Japanese superstar Cornelius reworks a kaleidoscopic vision of three decades of pop music on his latest album, Fantasma. Ray Gun took him on a rock'n roll tour through the streets of LA with rock historian Art Fein.

"I have met a ghost before." The artist currently known as Cornelius is standing in the deco lobby of LA's gorgeously frayed Roosevelt Hotel, sharing his haunted thoughts through his translator, Jim. "It was in Japan about two years ago, at the time of my grandmother's funeral. I was in bed and an old woman came into my room and started floating around." He waves his arms around his head like a lasso. "I couldn't really see her, but I could feel her. I couldn't move or get out of bed, and she kept saying, '87, 87.' I wondered what 87 could mean, and I thought maybe that's when I was supposed to die. But then I figured, well, if it's 87, that's not too bad."

"Unless she meant 1987, in which case you're already dead," offers Jim.

His response is delighted laughter. Cornelius--real name Keigo Oyamada--has in fact made a career out of playing with time. for years a superstar in Japan, he signed to Matador in 1997 and has just released his US debut, Fantasma (which has already gone platinum in Japan). With its kaleidoscopic retooling of three decades of popular music--from the Beach Boys to heavy metal to soundtrack samples to cheesy easy listening--the album has generated a buzz the size of Texas and left critics grappling for new adjectives to describe what might turn out to be this decade's most accomplished work of musical collage.

But at the moment, waiting for a rental van to take him on a magical mystery tour of LA's rock'n'roll sights, Oyamada is more concerned with exploring musical history than discussing his own. Video camera in tow, he is decked out in appropriate safari gear: a camouflage jacket designed by A Bathing Ape (upon close inspection, apes can be discerned lurking in its pattern), new blue jeans and blue wallabies.

Diminutive and fine-boned, Oyamada wears his hair in a neat facsimile of Brian Wilson's mop circa Pet Sounds, with dark bangs flopping into his eyes as soft and warm as brown velvet buttons. When he smiles or laughs, he looks 10 years old. In fact, Oyamada is 27. His perfectly ageless appearance suits a musician whose metier is blurring boundaries between musical eras.

Right now, the little time traveler is fidgety. Trying to make small talk, I ask how he likes the hotel.

He glances around nervously. "There are many stairs."

I dig a little deeper: "Tell me what kind of music you listened to as a kid."

Oyamada perks up. "When I was very young, music from animated cartoons. Then in elementary school and junior high, I started listening to Japanese popular music. In high school I listened to American and Western pop and got into punk."

As best as he can remember, Oyamada experienced his first concert when an employee of his family took him to see a Japanese pop star perform on top of a Tokyo department store. Then, when he was in the seventh grade, he attended his first bonafide stadium rock show: Queen. "This was before large video screens, he says. "They seemed very tiny down on the stage."

Determined that he should not appear tiny before his fans, last year Oyamada went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his sold-out show in Tokyo's Budokan Stadium would be a larger-than-life experience. an elaborate display of lights and videos accompanied the antics of gorilla-suited martial artists; the souvenir tour program included 3-D glasses and musical samples accessed by pushing buttons. A local radio station broadcast an extra rhythm track for concertgoers with Walkmans.

His sense of showmanship wasn't always so dizzyingly futuristic. As a teenager, he taught himself to play guitar listening to Kiss and Black Sabbath. he painted his room black and bought a human skeleton for company. he parents, he says, "Thought I was crazy because I would have the skeleton sitting in a chair watching TV. My mom would always come in and mistake the skeleton for me. She would say, 'Stop it!' but even though she didn't like what I was doing, she didn't try to force me to stop. They didn't force anything on me. They said, 'As long as you don't become a bum, do what you want.'"

"Well," I observe as we pile into the tour van, "You're certainly not a bum now."

"Not so far," sighs Oyamada, snuggling into a seat by the window.

As an art student in his twenties, Oyamada was the only kid in his school who knew how to play guitar. This made him very popular, and he wound up playing in numerous cover bands whose repertoires ranged from ska to punk to new wave ("I was a hired gun," he says proudly), an experience he credits for his current fascination with diverse genres. His most serious project was a band Flipper's Guitar, with whom he released three albums before realizing he would rather be recording his own music.

So he bought a sampler.

"That's when I started thinking about collaging," he recalls. "but if I look back, I realize that I've always been inclined to collage. As a child I used to draw a lot. There were these two Japanese characters called Kinkaida and Komenaida, and I would always morph them together into a different character called Kinkaiaida."

Oyamada chose the stage name Cornelius when he began his solo career in the early '90s. "I thought it would be good to have a separate name associated with my music as opposed to my own, " he explains. "That way, if my band grew, I could always just keep the same name." Japanese television happened to be running a "Planet of the Apes" marathon at the time, and Oyamada found himself smitten with Roddy McDowell's character, a benevolent chimpanzee scientist named Cornelius. "Even in the monkey world, Cornelius was very smart," he says. "He understood and empathized with the humans. I wasn't really a 'Planet of the Apes' fan until then, but after the name stuck, I felt a responsibility toward the films."

