#111: Big In Japan by Alphaville

City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKOI
Peak Month: August 1984
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #66
YouTube: “Big In Japan”
Lyrics: “Big In Japan”

Alphaville is a band from West Germany. Marian Gold (born Hartwig Schierbaum) was born in Herford, West Germany in 1954. Gold was part of the Berlin art collective the Nelson Community, where he formed the band Chinchilla Green in the late 1970s, which also included future Alphaville bandmate Bernhard Lloyd. When Gold, Lloyd and Mertens formed a band in 1982, they originally named it Forever Young, but soon changed the name to Alphaville. Bernhard Lloyd (born Bernhard Gössling) was born in the nearby town of Enger in 1960. Before he joined the band, he did not play keyboards – instead, he was previously a club DJ. Frank Mertens (born Frank Sorgatz) was born 1961, also in Enger, West Germany.

Alphaville got their name from the 1965 French (French-langauge) dystopian science fiction/film noir by Jean-Luc Goddard. The film’s subtitle is “A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution.” The plot concerns 20th Century trench coat-wearing secret agent, Lenny Caution, is a Guadalcanal veteran of the August 1942 battle between Japan and the USA. Nonetheless, he lives in a dystopian technocratic dictatorship named Alphaville. The dicatorship was created by a Professor Von Braun who created an Alpha 60 is a sentient computer system, which is in complete control of all of Alphaville. Alpha 60 has outlawed free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion in the city, replacing them with contradictory concepts or eliminating them altogether. One of Alpha 60’s dictates is that “people should not ask ‘why’, but only say ‘because’.” In short, Alphaville is an inhuman, alienated society.

The band, Alphaville, released their debut single, “Big In Japan”, in 1984.

The bandmates of Alphaville wrote “Big In Japan”. The title of the song is kind of a joke. Many rock bands that are well past their prime continue to be “Big in Japan” long after they lose their appeal in the UK or US. The movie Spinal Tap makes fun of this phenomenon, as the titular band has a hit single in Japan just as they appear to be washed up. Real bands that were “Big in Japan” include Scorpions, Saxon, Gwar and Cheap Trick, whose album Live At Budokan captures an enthralled Japanese audience at a time when they were little-known elsewhere.

‘Big In Japan’ tells about a couple of lovers trying to get off heroin. They both imagine how great it would be to love without the drug: no steal, no clients, no ice age in the pupil, real emotions, true worlds. Till nowadays Berlin station Zoo is an important meeting place for junkies. [“Shall I stay here at the zoo? Or should I go and change my point of view for other ugly scenes?”] That’s why this place – the Berlin Zoo – became a venue of the song.

Marian Gold in a 1998 interview with the German online magazine Re.flexion said, “In 1977, I was quite regular in a club in Kreuzberg, the SO36. I hoped to meet David Bowie. There was the rumor he would be in Berlin for withdrawal treatment in that period. There was a fellow, who sold stuff of independent bands from US and UK. I bought the album of a British band named Big In Japan. ‘Big in Japan’ meant so much as if you are nothing in your environs, you can be big somewhere else. You can be a king in another world. And if you aren’t that, you can tell it at home. Japan is so far away. Anyway that statement fit perfectly to the story of the couple of lovers. So I used it for the refrain of the song.”

“Big In Japan” peaked at #5 in Sherbrooke (PQ), #3 in Boston, #6 in Montreal, and #10 in Ottawa. Internationally, “Big In Japan” reached #1 in Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany, #2 in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, #3 in Norway, #4 in Austria, Ireland and Uruguay, #5 in South Africa, #8 in the UK, #13 in France, and #66 on the Billboard Hot 100. A re-release titled “Big In Japan A.D. 1992” reached #2 in Finland, and #15 in Sweden.

A second single, “Sounds Like a Melody”, reached #1 in Italy and Sweden, #2 in South Africa, #3 in Austria and West Germany, #4 in Switzerland, #5 in Norway and Spain, #6 in the Netherlands, and #10 in Belgium and France.

