Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Y&T Discography Deep Dive: An Album-By-Album Journey [Episode 206]
Transcript
- 0:00They had the potential to cross over to top forty radio. They did it
- 0:03all, and they did it all very well, and they remain sort of
- 0:08a treasure for those in the know. People that know about Why and T
- 0:11tend to know them very well. And then some people might know the name
- 0:15and they might think of them as a one hit wonder, which makes sense
- 0:18from a chart point of view. And then some people just don't know who
- 0:22you're talking about. They'll you say the name and they're like, what what
- 0:25what? Why what are you saying? So it was a foregone conclusion that
- 0:30if I was ever going to write a book about one band, chances are
- 0:33the first thing I came out with would be whyan T. We're totally booked
- 0:37rock and roll. I mean, I'll leave you do you're reading little hands
- 0:42this, It's time to rock and roll, Rock roll up. I totally
- 0:46booked. Welcome back to book don Rock the podcast For those about to read
- 0:54and write. Find the podcast at booked on rock dot com. That's where
- 0:58you can find every episode in audio and video, also links to your favorite
- 1:03listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, and the latest rockbook releases. Also
- 1:07make sure you follow and subscribe on Facebook x, Instagram, and TikTok.
- 1:11Exclusive content almost daily on all of those sites, which you can link up
- 1:15to through booked on rock dot Com. Author Tim Darling is back as promised.
- 1:22Last time we talked about his book Unspooled, an Adventure in eight tracks.
- 1:26You can hear that one on episode two oh five. For episode two
- 1:29oh six, we have Tim here to talk about his book down for the
- 1:33count the Yant album review. This is an album by album look at the
- 1:37recorded studio output of one of hard rock's best kept secrets, Yant. A
- 1:42playlist of Yant can be found on the show notes page. Tim Drling has
- 1:48returned as promised. We would not lie to you. Tim, hey man,
- 1:52welcome back. It's good to see you again. It's been such a
- 1:55long time. You look one know, it seems like forever, right,
- 2:00Yeah, So we promised to have you back on the first one was for
- 2:02the Unspooled book, which we had a blast talking about. Now let's get
- 2:08to let's get to some Y and T, which this is cool for me.
- 2:13I'm not a well now I am wasn't a huge YE and T fan
- 2:16going in. I knew about a song or too. There you go.
- 2:19I knew about a song or two from the band, and now I'm realizing
- 2:22why you are such a fan. This is a this is an outstanding band,
- 2:25and I wanted to get into some of the songs and the albums and
- 2:30the amazing musicianship. So let's get to all that first, though, Let's
- 2:35talk about when did you become a fan? How did you become a fan?
- 2:39Well, you just summed it up right there. The reason that I
- 2:42did this book, Eric, I mean, I always thought for a while
- 2:46that for a while, since I got into the band, that all people
- 2:50that are into this type of hard rock music need to do is hear them,
- 2:54you know. So I got into the band in nineteen nine, and
- 3:00that was when they released their ten album, which was the second one they
- 3:05put up for Geffen, and I caught the video for Don't Be Afraid of
- 3:09the Dark, which was the first single they put out, and it's a
- 3:13fantastic, like mid tempo ballad. And I'd heard of Y and T and
- 3:17i'd heard Summertime Girls, but this when I Don't be Afraid of the Dark,
- 3:25I was like, this is just right up my alley. This is
- 3:28the type of music I like. And I remember so busily. It was
- 3:31break the end of Grade ten, you know, summer was just about to
- 3:35get underway, and I thought, Okay, here's a band that i've heard
- 3:38about on the periphery. It's time to get into Y and T. And
- 3:43that summer I found everything I could find from them, and I just got
- 3:46completely hooked on the band. And were they playing their songs on the radio
- 3:53where you're from in Canada? Not at all, not at all, name
- 3:57here, just summertime girls here in the US. One time I the video
- 4:00on Much Music on Canada's MTV was probably the one time it got played.
- 4:04There was a we had, you know MTV at head Bangers Ball. Much
- 4:10Music had a show called the Power Hour, same idea hard rocket metal,
- 4:14and that's where I happened to catch the Yant video and I recorded it on
- 4:18a videotape and watched it over and over and over again. And it went
- 4:23from there and that summer, like I just went full on into this band.
- 4:28And for years I didn't know other than friends of mine that I kind
- 4:34of turned on to them. I didn't know anybody that had even heard of
- 4:38the band, never mind were into them. It was a long time.
- 4:42Let's talk about the history of the band. So they're from San Francisco,
- 4:45Yeah, in San Francisco Bay Area. They formed in nineteen seventy four,
- 4:49so it's actually their fiftieth anniversary now. And the original lineup, as far
- 4:55as you know on record, was Dave Menachetti. Dave is the lead vocalist
- 5:00and the lead guitar player, Phil Kennamore bassed player and background vocalist and co
- 5:09lead vocalists. Sometimes Joey Alves was like dedicated rhythm guitar. He would do
- 5:14the occasionally, but mostly he just stuck to the rhythm and drummer Leonard Hayes.
- 5:18That was the original Y and T lineup that people got to know.
- 5:21Unfortunately, you know, the crazy thing is about time. Dave Menichetti's the
- 5:27last man standing that the other three guys have all passed away over the years.
- 5:30So that lineup was intact that Their first album was self titled, came
- 5:33out in nineteen seventy six. Originally they were called Yesterday and Today. The
- 5:40full name was printed out, named after Beatles album, so that name lasted
- 5:45for their first album in seventy six and their second album seventy eight called Struck
- 5:48Down and those two albums came out on London Records, which kind of went
- 5:53under as the second album was just coming out, so it was another three
- 5:57years before people heard from them again. They they had already sort of made
- 6:00a name for themselves in the San Francisco Bay area and then also playing places
- 6:05like Bizzari's and the Whiskey at Go Go, and bands like Quiet Riot and
- 6:13Doken and Rat all cut their teeth going to see Yant. You know,
- 6:18it's never been talked about much, but I think Van Halen as well.
