Glam rock’s history is clustered into two distinct eras: its initial early 70s glitter-pop boom (T.Rex, Sweet, Slade, Suzi, Bowie, New York Dolls) and its macho, chest-thumping 80s hair metal resurgence (Mötley Crüe, Poison, Ratt). If you’re looking for the connective tissue between the two, it’s very clearly KISS and Hanoi Rocks. But there was also a hazy and overlooked “art-glam” moment in the mid to late 1970s when bands like Roxy Music and Sparks stretched glam’s platform boot stomp into weird new musical life-forms. Art-glam’s pinnacle achievement, I think, was the first two albums by reluctant Brit glitter-kings Japan. Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives were both released in 1978. By the time most people discovered them, the band had already abandoned their sound and vision, barreling straight-ahead into synth-driven pop, eventually becoming vanguards of the “New Romantic” movement. They were much happier being proto Duran Durans, and Japan frontman David Sylvian decided to just pretend 1978 never even happened.

But it did, man. And it was glorious.
 

Dandies in the underworld: Japan in 1978
 
Japan was formed in South London in 1974 by Sylvian and his brother, Steve Jansen. Sylvian’s tragic beauty was the band’s initial calling card and when early publicity photos wound their way to the band’s namesake country, they became instant sensations there. While virtually ignored back home, they were huge in Japan, even before releasing a lick of music. Their manager told the Japanese press that Sylvian was voted “most beautiful man in the world” (he wasn’t), and that was really all they needed. Initially, Japan’s sound was essentially blue-eyed funk, but by the time they hit the studio in 1977, an affection for the chunky hooks of the Dolls and T.Rex had kicked in. Their first two albums are low-budget wonders of post-punky jangle, alienated disco-funk, and slithery glitter rock. None of it should work, but it does. Perfectly. And looks-wise, the band was impeccable, like Hanoi Rocks in custom-fitted shark skin suits.
 

Racy sleeve for Japan’s debut 1978 single. Remind you of anything else?
 
But none of it mattered, really. 1978 had other things on its mind. Marc Bolan died in ‘77 and took glam rock with him. It was all about punk and disco and new-wave, and Japan’s funky glitter-rock seemed anachronistic to most, including the band themselves. In 1979 they met Euro disco king Giorgio Moroder who turned them on to dancier alternatives. He produced their hit single “Life in Tokyo” later that year and paved the way for their arty synth-pop makeover. They spent the next three years pioneering the new romantic movement before unceremoniously breaking up mid-stride. Sylvian has gotten the band back together here and there over the intervening decades, sometimes under the moniker Rain Tree Crow. But one thing he has never wavered on is how much he hates those first two albums.
 

Japan’s 1980 new-wave makeover.
 

“It doesn’t mean anything. That whole era of Japan was ....misguided,” Sylvian told NME in 1991. “If people want to somehow keep that period alive for themselves it’s really up to them but they’re fooling themselves. Maybe it’s a fantastic form of escapism for those people who build their existence around the fact that there was once a group called Japan. I think they’re missing so much in life. I feel totally detached from it. I don’t relate to it at all. If I felt complimented or flattered by that then I’d say so. I don’t. In fact most of the time I find it irritating, in that they’re highlighting an area of my work that I was involved in, in which I place no value myself.”

 

 
Well, sez you, dude. The fact of the matter is this: Japan’s 1978 albums are gorgeously disaffected glam rock gems well worth rediscovering.

And as these clips after the jump show, they looked as fantastic as they sounded.

 
Even a woefully incomplete list of Robert Fripp’s collaborators is something to behold—Brian Eno, David Bowie, Andy Summers, Peter Gabriel, Blondie, the Roches, Adrian Belew, Daryl Hall, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Grinderman, Van Der Graaf Generator, Talking Heads….. the guy gets around. He even composed some of the sounds in the Windows Vista operating system! Sheesh Robert, take a nap once in a while…..

