Background
Sugiyama was the lead guitarist in the band of Shana Morrison, the daughter of Van Morrison in her United Kingdom tour of 2006 and on her return to the United Kingdom in 2010.
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Saiichi Sugiyama
Edit ProfileCareer
His previous bands in 1990s featured Mike Casswell and Philosophy Williams of Walk on Fire, Andy Smith of Hot Chocolate, Zoot Money, Boz Burrell of Bad Company, John Cook of Rory Gallagher band as well as the guitarist, Paul Wassif. Sugiyama"s studio albums in 2000s featured Clem Clempson of Colosseum, Pete Brown (who co-wrote and co-produced the albums), Zoot Money and Ben Matthews of Thunder. His British blues-based lead guitar style as well as his association with 1999 and 2004 Crossroads Centre guitar auctions at Christie"s (as a guitar consultant) resulted in Sugiyama being labelled as a "Japanese Clapton" in the London blues clubs despite his remonstrations.
Sugiyama plays a Gibson Les Paul guitar and Marshall amplifiers.
His fluid and conversational guitar style does have a resmblance to Eric Clapton, Peter Green and has a vibrato technique similar that of Paul Kossoff whereas his singing style is of his own. Sugiyama collaborates with Mark Horiuchi, the former lead singer of the Japanese rock band Garo who had a number of chart hits in the Japanese chart in the early 1970s and the duo recorded several tracks which were included in the album "So Am I" released in Japan in 2004 Sugiyama moved from Tokyo to England in 1980 and has lived in Surrey and London since then
In January 2014, the Saiichi Sugiyama Band released the live studio album, The Smokehouse Sessions, with their current line up featuring Sugiyama, Rietta Austin (vocals), Ben Reed (bass guitar) and Mune Sugiyama (drums).
