About

Happy End is seminal Japanese folk rock band featuring Haruomi Hosono, Eiichi Ohtaki, Takashi Matsumoto and Shigeru Suzuki and formed by Hosono and Matsumoto after the disbanding of Apryl Fool in Autumn 1969. The band's pioneering sound was regarded as avant-garde to most Japanese at the time. They are considered to be among the most influential artists in Japanese music. MTV had described Happy End's music as "rock with psych smudges around the edges."

Prolific as sidemen, the members contributed to numerous projects during the band's output, and went on to find commercial success with solo and group ventures (in Matsumoto's case as a hugely successful lyricist). Domestic critics celebrated the band’s works from the start, with 1971’s Kazemachi Roman hailed as a masterpiece. It still regularly tops lists of the best Japanese albums. “Musicians back then admired Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and so on. Everyone copied them and competed against each other,” says Hosono, who went on to even greater fame with the synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra. “I grew up in that scene, but with Happy End we decided to use our own words to create something original.”

Their self-titled debut impressed critics with its combination of hard-edged sounds and Japanese sounds, and intensified the Nihongo Rokku Ronsō: the “Japanese rock controversy” revolving around whether it was possible for rock music to be authentic if it wasn’t sung in English. So Happy End returned to the studio for its second album looking to underline the point that Japanese rock could absolutely flourish. “We fine-tuned our strengths and figured out what directions we wanted to go … and dug into them,” Matsumoto says. — (via The Guardian)

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Label: URC
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Clear Red
Reissued: 2023 / Original Release: 1970
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Folk Rock

File under: Psychedelic Rock
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