In 1985 Fripp appeared on David Sylvian’s Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities, likely little suspecting that the two men would have a highly fruitful musical relationship in the years to come. Fripp actually asked Sylvian to take part in a reconstituted King Crimson. Sylvian demurred, but the duo put out several albums in short order as Fripp took up with Crimson in its “double-trio” iteration, which unfortunately didn’t endure.

For the Fripp/Sylvian material, Trey Gunn plays a variation on the bass guitar called the Chapman Stick, which looks like this:
 

 
In 1993 Fripp and Sylvian went on tour—the Tokyo concert, which took place on October 26, 1993, was taped for Japanese TV under the title “The Road to Graceland.” That title is a reference to their epic composition “Darshan,” which appears here late in the show as a particular highlight.

More after the jump…

 
The UK glam band Japan had a singularly interesting career—though influenced by the usual glam touchstones Bowie, Dolls, et al, their visual presentation directly predicted the New Romantic movement, and to this day the band is still somewhat incorrectly associated with that flamboyant scene, largely on the basis of similar haircuts. But Japan were more directly from the art-rock mold, experimenting with funk, electronics, and (surprise surprise) Asian musics. By 1982, as new-ro peaked, and the band was starting to climb from cult success to chart success, personal tensions broke them up. But the band’s singer, David Sylvian, continued as a solo artist in the avant-rock mold, collaborating with Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamoto, and releasing adventurous sophisto-pop albums inspired by jazz, prog, and contemporary classical.
 

 
On his 1984 solo debut Brilliant Trees, Sylvian was the beneficiary of vocal, brass and guitar contributions from Czukay, bassist of the long-running and influential Krautrock band Can. Though Czukay was a hired backup player on those sessions with no songwriting credits on the LP, the pair evidently found common creative ground. They’d record together in 1986, 1987, and 1988, those sessions ultimately becoming two wonderfully lush but little-known ambient LPs. Plight and Premonition, released in 1988, is a spooky and beautiful suite of two side-length songs (no points awarded for guessing that their titles are “Plight” and “Premonition”) in the Klaus Schultze vein, made with a combination of traditional instruments and manipulated radio sounds. Additionally, Czukay’s Can co-conspirator Jaki Liebezeit is credited with “Infra-sound,” which is science for “shit you can’t actually hear.”
 
More after the jump…

 
Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron (Mandrake) contributed this interview with David Sylvian:

On the heels of his current release Sleepwalkers, a compilation of some of his most hauntingly beautiful collaborations from the last decade, David Sylvian looks back over his life to reminisce about his earliest influences, and pays tribute to some of the artists who have inspired him along the way.

Spencer Kansa: Time travelling back to the mid-70s, you went from getting kicked out of school straight into management and then you were signed within two years, that’s really phenomenal isn’t it?

David Sylvian: Yeah, I didn’t think of it as being phenomenal at the time, I took it all rather for granted (laughs). I thought “I’m owed this,” for some ungodly reason. But looking back, I realize, yes, that I was obviously very blessed, and am very blessed. I mean the difficulties that I’ve had in my life don’t compare to the difficulties other people face. But that I’ve been able to pursue music is obviously a gift.

SK: You grew up in Lewisham. What was it about that part of South London that produced all these glamorous pop stars, cos Boy George also came from Lewisham didn’t he? And you also had the whole “Bromley Contingent” –the Bowie punks like Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol—just down the road.

DS: I think the only way I can view it is that it was so unbearably dull (laughs). It was a place of such convention. There was no colour, and it was an incredibly insensitive world. You couldn’t be different. You weren’t allowed to show certain sides of yourself, y’know. It was tough.

SK: Was it the Bowie influence or do you think the council put something in the water?

DS: (Laughs) I think the whole glam rock thing was a big influence. I mean it was Marc Bolan who first opened the door and it was just a release. I think there was a whole generation there just waiting to stick the pancake make-up on.

