Godiego
Godiego is a Japanese rock band which flourished from the late in 1970s to the middle in 1980s with its excellent meodies, techniques, and pop sense which are far from Japanese.
Takekawa Yukihide (vocal, music composer) aimed to be a singer songwriter during that he was a university and sent demo tapes to records companies. Several companies offered him on the condition that he sang in Japanese, but he, having a great deal of influence from The Beatles,dwelled on singing in English and continued to reject them.
Finally Takekawa Yukihide signed a contract with MCA Japan and released the first solo album 'Passing Pictures' in 1975. All lyrics of songs recorded in the album were written in English, which was epoch-making in Japanese music scene then. And the album didn't succeed in commerce, but ite fresh sound far from Japanese became a big issue and crirically acclaimed.
After the debut album, Takekawa Yukihide launched into making the second album and met the other members including Micky Yoshino during the recording, and the they decided to make the band of Godiego.
Tanking about the origin of the band name, it originates from a Japanese emperor's name, but it has other meanings like godiego turns into 'go-die-go (live-die-live)', which means the never-ending cycle of life and death in Buddhism or godiego turns into 'god-i-ego' ,which means human beings who live between faith and egoism.
They released the first album 'Genesis/Godiego' in 1976. It recorded 88th in Oricon chart and sold 4,000 copies then. This song of 'Salad Girl' was used as the campaign song of Kanebo ( a big cosmetic company) and sold 8,000 copies, which was so unusual as a unknown rookie band. And The album included a suite in which six songs made one song like progressive rock songs. It was also so fantastic then.
In 1977 They released the second album 'Dead End'. It recorded 64th in the chart and sold 27,000 copies then. It's a concept album and it's said it made the dark social situations then the theme, showing solid rock――but, actually the time from the late 1970s to the late 1980s was the richest in Japan, so it might be true that Japanese society got be rich enough to accept the dark side of it. Anyway, the album is so popular among fans and sometimes listed as their best album of all.
After that they launched into making so many kinds of works such as TV music, soundtracks, CM music, offering songs to other artists and so on. They had a intention to spread their music to the world.
One of these achivements is the soundtrack of 'The Water Margin'. This TV drama was broadcasted in BBC too and the theme song recorded 37th in British chart.
On January 1978 They released 'CM Songs Fraffiti Godiego Super Hits' as the corpus of these works. It recorded 4th in the chart and sold 240,000 copies then. It was the work before the band got be famous and most of songs recorded in the album were used for these charms themselves, so the album is so nice and also has a reputation of one of their best works.
On March 1978 They released the third album 'Magic Monkey'. It's the soudtrack of TV drama 'Monkey' and recorded 1st in the chart, sold 540,000 copies. After the debut they didn't succeed in commece and faced a crisis of split, but they took their place among popular bands finally. Incidentally 'Monkey Magic' of this song was released as a single in UK and Australia.
'Gnadhara', the ending song of the drama, was also released as the coupling song of 'Monkey Magic' and recorded 56th in British chart.
'Beautiful Name(1979)'. This is the campaign song for international year of the child. That there are so many younger people among their fans is one of their characteristics. Therefore they tends to be underrated and sometimes called 'music for children'. However I suppose It's because of their excellent pop sense, especially Takekawa Yukihide, who is called 'Japanese Paul McCartney'. So it should be said that they have a talent to write superb songs understandable even for children.
On Jun 1979 They released the fourth album 'Our Decade'. It recorded 3rd in the chart and sold 100,000 copies then. It's a concept album which looks back flourish and confused 1970s and records songs on the theme of so many kinds of social problems such as Osaka expo, 'Easy Rider', oil crisis, the group suicide of the cult religion group, the landing on the moon and so on.
The English lyricst of the band, Narahashi Yoko, said about the album like that.
The sunrise of 1970s was full of bright expectations. However when we know nothing will fly, those expectations turned into disappointment soon. And we lost our ways, increasing sense of frustration of ours began to come out in the form of fear and violence. One of characteristics in 1970s was that the focus transfered from the West to the East, I mean, the West declined and new power came out from the East. And what existed as the gateway to the East was Japan. But at the same time we felt that Japan should have ended as the gateway to the biggest country in the East 'China'. Now standing at the boundary between two decades of 1970s and 1980s, we face 1980s together with a question and a memory of a vow we made at first. And the album ends hoping that 1970s will be the beginning of fuller tomorrow.
'The Galaxy Expree 999 (1979)'. This is the theme song for the animation movie of the same title. This song recorded 1st in the chart for the first time.
In this year Godiego made several hit songs, CM songs, often appeared on TV shows, and you could tell that you heared their songs almost everyday. But lights are usually followed by shadows, the basist Steve Fox left the band for family matters ( Yoshizawa Ryoji joined later).
In 1980 they went on traveling around the world on the theme of 'The journey of new experience and redescovery' . Nepal, Tanzania, Athens, and they followed the Silk Road and crossed from India to Istanbul. The highlight was the concert which was held at Nepal royal stadium in Kathmandu and gathered about 60,000 people. Looking back on those days, Takekawa Yukihide said like that.
Ah, the concert in Nepal 1980. I am sure at that time Godiego was one of the greatest band in the world. Though the concert that we held was the first ever concert in Nepal, sixty thousand people came to see us. All the people who gathered there had never heard rock/pop music before, but they were excited about the show and the music all through the concert.
On October 1980 They released the fifrth album 'Kathmandu' on the basis of the experience of the Silk Road. It recorded 9th in the chart and sold 32,000 copies then, so you can tell that their popularity took a downswing. It's probably because the concept of utopia they had worked on was gotten tired of by fans and their adoptation of ethnic music was unfinished like the adoptation of sitars in rosk music in 1970s was like that.
On October 22/23 they appeared on The first music festival for friendly relationship between China and Japan held at Tianjin in China. This was commemorable the first rock concert in China. The performance of this concert was recorded into 'Live in China'.
On September 1981 they released the sixth album 'M.O.R.' It recorded 19th in the chart and sold 25,000 copies then. M.O.R. means 'middle of road' and as it seemed that they gave up making concept albums, it's a non-consept album.
On January 1984 they released the seventh album 'Flower' It recorded 36th in the chart and sold 10,000 copies then. It was also non-concept album and critically acclaimed, but didn't sell well again. The title means 'sending music in honest feelings like sending flowers', but symbolically flowers on the album jacket are dying.
And on November 1984 they released the eighth album 'One Dimension Man'. It recorded 36th in the chart and sold 10,000 copies then. It made social problems the theme again, and the lyrics on the basis of books philosophy were so difficult to understand, the melodies were't comfortable,so it had so bad reputation from fans, but interestingly it got good reputation among those who were't interested in Godiego usually.
At last they split in 1985. About that,Takekawa Yukihide said like that.
In 1984 we didn't have the reason to get together and create music anymore because we felt we had already made most of the music we could create and economically, we couldn't keep ourselves as a band. In 1999 we could afford to get together shortly and were sure that we could create new things.
After that they reunited the band in 1999 and the released the nineth album 'What A Beautiful Name'. And then they declared the state of restart permanently in 2006 and have actived energetically till now.
Godiego sound is forever.
Reference
・Godiego official website (Japanese)
・Godiego unofficial website (Japanese)
