Amp Magazine recently spoke with X JAPAN drummer / co-founder Yoshiki about the band's first ever North American tour, which is now underway. An excerpt is available below.

Q: 30,000,000 albums sold, and being able to regularly sell-out your local 55,000 capacity venue. What is there left to prove or accomplish? What is your biggest driving force now?

Yoshiki: "You can’t measure your happiness or your satisfaction by numbers, so 50,000 audience or 10,000 or even 100,000, either you’re happy or you’re unhappy. We’re very happy with our success in Japan, but we want to go outside. Our driving force is to try and break down the boundary with our music. There is still an invisible boundary, an invisible wall between East and West, so I would like to break down that wall."

Q: What have you noticed about playing in the States that’s different from Japan? I know set times are usually shorter here. Are you guys having to modify your usual set, and stage show for a US tour?

Yoshiki. "Well, we are headlining this US tour, but as we are not doing a huge, stadium show – yet – we have a limited time to perform. But it’s going to be a little harder, the set, than the Japanese version I guess. Our US show will be more about back to basics, more music driven, not a lighting or production driven concert."

Q: X Japan took a break(-up) in ’97. What changed in the years between then and when you guys decided to regroup? Was X Japan missed by you a lot?

Yoshiki: "Yes, yes, we just took everything for granted, we didn’t know how…I realized after this reunion just how good our vocalist, Toshi, sounds. We grew up together, we were always together, so I just took him for granted, not only Toshi, but all of the members of X Japan. I missed X Japan a lot, but during those almost ten years, I didn’t want to say the name of the band. Also, we lost Hide [X Japan's guitarist who died in 1998] after the band broke up, so I couldn’t even want to think about the X Japan, every time I thought about X Japan, it made me so sad. So, I buried X Japan six feet into the ground, even deeper than that, I put the thought of X Japan into the grave, and tried not to even visit that cemetery. But, for some reason, my mind always stayed in that cemetery, and finally, we resurrected X Japan from the fucking ground."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

X Japan kicked off their first ever North American tour at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, CA on September 25th. Fan-filmed footage from the show is available below. Remaining dates on the tour are as follows:

September

28 - Fox Theatre, Oakland, CA

October

1 - Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA
3 - Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver, BC
6 - Riviera, Chicago, IL
7 - Massey Hall, Toronto, ON
10 - Roseland Ballroom, New York, NY