SK: Well, you may not be aware of this, but do you realize that because of your influence if you were a schoolboy in the early to mid-80s and you went to school without wearing make-up, you risked being bullied or even expelled.

DS: (Laughs) Yes I know! I always think it’s hilarious ‘cos I remember when we were like 13 or 14, and Mick (Karn, Japan’s bassist,who recently passed away) and I getting our ears pierced at that time, and oh the grief we got for it, y’know, from everyone! The traditional, usual places, building sites and what have you. Now you can’t go past a building site without some guy with earrings (laughs). I find it hilarious. It’s amazing how things change over time and such a short time too. But superficial things like that may change, but deep down people still harbour the same prejudices and they look for different signs to express that prejudice. That is truly amazing to me.

SK: I know you don’t like an awful lot of your early material, and you’ve said that “Ghosts” was really the kind of launch pad into your solo career, but can a case be made that there is a through-line from say “The Tenant” to “Despair” to “Nightporter” to “Ghosts” and then into your solo work. 

DS: Sure, sure yeah. There’s a development and it’s very, very apparent. You could say that the first two Japan albums were an act of concealment, and from that point onwards the act of creating those albums was trying to pare away all of that, and trying to let something of myself come through, to allow myself to be that vulnerable. And I reached that point with “Ghosts,” that was the breakthrough. But getting there, there was “Nightporter” and there were other bits and pieces that spoke of emotional states that were very, very real to me. But they were dressed up in other storylines or ideas that I came up with.

SK: At that time you were far more interested in the New York punk scene, like Patti Smith and Richard Hell, than you were with the Kings Road punks that were happening back home. Was that because it was far more literary than what the Sex Pistols and others were doing?

DS: Yeah, for sure. You could recognise an intellect at work, particularly in Patti’s early work like Horses which was quite an important album at that time. Actually, I was never attracted to the British punk movement at all. I celebrated the spirit of it. As unlikely as it seems we were very much part of that spirit at that time. It was a matter of ‘well we can do that, pick up our instruments and go’ and I’m still drawn to the non-musician cos I really love that spirit of exploration, normally as a result of not having the technical expertise to work otherwise. So how do you work around your lack of ability? You’re forced to be more creative. Holger (Czukay) and I are always laughing at the fact that the two of us create music together, two non-musicians! It’s entirely inspiring.

SK: Cos you’re pulling something out of yourself that you didn’t know you had.

DS: Yeah, or you come up against a problem; ‘well if I was a proficient pianist I would put in a piano solo here, but I’m not so what can I do?’ So you manipulate the studio to work to your own ends. There are no rules in that respect. You’re basically trying to break them. You’re cheating. ‘I can’t do that so what can I do instead?’ So you become far more inventive, and I really enjoy working with people with that mind set.

SK: Talking of collaborations, how did the idea of Japan working with Giorgio Moroder come about? Did you like the stuff he’d done with Donna Summer, or was it purely to see if you could go in another musical direction?

DS: Yes, in a sense. I think we were ready to move into an area of music that was more electronically based, and at the time I’m not sure whether it was management or the record company that was pushing Moroder. He had just produced an album for Sparks which we thought was interesting so we thought we’d give it a go.

SK: There’s a great photograph of you two in the studio, where you’re looking very bemused by everything, and he looks like Inspector Clouseau with his bushy mustache.

DS: That’s right! That’s who he used to remind us of, Clouseau. He was this kind of funny, little, slightly bungling character. It was an odd little experience, and I just think it set the ground for Quiet Life. It was almost like being a songwriter for hire. It was one of those experiences: “we’ll throw you into a studio in LA with Moroder” and he dishes out some old demo from his stack and says “Try working with this” and it’s like “Okay.” It was odd but not unpleasant.

SK: Throughout your work you’ve incorporated influences from outside music, from literature, painting and cinema. The work of Jean Cocteau has been very important to you, was that because he was so wonderful at evoking the dream state?

