Lazy (レイジー Reijī?, typeset as LAZY) is a Japanese rock band founded in 1977 by the young classmates Hironobu Kageyama, Hiroyuki Tanaka and Akira Takasaki. The three founders soon found in their own school the drummer Munetaka Higuchi and the keyboard player Shunji Inoue to complete the line-up. The name Lazy was taken from Deep Purple's song with the same name and the music the new band wanted to play was orientated towards hard rock. Managers and producers instead envisioned the young musicians as ideal prototypes for pop icons and created, through the use of monikers, costumes and well-balanced singles, a successful boy band for the Japanese market of teen-agers. In contrast with these decisions, the band members started writing and recording their own music, slowly changing the sound of the band from easy-listening pop-rock to hard rock. A growing dissatisfaction for the direction the band had taken and the need to express their musical ability brought anyway to a split-up in 1981. All former members became known on their own, mainly in the soundtrack recording business, or formed other bands like Loudness. They reformed in 1997 for a new album and a tour and again in the following years to do several projects together. In September 2006 bassist Tanaka died of heart failure. Their most recent joint-project, along with Kageyama's JAM Project, is the single Kanjite Knight (感じてKnight?), for the anime Shin Mazinger Shogeki! Z Hen, performed under the name Ultimate Lazy for Mazinger. On November 30, 2008, also drummer Higuchi died at the age of 49.