Création (9/98) The instruments Gackt has mastered include: "Tuba, euphonium, trumpet, horn, trombone, and piano, guitar, bass, drum, percussion." Despite his multi-talent, he has never thought of recording by himself because he says "I believe I can create better things with the others who have something I don't have, than me doing it all by myself." He adds, "If I am versatile and better in everything than the others, I won't say 'Okay' to Kami, for example. But Kami has something that only he can create so that I can get along with him." The fact that the other MALICE MIZER members have something he doesn't have is not the biggest reason Gackt joined MALICE MIZER however. He says, "I just feel attraction towards each person, like Kami has his attraction, and Közi has his attraction. And in MALICE MIZER, what means the most to me is that joining MALICE MIZER has some meaning for myself. I want to feel that I am doing what only I can do, not what anyone else can do." Joining MALICE MIZER seems to mean satisfying his experience. He says, "It's very important to me that only I am me. Maybe I felt like that because I joined MALICE MIZER substituting the previous vocalist. But I've been thinking that I'm not a substitute of anyone, and if I will not do what anyone else can do, I don't have to do it, do I?" Gackt adds, "I've never thought I wanted to imitate anyone. Of course I felt some artists were very great and I admired them, but imitating is just imitating and it can't override the original. So I thought just imitating the original is very dull. I'm not discussing being popular or something, but I believe that only genuine things can reach people's hearts." Asked what kind of music has reached his heart, Gackt says, "I really hate Led Zeppelin, but one time I heard 'Stairway to Heaven', I couldn't stop crying." He can't remember which part affected him a lot, but he says, "I just found I'm crying listening to the music. Because it's an English song, I couldn't understand the lyrics, and I hated Robert Plant's voice, and I hate the whole sound of Led Zeppelin. But even so, I was impressed I was moved by that. It was a kind of shocking thing to me." Concerning his Led Zeppelin experience, Gackt adds, "Later, my friend, who'd lent me the album, said to me that when this song came out in London first, a lot of people killed themselves by listening to that song. And when I heard my friend's story, I figured out vaguely what I felt when listening to the song. I just felt the song has a really strong power which made people kill themselves." So does Gackt want to create songs which have such an appeal? He says, "I just feel maybe it'd be great if I strike the audience into such a degree, but actually I don't know yet. But this time I came to France, I felt really happy I had not given up the piano." This is because of an incident which occured in France which made him appreciate his piano-playing more fully. Gackt explains, "During the video shooting, I found an old piano in the castle, and I was playing it. Then a girl, who lives in the castle, and her friend came close to me and were listening to my piano-playing. After playing piano, they showed a really happy facial expression, and since I can't speak in French and they just speak very awkward English, we couldn't speak much to each other but we surely could communicate. I felt it was a very precious experience." He felt the power of music which transcends the barrier of language. He says, "I've never played piano for anyone else. I've almost always played the piano only for myself. And I play the piano to express myself very subjectively, but I guess when I was playing in front of the girls, subconsciously I was playing the piano for them. After I finished playing the piano, I felt their feeling very realistically. I've never felt like that before." He felt happy to come to France, even if only for this memory. Gackt does not believe he can be a pianist in classical music because he says, "I cannot figure out the songs composed by others. I can't reach the very bottom of the songs, and I'm not so genius to search the meaning of the song." Gackt further evaluates this: "In terms of classical music, it is most important to play the music by obeying the rules. I think it's really meaningless to play classical music along with instructions. People emphasize the theory and techniques, but they won't teach the most important things like feelings or heart. When I sing on stage, I've never felt the feeling like 'ecstasy', but I just feel I'm very absorbed in each song on stage. When I sing, each song has it's own story and main character, and sometimes, I'm the main character, and other times I'm rather the narrator, but in any case I'm involved in each stage, so in that sense I cannot feel a kind of 'ecstasy' on stage." So does Gackt feel he's an actor rather than a vocalist? He says, "Maybe. I think it's a kind of destiny for me to convey the feeling in the songs to the audience." Gackt admits that besides singing, he's been interested in acting. He also admits to having a lot of characters in himself. He says, "When I was asked which character is the true one, I don't know. I can say every character is mine and I guess I can say every character is not mine. I think it's very contradictory but in myself there are various kinds of characters, and they interact with each other and they produce other new characters. I think it's just repeating the series of those characters." Asked if he gets tired from that, he says, "I can't say no but I used to hate myself. It was like to the abnormal level." Gackt admits he doesn't like to talk about his past, including his childhood. "But I hurt myself before," he says. "But I also know everything stays stuck if I hated myself such a lot. I knew it, but knowing something doesn't mean understanding it. And finally, I started to take myself positively, not negatively, and I've cured myself. And then finally, here I am." He adds, "Currently, I started to understand various things step by step, and when I can say I like myself, I might be happy in a serious sense." Right now he cannot say he's happy yet. Asked if it was because of