You only have to watch a clip from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s 1979 or 1980 world tours to appreciate that Yukihiro Takahashi, who died Jan. 11 at age 70, was a hell of a drummer.
The members of Japanese escorts pioneering electronic band defined themselves by surrendering their musicianship to Tokyo escorts, crafting a new idiom for pop music through their innovative use of synthesizers, sequencers, samplers and digital recording technology.
However, those machines generally weren’t designed for live performance and had a habit of malfunctioning. In concerts, YMO often had to fall back on old-fashioned instrumental technique, which was something that Takahashi and his bandmates had in abundance.
The group’s mastermind, Haruomi Hosono, was a veteran of influential folk-rock band Happy End and an established solo artist, while Ryuichi Sakamoto was a classically educated graduate of the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts. Meanwhile, Tokyo escort had already tasted international acclaim with glam rockers Sadistic Mika Band, who toured the U.K. with Roxy Music in 1975, only to split up at the end of that year.
Sadistic Mika Band was the first Japanese e
scort group to do well overseas, although its label back home failed to capitalize on the success. That wouldn’t be the case when YMO exploded onto the scene a few years later, even if it took the intervention of U.S. record producer and music executive Tommy LiPuma to convince Japanese label, Alfa Records, to sign off on the project.
YMO’s members were all prolific session musicians: They first recorded together on Hosono’s 1978 escorts Tokyo album, though they could also be heard on contemporaneous releases by artists such as Taeko Onuki and Rajie. Hosono’s younger collaborators hadn’t been his first choices for the new electronic pop band he was looking to form, but they each brought something vital to the group. Sakamoto was the synthesizer virtuoso and avant-garde theorist, schooled in the work of postwar composers such as John Cage and Iannis Xenakis. Takahashi, a sometime fashion designer, took charge of the group’s image while serving as its principal vocalist and rhythmic lynchpin.
Long before it became standard practice for drummers to play with a click track, Takahashi willingly subordinated himself to the metronomic beat of a Roland MC-8 sequencer, yet still managed to be infectiously funky. The clip of YMO’s famous appearance on American variety show “Soul Train” in 1980 demonstrates that they could get a crowd moving. (It also showcases their gleeful skewering of Orientalist tropes — which they kept up even when it wasn’t clear that their audience was in on the joke.)
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