- 6:21Yeah, I was gonna ask, Yeah, that was you know, there
- 6:26was a definite All these bands were playing in that circuit and Yant were doing
- 6:30it early. Even Lars Alrich has stated that when he first moved from Denmark
- 6:38to California, he was a fan of Yesterday Today and he would go and
- 6:42see them underage play, So definitely an influential band. They signed with the
- 6:47A and M Records and that's when they sort of had their most successful period
- 6:50between eighty one and eighty five. So they put Earthshaker out in eighty one,
- 6:55Black Tiger and eighty two. Their first album to chart in eighty three
- 6:59was main Street. The title song from that, one of their better known
- 7:01songs. Their biggest album was nineteen eighty four in Rock We Trust. Almost
- 7:06went gold, and I've said many times if Universal did not it, it
- 7:12might be a gold record. Now peaked at forty six on Billboard. It
- 7:16was the biggest selling album. Next year they put out the single Summertime Girls,
- 7:20that became their most successful single. That peaked at number fifty five on
- 7:25Billboard. So it got a lot of top forty stations playing it, just
- 7:30not enough to crack into the top forty. The video got a lot of
- 7:32plan on MTV. Unfortunately, I've said that, I say this a lot.
- 7:39I don't think A and M were that great label when it comes to
- 7:42hard rock and heavy metal. I don't think they knew what to do with
- 7:45this band. So then they signed to Geffen Records, which on the surface
- 7:49seemed like a good move. It certainly worked for White Snake, it worked
- 7:54for Aerosmith, didn't work for Yant. They did two records on Geffen.
- 7:58They did Contagious in nineteen eight and as I said before, Ten in nineteen
- 8:03ninety, and by that time, you know, when it became apparent the
- 8:07ten wasn't going to be a big hit, they decided to knock it on
- 8:09the head. So I'll talk about the lineup changes real quick between A and
- 8:15M and Geffen. So around nineteen eighty six, Leonard Hayes left and he
- 8:18was replaced by a drummer that a lot of people know, the name Jimmy
- 8:22DeGrasso. Jimmy went on to play with Alice, Megadeth, with Suicidal Tennesse,
- 8:26He's Black Star Riders, you know, he's Leader Ford. He's played
- 8:30with a lot of different groups. So then Joey Alves rhythm guitar left and
- 8:35then he was replaced by Steph Burns. So that was the lineup that did
- 8:39the ten album and their final you know what, they called their farewell tour.
- 8:43The hiatus only lasted about four years and then they were back in that
- 8:46lineup. They did a couple of independent albums in the mid to late nineties,
- 8:50Musically Incorrect and Endangered Species, a lot of touring. The lineup was
- 8:56revamped in I want to See around two thousand and three. Sometime around there
- 9:01in the process, Dave Menichetti had put in a couple of solo records,
- 9:05but Steph Burns left, they got john Nyman now. John Nyman was a
- 9:11longtime friend of the band. He'd known them forever. He's a Berry,
- 9:13a guitar player. He got starred his major label Start, was part of
- 9:20Eric Martin's band for Mister Big when he was a solo artist. So John
- 9:26joined the band and Leonard Hayes was eventually eventually left or was asked believe whatever.
- 9:31He was replaced by a guy named Mike vander Yuel. And since after
- 9:37that, I'm trying to think what the next thing was. Oh, so
- 9:41you had the two main guys, Dave Menichetti, lead singer, league guitar
- 9:45player and bassist Cope Kennimore. They were like the Paul and Jean of Yat.
- 9:50It was always those two guys, and they changed like second guitar player
- 9:56and drummer Till Kenemore sadly passed away from cancer in twenty eleven. He was
- 10:00replaced by Gunning brad Lang. Brad played with a bunch of different people.
- 10:03He used to be in a man called Jet Red. I think nowadays he's
- 10:07with the Bullet Boys, and he didn't last. He lasted a few years.
- 10:11Then he was replaced by Aaron Lee, and that's the lineup. Today
- 10:16is Dave Menichettie john Nyman, Aaron Lee, Mike Vanderhuel. They're still touring
- 10:24so far. The last album they put out was an album called Face Melter
- 10:26in twenty ten. And I just think that they should have been everybody as
- 10:33big as Van Halen, Maybe not as big as Van Halen, okay,
- 10:39but as big as Rat, as big as Motley, as big as mid
- 10:43that level of band. They should have been a band that could sell millions
- 10:46and millions of albums. I think they had the potential to cross over to
- 10:50a metal audience, old school medal, they had the potential to cross over
- 10:54to top forty radio. They did it all, and they did it all
- 10:58very well, and they remain sort of a treasure for those in the know.
- 11:03People that know about Why and T tend to know them very well.
- 11:07And then some people might know the name and they might think of them as
- 11:09a one hit wonder, which makes sense from a chart point of view.
- 11:13And then some people just don't know who you're talking about. You say the
- 11:18name of They're like what what? Why? What are you saying? I
- 11:22ran into that a lot when I was in school, so it was a
- 11:24foregone conclusion that if I was ever going to write a book about one band,
- 11:28chances are the first thing I came out with would be Yan T.
- 11:33Wow, because I've never ever been a book about them ever. Yeah,
- 11:35this is the first book ever on the band as far as I know.
- 11:39As far as I know, people have asked me that a lot, and
- 11:41I said, look, we may find out someday that they put out,
- 11:46you know, a book in Japan in nineteen eighty five, because they were
- 11:50fairly big in Japan. But I don't think so. No one has come
- 11:52to me and say, you know, actually there was a Y and T
- 11:54book. But either way, there wasn't one point like this. I just
- 11:58don't think there was one. I think this is the only one. There
- 12:01have been books that mentioned them, but I think this is the only one
- 12:03that's dedicated to them. And Manichettia that name was familiar to me through guitar
- 12:09magazines. I think he was well respected is well respected among the guitar community.
- 12:13And it's also fair to compare them. Would they be like America's version
- 12:18of UFO, because UFO in the UK is that similar situation where how come
- 12:24they didn't get bigger than they were UFO's got a huge following in an outstanding
- 12:30band. You know what, I'm not savvy on UFO. I'm not familiar.
- 12:35I mean I know like like Sound and a couple other songs, but
- 12:37I do know that they are a well respected band. And yeah, in
- 12:43the UK they were fairly big Finn Lizzie too, Lizzy's one. Yeah,
- 12:46although Lizzy had those big they had a few big hit singles. Ryne t
- 12:54has won Summertime Girls, but it's it is similar. Yeah, Yeah,
- 13:00one of hard rock's best kept secrets. Absolutely they are. And you know
- 13:05a lot of people too. If you grew up in the eighties and you
- 13:07were really into the hard rock and metal scene, you'll also know Dave from
- 13:11the here in eight song Stars after Ronnie James Dio, Dave's the first voice
- 13:18you hear on that song sometimes in the night, when you're feeling the cold,
- 13:22that's Dave Menachettie. He sings on that song. He sings some great
- 13:24ad libs at the end. Ronnie James. People in the industry knew Ronnie
- 13:30James, dial knew he was great. D Sneyder knew he was great.