his ambitious nature, Gackt replied, "Partly because of that maybe. But I felt like my facial feature has been really changed in this couple of years. It's partly because my figure has changed." Maybe Gackt's facial features indicates his mental state. He says, "My facial features has really changed to the level that if a stranger saw my old photographs, he or she might think I had some operation to change my face, and actually some people say I had an operation. But I think if I had an operation, my face should have been more handsome." He adds, "I've never thought my looks were good, so when some people say I'm a very goodlooking guy, I wonder what part they're looking at everytime." Création (9/98) Gackt has a lot of curiosity about everything. He says, "Yes, I easily get interested in everything, and I get absorbed in them too." He has strong curiosity. "In terms of that," he says, "I bet I can be a champion. For example, a couple of days before we stayed in France for a shoot, at first I got in this room (of the interview) in this hotel. What I did first was check all of the drawers in the room. In addition, I checked below the bed." He adds, "Then if I notice something like small trash under the bed, I would move the bed and check what it is. I mean I can't relax unless I know everything in my room. Another example is if I get something, some electrical appliance, I'll read through the whole instruction manual from beginning to end. But once I know it, I easily lose interest." Gackt easily loses interest in a thing once he sees the whole perspective. "Everytime I get interested and know it, I feel kind of disappointed by the feeling that I thought it would be more difficult or I thought I couldn't reach the goal so easily." In terms of MALICE MIZER however, he says, "The reason why I don't lose my interest in MALICE MIZER is that I can't see the result, I can't see what will go(?), so I think MALICE MIZER has a very big potential, and I often feel that we've achieved better than we expected before and it stimulated us again. That's why we can keep going." Gackt is a very strongly curious person. He says, "As a child, when my father drove a car, I asked him to put me on his lap, and I was thinking why the car moves. I was very interested in the speed." After his drowning accident, Gackt experienced a couple of memory flashbacks from his subconsious, like, for example, "The memory of being 1 years old came up in my mind. When it happened, it appeared in slow-motion, and I couldn't hear anything. And I also felt an inexplicable ecstasy. It's like an ecstasy which is close to death. And I found this ecstasy when I drove a car at a very high speed. After that, I usually drive a car at a high speed over a mountain road." Gackt adds to this, 'It's meaningless to just drive at a high speed. To feel I'm next to death has meaning. Even though I drive in a low speed I can feel an ecstasy, maybe because it needs intense concentration. I also love skiing, and when I was a beginner, I skied in the upper class level's course in very high speed." But he admits that when he persued high speed, he was mentally very negative. He says, "I think I felt afraid as well as attracted to death." He thought this attraction to death was very immature, however. He adds, "But at some point, I changed positively, and I started to pursue different things." From that time, Gackt started to learn driving a car to see nightscapes. He says, "I think each city has its own attractive nightscape. The best time is from midnight to dawn. I like the nightscapes of Kumamoto, and Hokkaido, but I especially love the ones of Kyoto. It's magnificent. I have a favorite place to which I only bring my favorite people. But when I brought Közi there, he was moved by that." Gackt says he hates to be troubled, or being troubled itself. "When I feel stressed or troubled, I go see a nightscape, and I feel I'm trapped in a very tiny idea. So by seeing a nightscape, I can find a way to step forward. When I see a nightscape, I usually leave the engine on and I sit on the hood of the car. Then I feel my legs warm up, but my head is very cold, and it is also good the feeling, so I like to see nightscapes in winter." Gackt has actually driven his car from Tokyo to Kyoto to see a nightscape during their recording. But he says, "in this recording of 'merveilles', we did not have enough time to drive far. There's no mountain close to the city (Tokyo), so I often went to Yamashita Park (in Yokohama), and I made a lyric looking at the sea." The songs he created by looking at the sea are Brise and EGEE. On Kyoto: He likes nightscapes and nightviews... There's a certain one from an area called "Pom Pom Mountain" which gives the best nightview of Kyoto. Nobody's ever heard of it and nobody knows how to get there but him, (he even says it's on the map). He also mentions some other places (one of them is a park), but he thinks "Pom Pom Mountain" is the best. He thinks it's unpopular because of its name. He doesn't like urban areas (city). When he came to Tokyo, he wanted to know where to get the best nightview. He asked Kami, but Kami brought him to a beach instead one night. Also, he doesn't like regulations in the city, (like taking out the garbage on certain days, turning the radio volume low). He'd rather have everything natural; in other words, to do things when he feels like doing them. He doesn't like the noise of the city either. He misses the quiet of Kyoto. He likes open deserted spaces. He likes shrines. He used to watch the nightscapes from shrines. Also, he feels it's a place where one can relax. He likes the smell of incense. After concerts, he would burn incense backstage but the other members didn't like it and complained. He once showed Közi the nightscape view and he was surprised by it. In his house he likes to play his piano, read books, drink alcohol, or listen to music. In early 1999, Gackt officially left MALICE MIZER. Although he still continues his musical career alone, he does not want to be referred to as a solo artist. For more information regarding his breakup with MALICE MIZER and his (aherm) solo career, please go to the interview section.