Friday, October 14, 2022
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A rock band’s mystery
A rock band’s mystery
The Japanese band Les Rallizes Dénudés, which emerged in the late 1960s, has long been a group more heard about than actually heard, its reputation resting more on legend than fact. One crucial piece of the band’s notoriety: Its original bassist was part of a Marxist group that hijacked a Japanese passenger plane and flew it to North Korea in 1970. |
Over the years, Rallizes fans have pored over bootleg recordings and sheets of guitar feedback and tried to decipher the band’s cryptic lyrics on social media. Now, after decades of intrigue — and almost three years since the death of Takashi Mizutani, the band’s reclusive leader — the Rallizes are getting the archival treatment. Recordings from 1973 called “The Oz Tapes” were reissued earlier this year, and reissues of the band’s three official albums will come later this fall. |
“I never thought this could touch foreigners’ hearts so deeply,” said Makoto Kubota, who played with the Rallizes in the ’70s. |
To this day, the band remains enigmatic. Mizutani almost never spoke to the media and was a cipher to his band mates. Even the meaning of the band’s name is obscure. But unearthing the Rallizes archives may get fans closer to the mystery.