- 13:33They got all kinds of opening good opening slots, special guest slots, like
- 13:37they toured with the biggest of names in this genre. They just never cracked.
- 13:43They just never cracked completely through. And I have to think that it
- 13:48was record label maybe some bad, bad record label decisions, and they didn't
- 13:54really have what you'd call high powered management. It was just sort of like
- 13:56local. They were managed by named Scott Bore for years. Who I'm sure
- 14:01he was a great guy. He figures in on, you know, the
- 14:03production of some of their albums. But you know, if they'd have been
- 14:07managed by say Q Prime or you know who else, you know, Doc
- 14:13McGee, you know, any of the big name managers that can sort of
- 14:16the movers and shakers in that world, you know, they might have they
- 14:20might have had something. And then there is the case of maybe the name
- 14:26was a little confusing, you know. So what happened after those first two
- 14:30albums. They gained a pretty big following in their you know, home area,
- 14:35the Bay Area and surrounding, and then in other pockets in the US,
- 14:39but mostly it was like a you know, a Bay Area thing.
- 14:43But their fans would always chant Wyant. They always shortened the name. So
- 14:46when they signed A and M Records, they just decided to go with the
- 14:52shortened version of the name, and I think it does ever ring ring to
- 14:56it. They came up with a cool logo for it, but you know,
- 15:01it might have caused some confusion. People might have thought, well,
- 15:03what is that duo? Or is it what does it stand for? What
- 15:05kind of music we did? Yeah, but so the big discussion among fans
- 15:13is like, well was it management was at the record label. And what
- 15:16we keep coming back to is because it wasn't the music. The music was
- 15:20exactly what it should have been, and they should have There are places where
- 15:26they could have broken through. At so many points in their career. You
- 15:30know, there was a slow, slow, slow build, and A and
- 15:35M Records, you know they Yeah, they put out the ads, they
- 15:37put out the promo singles, they did these things. But when in Rock
- 15:43We Trust came out, this is nineteen eighty four, I mean, this
- 15:46is the perfect time for this sort of music. This is when Rat and
- 15:50Scorpions and Autograph we're having top forty singles, where a few years ago it
- 15:54was unheard of for bands that had heavy disordered guitars to have any kind of
- 15:58top radio success, top forty radio success. So here comes Yant with their
- 16:04most accessible album yet and it struggles to hit forty six and it's estimated it
- 16:11sold about four hundred and fifty thousand copies in its first run in the state,
- 16:15So people that don't know, five hundred thousand is gold status and that
- 16:21should have broken them through. So then by the time Summertime Girls came out,
- 16:29Summertime Girls should have done for Yant what Jump did for Van Halen.
- 16:33Yes, it was a song, it was uber poppy. It really didn't
- 16:37represent them. It was very keyboarding. But then Jump was quite a departure
- 16:41for Van Halen. I'm not saying it would have been a number one song,
- 16:45but I'm saying it should have done better than it did. And unfortunately,
- 16:49because it was the only song to garner any amount of airplay, there's
- 16:52probably people that think, well, that's probably what their music tends to sound
- 16:56like. It's not. They don't even have a keyboard player in the band.
- 17:00Looked on podcasts. We'll be back after this. Now here's a name
- 17:07that's very familiar and I already mentioned this to you while we weren't recording last
- 17:14time. Hugh Sime does the artwork for your book? How did you get
- 17:19him to do this? Hugh sign? For those who may not know Rush
- 17:23fans know who he is. Oh yeah, here's an award winning graphic artist
- 17:26who has worked with pretty much everybody in the business album covers, did so
- 17:32many great album covers. Yeah, how'd you get him? It's pretty mind
- 17:37blowing to this day, you know, because yeah, Wyant and Rush are
- 17:41probably my two favorite bands, you know, and Hugh started working with Rush
- 17:48from the Crest of Steel album onward. So it's only the first two Rush
- 17:52albums that he didn't do the artwork for every tour book, every home video,
- 17:57posters, all you sign artwork. He's the guy. He's the Rush
- 18:02artwork guy. He is what Rushed, you know, like Roger Dean is
- 18:06to. Yes, you know, it's a very distinctive style, but you
- 18:10also branched out and he's you know, he's done print ads, he's done
- 18:12TV, he's done all kinds of different things. But you know, people
- 18:18that are into our genre, hard rock and metal, I can list off
- 18:22a ton of val I bet you anybody watching this you've got at least one
- 18:26album in your music collection that you Sime did a cover for. I don't
- 18:30care Bon Jovi New Jersey, bon Jovi New Jersey, which very much was
- 18:34inspired by the White Snake nineteen eighty seven album cover White Snake, Slip of
- 18:38the Tongue, The covered the Old Page album White Snake, Restless Heart,
- 18:42Aerosmith, Get a Grip that doesn't really look like a Hugh Sime cover,
- 18:47but it is. Kiss, Revenge, Megadeth, Countdown to Extinction, Euthanasia,
- 18:52Iron Mate, and The X Factor, Queen's Wright Promised Land Here,
- 18:57The Now Frontier, The Sign of the Times compilation Man Tesla Busted Not is
- 19:06a used Time cover water Stick it to you. No, No, I
- 19:12don't. It's on Wikipedia. I always maybe I don't know that that one
- 19:18didn't. But yeah, I mean he definitely worked. He did Cherry Pie,
- 19:22he did Great White Hooked. You're helping me think of a few more.
- 19:26We'll just let me look at my collection here. Uh yeah, I
- 19:30just quickly went to Wikipedia. Revenge, which one Night Ranger, What Man
- 19:36in Motion? Yeah, Kiss Revenge. Yeah, so you know, Kiss
- 19:42fans tend to know who did everything, So yes, that's a name.
- 19:47Uh. And he started working with Dream Theater in about two thousand and five,
- 19:51and I think he's done everything for them since then, which kind of
- 19:52makes sense because Dream Theater is sort of like the modern day I mean,
- 19:57they're not modern now that they were sort of like the modern day Rush when
- 20:00they came out Mega Death. He did the count out to Extinction and this
- 20:07is interesting the band he did the ninety three album by the band Jericho.
- 20:12I mean he's he's a Canadian, right, He's Canadian by way of England,
- 20:18but he grew up in England. Yeah, okay, so you signed
- 20:21you Simon did do the cover for to Take It to you? Yep?