That responsibility includes wearing a large silver ring embossed with a likeness of McDowell's Cornelius. It also includes re-releasing the "Planet of the Apes" soundtrack on his own label, Trattoria, which he founded in 1993. Also on the Trattoria roster are Apples in Stereo, the Japanese bands Hanatarash and Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, and Bill Wyman's back catalogue.

Trattoria's diversity reflects Oyamada's revolving musical praxis, which, after two Japanese-released albums, --the breezy pop of First Question Award and the funky, Beastie-Boy-ish 69/96 (as well as the remix companion 96/69) --has produced the genre-bending Fantasma. Here, rather than follow a single stylistic line, Oyamada (who played all the instruments on the album) mixes and matches musical eras, media, and languages in a creatively spectacular homage to pop. Some tracks blend lounge muzak with metal guitars; others pair surf-rock harmonies with tinny Casio keyboards. One memorable number appears to use a housefly, three vacuum cleaners, and a gospel choir as instrumentation. Oyamada delivers all this via a puckish persona somewhere between Beck, DJ Shadow, and Pizzicato Five.

When I liken his musical bricolage to the work of a postmodern Dadaist, Oyamada giggles. "Dada," he sing-songs, as we disembark at the notorious Rainbow club looking for a photo op and a restroom. "Maybe. But it's not a conscious thing. I think it's based on something numerical or chronological. , like approaching the new millennium. A lot of people have started gathering various aspects of the 20th century, taking elements from the old and putting them into a new vessel, so that when you listen to it, something comes at you which feels intimately personal or familiar. You don't know what it is, but it strikes an emotional chord."

The tour van continues its winding journey through the streets of Los Angeles as our guide, Art Fein, author of The LA Musical History Tour, (now in its second printing on Henry Rollins' 2.13.61 publishing) and local cable TV personality, supplies running commentary:

"Janis Joplin died in room 105 of that hotel" (Oyamada gasps and directs his video camera at the seedy motorcourt); "There's where they found the body of Bobby Fuller (another gasp as the camera whirs); "Charlie Chaplin's studios, built in 1910; Michael Jackson did USA For Africa there" (neck-swiveling and silent awe)' "And right here is where Buffalo Springfield's house used to stand" (blank incomprehension).

When the van reaches LA's legendary Guitar Center, Oyamada climbs out to peruse the palm prints and signatures in its Rockwalk. he reverently places his hands in Brian Wilson's large prints while a photographer snaps a picture. Later, outside the Denny's Restaurant on Sunset (the Rock'n'Roll Denny's), Oyamada has his picture taken with another California legend: DJ and bon vivant Rodney Bingenheimer, who graciously interrupts his lunch for the honor--though neither he nor Oyamada appears to have the slightest idea of who the other is.

At the Gold Star Recording Studios, where the Beach Boys recorded "Good Vibrations," Oyamada again mulls the magic of influence. "I think I'm lucky to have been born at a time when, with the advent of CDs, old music and new are equally accessible, " he says, sweeping his video camera across the building's rundown facade. "Technologically, it's all fair game. We are at a time where we're digesting and looking back to see how far we've come. How that's going to evolve is difficult to say. I don't know if something will come around and clear the table off to start things anew. Tough it would be great if that came about, because it would get really boring to just rehash the past forever."

Even in Japan, where he is a full-blown superstar, little is known about Oyamada's personal life, except that he lives alone in Tokyo with his two cats, whom he boards with his mother while on tour. If he is in a relationship, he has kept it out of the public eye--though he does cite Michael Jackson as a celebrity crush. Not surprisingly, when he spots a Jacko impersonator on Hollywood Boulevard, he happily pays cash to have his picture taken with his idol's doppelganger. The two compare dance moves.

But the best is yet to come. Back at the Roosevelt, his brain brimming with rock history, Oyamada is on his way to the pool when he suddenly finds himself face to face with James Brown. The Godfather of Soul has just arrived, with a police escort, to hear a singer audition in the hotel ballroom (in keeping with the day's historical theme, she happens to be performing Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart.")

Looking formidably royal in a sleek dark suit and hairspray-cemented hair, Brown allows himself to be coaxed into a photo with the bashful Oyamada, who seems about to swoon.

After a round or mimosas to calm the nerves, we set out for the wax museum down the block, which we understand boasts a formidable "Planet of the Apes" display. But the results disappoint: the simians behind the glass case are wizened and dusty, and do little justice to the livelier cinematic counterparts. After a moment of sad contemplation, Oyamada spots a Whoopi Goldberg figure in full Sister Act drag. Quick as a bunny, he scampers across the room and clambers into the open display. there he gleefully poses for a final souvenir snapshot with Goldberg's musty simulacrum. For a moment, under the museum's garish lights, the juxtaposition seems perfect: Cornelius has once again stepped out of time and into pop history.