In May 1985, the band’s single “Forever Young” reached #20 on CFTR in Toronto, though it stalled at #93 on the Billboard Hot 100. Internationally, “Forever Young” reached #1 in Sweden, #3 in Norway, #4 in West Germany, #7 in South Africa, #13 in France, #14 in Spain, and #18 in the Netherlands. “Forever Young” has been included in multiple soundtracks in film: Listen To Me (1989), Career Opportunities (1991), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Burlesque (2010), Rock ‘N Roll (2017), BRATS (2024), and Marty Supreme (2025).

The album Forever Young was named Best Foreign Album in the Swedish Rockbjörnen music prize in 1984, as well as also receiving the Stockholm event’s Best Foreign Group award that year.

“Forever Young” was given additional verses by David Guetta and Ava Max in 2024. Together with vocals from Alphaville, the extended version climbed to number-one in the Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Paraguay, Romania, and Slovakia, #2 in Lithuania and Venezuela, #3 in Ecuador and Uruguay, #4 in Panama, Peru and Sweden, #5 in Bulgaria, #6 in Finland, Lebanon, and Poland, #7 in Israel and the Netherlands, #8 in Croatia, #9 in the Dominican Republic, Moldova and Serbia, #10 in Germany and Puerto Rico, #11 in Spain, #12 in Nicaragua, and #15 in Japan and Latvia. Forty years after its release, “Forever Young” reached number-one in the USA on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart.

A second single in 1985, “Jet Set”, reached #11 in West Germany, and #13 in Sweden and Switzerland.

Frank Mertens is a shy and quiet person who doesn’t like to talk. Shortly after the success of their debut album, he left Alphaville in December 1984, because he found public attention stressful. After he left, Mertens founded the group Lonely Boys with his girlfriend at the time Matine Lille (née Richter) and Felix Lille (né Schulte). Mertens disbanded the group in 1987 to study economics. In 1991, Mertens moved to Paris to study art. In 1996, he moved back to Cologne, Germany, to work as a plastic artist. Mertens was replaced in January 1985 by Ricky Echolette (born Wolfgang Neuhaus in Cologne, West Germany). Echolette had been in a band called Chinchilla Green where he first met Marian Gold.

In 1986, Alphaville released their second album titled Afternoons in Utopia. The debut single was “Dance with Me”. It climbed to #4 in Norway, #5 in Sweden, #9 in Switzerland, and #14 in France. A second track from the album, “Universal Daddy”, peaked at number#12 in Denmark, and #19 in Finland.

In 1989, Aphaville released their third album titled The Breathtaking Blue. Its eventually climbed to #16 on the Hungarian pop album chart. Their fourth album, Prostitute, was released in 1994. While Salvation was released in 1997 and reached #17 on the Czech pop album chart. At this time Ricky Echolette left the band and moved to southern France with his family. Though he wrote some of the songs on Salvation, he did not play on any of the tracks.

The band went through some lineup changes and emerged with their sixth studio album in 2010 titled Catching Rays on Giant. It peaked at #9 on the German pop album chart. In 2022, the album Eternally Yours reached #2 on the German pop album chart.

Gold’s first solo album, So Long Celeste, was released in 1992. He released a second album, United, in 1996. As of 2026, he is the last remaining original member of the band, whose eighth studio album, Eternally Yours, was released in 2022.

In 2001, Lloyd also worked on a project named Atlantic Popes with singer Max Holler, on a 13-track CD. He left Alphaville in 2003. Bernhard Lloyd produces for German bands in his studio, mainly electronic music in Berlin.

August 8, 2026
Ray McGinnis

References:
“Alphaville,” Wikipedia.org.
“Marian Gold,” Wikipedia.org.
Bettina Schischke, “Interview with Bernhard Lloyd,” cosmic meadows.com, 1988. (translated by Silvia Epicoco)
“Interview with Frank Mertens,” OKEJ, Sweden, 1984. (translated by David Witkowski)

CKOI 96.9-FM Montreal Top Ten | August 24, 1984