- 20:25Yeah, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have thought that was a sign because
- 20:27usually you look at enough of them and you go, you can kind of
- 20:30tell. Yeah, he did the Bacon Brothers, Kevin Bacon and his brother
- 20:34two thousand and ones. Can't complain. He's got a lot of Canadian acts
- 20:38that people in the States might not be aware of, like Max Webster,
- 20:41Kim Mitchell, Honeymoon's Sweet Helix. Even if it was just one album,
- 20:47that the fact is that you probably got something that you signed design in your
- 20:51in your Yeah, alcohol, So what's happened? So I'll tell you.
- 20:56I'm take forever to get to anything that's okay that but I am so I'm
- 21:00passionate about this and it's this was such a such an adventure because I never
- 21:06thought this would, uh, you know, end up happening as far as
- 21:08the cover. But the first person I reached out to as far as art
- 21:15directors were concerned, was another name people will recognize. I think John Taylor,
- 21:18dismutes. John Taylor just makes has a really distinct style. He did
- 21:25Keel the Right to Rock in the Final Frontier, Uh, he did Lynch
- 21:30Mob Wicket Sensation, he did Winger in the Heart of the Young, and
- 21:34he did the best the probably the visually the best known Y and T albums,
- 21:40Black Tiger, Mean Streak and in Rock We Trust Right in a Row.
- 21:44Those all have a very distinctive look to them, and I think they're
- 21:45just like especially Black Tiger and Mean Streak. I think that those are just
- 21:49the coolest looking album covers. I reached out to him just to see if
- 21:55I could get some stories from him, and I never heard back, and
- 21:59just on a whim, I reached out to you Sign because Hugh Sime designed
- 22:03the cover for Contagious. He did uh, he did a lot of work
- 22:07for Geffen and John Kalodner. That's how he ended up working for White Snake.
- 22:14He did, he did the last Black and Blue album in Heat.
- 22:21Yeah. Yeah. He ended up working a lot with with Geffen and with
- 22:23John Kalodner, and and and Contagious was another one of those projects. So
- 22:30and lo and behold he emailed me back, which I was never expecting.
- 22:36And I'm just trying to keep it cool, right, This is Hugh Sign.
- 22:40This is a big like He's like a as far as designers go.
- 22:44He's like a rock star in the design world because I've got so many examples
- 22:48of his artwork. Oh yes, and uh so, all I wanted to
- 22:56ask him was what he remembered about working on that album, because I know
- 23:00that, you know, these designers, it's their job. They don't necessarily
- 23:03have to like the band they're working for. They don't have to necessarily know
- 23:07anything about their music. Here's you got a band, you know, this
- 23:11is the kind of music they do. This is what they want to call
- 23:12the album go you know? And uh so with Contagious, if people don't
- 23:19know what it looks like, it's basically like someone through a vial or a
- 23:23you know, a test tube. Of something, you know, some sort
- 23:26of liquid and it explodes and then it's got like a sun sunset underneath.
- 23:30It's a really cool cover, really striking, and it's one of my favorite
- 23:34uses of the Yant logo. It's all in gold and it just looks really
- 23:37cool. And basically he said that, you know, he didn't he mainly
- 23:42remember working with Kolowedner. He didn't remember so much working directly with the band.
- 23:48But I mean it would be hard. You've done hundreds and hundreds and
- 23:52hundreds of albums. I don't know how you can remember each one of them,
- 23:55you know, especially when they were just one offs, like one per
- 23:59band. It's like, yeah, I think maybe I did that one.
- 24:02I don't know. It's just another day's work. So we actually ended up
- 24:07having a phone conversation, which was, you know, a pretty big deal.
- 24:11And I'd heard him in interviews before, so I knew what he sounded
- 24:14like. He said, well, that's that's him that I'm talking to,
- 24:17And he could talk for hours about he's a musician in his own right,
- 24:22you know, but a lot of stories we're working with Rush and conversations to
- 24:26Neil Pier which was just like this is amazing. Yeah. And at a
- 24:30certain point Hugh said or asked me. He said, Tim, have you
- 24:33got anybody working on a cover for this book for you? And that took
- 24:40me completely by surprise. It was the Hugh Sign just asked if I wanted
- 24:45him to design the book covered Twilight Zone and I really had to end it.
- 24:52But but I really had to stress to him. I said, you
- 24:53that would be absolutely amazing. But it's not just low budget. It's no
- 25:00budget. I'm just me. I don't have a publisher or an agent or
- 25:04anything. And he said, well, think about it. It might be
- 25:07fun. And so that's when we had this phone conversation. Long story short,
- 25:12he made me a very generous offer. I'm sure that it was just,
- 25:15you know, like below minimum wage for a Hugh Sign project. But
- 25:22and I had an idea initially that I wanted to do something like what h
- 25:29did for Rush on their live album Exit Stage Left, which, for those
- 25:33that aren't into Rush, basically it reprises icons and images from the previous albums
- 25:37to that point and they're all, you know, and it's up to people
- 25:41to find them in the you know. But he had a really good point.
- 25:45He said, you're talking about you know Amazon. This is going to
- 25:49be through Amazon, because I told him that you're talking about thumbnails, right,
- 25:52you need something that will stand out. I said, you know what
- 25:55you're Hugh sign this is what the book's called, this is what it's on.
- 26:02Do your thing. And he came back to me with this gorgeous steampunk
- 26:08looking cover and my first reaction, the first thing I thought it was like,
- 26:15this looks like something he would do for Queen's Rike. This looks like
- 26:19Promised Land or here in the Now. Frontier has got those brown hues to
- 26:22it. I loved it. He's got the tea in the foreground, the
- 26:26today and the yesterday in the background. Just just amazing. And the really
- 26:32really cool thing about it, and I didn't notice this for quite a while,
- 26:34is that sitting on top of the tee is a beaker full of some
- 26:41sort of caustic liquidness steam coming off. Yeah. That's a nod to the
- 26:45contagious album cover that he designed. Oh man. So I'm like, that
- 26:51is perfect, perfect, wow. And there is no question that having Hugh
- 26:59Stime's name attached sold me some books. I know it did. I'm very
- 27:07proud of the inner contents, of course, but that name means something to
- 27:11people in our world. So I know people looked at that and go,
- 27:15you sign, Okay, this guy must be for real. Let's check it
- 27:18out. Yeah, yeah, that's how That's how that came down. It's
- 27:22pretty mind blowing. I mean to have email conversations with you sign. I
- 27:26haven't talked to him in a while, but I mean, you know,
- 27:29he he made a post about the book once it was out, and you
- 27:30know, he's very good a book promoting it and it just came out last
- 27:34summer I think, right was it? I came out in December? Oh
- 27:37that's right late, yeah, three okay, yeah, I think it was
- 27:42like last summer, May or June of last year. Yeah, last summer.
