Southern All Stars

While members of the Aoyama Gakuin University folk club, Sasaguchi and Kuwata decided to start a band together. It was largely comprised of fellow students and went through numerous name changes until keyboardist, Yuko Hara joined the group at which point at the suggestion of Kuwata's friend became Southern All Stars.

The band experienced a number of member changes in these early days however after Kuwata triumphed as best vocalist in the Yamaha EastWest '77, the band would be finally assembled when two non Aoyama Gakuin students, Matsuda Hiroshi and Nozawa Hideyuki joined.

It took three years for the first single to be released: Katte ni Sinbad in 1978. It was named after two songs by Sawada Kenji and Pink Lady and released on the 29th anniversary of Sawada's 29th birthday. Featuring coarse vocals and a rather eccentric live performance the song made a big impact on the music scene and gradually climbed to a peak of number three in the Oricon chart in Autumn 1978. Initially they were perceived as a comical band due to the promotion surrounding the first two singles, although the third, Itoshii no Eri turned this around. The ballad was received highly by music critics and is seen as their breakthrough song. It was even covered by Ray Charles in 1989.

Despite such success, the late 1970s and early 1980s were not the best of times: Kuwata stated his unhappiness with the quality of their second album and the five successive singles in 1980, the Five Rock Show were only moderately commercially successful. Thanks to an established fan base built in the 1970s however they were still popular.

Chako no Monogatari brought it back though. It was written to be a commercial song and performed as expected. The follow up album, Nude Man became the bestseller on Oricon in 1982. Throughout this early period the band also built up their rather controversial sexual image with songs such as Body Special II and imagery used on the albums. In 1985 though they secured their popularity with the album, Kamakura, considered by many to be one of their finest. It was a struggle though, wide scale promotion brought rumours of rifts in the group and it was reported that almost 2000 hours were devoted to producing the album.

After Kamakura, the members began to work on solo projects, Kuwata with his Kuwata Band. It would be three years before SAS regrouped to release Minna no Uta. In 1989, their first compilation was released: a box set named Suika containing 61 of the band's songs thus far. They continued to flourish in the 1990s; despite a failed commercial success of Kuwata's movie Inamura Jane the music received a positive reaction. The film's soundtrack reached number one and the track Manatsu no Kajitsu when covered by Jacky Cheung was hugely popular in Asia. It has now become a favourite of SAS fans. Then in 1992 they finally had their first million selling single. Due to health problems Sekiguchi took a leave of absence but nonetheless Namida no Kiss sold over 1.5 million copies and reached number five on the end of year charts. From hereon in million selling singles and albums would not be unusual for the band including their 11th album, Young Love which sold more than 2.5 million copies.

Tsunami in 2000 can be considered the peak of their popularity - it became the third best selling single in Japan of all time with almost 3 million sold. It won the 42nd Japan Record Award in 2000. Sadly afterwards, Omori decided to leave the band although this still did not stop the Southern All Stars. On their 25th Anniversary in 2003, the single Namida no Umi was released along with the album, Umi no Yeah, a compilation of their music in the 1990s. In the same year they were named as the number one influential artist in Japan by HMV Japan. To celebrate the 30th year that the band had been together, in 2005 the singles were re-released as a giant SAS boxset overtaking the Oricon charts in the process. Even 2005 released album Killer Street continued their million selling trend. Recently however after a tour in 2006 the band has been quiet and Kuwata Keisuke is again focusing on solo activities. Doubtless though SAS will be back with their retro laid back music once again.