DJ Steve Aoki never got a dime from his Benihana-founder dad
During the past 10 years, EDM DJ, producer and artist Steve Aoki has performed solo at just about every arena and festival stage you can think of. But on Friday, he’ll be sharing the stage at Beacon Theatre with a very special guest — his late father, Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki.
Prior to his performance, the documentary “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” (premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival) will focus on the irrepressible and eccentric millionaire founder of the Benihana restaurant chain, and his complex relationship with his 38-year-old son.
“He was not the kind of father to sit you down and tell you about life,” Aoki tells The Post of his playboy pop. “He’d take you under his arm and show you the life he was living. I didn’t get to see him all the time, but even so, I felt spoiled by those experiences.”
Rocky was a Tokyo native who came to the US in 1960 as an star wrestler. He started his food empire selling ice cream in Harlem, but through the success of Benihana, Rocky developed a net worth of about $40 million by the mid-1970s.
Steve was 4 when his mother, Chizuru Kobayashi, divorced Rocky in 1981. He was raised by his mom in Southern California and only saw his New York-based father a few times a year. But those visits were never less than memorable, especially as his father had developed a penchant for daredevil stunts, including a boat race in San Francisco in 1979 that nearly killed him, and a nonstop hot-air balloon journey across the Pacific Ocean in 1981, which ended in a crash landing.
Aoki, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, model Tiernan Cowling, responded to his dad’s wild life by creating his own empire. In 1996, while still in college in LA, he started a record label, Dim Mak. It put out early releases from indie-rock bands like Bloc Party and the Gossip. The niche label struggled financially, but Aoki didn’t turn to his dad for help.
“His father didn’t give him a dime,” says documentary director Justin Krook.
Dim Mak wasn’t profitable until Aoki started to DJ in the mid-2000s, building up his own reputation as an entertainer — with some inspiration from his father. In much the same way Rocky had promoted the idea of chefs tossing around food on grills and putting on a show at Benihana, Aoki employed some razzmatazz at his gigs by spraying fans with Champagne and throwing huge cakes into the crowd. It’s an approach that has helped make Aoki into one of the highest-paid DJs in the world, with a net worth of $55 million.
Things between father and son soured following Rocky’s marriage to his third wife, Keiko Ono, in 2002. After Rocky’s 2008 death at age 69, a messy battle for his estate (involving some of Aoki’s six siblings) ensued and only ended last month with an Albany court ruling against Keiko.
“My father always had an open-door policy, and when I would come to New York, I would always [go] to the house to hang out with him,” he says. “But that all changed when Keiko came into his life. I rarely got to see him — none of us did. The door was locked. You couldn’t even reach the window. That really hurt.”
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