- 27:47It's like around September is when it appeared on Amazon. It had been
- 27:49out as a Kickstarter project for for two years at that point, but I
- 27:56didn't think that there were ever going to be any more copies of that one
- 28:00until I brought it back to it or brought it over to Amazon. But
- 28:03but yeah, Whyan the Wyant book was the first one to just strictly come
- 28:07out as an Amazon print to print to order, and it came out just
- 28:11perfectly, and one of the things that I love about it is unlike on
- 28:15school, this isn't full color because it just costs so much to make it
- 28:18full color. But the the way that black and white photos translate, they
- 28:26came out very very well. Yeah, and all of these everything you see
- 28:30in this book, but these are all from my own collection. Okay,
- 28:34all of these, the albums, the singles, you know, the home
- 28:37the DVDs, all of that stuff. It's all my stuff. And yeah,
- 28:44it was it was pretty uh, a pretty amazing prog process. I've
- 28:48met a lot of Y and T fans since doing this. I had a
- 28:51lot of cool people helped me with the book. Well, the forward Sean
- 28:55Kelly, i think is the same Sean Kelly who was on this podcast he
- 28:59had the book. Call it hair metal. Absolutely, I'm super super duper
- 29:03guy, fairly fairly off and that is a great book. I'm also a
- 29:08huge fan of Cody Atch. They're another unsung band that I just love and
- 29:14and he's their current guitar player. He plays with the Air and he's played
- 29:17with a ton of people. Yeah, he was telling me he was he
- 29:18was on one of those cruises with all the all these bands, Winger and
- 29:22yeah, you name it. Yeah, I just don't call it hair metal.
- 29:25I recommend anybody from our book. That summed up so much of what
- 29:29I've always thought about this type of music. But yeah, he was,
- 29:32he was great. He wrote a fantastic forward to it, and he told
- 29:33me, he said, man, I'm I was always kind of I was
- 29:37always aware of this band, but you've really got me checking out their albums
- 29:41now. And that's to me, that's the gratifying thing. And that's all
- 29:45I've ever tried to do since I got into this band, is like,
- 29:48if you like this band, in this band, in this band, you'll
- 29:51probably like yan t. You just got to hear them and and sometimes it
- 29:55takes somebody that you know the name to get you know, on Kelly Okay,
- 30:00cool, Martin pop Off, you know you've had another Martin pop Off
- 30:04talked about. I've got him on the chapters about the first three albums.
- 30:11Great. You know, he did great as usual. Pete Pardo from Sea
- 30:12of Tranquility is in here. Yeah, they're all part of this if you
- 30:17want to talk about that too. How the book is set up. You
- 30:19have a very list of writers and YouTubers and music fans offering their views on
- 30:25the catalog. This book is very much based on Martin's series of books that
- 30:30he calls album by Album, and they're panel books where you get a panel
- 30:34of people, however many people you want per album. You ask them all
- 30:38the same question and you get their answers, whether you do it via zoom
- 30:42or whether they type them out and send them to you, that's how you
- 30:45gather this content. And I really liked the Queen one that Martin did,
- 30:52the album by album I've read that. I don't know how many times I've
- 30:55got his Brush one too. He's got other ones, but those are the
- 30:56only two that I have. But I said, yeah, I can me
- 31:00doing something like that. And you know, Martin and I have talked a
- 31:04lot, and I asked him, I flat and asked him, you know,
- 31:08are you ever planning on doing Awaian t book? And he said no,
- 31:12I don't think so. He he did some of those little ye old
- 31:17metal like the ninety nine cent you know, audio books and stuff, and
- 31:22he really, you know, he really likes the first few albums, but
- 31:25he's not a big fan of like the commercial stuff. I'm a fan of
- 31:27all of it. And but he did say kind of like the Unschooled.
- 31:32He kind of planted the seed. He said, no, I wasn't planning
- 31:33a doing one, but somebody should. So I thought, okay. I
- 31:40mean it's like it's almost like all my years of being a fan prepared me
- 31:45for for doing this, and you know, already having a book under my
- 31:49belt. I'm like, I can do this. I can do I know
- 31:52that I can do a book, it's just how am I going to do
- 31:55this one? So I really went with that album by album. I just
- 31:57couldn't call it album by album. That's kind of his thing, and one
- 32:01of his publishers kind of they get a little territorial book the name. I
- 32:06said, that's okay. So we went back and forth, and Martin's actually
- 32:07the one that suggested Down for the Count, which is of course one of
- 32:10their albums, is not one of their you know, more highly looked upon
- 32:15albums, but as a title, it makes sense we're sort of we're not
- 32:17counting them down, but we're talking about each one. So, you know,
- 32:22Down for the Count the Yant album review. Well, so that he
- 32:25brings up a point that this is for me, it's the same experience,
- 32:30like now I'm listening to all of their music because of the book, so
- 32:32thank you for that. But he brings up something that maybe my favorite aspect
- 32:38of Y and T, especially those first two albums, which Martin is a
- 32:40fan of, the double bass pedal work of Leonard Hayes, like on that
- 32:46first on that first album self titled, it's not double bass, it's not
- 32:52it's a single bass pedal Leonard. That's even more impressive to they just had.
- 32:57He was just born and blessed with an incredible right, incredibly fast right
- 33:00foot, and he could do these really insane based with one foot. That's
- 33:07what he was known for in drum Circles a day is the one that you,
- 33:13oh, yeah, he'll do it. That's off that first album,
- 33:15super like insane insane drum Patterson. I got to tell you if you're interested
- 33:21in yan T and and thank you by the way for you know, finds
- 33:24about the book, but for anybody who's into YANT and wants to know more,
- 33:28yes, by the book, but go to the band's website and get
- 33:31yourself a copy of this on with the show on the documentary, this is
- 33:37the story of yan T. This is as complete as anything you could ever
- 33:43hope for I learned so much watching this, and I thought I knew a
- 33:45lot about this band. It's narrated by Eddie Trunk, and it is.
- 33:50If you combine the main documentary on Disc one with the the extra features that
- 33:54are on disc too, you've got hours and hours and hours of material.
