from "joy", "anger", "grief", to "fun". Well, basically any emotion (laughs). All it really took for the transformation was him feeling any kind of overexcitement or strong emotion while in an intoxicated state.

That night, it was triggered by the "fun" factor. Somehow, hide remained a smug angel all the way from when the women thanked us and waved goodbye as we left the establishment, up until the moment we got in an elevator and its doors shut. However, this elevator ride that should have taken us to heaven turned into a ride straight to hell before we even got to the underground parking lot.

As the elevator moved from the third floor down to the underground car park, hide suddenly started to kick at the door. It left all of us completely baffled as to why. The kicking became more intense, and by the time we reached the ground floor, they had become flying kicks. The moment the elevator's doors opened to the underground floor, he bolted out. It was as if he had been bitten by a zombie in the ground floor and was immediately set on attacking people, having fully turned by the time we got to the underground lot. It really felt like that.

As soon as he ran out, he spotted and dashed straight to a pillar that had a fire extinguisher, encased in glass, fixed to it. He aimed and karate-chopped the fire extinguisher. The glass shattered with a loud CRASH! Still unsatisfied, hide took the fire extinguisher from the destroyed case and started running around, holding it up.

"Oh no! Oh no...!"

"What the hell is he doing?"

We all started chasing hide in a deranged late-night game of tag.

We managed to restrain the rampaging hide, took the fire extinguisher off his hands and shoved him into the back seat of a huge American van. But that only got us into more trouble. A security guard noticed the commotion and came running towards us with a furious look on his face.

Someone shouted: "Shit! Get into the car! Let's go!!"

From the window of the van that was about to take off, hide started yelling at the security guard: "Bitch, do you know how long I've lived here?"

The security guard he was talking to was a Black American who had been obviously living in the country for much longer, and he didn't speak a word of Japanese (laughs). Still, we had to get away from there as quickly as possible.

Our vehicle's tires squealed loudly just like in those Hollywood movies with car chase scenes.

After a while on the road, hide suddenly started groaning.

"Oooooof, it huuuurts..."

I noticed that the palm of his left hand had a gaping wound that bled profusely. For fuck's sake. He likely cut himself when he smashed the glass. He needed first aid immediately, but we didn't have any medical supplies. It would take one hour to get to our apartments, and we couldn't turn back and go to that restaurant again. What were we going to do?

"I know! Let's go to Mama's bar! Make a U-turn!"

We floored it to that karaoke pub.

We arrived at the bar just before closing time, and Mama immediately administered first-aid after we told her what happened. The bleeding was stopped with gauze bandages, and while the edges of the wound were soothed with ice, hidezilla was temporarily defeated.

"It's a pretty deep wound, you should go to the hospital tomorrow, first thing in the morning."

Mama sent us off with those words.

Now we could go home in peace after the incident de-escalated and there would be no police involvement.

... The thought was short-lived as our car drove along on the freeway. hide, who had finally calmed down, suddenly jolted awake. Was hidezilla about to make a second appearance? Would we get an encore? Was that only the opening, and the real show was about to begin?

"Hm... Huh? Where am I?"

"We're going home, hide-chan. We're on the way."

"Are you fucking kidding me! Get me out of this car!!"

The next thing I knew was that hide was sliding the rear door open, all while this vehicle was travelling at about 100km/h, and attempting to throw himself off of it.

"Aaahhh!!"

One of the staff members grabbed him before it could happen, and pulled him back into the van. But hide managed to open the door again. Tries to jump out. Staff grabs him and pulls him back. He opens the door again. Tries to jump. Staff grabs him and pulls him back. This went on again and again until we made our way back to Oakwood Apartments. By the time we got there, we were exhausted and sweaty.

It was a relief to finally be home, but the ordeal was far from ending.

In order to make sure hide safely got to his apartment, all of us exited the vehicle and made sure to walk with him to his front door. As we took the stairs to get to the floor of his apartment, hidezilla spotted a certain item on the wall.

