felt would capture the spirit of the song. To Johnson, it seemed the song's original lyrics had 3 possible interpretations: as the mindset of a man facing execution; as someone trying to be optimistic despite life's trials; or as the story of an ended love affair. Johnson decided: "me being the hopeless romantic that I am, I decided to write about a love gone bad." According to Johnson, when Cecil Hale, vice-president of Capitol Records, heard her sing the lyrics she had written for "Sukiyaki" in the slow balladic style she envisioned for the track, "he said, 'absolutely not! Black people don't want to hear Japanese music.' I was stunned [having been] so sure he would like it. I looked at him and I said 'Last time I looked in a mirror I was black and I want to hear it.'" Producer George Duke, who was assigned to produce the upcoming A Taste of Honey album Twice as Sweet, shared Hale's lack of enthusiasm. Duke recalled: "'Man, what am I going to do with "Sukiyaki"?' I thought [Johnson] was crazy, but I said 'If that's what she wants to do, I'll do it.'" Johnson would recall Duke, "thought we could do a kind of uptempo version [but] I [saw] it as a love ballad, which is how it was done. [Duke] did a fantastic arrangement." Duke replied, "we did the song and had Clare Fischer do the string arrangement and brought June [Kuramoto] in to give it a Japanese flavor" - Kuramoto being a koto player whom Duke knew from the jazz band Hiroshima - "We added an R&B section, and that was it. It was a simple tune I never thought would become a hit. To this day, I can't believe it was as big a record as it was." Cecil Hale remained resistant to the track: as late as the master for Twice as Sweet being placed on the disc cutter "Sukiyaki" was omitted, the track only being added to Twice as Sweet before the album's August 1980 release after some eleventh hour negotiations between Johnson and Capitol Records, most essentially that Johnson be disallowed credit or royalties for her new lyrics (Capitol Records held the copyright of the Kyu Sakamoto original). After the album's uptempo advance single "Rescue Me" fell short of the R&B chart Top Ten and failed to cross over to the Billboard Hot 100,