‘There was a bucket where you could squeeze sweat out of your clothes’: OZ, the club that changed Japanese rock

The venue, which opened in Tokyo in 1972, created a pioneering space for musical experiment. As a record of its wild last days is released, habitués recall how it ‘brought legitimacy to the underground’

Minoru Tezuka remembers the start of the 1970s in Japan as a time when the youth appeared lost. “The student protest movement had died down, and young people were depressed, seeking out new ideas,” he says.

They needed room to express themselves, and Tezuka played a central role in creating that space. He managed the “live house” OZ, a tight two-storey building situated in the western suburbs of Tokyo that opened in 1972. Intent on making a space for young people to get together and collaborate, he held concerts and other events and kept entry fees low. It attracted musicians from across Tokyo along with local university students sporting then on-trend long hair and bell bottoms. “It was a free atmosphere, and probably an easy place to get drugs – though I don’t know about that,” laughs Makoto Kubota, who played with Les Rallizes Dénudés at the time.

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