Hiroshi Yamaguchi 山口博史
Title: Bass guitar player's way of life
The first time I saw Hiroshi on stage, he made a strong impression on me as a bright red bass guitar player. Here is a very interesting story that I was forced to ask him halfway through the interview.
When did you start playing guitar?
I started playing guitar when I was 10 years old, and switched to bass when I was 12. I chose the bass guitar because it is a single instrument that can be used for many different genres, as there are different instruments and techniques for different genres.
Why did you come to the United States?
To attend Berklee College of Music in Boston. I listened to a lot of different music, from the Beatles to Bill Evans to folk music, and I tried to listen to all instruments, not just one. Because of this, I was interested in arranging and producing music as a whole, and I majored in arranging in school. My role models were arrangers and producers such as Quincy Jones and George Martin. When I play, I listen to how the other instruments are playing to get a sense of the music as a whole, and then I try to play a bass line that fits with that. In the case of the producer I mentioned above, rather than being a guitarist, I was attracted to the fact that I could draw out the best aspects of each artist and put them together to form a whole piece of music, rather than imposing my own view of music on them.
What is the message you want to convey through your music?
Many musicians, myself included, are not very good at expressing themselves verbally. I think that being in a band, communicating through sound and creating something together, is both assertive and democratic, an activity that is rarely experienced elsewhere. It is difficult to say how this has changed me, but as people change from day to day, I think to some extent I have been influenced by my interactions with people outside of music. Music that was not accepted in the past may be gradually accepted as time changes. In other words, what was wrong in the past may become right over time, so there may be no real mistakes. People have different ways of living, and I don't think there is a right answer, so if you live your "own" way, that is the right answer.
Please tell us about a memorable episode.
I have been on a Caribbean cruise, played with a reggae band in Jamaica, performed at the Playboy Jazz Festival, spent a week in a movie studio recording a commercial, and traveled from Boston to Atlanta on the road, each in different situations and places. But it was a gig on a midwinter Boston Bay cruise that made me keenly aware of my position as a musician in the public eye. This was a gig where we played in the background of a party on the deck of a ship in the middle of winter, covered with plastic and heated, but no guests were on deck because of the cold. It was a gig. In other words, I thought that for the general public, unless you are a celebrity, music is just a secondary existence. However, there were many times when the same band played in other situations and almost everyone in the audience was dancing, so I thought it was a good thing to be a musician at that time.