DS: Yeah, he made the invisible world tangible, and I’ve existed in that world (laughs). I had existed in that world a long time but it was always denied by those around me, as a delusion. So to find somebody writing about it and exploring it in film was like finding a friend. And to be honest, I think I’ve incorporated too many references in my work to other writers and artists. But the reason for doing so was that it was my community. I didn’t have one in the physical world. So I found like-minds through the work of others and I drew them into my work as a result. As a band of like-minded individuals, dead or alive, it didn’t matter. I sort of bonded with them.

SK: Like soul brothers.

DS: Yeah, and I felt a very close connection with Cocteau for a while. I really felt his presence and the same happened with Joseph Beuys. I mean, Beuys is still one of the most important artists for me. I was actually trying to make contact with him when I made the Gone to Earth album. I used a quote from him on it as you know, but I was actually gonna try and get Beuys to come in and record throughout that whole instrumental side, just quotations coming in and out, which would’ve been amazing. But as I was driving back from the studio one evening I heard that he’d died. But he’s been so present in my life at different points in time. He’s turned up in dreams and his presence has been very tangible. So often times in my life the presence of these dead artists have been more tangible then some of the people living around me.

SK: I always assumed you were a big Dirk Bogarde fan too, because you cribbed a song title from his film Nightporter.

DS: (Laughs) You’re right! Actually I did like some of Bogarde’s work, particularly the films he did with Visconti and Joesph Losey, I really enjoyed those.

SK: You’ve used a lot of paintings on the covers of your albums over the years, starting with the Frank Auerbach portrait on the cover of Japan’s live album Oil on Canvas. How did that come about initially?

DS: Well, I had a problem looking at visual art up until I saw that painting of Auerbach’s. I would walk around galleries, and I would appreciate the beauty of some of the work, the abstract nature, blah, blah, blah, but I was never moved. Not like a piece of music would move me or a poem. So I was quite unprepared for the experience that I had with the Auerbach, and I can’t tell you what I did or if I did anything to prepare me for that experience. I was just open to that moment. I must have been in a very open state of heart and mind, and was just blown away by one particular image. And the experience was as intense as any experience I’d had in music, and that was exciting cos I just didn’t think it possible. And since that time I’ve had that experience on a number of occasions with a variety of different artists. And it’s just a matter of being open to the work and also giving the work time. If you’re gonna go down to the Tate Modern, don’t try and see it all. Just think “Well I’ll walk through all these rooms but I’ll stop in front of three works and spend some time with three that appeal to me and see how I get on” and you’ll be amazed at what happens.

SK: Some spiritually minded people believe that rock ‘n’ roll is bad for you because the path to spiritual life means quieting the mind and rock ‘n’ roll is all about stirring the visceral. Has that had a bearing on your music? Did your music have to become more meditative in some sense?

DS: I think it had that quality to begin with, particularly once I moved into the solo work, it started to take on a quieter form for me. I just had the confidence to go there. I guess working with Japan, the band was uncomfortable working with the quieter material. They always wanted to do something a bit harder, something they could get their teeth into. I was being more and more drawn to these quieter compositions, and when I got the positive response to “Ghosts,” and that being something of a breakthrough to me as a writer, I realised ‘well I can pursue this avenue and it’s OK,’ every album doesn’t have to have these power pieces on them. And so I think I naturally fell into that style of writing because it so much suited my own nature. But there was a spiritual search going on that accompanied that which enabled the work to actually get quieter and quieter in some respects. But I don’t necessarily agree with the people that think about rock ‘n’ roll in the way you just described. To me, Robert Fripp is an intensely spiritual man and makes work that conveys that. There’s a powerhouse there, a very powerful music. So I don’t think that runs true. It’s so much to do with the heart and mind of the creator of the music. What are his or her motivations behind making the music? What emotions are you trying to stir in your listener? Where are you trying to take them? Those are more important issues than the genre of music in general.

Sleepwalkers is available now on Samadhisound.