The story is already gone so I was not sure if it was real or if I just dreamt it 
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Well now you mention it I had always wondered… haha
Absolutely 100% agree. I’ve wanted this for years. Takumi is so talented.
Having a keyboardist on stage would fill out their (sometimes empty) sound, and would mean they could play more piano or synth-heavy tracks without relying on playing back tapes.
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Takumi is a melodic genius since RENTRER EN SOI. It would be a real contribution for Dir En Grey.
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If the core of Dir en grey is the five members and Dynamite Tommy, Takumi is the Kuroko of Dir en grey.
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Most people don’t know this but you can have support members on stage without them being a full member.
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A good example of this is Slipknot, where only two of the nine legally own the band (Corey Taylor and Shawn Crahan). The rest are disposable hired guns.
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Yet they are still apparently considered members. That situation with them is such a shit show its unbelievable.
A big part of why fans are so upset is the way Slipknot built up this mythos of ‘The Nine’ for years and acted like some kind of immortal brotherhood that would never die. Of course that was never the case. Chris Fehn’s legal tantrum over not being treated equally was a real eye-opener as to how that band operates. That situation is also a good lesson in learning to read the contract before you sign, but then again, you’d think they’d give a few more perks to someone who’d been around for over 20 years and remains one of the most recognisable members (/employees) to this day.
Anyway, I digress. Backstabbery and contract woes probably happen in VK all the time.
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Totally agree.
I really wonder how the legal stuff surrounding DEG is. Cases like Slipknot are not that unusual, from what I know. It’s easier finance-wise to be employed by a band, and I can imagine that the opposite would result in cases like System of a Down, where they can’t get on the same page on how to make music, so nothing happens for over a decade. Being a “hired gun” doesn’t always mean that you’re not a full member, in any case. But Slipknot of course took it to another level with the whole brotherhood gimmick.
Honestly, for DEG I could imagine that none of the members hold the rights to the band as an entity, and their compositions. With DT in the mix I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the he’s the one to hold all the rights.
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noob question but how’d Diru go from being produced by Yoshiki to signed to Dynamite Tommy? Isn’t that like crossing party lines?
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Paging @seelentau
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I think it’s telling that they dont give individual credits anymore
tbh this doesn’t make me think anything…
sometimes i or a guitarist writes the general shape of a song and the rest of us fill in our instruments, and it’s easy to say who was in charge. I use the "music by: " field as something like a "song directed by: ".
But then other times we’re all in the studio passing a guitar back and forth every couple of measures; none of us know what’s supposed to happen but music continuously appears
So anytime the band’s credited instead of individuals, i assume it’s either something like that, or a particular dedication to even profit + reputation sharing
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While I ageee with this, we have cases where we know wich one of them composed a song. For exemple, Shiniya claims Cause of Fickleness, but the credits still go for the band.
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Other way around, DT discovered them during their time in La:Sadie’s and wanted all five of them under his wing. So he bided his time and when they disbanded, he immediately pulled all strings.
And from there to getting produced by YOSHIKI is a long time. But it’s not like East and West hated each other. Even the band’s first manager (1997-1998), Rooko, used to work for Extasy Records.
DT spoke about the early days in a colum in Haiiro no Ginka, but it never got properly translated back during the golden days of DEG translations, sadly. But from what I was able to read, it’s quite interesting actually.
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My band does something similar to your second example for everything we do. Our vocalist or I will usually come up with the primary arrangement for most of a song, or even an entire song, before bringing it to the band. And even if that song survives as-is through our writing revisions process, the final release is always credited as “all music written by Samsara” except for covers
As far as the USA goes, songwriting credits DO matter for royalty pay-outs. If a band releases an album, and only certain members are credited as the songwriters, those members will get songwriter royalties on TOP of the mechanical royalties that every band member gets for sales of the album. Crediting the entire band, even if technically not the reality of who wrote what, helps ensure that each band members gets an even amount of royalties for a release.
Why any band goes one way or the other on how to credit writers will usually come down to how the band operates. For some who want individual credits, they care a lot about that extra money, or maybe they care a lot about “technically correct” credidation. Some bands just don’t care and want to make sure everybody feels equal, or some (as in my band) there’s a feeling of "even if I wrote the song all myself, the reason it sounds the way it does NOW is because specifically these people in this band with this chemistry together played it, and many feel that alone is enough contribution to the process to consider giving everybody else writing credits. LOTS of reasons any given band would choose to operate in either direction!
Then of course things get a little wild once you start diving into the realms of bands hiring outside writers, or pop artists working with songwriting teams. But that’s a whole other discussion probably better left for a different thread
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Hmm, I see. Interesting, so basically during VULGAR, the members decided on an equal cut of the revenue, instead of Kaoru getting the biggest payout. It has been the same for sukekiyo since the start of their career, by the way. In case of Petit Brabancon, it’s different, with only one member being credited for “Music”, and sometimes “Arranged by” is also credited to a specific member, but mostly it’s credited to Petit Brabancon.
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