Yoshiki Hayashi is a Japanese musician, songwriter, composer and record producer. Better known by his stage name Yoshiki, he is best known as the leader and co-founder of the heavy metal band X Japan, for which he is the drummer, pianist and principal songwriter. The band achieved breakthrough success in the late 1980s, and besides being one of the first Japanese acts to achieve mainstream success while on an independent label, Extasy Records which he founded, the group is widely credited as one of the pioneers of the visual kei movement. Though the band disbanded in 1997, they reunited in 2007 after ten years. In 2000 and 2007, Yoshiki formed his solo musical project Violet UK and the Japanese rock supergroup S.K.I.N. respectively. Yoshiki's solo career includes two classical studio albums: Eternal Melody, produced by George Martin, Eternal Melody II, and the classical compilation Yoshiki Classical. He has collaborated and played with Tetsuya Komuro and Roger Taylor. In 1999, at the request of the Japanese government, he composed and performed a classical song at a celebration in honor of the tenth anniversary of Emperor Akihito's enthronement. [More at Wikipedia]

November 20th, 1965 in Tateyama (Age 59)