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Komuro Tetsuya (Tokyo, 1958- )
Depending on who you talk to, Komuro Tetsuya is either a musical
and marketing genius or the man who destroyed what little credibility
Japanese pop music had left at the end of the 20th century. The
fairest description is probably that he's a bit of both. Already
a successful musician and producer, Komuro started building his
"komuro family" in the early 1990's and helped make the
Avex Trax label one of the biggest forces in the Japanese
music business.
Born in Tokyo, the young Tetsuya learned violin from the age of
three. But when he was in junior high school, he came across his
first synthesizer and it was love at first sight. He secretly
pawned his violin, guitar and keyboard to buy a Roland SH1000
of his own for the whopping sum of 160,000 yen. He joined a band
while a student at the prestigious Waseda University and with
two members of the band, Utsunomiya Takashi and Kine Naoto,
formed TM Network in 1983. The techopop band had some success but Komuro did even
better as a producer for such stars as Matsuda
Seiko, Koizumi Kyoko and
Nakayama Miho.
In 1988, Komuro left the TMN project, as the band was now called,
and went to spend a year in London. He indulged in every aspect
of the rave scene that was sweeping Europe at the time. On his
return to Japan, he set about creating a new scene at home, as
a svengali-like guru constantly on the lookout for the right talent.
His breakthrough came in 1992 with the group trf (Tetsuya Komuro
rave factory), which consisted of a female vocalist,
a DJ and three dancers who performed to Komuro's pre-recorded
music. Most Japanese music fans had never seen the likes of trf,
at least not at home. The steady eurobeat music and onstage confidence
of the group caught the public imagination and trf's first two
singles EZ Do Dance and Boy Meets Girl sold over
a million copies each. The group went on to sell over
20 million singles and albums over the next six years.
Meanwhile Komuro was busy creating another star, Amuro Namie.
The impish-faced, long-legged teenager from Okinawa became the
style guru for a generation of school girls (much like Hamasaki
Ayumi several years later). She later became pregnant by and married
trf dancer Sam, putting her career temporarily on hold. Other
huge stars from Okinawa included Max (who started out as Amuro's
backing dancers) and Speed. Komuro himself played keyboard in
the trio globe. All of these projects reaped huge financial rewards for Komuro
and his "family".
Some controversy surrounded the career of another protege Kahara
Tomomi after the 21-year old became Komuro's live-in lover. Very noticable
weight changes and accidents with a gas oven and some razor blades
came with their eventual breakup and almost ended her singing
career. But she began a comeback in 2001, around the time that
the 42-year old Komuro announced his marriage (his second) to
singer Yoshida Masami, aged 26 and 4 months pregnant at the time.
That lasted less than a year but Komuro was soon back in the saddle again,
this time marrying globe vocalist Yamada Keiko in a ceremony televised live.
It was a sign of Komuro's somewhat diminished status that many top stars
declined invitations to the event.
Komuro has made several efforts to expand his reach beyond Japan.
He wrote the theme music for the France World Cup in 1998 with
Jean-Michel Jarre. He is making the most of the popularity of Japanese pop music
throughout Asia and has also set up companies (such as orumok and
tk news - notice how his name is always there) to search for and produce
talent in such places as Hong Kong and Taiwan. But the kind of
success he achieved at home has so far eluded him abroad. And
now that Tsunku and his Morning
Musume-led crew are ruling the home turf, will Komuro ever get back to the
No.1 spot?
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