access: A 30th Anniversary Memorial Video Box with Approximately 6 Hours of Footage — The Duo Reflects on Early Memories and What They See Anew in Their Work
This interview was originally published in Japanese on thefirsttimes.jp. Translated by VK Chronicle.
access 30th Anniversary Interview
Exactly 30 years since their debut in November 1992. In a music world that undergoes rapid change, access continues to be supported by many fans while pursuing ever greater heights. And for reflecting on such a long career, 30 years is the perfect moment. The new Blu-ray box 30th ANNIVERSARY MUSIC CLIPS COLLECTION BOX is a video work packed tightly with music clips from their debut through 2017, as well as footage from their 1st tour. Though featuring footage from the early days of their debut, it’s being released in 2022 with fresh passion. Now then, what do Daisuke Asakura and Hiroyuki Takamizu themselves feel at this 30th anniversary milestone? In any case, it’s been a long time since their last interview. We gathered plenty of talk in various senses of the word—both about the work and about the period when the path of music was unclear due to COVID-19.
“There’s something rather nice about how easily you can separate work and private life with just a click”
Q: Recently interviews have become mostly online, so I’m very happy to be able to do this face-to-face.
Asakura: That’s right. I do a lot of exchanges online too, but access meetings are basically done face-to-face with HIRO. HIRO doesn’t use ZOOM anyway, does he?
Takamizu: Right, I don’t use it. You can record it too, right? I just really don’t like that—it’s not just for work, when I get invited to those online drinking parties, I turn them down. No way! (laughs)
Asakura: That’s probably actually important when living in an internet society. Though with live streaming and such, there’s something rather nice about how easily you can separate work and private life with just a click. Well, I do have to prevent my Golden Retriever from walking into the frame (laughs).
Q: Like keeping him in another room during meetings…
Asakura: Oh, I wouldn’t do that—it would be too mean to him (laughs).
Q: That’s very kind (laughs). So, is that what today’s about? The 30th anniversary story?
Takamizu: Right?
Asakura: I might not remember everything… (laughs)
Takamizu: Yeah, you really have to dig into your memories.
Q: It feels like it’s flown by, but there were definitely many things along the way. The pandemic shook the very foundations of how music could exist and be shared.
Asakura: That’s true. Thirty years ago, you only heard about pandemics in sci-fi movies. We had to cancel tours we’d planned, and you realize that impossible things really do happen. That’s what I was thinking.
Takamizu: I honestly couldn’t accept it. Something with no precedent suddenly appeared right in front of us, and it was the peak of anxiety.
Asakura: It really was. We didn’t know what words to say to the people who’d been looking forward to our live shows, and even before that, we didn’t know what we ourselves should do.
“I reconfirmed that music has moments where it heads toward the light no matter the circumstances”
Q: But you had the option of live streaming.
Takamizu: After watching how things developed for a while, we thought, why not try streaming? And when we thought about what we could do in a situation like that, we realized we could really only deliver music. We just wanted everyone’s hearts to feel a moment of peace or healing through the music. It was our first try, so we didn’t know how it would go, but when we did it, we felt saved ourselves. I reconfirmed that music has moments where it heads toward the light no matter the circumstances. That livestream was a very small step, but I think it strengthened our bonds with everyone. It turned out to be the right call.
Asakura: Yeah. access has always been challenging something new, but being in that environment definitely created things too. HIRO and I often stand back-to-back on stage, but the stage director suggested that wouldn’t work for the stream. So the director made life-sized panels, and we each played off those. It became quite a unique scene (laughs). It was a makeshift solution, but the result was good.
Q: Asakura-san was also doing live streams on Instagram.
Asakura: Playing piano late into the night (laughs). I think I did it for about a month. I couldn’t go out to everyone and perform, but I thought if I could send something out via SNS… you know, doing Instagram Live, I felt this sense of security from being connected. Even when we couldn’t do live shows or events, having a tool where we could access each other bidirectionally—I felt really grateful for that.
Q: Since the world basically stopped, there had to be lifestyle changes.
Takamizu: I basically stayed home the whole time. I made a real effort not to set foot outside, to absolutely avoid infection (laughs). I usually don’t watch much news about politics, but during that time I did. You feel like you have to know what’s happening in the world.
Asakura: I learned to cook for myself during COVID.
Q: Oh wow, that’s a major topic!
Asakura: I’d been eating out exclusively my whole life. But the restaurants were closed, so there was no choice.