Fire alarm

Yes. Of all things, an emergency alarm. There were several of these alarms installed at regular intervals along the large corridor that ran through the entire length of the building. The shape was a little different from the ones we're used to in Japan. It wasn't the push-button kind, instead, it worked like an ancient breaker, where you still had to manually pull a lever. It's even worse because there's the polite instruction written on it: "Pull down". Well, hidezilla was still the worst offender in this situation. Having spotted the alarms, hidezilla ran across the long corridor, pulling every single lever down.

Claaaaaang, beep beep beep beep....

The deafening alarms rang out from the building just past 3 AM. They rang in succession, the sound getting louder and louder. Both the alcohol content and the blood in our bodies completely drained from our systems. We tried to stop the alarms, but the levers were firmly stuck in place. We were all white as sheets and panicking, screaming to each other: "We gotta run! Shit!"

"hide-chan, just go home, please!"

I walked him to his door, but we couldn't get in as the keys were nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, the neighbors started to come outside to see what exactly was happening, and that was when things really started to get serious. Without anywhere else to go, Heath's apartment was on that same floor, and we quickly rushed inside. We locked the door immediately, turned all the lights off, trying to hide any trace of us. We phoned X Japan's local management, not bothering to explain, just telling them to come quickly. While we waited for the manager in a completely dark room, I noticed the alarms went quiet.

I heard chatter coming from the corridor and put my ear to the door. I heard the other residents saying things like: "They went to that door. The person from this apartment did this." When we looked out the window, there was a fire engine with its siren blaring... No, there were two... four fire engines in total.

"Guys, where did he go?"

We found hide passed out, snoring loudly while sprawled out on Heath's bed. Unbelievable... We couldn't help but laugh. But it wasn't funny, not in the slightest. The manager arrived shortly, and there was a knock on the door as we were explaining what happened. Through the peephole, the manager saw firefighters in their fireproof suits.

Had the story finally reached its climax?

"You all stay hidden here, I'll deal with this."

And so, the manager slowly opened the door. He was brave. And... Was he even an English speaker? We watched the exchange from the room we were hiding in, through an open sliver of the door. The firefighter spoke:

"The neighbors said someone from this apartment set the fire alarms off. Is it true?"

"Hahaha... I don't know."

The manager feigned ignorance while gesturing.

"There's no fire. Was it a prank?"

"I am Japanese, I don't understand."

From that point onwards, he only replied to anything the firefighter said with that exact sentence. That guy had quite the nerve (laughs). The back-and-forth continued for some time, until the firefighter shot him a defeated look that said, 'this will get me nowhere'.

Sigh of relief... I barely had any strength left in me.

The group disbanded as the manager advised us to go home and let hide sleep there. The long night was finally over. The one who got the short end of the stick was Heath. He was booked to record bass for "Art of Life" the very next day…

Later, hide had to re-schedule his guitar recording due to the injury to his left hand. He seemed to be regretful of his actions for a while, but several days later when he came to hang out with us, he didn't seem to be ashamed and even complained to me:

"Ina-chan, I'm so done. The wound's closing up but it itches so fucking much I'm going insane. Aaaahh, it's so itchyyyy but I can't scratch iiittttt, oooooof, it's sooo itchyyyy, fuuuck!"

Now I understood why everyone unanimously said he was impossible to dislike.

Weeks later, the MxAxSxS song, a collaboration between hide, J and Inoran, was finished. The song was titled "Frozen Bug".

“I had a little drunken outburst the day before I wrote the lyrics to this song. I did some deranged things, I'm still not sure how I managed to survive (laughs). [...] When I'm like that, I think I have a bug in my head that thaws out whenever I drink. It doesn't make much sense. The song's about that (laughs).”

[Interview excerpt from Rock'N'Roll magazine volume 18, January 27 1994.]