Blue Hearts are Japan's most successful punk band, although admittedly they mixed Ramones, Clash,
and social commentary with country and early rock & roll
influences. The group, which ranked number 19 on the HMV list of top
Japanese bands in the 2000s, was established in 1985 in Tokyo by
vocalist Komoto Hiroto, guitarist Mashima Masatoshi, bassist Kawaguchi
Junnosuke, and drummer Kajiwara Tetsuya, and soon garnered a reputation
as a solid live act. They waited for two years before releasing
anything, but in 1987 provided a slew of recorded material, all out on
Meldac: the debut single "Hito Ni Yasashiku"; their self-titled debut
full-length; another single, "Linda Linda," which had become their most
famous song; and their second album, Young and Pretty. Already
underground darlings, Blue Hearts became a nationwide sensation with
their third offering, Train Train (1988), thanks to the media buzz
generated by attempted label censorship. The album was to feature the
anti-nuclear power song "Chernobyl," which didn't go down well with
Mitsubishi, a sponsor of their label, Meldac. Mitsubishi was involved
with the nuclear industry and therefore demanded that Blue Hearts either
drop the song or get dropped from Meldac. The band opted for the
latter, but, for once, label pressure worked in favor of the artist:
after the scandal hit the news, they were picked by East West Japan, and
Train Train went on to sell over a million units, which became a
standard for the band's subsequent albums.
In 1990-1991 Blue Hearts tried to make their way to
the American scene, touring the U.S. twice and releasing two CDs there,
but sales remained small despite good reviews, college radio airplay,
and USA Today coverage. Meanwhile, in Japan, where they released the
albums Bust Waist Hip (1990) and High Kicks (1991), their fame was
growing ever bigger, not hindered even by a yearlong TV ban imposed on
Blue Hearts by the stations because of the bandmembers' provocative
behavior. The 1993 releases Stick Out and Dug Out both topped the charts
and outdid their respective predecessors in sales, but in 1994 the band
broke up -- or, rather, transformed into High-Lows,
another punk rock unit that this time sported mildly surrealistic
lyrics and had Komoto and Mashima on board (in 2005, they formed their
third punk act, Cro-Magnons).
The label released one more post-breakup album, Pan, in 1995, and the
popularity of Blue Hearts endured in the 2000s, when their songs were
used in a number of video games and the dramas Socrates in Love and
Gachi Baka (both 2004), and "Linda Linda" lent its title to the movie
Linda Linda Linda (2005), about a high-school girl rock band playing
Blue Hearts covers.
