The Alien with the Red Hair: hide and the 33-Year Flash from Yokosuka to the World
Flaming red hair, pink costumes, and a roar of sound erupting from his fingertips. You cannot tell the story of 1990s Japanese rock without the name hide—born Hideto Matsumoto. He shredded guitar at the eye of the storm called X JAPAN while remaining, all the while, a rare artist with a color entirely his own.
Born in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, in 1964, and gone from this world on May 2, 1998, at just 33, hide lived a short life that—despite all its flamboyance—was at heart the story of a craftsman who never stopped facing the music. What he left behind is still being passed down today, somewhere in the back rooms of live houses across Japan.
This is the story of how a boy from a port town became the one-of-a-kind figure they called "the red-haired alien."
A Boy from Yokosuka Picks Up a Guitar
Hideto Matsumoto was born on December 13, 1964, in Yokosuka, Kanagawa. He attended local schools—Tada Elementary, Tokiwa Junior High, and Toshu Kaisei High School. A Sagittarius with AB blood type, the man who would one day take on the world started out as an ordinary boy from a harbor town.
The turning point came in high school. In 1981, he formed the band SABER TIGER (later SAVER TIGER) and stepped seriously onto the path of music. Even then, he was said to show flashes of a personality that did more than simply play well—it demanded to be looked at.
Tellingly, hide was a graduate of Hollywood Beauty College. His deep devotion to beauty and fashion would later crystallize into his trademark look: red hair and pink. The instinct to never separate music from the visual was nurtured in him from these early days.
At the Center of the Storm Called X JAPAN
In 1987, after SAVER TIGER disbanded, a fateful invitation reached hide—a recruitment by YOSHIKI. He officially joined X (later X JAPAN), taking on the role of lead guitarist and helping shape the band's sound.
In 1989, X JAPAN made its major-label debut with the album BLUE BLOOD and won the Japan Gold Disc Award that same year. On songs like "Kurenai," hide's guitar sounded both headlong rush and aching lyricism at once, becoming a defining thread of the band's identity. His presence held firm again on 1991's Jealousy.
Amid the showy staging and the thundering volume, he was never merely a technician. He wrote songs, shaped arrangements, and pushed the band's whole expression higher. The hide of X JAPAN stood at the center of the storm while remaining, somehow, a craftsman coolly designing the sound.
Solo Work and a Reach for the World
Even as a band member, hide had long been searching for his own voice. In August 1993, he made his solo debut with the simultaneous release of the singles "EYES LOVE YOU" and "50%&50%." Then, in 1994, his first solo album HIDE YOUR FACE reached number one on the Oricon chart and won Rock Album of the Year at that year's Japan Gold Disc Award.
His ambition did not stop there. In 1996, alongside releasing his second solo album PSYENCE, he formed zilch, a band assembled with American and British members. His willingness to cross borders and go toe-to-toe with the sounds of the wider world stood out sharply in the Japanese rock scene of the time.
When X JAPAN disbanded in 1997, hide carried on under the unit hide with Spread Beaver. Within him there was, without doubt, a sound he wanted to keep making no matter where he belonged.
PINK SPIDER, the Song That Took Flight After His Death
In January 1998, hide with Spread Beaver released the single "ROCKET DIVE." He should have kept racing forward on that momentum. But on May 2 of that same year, hide died suddenly at the age of 33. The farewell came far too soon.
In the immediate wake of his death, his song "PINK SPIDER" was released just eleven days later and went on to sell more than a million copies. A track where sorrow and headlong speed coexist, it became, by tragic coincidence, a song that distilled his entire musical sensibility and burned itself into countless hearts. That same year, the music video for PINK SPIDER won the International Viewer's Choice (Japan) at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The tribute album released in his memory, "hide SPIRITS," sold so many copies that an application was reportedly made to Guinness. Seeds he had sown in life bloomed enormously after his death—a rare thing indeed.
Red hair draped in pink, a look that made people do a double take on sight alone. And behind all that flash, the ability to write songs like PINK SPIDER—aching yet hurtling forward. hide's particular brand of cool lived precisely in that gap. Where anyone else's imitation would end as mere costume, his became one of a kind. It was the gift of something innate, fused with an aesthetic he had built since his Yokosuka boyhood.
Decades have passed since he left us. And still, somewhere in a live house, fans light up talking about "that guy with the red hair." To live on not in records but in memory—that, more than anything, is the greatest honor hide left behind.