Trivia / Hideto Matsumoto

• Breakup Breakout: hide became most famous after leaving Yokosuka Saber Tiger and joining X Japan, and his career only improved more when he went solo from X Japan to his own career.
• Creator Breakdown: One that, in retrospect, seems horrifically, blindingly obvious, but that seemingly either went ignored by most of the people around him, or that concerned them but they had no way to act upon their fears. At the point of this interview with Arena 37C magazine in 1994, he was a textbook case of alcoholism (If you doubt this, run any alcohol screening test as if you were him, with the information he freely divulged in said interview. You will get the result of severe, life-threatening alcoholism), as well as showing symptoms of severe Bipolar 1 mania and depression which he even referenced in several of his songs and in other interviews. Yoshiki mentioned hide's bulimia in his own autobiography - that hide often vomited when he felt that he'd eaten too much, and he'd often find himself holding hide's hair out of his face as he purged. That said, all or most of the warning signs were dismissed by almost everyone, and those who were close enough to know something was wrong at the time (specifically Yoshiki and Pata) likely weren't educated enough in mental health to know that they were seeing serious, horrific problems unfold before their eyes.
• Died During Production: 1964-1998. Probably one of the most notable and tragic examples in recent memory. When hide died, he had not yet finished his third album, Ja, Zoo, and many of his singles and other works hadn't been finished or released yet.
• Dye Hard: hide's hair is either red or pink.
  • Sometimes it was blonde with a pink or red streak in the early days of the band. Which could be confusing to n00b fans seeing a redhead... and therefore confusing hide and Pata, who had *entirely* red hair off and on from around 1989 to 1991.
• Fountain of Expies: So, so, SO many in Visual Kei. Probably, in one aspect or another, the most imitated artist in Visual Kei.
• Franchise Zombie: LEMONED, Lemoned Plant, and the entire hide "estate" or "empire." It can be argued fairly well that Hiroshi Matsumoto has no idea of what hide would have wanted for it, and is solely using it as a personal ATM to gain payment from fans and from artists who admired hide.
• No Budget: The Misery PV, unless it was Stylistic Suck. The film quality is awful even for the mid 1990s.
• Outlived Its Creator: Zilch is a straight example (it outlived both hide and Paul Raven), but a more meta example would be pretty much all of hide's career and artistic output. As an example, the "Pink Spider" musical just opened in Japan...
  • Visual Kei itself is a straight example, as he was one of the predominant influences in many parts still existent in Visual Kei aside from the direct cloning attempts: he was the one who pioneered Genre Roulette as essential parts of a VK band repertoire, he (and COLOR) were the first to introduce the idea of hair colors other than black, brown, or blonde along with the over the top styles, why lead guitarist is such an important role in VK (as opposed to Western rock where it's usually vocalist), (along with X Japan itself) the idea of making Performance Videos or promotional videos art pieces themselves. Even artists who aren't directly or intentionally cloning him have drawn much from his influence on the scene.