Rocket Dive


"Rocket Dive" is the eighth single by Japanese musician hide, the first to bear the hide with Spread Beaver name, released on January 28, 1998. It reached number 4 on the Oricon chart and was the 33rd best-selling single of the year. It was certified Platinum by the RIAJ in May 1998. The song's name and intro are an homage to Kiss' "Rocket Ride".
On May 2, 2007, the single was re-released with a slightly different cover. On December 8, 2010, it was re-released again as part of the third releases in "The Devolution Project", which was a release of hide's original eleven singles on picture disc vinyl.

Reception

"Rocket Dive" reached number 4 on the Oricon chart. By the end of 1998 it sold 690,220 copies, making it the 33rd best-selling single of the year.
It was used as the opening theme song for the 1998 anime series AWOL -Absent Without Leave- and appears on its soundtrack. It was the theme song of the Fuji TV variety show Rocket Live, which aired from October 2012 to March 2013.

Track listing

All songs written by hide.

Personnel

The song was covered by Tomoyasu Hotei on the 1999 hide tribute album Tribute Spirits.
Tetsuya Komuro remixed the song for his 2007 album Cream of J-Pop ~Utaitsuguuta~, which was released under the name DJ TK.
It was also covered by Megamasso on the compilation Crush! 2 -90's V-Rock Best Hit Cover Songs-, which was released on November 23, 2011 and features current visual kei bands covering songs from bands that were important to the '90s visual kei movement.
defspiral covered it for their 2011 maxi-single "Reply -Tribute to hide-", which also included the band's interpretations of three other hide songs. hide had signed the members' previous band, Transtic Nerve, to his label Lemoned shortly before his death in 1998.
It was covered by And for the compilation album Counteraction - V-Rock covered Visual Anime songs Compilation-, which was released on May 23, 2012 and features covers of songs by visual kei bands that were used in anime.
The track was covered by R-Shitei for the Tribute II -Visual Spirits- tribute album, which was released on July 3, 2013.
Amiaya and Kishidan recorded versions for Tribute VI -Female Spirits- and Tribute VII -Rock Spirits-, respectively. Both albums were released on December 18, 2013.
Luna Sea covered "Rocket Dive" at the second day of their rock festival, Lunatic Fest on June 28, 2015.
The song was covered by Dragon Ash for the June 6, 2018 Tribute Impulse album.