“You’ve changed so much from 30 years ago—you’ve become health-conscious”
Q: Thirty years ago you only ate meat. Fans were probably worried about “big’s nutritional status” (laughs).
Asakura: Yeah, I’d talk about it in interviews—how I only ate meat even on tour. But lately, honestly, I can’t handle fatty cuts anymore… wait, is that what this is about? (laughs) But yeah, I’ve come to prefer lean meat. My diet’s become super healthy now. HIRO had already started caring about health and cooking, so I thought I’d give it a try too.
Takamizu: After all, if you want to keep making music, health comes first. These days I’m really into low-carb rice cookers (laughs). Yeah, big’s changed so much from 30 years ago—he’s become health-conscious now.
Asakura: I mean, over these 30 years, I watched favorite musicians from overseas one by one become vegetarian. Quit smoking, started running—that kind of thing. When I was young, I’d think, why would they do that? I was convinced I’d eat meat forever. But before I knew it, I was talking about being careful with my health… is this really the interview we’re having? (laughs)
Q: It’s fine, it’s the 30th anniversary (laughs).
Asakura: I’m grateful to say I’m in good health, and now I realize how important diet really is. So the difference from 30 years ago is that I’ve become conscious of my body (laughs).
Takamizu: That’s a good thing, big.
Q: And this time, for the 30th anniversary, a six-hour video work was created: 30th ANNIVERSARY MUSIC CLIPS COLLECTION BOX.
Asakura: Have you watched it? How was it?
Q: Personally, I felt nostalgia, but I was surprised that the music from 30 years ago hasn’t faded. Whether it’s the melody or the skeletal structure of the sound, I’m not sure what it is, but there’s definitely something consistent that makes access access.
Asakura: I’m happy you felt that. We probably kept something like DNA in all our songs over these 30 years.
Q: “Disc 1” is a collection of music clips for single tracks. I used to visit the shoot locations often back then. Since CGI wasn’t used as much then, the shoots really were long productions.
Asakura: Shooting PVs might have been the hardest part. They’d start at six in the morning no problem, and we’d finish the next morning sometimes. I’d think, why can’t we split this over two days? (laughs)
“Standing by a fire while sucking on ice” (laughs)
Q: “JEWELRY ANGEL” was shot with a drum barrel fire burning in the cold, right?
Asakura: At this abandoned factory kind of place. It was cold, we had the fire going, then the fire spread to some set piece and everyone’s like, put it out! Put it out! (laughs)
Takamizu: I was actually really excited to be doing a full-scale location shoot for the first time. I remember having fun with it.
Q: They put ice in HIRO’s mouth so his breath wouldn’t show on camera. I remember thinking “poor HIRO” the whole time in that cold.
Asakura: Right, nowadays you could fix that in post-production on the monitor. Standing by a fire while sucking on ice (laughs).
Takamizu: Huh? Did that happen? I totally don’t remember…
Q: Give me back my “poor HIRO” (laughs).
Takamizu: Maybe it wasn’t that tough for me (laughs).
Asakura: That really is nostalgic. But to think we were making such elaborate work starting from the second single. That must’ve been the era for that. You don’t see PVs like that anymore.
Q: Are there any clips that particularly stand out in your memory?
Asakura: I wonder… actually I might not remember much either (laughs).
Takamizu: Maybe it’s because the schedule was so packed back then, but memories are pretty fragmented. But “MOONSHINE DANCE”—we shot that in L.A. with Hollywood staff, and it was an incredible experience.
Asakura: Right, it was like a movie.
“PVs really reflect the environment you’re in at the time and the era”
Q: Given the massive expectations placed on access, money could be spent on these things back then. It’s unthinkable now.
Asakura: I mean, we were shooting PVs overseas! Now, horses showed up too?
Takamizu: Several of them (laughs).
Asakura: But in our case, I think we were basically combining PV shoots with mixing sessions overseas. Now everything’s done online, so we don’t go abroad anymore. We took finished tracks to L.A. and had engineer Phil Caffero work on them for the first three albums. Oh, once I remember one thing, the memories keep coming. You know what made me happiest? Getting to go to Disneyland in Anaheim when we were in L.A.!
Takamizu: Oh! We went, but it was right before closing (laughs).
Asakura: Yeah, I’ll never forget that (laughs). The staff with us were like, okay we’re tired, let’s go. It was about an hour by car back to the hotel, so I couldn’t really stay by myself.
Takamizu: Come to think of it, PVs really reflect the environment you’re in at the time and the era.