- 33:59Well, Lenny Trunk's the one that that really championed UFO. That's how he
- 34:01became a UFO fan. Yeah, And to be honest with you, I've
- 34:06been trying to reach Eddie for months because I know he's such a fan.
- 34:09I just you know, you've ben to send him a book and get him
- 34:12to talk about it. But that's another story. But in this documentary they
- 34:19talked to Don Dawkin, Eric Martin, Frankie Hannon from Tesla, Sammy Hagar,
- 34:27Steve Smith from Journey. Jimmy's a fan, huh. Sammy's a yan
- 34:30T fan. I mean, like, so he's from the San fran area.
- 34:35And and if I had to describe wyan T Dave Benichetty, He's not
- 34:40a clone, but he kind of has a similar voice to Sammy, a
- 34:45similar set of pipes. That's the easiest comparison I could I could come up
- 34:49within the easiest band I can compare wyan t Is Van Halen in general because
- 34:53they kind of they're kind of this combination of like the David Lee Roth era
- 34:58music with a Sammy vocal. You know, Dave Can can can sing just
- 35:04about anything in the hard rock contest or context. He he can sing ballads,
- 35:08he can sing you know, more commercial minded material. He can sing
- 35:12heavy stuff like he's just lead guitar. Yes, that's you know what a
- 35:16talent. But and you noted how I think it's in the book. His
- 35:20voice got better as the albums I think so, Yeah, because he was
- 35:22the reluctant lead singer, right they they he thought, well, some we'll
- 35:27just get event we'll get a front man eventually. But event he just got
- 35:30better at it and better at it and and pretty soon yeah, okay,
- 35:34and that's you know, I don't know why it matters, but people have
- 35:37said, well, maybe that's the reason they didn't really break they didn't have
- 35:39a front man. Well, not every band has a front man. It
- 35:42certainly didn't hurt Cinderella. And there's a band with the lead singer that played
- 35:45lead guitar, So you never know who else is in the document Bobby Blatzer.
- 35:52Uh. Oh, there's so many people that that that. Oh uh
- 35:58uh. The drummer for from Saxon, Nigel Blockler. They talked to some
- 36:06of the producers that worked on the YT albums like Max Norman, Chris Sangerites
- 36:10who is now in the Locer with us, Tom Allen, and and just
- 36:15the insights they talked to. Yeah, they talk to every member that's been
- 36:20in the band. They even talked to a couple of guys that were in
- 36:22an early version of the band that I didn't even know about, like before
- 36:24their first album came out. So that's that's the kind of stuff that you
- 36:28learned from watching this. But it really it tells a story so well that
- 36:34you know you come to the end of it. It is so worth the
- 36:37money to pay for this. It just it came out twenty nineteen, so
- 36:39it's fairly up to date and I would recommend it to anybody. Their website
- 36:45is it's kind of hard. It's you can't use an an for sand in,
- 36:49you know, in a URL. So it's why an dt rocks dot
- 36:52com that's their website. I think this is still available. They really need
- 36:58to restock their web store as far as CDs go, but I think you
- 37:00can still get this on I think on DVD or Blu ray. I was
- 37:06supposed to be talking about my book, but when you mentioned, you know,
- 37:08wanting to know more about the band. This is an excellent It's one
- 37:12of the best rock documentaries I have ever seen. Another guy that I talked
- 37:15to the book in depths, I've been buddies with him for years and years
- 37:21and years, a guy named Jeff Keir, also known as Rowdy Jay.
- 37:24Jeff was Wyant's webmaster for many years, and he was also the moderator on
- 37:30their forum when their forum was active. That was one of the first forums
- 37:36I joined when I first got a home computer because I wanted to know more
- 37:38about the band. I wanted to meet more Yant fans. The band members
- 37:43themselves would pop in occasionally, but I got to know Jeff really well.
- 37:45So when it came time when I was doing this book, he was one
- 37:49of the first people I thought of. I said, do you want to
- 37:51take part in this this one? He's like absolutely, man, He's like,
- 37:53somebody's got to do this. I'm glad it's you and Jeff. I
- 37:57interviewed him in the book for how he got started. He ended up doing
- 38:00a fan site when the Internet was just you know, coming around like a
- 38:06I don't know if it was a GeoCities, but it was like a what
- 38:08did he call, like a music board or like a message board. Yeah,
- 38:12like an AOL message board. I remember they used to have like in
- 38:15the mid in the you know, the mid nineties, early days, right
- 38:19for this sort of thing, like not every band had a website at this
- 38:22point, and a friend of Dave Menichetti's came across it and brought it to
- 38:27Dave's attention. So he ended up meeting Jeff and say, hey, you
- 38:30know, we're putting together a website. Do you want to help us with
- 38:32it? So he went from there. So he knows those guys very well.
- 38:36The official site ryant rocks dot com. A quote from Ronnie James deal
- 38:40Mannichetti is one of the most underrated singers on the face of the earth.
- 38:45High praise from Ronnie James deal Yeah, that's why he featured him so prominently
- 38:50on the Hearing Aide song. Right, And you know there's a quote.
- 38:53I have the Contagious twelve inch single and it's got like a little blurb on
- 38:58the back of it, and Eddie Van Halen is quoted as saying something like,
- 39:01I've been all around the world and there ain't enough good rock bands like
- 39:06Yan T. Wow. So like those those ibrob Halford sung their sang their
- 39:10praises all the time, Like I said, de Snyder, you know they
- 39:16they're well respected within the hard rock community. Another footnote is that Motley cruez
- 39:23first ever show was opening for Y and T in nineteen eighty one, and
- 39:29you know, you know, let's say what you will about the guys Motley
- 39:34Crue. Four years later, they did return the favor because they had Y
- 39:37and T opened for at least a part of the Theater of Pain tour.
- 39:40So and that's one of the other things that that kind of irks me a
- 39:45little bit. Like now these well you know, musicians that ended up in
- 39:49bands that did better than Y and T are all singing their praises. But
- 39:52when I was buying metal Edge and Circus and did Prager in the late eighties
- 39:55and early nineties, especially the early nineties, when I get into the band,
- 40:00nobody talked about Y and T and and and you know, if you
- 40:04you know, you know that yourself, Like when a band would talk about
- 40:07another band, I would listen, might not necessarily get into it, but
- 40:12my ears would be tweaked a little bit. You know. That's why That's
- 40:15one of the reasons I got into Queen, because def Leppard Metallica extreme,
- 40:20and I'm like, Okay, there's got to be more of this band than
- 40:22another one bites the dust, you know what I mean. Like I just
- 40:23wasn't hearing the right things. And and look what Metallica did for bands like
- 40:29diamond Head, Like nobody, you know, forgotten bands, and now they're,
- 40:35you know, in the metal community, a diamond Head. Yeah.
