Yoshiki definitely did not hover in the shadows of his studio hunched over like Golum concocting an X Japan song while whispering, "no Toshi voice," wheeze wheeze, "someone else my precious sheet music, someone eeeelse"
I love this mental image, can I please believe it for a second?
Lakeisle brought up some interesting points. Not that we know much about the band's dynamics, but if we want to think about it realistically, of course things can't be all ponies and rainbows when that much money and influence is at stake. X is a moneymaking machine and I bet there's a myriad of contracts, paperwork and other stuff we can't even dream of. When cold hard cash comes into the picture, pure, sweet, selfless friendship falls straight out the window. Of course sometimes people fight, kick, scream and slam the door with a dramatic groan of '
just leave me out of this'. It could or could not be the case, who knows and who cares.
As for their international aspirations, this is a super interesting topic that could deserve a thread of its own: do X really want to take over the world? I honestly think they do, or at least Yoshiki genuinely does. But I have come to observe that Japanese society is seriously the least pro-international thing ever. The music industry in Japan is so huge and insanely profitable, if you're the average white-collar bloke with zero knowledge of the West and your job is to simply manage a label and make sure everyone makes money, you probably don't see the point in wasting time, money and effort just for the sake of leaving your safe ground. Book a Tokyo Dome concert and tickets sell out in hours, you don't even need to promote it. Commit to a concert abroad and you need to find a venue, convince the local industry big cats, spend a shit-ton of time and money on advertising, PR, promotion, local support, etc, and all you end up with is a fraction of the attendance and of your usual turnover. It's a lot of work for very little material and emotional compensation.
Think about how many sucessful Jap bands akin to X have tried to make it out of their own soft and comfortable four walls? Not many. Most don't even put their stuff up on Spotify and iTunes. In many cases, you can't even buy their records with a foreign address, join their fanclub or buy tickets to go see them in Japan - you need a nice friend over there willing to be your proxy. All things considered, what we get from X is pretty much state-of-the-art Japanese openness. Why does Toshi not write in English on social media, if he obviously can speak it? Probably because his narrow-minded PR folks who manage his online presence for him don't see the point of doing things otherwise. What does the rest of the band think about becoming model world citizens? They probably think it's a cool story, bro, but if
The System keeps telling them it's better to stay home in their bunny slippers, they might end up believing it.
