Under the stage name Andre Candre, Inoue debuted in 1969 and released a single "Candre Mandre" by CBS Sony Records. After he changed his stage name and signed onto Polydor, he recorded his first studio album "Danzetsu" in 1971, and the album was acclaimed by critics. Inoue gained recognition as a folk-rock singer-songwriter through his 1973 "Kōri no Sekai" album, which became the first long-playing record that sold more than a million copies in Japan alone. His early work has been compared with the music of Paul McCartney and Roy Orbison. Mark Anderson writes in the "Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture", "His music was smart, melancholy and melodic. [...] Inoue's work of the early 1970s [...] is widely thought to have been a significant influence on the development of Japanese pop rock".