- 40:37Yeah, So you know, I wish someone had had thrown y and t
- 40:40at bone that way and and and said, hey, this is a great
- 40:45band. And but you know something that came up in this documentary and it
- 40:51is mentioned in the book too, because it is significant and it's very unfortunate.
- 40:54But the longer that they were around, their experience started to work again,
- 41:00because you know, when you've been at it that long and you hadn't
- 41:04really broken through within the industry, like radio programmers and record company people were
- 41:08like these guys again, they you know, they haven't knocked it on ahead
- 41:13yet, and you know, it's it's sad, you know, but I
- 41:19talked about this too, and I think it's true. When grunge happened,
- 41:24I sort of call it the great leveling when it comes to traditional hard rock
- 41:30and you know what used to be called old school metal, there was kind
- 41:34of a leveling period where everybody was you know, effective in some ways.
- 41:39I mean even bands as big as def Leopard were knocked down to gold status
- 41:43at that time. I mean, it really noted the wind out of the
- 41:45scene. Now Y and Tea it just so happens kind of sat that out
- 41:51because they played their last shows at the end of nineteen ninety and then they
- 41:54took a hiatus for five years, so they were kind of immune. They
- 41:59didn't really have that Dave was building his own studio and things like that.
- 42:05But you know, when they really started touring heavily around two thousand and three,
- 42:09and there's a good reason that it happened when it did. They started
- 42:14playing all these festivals like Sweden Rock and you know, places like that,
- 42:19and started to you know, people were just loving seeing Whyn't live. Now
- 42:22they can go on like the rock cruises and do as well or better as
- 42:27bands that you know, went way past them in sales, way passed them
- 42:30up the charts, and you know, there's such a respect now. I
- 42:37just think that that perseverance has paid off because Dave Menichetti is still out there.
- 42:42He's seventy years old and he still sings really well, like he's kept
- 42:45his vocal chops up. I mean, yeah, he's seventy years old.
- 42:50He's not singing like he did when he was in his late twenties early thirties,
- 42:52but he's still he's still delivering. And they're singers that are much younger
- 42:58than him, that cannot do any thing close to what they used to do.
- 43:00So if you live in California, you can see them Friday July nineteen,
- 43:05venture A Music Hall, and then the twentieth they're in San Juan Capistrano,
- 43:08California, Coach House Concert Hall, and then Friday August nine, Berkeley,
- 43:14California, Cornerstone Craft Beer and Live Music. There you go free plug
- 43:19for some upcoming Wainan t dates. Yeah, and unfortunately here I am in
- 43:23the you know, the eastern most part of Canada, which is a terrible
- 43:28place when it comes to classic rock bands because they just don't hit this area
- 43:34unfortunately, so I've never seen them and I've never seen them live. Oh
- 43:37isn't that Yeah. I think the closest that they that Whayante ever came to
- 43:43playing here was in eighty five when they were opening for Motley Crew. They
- 43:46played in Portland, Maine. That's about eight hours away. But I've or
- 43:50six hours away from me, and I've been to Portland many times to see
- 43:52show. So I'd have made that trip if they'd, you know, inc
- 43:55if they didn't call on there now and play the theater somewhere, I'd be
- 43:59there. But yeah, I had I had the privilege because I did an
- 44:07entire deep dive series on Wyant's albums to go with the book, like I'm
- 44:13doing now for my Kansas book, but I went through each of the studio
- 44:15albums. And then after that was the privilege of getting john Nyman and Aaron
- 44:22Lee both on the show because they both had solo albums up to talk about,
- 44:28so I had them both on. So I had alfle yan Tea on,
- 44:30so they're very aware. They both bought the book, which is amazing
- 44:34that you know, but so they are aware, and I've talked to Jeff
- 44:39here a lot, and you know what I hold out hope. I'm going
- 44:43to get a copy of that book to Dave, because I mean, obviously
- 44:46he's the keeper of the flame, right, he's the last remaining original member.
- 44:51He's the main guy. He always has been. So yeah, he's
- 44:52the guy that you know, hopefully get you know, getting some contact with
- 44:58him. We'll be back after this. We'll be back with the Magic Tooms
- 45:02for the Armada Rooms to our disco swing party after this short break till then,
- 45:07don't you go change it. Let's go through some of the albums here.
- 45:12We did touch on that first one just a bit, the self titled
- 45:15debut, and then the second album. What bums me out? Of those
- 45:19first two albums, you can't get on Spotify, so they're on YouTube and
- 45:22you can. Yeah, and it's two bad because they're really really good albums.
- 45:25Now, the discussion among the yan T diehards when you get to that
- 45:30second album is regarding the producer, right, Jimmy Robinson on the second one,
- 45:38Oh yeah, this is a topic of the discussion. Fans weren't too
- 45:42happy with the production. What are your overall thoughts on the first two albums?
- 45:47I love the love the first album, first album is really raw off
- 45:52the floor. It sounds like you're in the room with them. It's great,
- 45:57you know it's it's it's an album like if you were to put a
- 46:00metronome, that would be a terrible thing, because you know, the music
- 46:05breathes. It's not I'm not saying it's sloppy, but it's not John Bonham
- 46:09if you put him to a metronome that slows down, the speeds up as
- 46:13the music dictates. So first album is fantastic and I love the way it
- 46:17sounds. The second album, struck Down, is actually my personal least favorite
- 46:22yan T album, but something always has to come in last. Not everything
- 46:27can be tied for first place. I think it's got a few good songs
- 46:30on it. It's got some songs that don't particularly care for, but yeah,
- 46:32the production is like Flange City. It's just drowning in Flange. I
- 46:38notice that. Yeah, it's it's a very noisy, difficult album, but
- 46:44you know, yes, there are some quality songs on there. To me,
- 46:46my favorite Y and T albums, if I had to pick my top
- 46:50three would be earth Shaker in eighty one, the first A and M album.
- 46:54That's a killer album. A lot of people. That's a lot of
- 46:58people's favorite. Main Streak in eighty three, amazing album. And I've got
- 47:04a soft spot for ten in nineteen ninety, which is their most commercial,
- 47:07like they're most overtly well maybe not for most commercial, but it's a you
- 47:10know, it's definitely more of a commercial. It's not metal in the least,
- 47:14but I really like it. But that's when I got into the band.
