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<p>In the late &#8217;80s and early &#8217;90s, Japan was in the throes of a bubble economy. WON&#8217;T BE LONG&#8221; by the &#8220;Bubblegum Brothers&#8221; was released in the midst of this period and became a million-seller, selling approximately 1.7 million copies.</p>
<p> Clutching 10,000,000 bills, they stopped a cab and drank 2 million yen worth of sake in one night. The production costs for variety shows were sky-high, and we could go anywhere in the world for location shooting&#8230; Brother Cohn, who spent many nights in Tokyo with big-name celebrities such as Tonnerzu and RIKACO (59), looks back on his time in the frenzied entertainment world and how messed up it was. The following are excerpts from his autobiography <a href="https://amzn.to/3R8KjGT">, &#8220;WON&#8217;T BE LONG: My Life Swimming with the Bubble&#8221; (Kodansha), which</a> was released on May 21.</p>
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<figure id="attachment_423869" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-423869" style="width: 910px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b4dc18c4"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/52476c1727c4cdf14f831e2b4ef98e5a.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-423869" class="wp-caption-text"> The final episode of All Night Fuji, which triggered his breakthrough</figcaption></figure>
<h2> Composing on a public phone</h2>
<p> After I made my major label debut, I worked with so many people. Now it&#8217;s just me and Tom doing the songwriting, but in the early days I had people do it for me. For our first album, &#8220;SOUL SPIRIT Part II,&#8221; Kenji Kizaki, who had been with us since before our debut, came in as a producer. He is a talented man and had also worked as a producer for Koji Yoshikawa. Epic Sony also let us spend money as we wanted, and we were allowed to record the album at a studio in New York. We put out two albums that we were very happy with. But they didn&#8217;t work.</p>
<p> So around the time we were making our third album, we asked, &#8220;Can we write a song or two? and we started writing our own songs. Tom wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music. When I started writing songs, cell phones had just come out. When I didn&#8217;t have a cell phone, I composed in a very analog way.</p>
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<p> A melody would come to me while I was on the train. I would get off at the next stop and blast the melody from a pay phone into the answering machine at home. Chan chan chaka. Chan-chan-chaka-chaka-chaka. The person using the phone next to me would look at me like, &#8220;What the hell is this guy doing? The person using the phone next to me was looking at me like, &#8220;What is this guy doing? But I was determined not to forget the melody I had just thought of, so I didn&#8217;t care what they looked at me for.</p>
<p> I would give Tom the song I had created, and he would send it to me with the lyrics. Tom could also play an instrument, but we rarely wrote together. I think it was because we separated the songwriting and lyric writing that the colors of Brother Tom and Brother Cohn were combined in one song, and the colors of the Bubblegum Brothers were created. The Bubblegum Brothers were creating more and more new songs on their own. Then, in 1990, they released the album &#8220;Born To Be Funky,&#8221; which included WON&#8217;T BE LONG.</p>
<p> WON&#8217;T BE LONG was a million-seller, but it took quite a while to start selling after its release in &#8217;90. We used it as the ending for a show called &#8220;Midnight Play DX&#8221; (TV Tokyo), which was the Bubblegum Brothers&#8217; regular show at the time, but the response was almost nonexistent. It took about a year and a half before it saw the light of day.</p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" It all started with All Night Fuji."></div>
<figure id="attachment_423871" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-423871" style="width: 3648px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="5a8bc2ac"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/05/04d6537a953c409caeef0e4932cdb3f6-rotated.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-423871" class="wp-caption-text">Cohn&#8217;s Ginza bar &#8220;OLY-OLY&#8221; in Ginza, Tokyo.</figcaption></figure>
<h2> Behind the Scenes of the Birth of a Million Dollar Hit</h2>
<p> The hit was triggered by &#8220;All Night Fuji&#8221; (Fuji Television) on which Tonneruzzi, who had been a good friend of mine since we met at Kon (a show pub that used to be located in Shinjuku, Tokyo), appeared. Since I was good friends with Tonneru, he would often invite me to appear on All Night Fuji. The program ended on March 30, 1991, and Tunnels played WON&#8217;T BE LONG many times that day. Apparently, Noritake and Takaaki liked WON&#8217;T BE LONG.</p>
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<p> I was on the last episode. I had brought the CD to the studio and said to them, &#8220;Kon-chan, let&#8217;s play that song! I played &#8220;WON&#8217;T BE LONG&#8221; once. Then all the performers started dancing, and the voltage at the site rose and rose. The tension was so high that Tonnerzu asked the staff recklessly, &#8220;Let&#8217;s play Kon-chan&#8217;s song one more time! He recklessly asked the staff, &#8220;Let&#8217;s play Kon-chan&#8217;s song one more time! The staff was so excited that they recklessly asked the staff, &#8220;Let&#8217;s play Kon-chan&#8217;s song one more time!&#8221; &#8220;Okay, but it&#8217;s the last episode, so play your song, too,&#8221; they instructed.</p>
