Photo/Illutration The October, 40th anniversary issue of the Burrn! magazine

The Burrn! music magazine marked the 40th anniversary of its foundation despite finding itself in a jam over drastic changes in both the print and music industries.

The October issue of the monthly Japanese-language magazine, which specializes in hard rock and heavy metal, was released to an aging and shrinking core readership.

The musical genre has fallen out of favor among the Japanese public, and younger music fans tend to go online for information about their favorite bands.

The magazine has survived for so long largely because of its impressive number of interviews with famous artists, most of them based overseas.

Burrn! was first published in 1984.

It was named after “Burn,” a hard-rocking song by British band Deep Purple, under the belief that beginning a magazine’s title with the letter B promised strong sales.

The letter R is duplicated in the name to rhyme with “Kerrang!” a British rock music magazine.

Bon Jovi also debuted in 1984, and Van Halen’s album “1984” featured “Jump,” the band’s top-selling single.

“Heavy metal had the wind at its back that year,” said Kazuo Hirose, the second editor-in-chief of Burrn!

The magazine has since printed at least 5,000 interviews with artists over the four decades.

Hirose, 64, said many artists preferred to be interviewed by Burrn! for its name recognition rather than by other magazines.

He said he himself has taken part in several thousand interviews.

Ritchie Blackmore, former guitarist for Deep Purple who is reputedly hard to please, lowered his guard when Hirose interviewed him.

Hirose said the three-hour-long interview with Blackmore at his home in the United States left a lasting impression on him.

The popular “Disc Review” section of Burrn! rates CDs on a scale of 100 points. The magazine once received a fax from an overseas artist who disagreed with a rating.

“I don’t really like giving marks,” the editor-in-chief said.
Hirose said sales of Burrn! peaked in 1998, during the heyday of CDs.

Music fans back then bought CDs and read the accompanying liner notes for Japanese translations of the song lyrics. They then purchased Burrn! for detailed interviews with the band members.

“Burrn! was there to satisfy intellectual cravings,” Hirose said.

But the magazine has faced difficulties since the 2000s.
Not only did the Japanese public start reading fewer printed materials, but they also listened to less Western music, including heavy metal.

“There were no longer new artists who resonated with the Japanese, and our magazine came to feature only a fixed lineup of bands,” Hirose said.

He said he still listens to and reviews dozens of albums every month, including those by young bands that he sort of likes.

But the magazine’s readership is aging, and reviews of young bands often don’t resonate with readers who would rather see articles on veteran lineups.

A business model change in the music industry has also left its mark.

Music streaming services have become mainstream, and musicians are now paid according to the number of times their songs are played. CDs, meanwhile, are going the way of the cassette tape.

Although it has become difficult for young bands to earn a living, Hirose remains optimistic.

He prides himself on having featured a promising U.S. band in Burrn! even before the group was founded. The article helped to consolidate popularity for the band, Mr. Big, in Japan during the late 1980s.

“I hope our magazine remains ready to immediately feature new stars, like Mr. Big, who play good music that wins the hearts of the Japanese,” Hirose said. “I wish to go back to the starting point and face up to our niche readers, precisely because heavy metal has become a niche genre again.”

Hard rock, born in the 1960s, is based on blues music and characterized by strong lead guitars. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were early masters of the genre.

Heavy metal, which branched off from hard rock in the 1970s, has heavier and more metallic timbres.

(This article was written by Hiroshi Nakano and Yusuke Morishita.)

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