Waiting for a second lease of life - Steve';s GL1000
I recently was watching TV with the family, in fact it was the film Charlie’s Angel’s to be honest and I was trying to compare it to the original series in the 70’s (That’s my excuse anyway!). As it turned out it was a good film, the kids loved it and it had some excellent songs on the soundtrack too.
But what grabbed my attention was a song playing in the background during the restaurant scene. I had heard it so many times but never knew who sung it. All I knew was it was sung in Japanese and the tune had been playing over in my mind again and again for years. It eventually got to the stage in the film where I was eagerly reading down the credits to find out the song title, but it was not there!
Anyhow a few days later I was on line and I thought I would check out the soundtrack through Amazon (being a bit of a computer nerd) and to my dismay the song was not listed on the movie soundtrack CD. I played the 25 second previews of each track and began to get really frustrated.
So the next step was to Google it and eventually 2 hours later I had found the song I’d been searching for. Amazing what you find with a little perseverance and patience. It is called “Ue O Muite Aruko”, or in English “I look up when I walk” and was originally released under the name “Sukiyaki” in the USA in 1963, the year I was born. I was ecstatic .
The singer was a young Japanese heart throb at the time called Kyn Sakamoto. But he was unfortunate enough to have been killed in a plane crash in 1985. So even though he is now no longer with us his song is still here to make people like me happy and think of those times way back in the seventies.
In fact it was in 1975 I can remember as a 12 year old seeing for the first time my first Honda GL1000 K1 in red. I was taken aback by its size and style and I still think to this day it is a fantastic GoldWing. Due to this memory I decided to buy one back in 1983 at the age of 20. I rode it every day I could until 1990 then I had to consider a young growing family and was forced to put the bike in the garage and drive cars instead.
Well, last year I could not hold out anymore and bought my present bike, my pride and joy “Heavenly Louise” and yes I have kept that little K1 to this very day hoping one day to bring her back to life.
So there you have it 2 great things to come out of Japan, firstly a beautiful song in 1963 and the Honda GL1000 Goldwing 1975, the start of all we have today in our world of GoldWings.
And I am sure when I am long gone my bikes will make someone else happy too, just like Kyn Sakamoto’s song does today. Click on it to listen.