<p> All Night Fuji&#8221; was in the late-night slot, but it was a popular program with a top rating of over 7%. I am sure many people watched the final episode. From the moment the live broadcast ended, Fuji TV was inundated with calls about WON&#8217;T BE LONG. Tell me the name of that song! Who is singing that song?&#8221; The calls kept coming in from midnight to morning, and finally the phone lines went dead. It seems that the people who answered the phone couldn&#8217;t handle the calls any longer, so they began to respond, &#8220;If you get any inquiries about WON&#8217;T BE LONG, please turn them over to Epic Sony, the record company.</p>
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<p> Since the last episode of &#8220;All Night Fuji,&#8221; WON&#8217;T BE LONG began to sell explosively. Its ranking on the music charts also skyrocketed in the blink of an eye. In 1991, it even reached No. 3 on the weekly ORICON CD ranking. WON&#8217;T BE LONG was competing for the top spot in the rankings with other big hits of the same year, such as CHAGE&amp;ASKA&#8217;s &#8220;SAY YES&#8221; and KAN&#8217;s &#8220;Love Will Win&#8221;.</p>
<p> Thanks to the success of WON&#8217;T BE LONG, we started getting invited to variety shows. In the early 1990s, Japan was still in the midst of a bubble economy. TV stations had plenty of money for production.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The generosity of the bubble era"></div>
<h2>Television was won by the ratings.</h2>
<p> In those days, many people in the entertainment industry and TV stations worked with a playful spirit. Playful is the key point. It is just a job, so it should not be done completely for fun. But if you keep thinking seriously, you will never come up with a work of art or an out-of-the-ordinary program plan that will make people go wild. I think seriously, but I put a little playfulness into it. I have seen many national stars and shrewd TV people who have approached their work with this attitude.</p>
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<p> This is not a rule that applies only to the entertainment industry. The world is a little too serious these days, so I think everyone reading this could try to be a little more playful.</p>
<p> During the bubble era, it was common for entertainers to be drinking in Ginza and Roppongi until morning. It was not unusual for them to go out for drinks after a recording session and then go straight to the next session. Of course, I was one of them. It was only in the morning that I finally said to myself, &#8220;Oh, no!　Was today a recording?　Oh my God! I didn&#8217;t want the crew to find out, so I&#8217;d manage to get to the studio with the smell of alcohol off my face, but I couldn&#8217;t speak at all because of the alcohol burn. At that time, I would shut up and Tom would do all the talking. The director looked disgusted too!</p>
<p> It is true that during the bubble era, there was a magnanimity that allowed celebrities to make mistakes with alcohol. I was once having drinks at the same restaurant as a TV personality who was on a morning news show at the time, and he didn&#8217;t seem to be leaving at all. He said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve been drinking all night, but I wonder if the morning news will be okay. I ended up leaving on the way home, but when I watched the show in the morning, it said, &#8220;XX-san is not feeling well and will not be on the show. I laughed and said, &#8220;I knew you weren&#8217;t on the show.</p>
<p> In the 1980s and 1990s, television had the value system that as long as something was interesting, it was good enough. The winner was the one who got the ratings. There was no moderation, but instead there was a tremendous amount of energy. That is why there were so many new and innovative projects that had never been seen before, and TV stations produced programs with high viewer ratings. Talent appearing in these programs also grew together with the enthusiastic staff. Such a virtuous cycle was created.</p>
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<p> Studios could be used from midnight to morning as they pleased, and live programs could be produced from midnight to dawn. Nowadays, with the introduction of various regulations, it seems that in some places the lights in the studio are forcibly turned off after midnight and recording is no longer possible. If that is the case, then there are places like &#8220;Live TV till Morning! (TV Asahi) may no longer be available.</p>
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<figure id="attachment_423403" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-423403" style="width: 1764px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="2733bf8b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/04/fdddda3766dbc792e3898f6e54bf1cea.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-423403" class="wp-caption-text"> WON&#8217;T BE LONG: A Life Swimmed with Bubble&#8221; (list price: 1,650 yen / produced by Kaori Oguri) to be released on May 21.</figcaption></figure>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/3R8KjGT">WON&#8217;T BE LONG: A Life Swimming with Bubble&#8221; (Kodansha), an</a> autobiography that describes the story behind the million-selling hit that sold 1.7 million copies and his friendship with big-name celebrities, will be released on May 21. The book is available for pre-order at bookstores nationwide and online, and a launch event will be held on May 24 at Tsutaya in Roppongi! <a href="https://eventmanager-plus.jp/get/3b0982131469aa73cdbd948e138009451336737134c358f374c2a0d60e1b9cd9">Click here to</a> register.</p>
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 Ichiro Takatsuka (2nd photo)

 Brother Korn, who once dominated the world with his million-seller "WON'T BE LONG". Korn, who ran through the entertainment world during the bubble era, looks back on his life.

Missing a recording due to hangover&#8230; Brother Cohn Reveals the Hilarious Celebrity Biography and &#8220;Behind the Scenes of the Birth of His Best Songs&#8221;

Missing a recording due to hangover… Brother Cohn Reveals the Hilarious Celebrity Biography and “Behind the Scenes of the Birth of His Best Songs”

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