The Day Yoshiki Rocked Carnegie Hall
Inside the relationship between the Japanese composer and his fans
New York City’s Carnegie Hall is one of the most legendary classical music venues in the world.
But at his sold out concert there on October 28, 2023, superstar Japanese musician and composer Yoshiki did something that has never happened before on that hallowed stage: Sitting at a drum kit, he expertly executed a breathtaking, full-speed heavy metal-style drum solo. It is startling in its intensity, and it nearly drowns out the full orchestra accompanying him.
A few weeks later, Yoshiki is back in New York, this time sitting on a sofa in his impressively expansive hotel suite overlooking Central Park. As always, he’s beautifully androgynous, sporting an immaculately tailored black suit and heavy but flawless makeup. He lights up at the mention of that Carnegie Hall drum solo.
“I wanted to do something shocking,” he says with a mischievous grin. “Probably nobody is expecting me to play drums over the orchestra, so I thought that was cool!”
For the rest of that show, Yoshiki had played with equal skill at a grand piano, performing intricate classical versions of songs drawn from across his four-decade career as the leader of the hard rock band X Japan and as a solo artist, as well as a stunning rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” But it still didn’t seem like a typical Carnegie Hall concert, because the audience responded as if this were a rollicking rock show. Between songs, fans yelled out compliments to him, and he picked up a microphone and responded directly to them. (He says a Carnegie Hall staff member later told him it was loudest show in the venue’s history.)
That powerful bond with his followers is, Yoshiki says, his prime motivator: “I put my entire energy into it onstage, as if there’s no tomorrow, as if it’s the last show. Then I think the audience feels that.” This strategy is certainly working – he’s sold 30 million albums so far, and is arguably the most popular musician ever to emerge out of Japan.
Yoshiki has also endeared himself to his fans because of his tendency to wear his emotions on his sleeve, which seems to make him even more relatable. This was especially evident at Carnegie Hall and the other shows on his 2023 classical world tour (which stopped at London’s Royal Albert Hall, as well as venues in Tokyo and Los Angeles), where he premiered “Requiem,” a classical song he wrote for his late mother.
VIDEO: Yoshiki “Requiem”
“When I lost my mother last year, I didn’t know what to do, so I went to doctors to see, ‘How can I stop my tears?’” Yoshiki says. The doctors told him there was nothing they could do to assuage his grief, but he soon found solace in music. “I started composing the song ‘Requiem.’ That song started making me realize I’m still OK to live in this world.
“I just live [in] this moment as much as I can, because I feel like I’m maybe not alive tomorrow,” he continues. He pauses, then adds, “I really do, actually. Almost every night, [I’m] like, ‘Oh, I survived today.’”
This view on life was shaped by a series of tragedies that taught him just how tenuous our existence can be. At ten years old, he lost his father to suicide. The same fate later befell two of his X Japan bandmates, Hide and Taiji, who died in 1998 and 2011, respectively. Then his mother passed in May 2022.
By the end of the Carnegie Hall show, Yoshiki was finally feeling better again, thanks in large part to the success of his classical world tour – but before he could even fully savor his success, he suffered yet another profound loss. “I played the last note, and it was really like the loudest audience ever in my life, cheering. I was like, ‘I did it!’ Then within 24 hours I heard the news from Japan that one of my band members passed away, Heath.”
Heath, the longtime bassist for X Japan, had been secretly battling cancer, making his sudden death all the more shocking. Yoshiki immediately dropped everything and flew to Tokyo. “I had to see him,” he says. “He was already dead, but at least I could say goodbye to him before he was cremated. It was hard.”
Since then, Yoshiki has coped like he has done before: by throwing himself into his work, which takes him around the world on a constant basis. Besides his parallel music careers as a rock star and classical artist, he also has his own brand of wine and champagne (“Y by Yoshiki”), a line of kimonos (“Yoshikimono”), and numerous philanthropic efforts via his 501(c)(3) non-profit public benefit organization, Yoshiki Foundation America.
VIDEO: Yoshiki: Under the Sky official trailer
Another major focus for him recently has been Yoshiki: Under the Sky, which marks his directorial debut. In this unique film – which was released theatrically internationally in 2023, and will be available via Amazon Prime Video starting in May 2024 – Yoshiki performs with an impressive array of musicians around the world, including The Chainsmokers, Scorpions, St. Vincent, Sarah Brightman, and his fellow Japanese superstars Hyde and Sugizo.
Between the songs, Yoshiki tells his life story, including emotional homages to loved ones he has lost – and, in an especially moving segment, he comforts a distraught widow whose wife had found strength and comfort in Yoshiki’s music in the final months of her life. “This is not like a normal music concert film,” Yoshiki says. “It has so much depth to it.”
In the end, Yoshiki hopes that viewers will feel uplifted after watching the film – and will understand his encouraging message that “Basically, nothing’s impossible. You can achieve pretty much anything if you are really dedicating your life to something you want,” he says. “Just don’t give up. You are given this life. Might as well live as much as we can.”
VIDEO: Yoshiki performs “Endless Rain” at Carnegie Hall NYC
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