[2] He began playing the piano professionally at the age of 17,[2][3] "accompanying singers, magicians and strippers at a cabaret in the Ginza district".
[7] Satoh played at the 1971 Berlin Jazz Festival as part of a trio; he used a then-unusual ring modulator to alter the sound.
[11] In the early 1990s he was reported as stating that 70% of his time was spent on arranging and composing, and the rest on playing and recording.
[2] For instance, he made the music of Kanashimi no Belladonna, a film in which the sound is very important; all the songs of this movie are performed by his wife, Chinatsu Nakayama.
A fictionalized version of Masahiko Satoh appears in Izumi Suzuki's short story "Hey, It's a Love Psychedelic!"