TMG Trivia — 20 Entries
20 sourced facts about TMG.
Trivia
The official site pins down the date the reunion started. On 22 November 2022 Tak Matsumoto put it to the other two that they might reunite TMG in 2024, exactly twenty years on. Jack Blades answered without hesitation that he was in. Eric Martin replied that it was good to hear from him and that it would make a fine reunion. From that short exchange, a Japanese-American hard rock band started moving again after two decades.
TMG — the Tak Matsumoto Group — is a Japanese-American hard rock band with B'z guitarist Tak Matsumoto on guitar and in the producer's chair. It was formed in 2004 as a project of his, alongside Jack Blades of Night Ranger on bass and vocals and Eric Martin of Mr. Big on vocals.
The 2024 reunion made TMG a five-piece. To the original three — Tak Matsumoto, Jack Blades and Eric Martin — were added Matt Sorum, of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, on drums, and Yukihide "YT" Takiyama, familiar from B'z sessions and touring, on guitar. Sorum also played on the TMG II sessions.
TMG II was made against the grain of how Eric and Jack usually work. As Matsumoto explains it, the standard method for musicians of their background is for the singer to hear a backing track and arrive at melody and lyrics together. On this album he handed over songs with the vocal melody already played in on guitar, and the two of them wrote words to fit. Fitting words to a melody already fixed turned out to be hard going — they told him as much. The results were good enough, though, that he now says he may keep specifying the melodies.
Part of what makes TMG sound the way it does is Matsumoto's guitar harmony. For some years now he has recorded imagining a twin-guitar band — he plays every part himself on record, but the approach is a two-guitar one. Live, Yukihide "YT" Takiyama takes the second part and the harmony happens in the room; what Matsumoto values is the difference in nuance between them and the slight misalignment that produces. Watching the concert film, the interviewer noted, you can see how tightly it is built — YT harmonising for a single moment and dropping straight back to rhythm.
"GUITAR HERO," which closes TMG II, has lyrics Jack Blades wrote with Tak Matsumoto in mind. On the 2024 tour it closed the night as well: Eric Martin introduced Matsumoto as the guitar hero from the stage, and the band played it last.
"THE STORY OF LOVE (feat. LiSA)" on TMG II was not written for the record. It is a TMG rearrangement of "Another Great Day!!," a song Matsumoto had written for LiSA in 2021, reworked so that her voice and Eric Martin's sit together over the band's heavier sound.
On 19 September 2024, the day after TMG II came out, it was announced that TMG had signed an overseas partnership with the European label Frontiers Music SRL, with international CD editions rolling out from 6 December. Frontiers is the label behind records by Def Leppard, Toto, Whitesnake, Yes and Journey — and the one that had put TMG I out internationally back in 2004. In its statement the label noted that the band formed in 2004 had surprised listeners worldwide by fusing Western rock with Eastern sound, and that twenty years on they were setting out to do it again.
On the 2024 tour each member brought one song from his own band. Matsumoto picked his solo instrumental "Waltz in Blue," from the 2020 album Bluesman — a song he is fond of and thought would fit the shape of the show. Eric Martin chose Mr. Big's "To Be With You," and Jack Blades chose Night Ranger's "(You Can Still) Rock In America."
Both choices have a story behind them. Eric Martin initially wanted anything but "To Be With You"; Matsumoto pushed for it on the grounds that everybody loves it, and they played it acoustic. With Jack Blades the first idea had been Night Ranger's "Don't Tell Me You Love Me," but Jack came back asking for "(You Can Still) Rock In America" — because he wanted to stage the bit with the flags descending from above one more time.
Matsumoto does not rework the songs he covers. His reasoning is simple: you cover something out of respect, so changing it to suit yourself is beside the point. On "(You Can Still) Rock In America" he reproduced Brad Gillis's whammy-bar solo as it stands. The eight-finger passage that follows it, Jeff Watson's, he declared beyond him and handed to Yukihide "YT" Takiyama. In the concert film, he notes, you can watch the rest of the band drift over to YT's side of the stage during that section to see his hands.
BABYMETAL appeared as guests at Tokyo Garden Theater on 12 October 2024. The first song was theirs: "DA DA DANCE," from their third album METAL GALAXY, on which Matsumoto had played as a featured guest — and this time TMG were the band behind them. MOAMETAL and MOMOMETAL then left the stage, and the main set closed with "ETERNAL FLAMES" as a duet between Eric Martin and SU-METAL. Matsumoto has said he never expected to share a stage with them; the offer went out while the show was being put together, and they accepted readily.
TMG did not stop in 2024. On 8 May 2026 a tour was announced for that October under the title TMG LIVE 2026 "SAYONARA," opening at Zepp Haneda in Tokyo on 5 October and running through five cities to Tokyo Garden Theater on 23 October. The line-up given is four: Matsumoto, Eric Martin, Jack Blades and Matt Sorum. A new release was announced at the same time, with details to follow.
Jack Blades's side of the reunion is on the official site too. When Tak phoned and suggested TMG II, his answer was that it was about time. Writing, recording and touring TMG I had been enjoyable enough that not doing a second one was never on the table. In the same message he counts himself lucky to have played with Brad Gillis, Ted Nugent, Tommy Shaw, Neal Schon, Doug Aldrich — and Matsumoto.
Yukihide "YT" Takiyama, brought in on guitar, framed his own position in his message on the official site: the sixteen-year-old who had just picked up a guitar would never have believed he would one day be in a band with Matsumoto, Eric, Jack and Matt — musicians he had spent his life admiring and listening to.
It was Eric Martin who kept naming the difference between the two albums. During the sessions, Matsumoto says, Eric repeatedly observed that the first record was American rock and roll while the second had Japanese in it. Enough other people said the same thing that Matsumoto took it as where TMG's own character lies.
BABYMETAL guest on "ETERNAL FLAMES," the second track of TMG II, trading lines with Eric Martin.
The people brought in for the TMG II sessions were mostly people Matsumoto already had history with. Daniel Ho had made the collaborative album Electric Island, Acoustic Sea with him in 2017; Jeff Babko had worked on his solo record Bluesman. Yukihide "YT" Takiyama played on it as well.
The autumn 2024 tour that followed the reunion was billed as TMG LIVE 2024 -Still Dodging The Bullet- and ran to nine shows in five cities. The title picks up the 2004 tour and its video release, TMG LIVE 2004 -Dodge The Bullet-, and adds twenty years of still dodging. The final night was at Tokyo Garden Theater on 12 October 2024.
The staging on the last night of the 2024 tour leaned on Japanese motifs. It opened with imagery projected onto a scrim between stage and audience, which dropped as the band went into "THE STORY OF LOVE." Enormous paper lanterns carrying the TMG logo hung above the stage, and behind Matsumoto stood a wall of Two-Rock cabinets bearing the character 玲.