Asakura: Wasn’t “TRY AGAIN” filmed at a soccer field?
Takamizu: Yeah, at a soccer stadium. It was during the height of J-League popularity.
Q: J-League debuted in 1993, so access actually debuted before that!
Takamizu: When you put it that way, history feels really heavy (laughs). But maybe that means access was expressing the zeitgeist through PVs?
Asakura: Yeah, we could only do it because of that era. “DRASTIC MERMAID” and the trilogy after it had a story structure, and HIRO expressed that world in the PV while I was holed up in the studio remixing—that kind of thing.
Takamizu: Oh yeah, we were really particular about making those. Starting to remember (laughs).
Q: There were lots of programs showing music videos back then.
Asakura: These days so many people don’t even own a TV.
Q: Young people don’t own CD players either, I hear.
Asakura: Come to think of it, I found a LOOKING 4 REFLEXIONS laser disc at home recently (laughs).
Takamizu: Can you still watch that?
Asakura: I still have one player, but I haven’t used it recently, so I’m not sure it still works.
Q: Karaoke used to be on laser disc too.
Asakura: Laser karaoke was the cutting edge (laughs). Same with the move from vinyl to CD—the bigger the jacket, the cooler it was, but gradually we prioritized convenience… wow, saying stuff like this makes me feel like an old guy from the Showa era (laughs).
Q: The shift to CD happened at the end of the Showa period.
Asakura: So access never had a vinyl release. When we debuted, we only had CDs.
Takamizu: So that LOOKING 4 REFLEXIONS is “Disc 2”?
Q: Right, this time “Disc 2” (LOOKING ALL THE REFLEXIONS) covers the entire LOOKING 4 REFLEXIONS series—packages of four clips each.
Takamizu: So… does that mean “Disc 1” and “Disc 2” are basically the same thing? (laughs)
Asakura: Hey! That’s what I wanted to ask but couldn’t (laughs).
Q: No, they were released as different concepts, so as products they’re independent. Plus this time it’s Blu-ray, so fans whose LD or VHS players broke will be happy.
Takamizu: I want one. With Blu-ray you can watch whenever, wherever. Wait, do we get copies?
Asakura: You have to get copies, right? (laughs)
“It’s rough, but maybe that’s okay as is”
Q: And “Disc 3” is a documentary of the live at Shibuya Loft on November 25, 1992—the day before their debut—plus footage of the 1st Tour FAST ACCESS TOUR ‘93 at Nakano Sunplaza.
Asakura: I remember that Loft show vividly. The team making the stage was like, let’s build a flower path! and they poured so much information into the stage. It kept coming and coming and the stage got totally packed (laughs).
Takamizu: The energy coming through the screen is incredible. The energy of everyone moving forward as one is amazing. Looking at it now, it’s actually educational.
Asakura: After the Loft show ended, HIRO was really worried about something—”I might have stepped on someone’s hand in front.” Remember? It was a live house so we were close to the audience, and someone in the front row was reaching out and I might have stepped on them… “Are they okay?” He kept saying that?
Takamizu: Right, I remember. That live is unforgettable in all its details. The energy really comes through even watching the footage. It’s rough, but maybe that’s okay as is.
“The ‘two-way’ we put into the name access can now be easily realized”
Q: The Nakano Sunplaza show is captured in nearly full, and access’s live prototype was completely formed there. It has that youthful quality though.
Asakura: That’s what’s good about it. Back then we put everything into it, and even watching now, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Well, “embarrassed” is the wrong word, but it’s our best work from that time.
Q: This live footage is being sold as a product for the first time.
Asakura: Really? Back then, editing and track mixing took so much time. Thirty years later, live shows can be streamed in real time. You can edit cuts in real time and everyone watches it from home. How do viewers feel about that? The rate at which people share the same time axis is increasing, and for us on the sending side, being able to deliver what we want to convey right now—through music, through images—is incredibly gratifying. In the early days, even if you got interviewed, fans wouldn’t read it for two months, right? In that sense, the “two-way” we put into the name access can now be easily realized.
Q: Whether it’s sound or image, the original is the same—it’s just that data processing methods and speeds have advanced dramatically.
Asakura: Of course each era’s work has its own charm. When you stumble across old footage on YouTube, the image quality and color palette are unique to their time. Just recently while checking data for a distributed track, I found myself thinking an mp3 file was cool. When releases shifted to distribution, I was really sensitive to the change in sound quality, but each era has its own sound