- 47:16So it's really hard to separate because there's always something about what was current
- 47:22when you got into them, and that was the one. Well, they
- 47:23were working hard a new album, the studio album, at least every year
- 47:28from eighty one to eighty five. Yeah, they were you named very Yeah,
- 47:32earth Shake, Grady one, Black Tiger eighty two, Means Street eighty
- 47:36three and Rock We Trust eighty four, down for the Count eighty five and
- 47:38then you get the live album Open Fire in eighty five. Yeah, earth
- 47:43Shaker, solid album, and then that gets them off to a great start
- 47:45to the eighties. But this is when they opened for a CDC, right,
- 47:50Yeah, they opened for and here's one of Here's what I was about
- 47:52to rock. They opened for a CDC in Europe, but they didn't open
- 47:57for them North America, they're they're home. So that's one of the things
- 48:01that maybe could have gone a little bit different. So they're you know,
- 48:05they're quite well known in the UK, they're very there. They did very
- 48:08well in Japan, you know pockets, right, And I got to say
- 48:15it, I'm so glad that they have an audience in Japan because when I
- 48:19was it was really really hard finding all of these albums in the early nineties.
- 48:24And if it wasn't for Japan, I wouldn't have any of those on
- 48:29CD like back then because all you could find were all you could ever order
- 48:34were Japanese imports. Where did you order them from? Because this is pre
- 48:38internet? Okay, so this is this is a this is a good story
- 48:44that happens to be a Y and T oriented story. So by the summer
- 48:49in ninety one, I mean after they were already broken up. And that's
- 48:52another story because I've done that so many times. I'll get into a band
- 48:54and they break up. Anyway, So summer ninety one, I had Contagious
- 49:02ten and a compilation called Best of eighty one to eighty five that came out
- 49:07in nineteen ninety on A and M. Because you know, that's former labels
- 49:10do that all the time, Like look at Aerosmith, GEFF and Columbia.
- 49:14They'll put something out right and that's still out that's on Spotify. That best
- 49:19standard practice. So I had those three on CD, and I had everything
- 49:22back to Black Tiger on this set. That's I couldn't find the first three
- 49:27albums anywhere. I distinctly remember that I was in a grocery store and I
- 49:31was looking at a circus magazine. It was a voracious, you know,
- 49:35steady reader a circus at that time. And in the back of the magazine
- 49:38there was an order form for a place in Connecticut called the Right Choice.
- 49:43They were they sold rare import CDs. That's I'm in Connecticut. Yeah,
- 49:50really where this place was, I don't think it exists anymore, but Right
- 49:53Choice. I think it was called the Right Choice. I could be getting
- 49:58it mixed up for something else, but but but I do remember they had
- 50:01a listing for Earthshaker on CD, which I didn't have on anything. It
- 50:07was thirty nine ninety nine and that's in US and I'm up here in Canada.
- 50:14But to be fair, at that time, the exchange rate wasn't that
- 50:17bad. I think the Canadian dollar was like eighty two cents US, so
- 50:22it was you know, it's not like it is now more than our dollars
- 50:25and doesn't get you very far in the States. But anyway, I thought,
- 50:30man, I'd love to order that, but you know you're skeptical,
- 50:34right, I'd never I didn't know anybody that order from these places. So
- 50:37I remember talking to a friend of mine, my buddy John, who I've
- 50:39had on my show before. He's in the Yant book too. I got
- 50:44him to list his favorite riffs. Yeah, that's that's a cool section.
- 50:46Yeah. Yeah, because he's a guitar player too. So anyway I said
- 50:51to John, I said, oh, man, I don't know. I
- 50:53what if it's a scam. That's a It came to about fifty bucks Canadian
- 50:59to order it, and I thought, man, what if it's you know,
- 51:02And so what he did it was kind of brilliant. He bought the
- 51:07cassette single and remember's cassette singles to Metallica one because that had the prints on
- 51:16the other side of it, which is a Diamond Head song, and we
- 51:20hadn't heard it at that time, and it was less than ten dollars.
- 51:25So he thought you know what the heck I mean, I'll order this,
- 51:29it comes, it comes, and then we'll know. So that's exactly how
- 51:34it went. So I ordered her Shaker, and I remember getting it.
- 51:37I'd never seen the cover before. I knew four of the ten songs on
- 51:40it because they're on that best of But that's when I knew that, Okay,
- 51:46it's legit. These places you can actually I can actually get some of
- 51:50these things on CD, not just cassette, because I was just transitioning from
- 51:53cassettes to CDs at that point. I have just the fondest memories of getting
- 51:58that album and and listening to it all the time because it's so amazingly good.
- 52:04It regularly gets mentioned as people's favorite of their albums. Yeah, earth
- 52:07Shaker, Yeah, Yeah. Black Tiger has a song that I love though
- 52:12that the toggle switch, the helicopter effect that Mannichhetty does this on the title
- 52:17track. Yeah, And Martin pop Off compares Dave to Ronnie Montrose as far
- 52:24as the guitar style, which is interesting. It really there's a lot to
- 52:29that. There's so many it's a Bay Area, you know, there's so
- 52:31many bare Bay Area connections. Because I already mentioned that Dave's kind of got
- 52:37that hagar ish voice a little bit, but as a guitar player, yeah,
- 52:45I mean that first Montrose album was hugely influential. I mean, it
- 52:49took thirteen years to go platinum, but people that were in the know knew
- 52:52how great it was. It still sounds so good, doesn't do today?
- 52:57How many people have covered songs from it? How many people have covered Rock
- 53:00Candy and and Bad Motor Scooter. I mean, I mean, it's just
- 53:04it's a whole that's I could look, I could go down a whole other
- 53:07rabbit hole about that. But I'm going to see solo stuff and stuff like
- 53:09that. I'm going to see Sammy in a couple of weeks here in Conne,
- 53:14which was coming near me. I would love to go see that.
- 53:16I'm hoping that he I think he'll he'll pull out of Mantros too, but
- 53:20it's gonna be like at least I think he'll at least do Bad Motor Scooter.
- 53:24That's my yep. But so the connections, uh there, I mean
- 53:31their four piece band, so you know you've got that, but uh,
- 53:38let me think about that. Ronnie Montrose was actually going to produce the ten
- 53:44album uh, And they have a couple of CDs that they put out in
- 53:49the early two thousands, unearthed Volume one and two. Volume two has quite
- 53:55a few songs from those sessions that Ronnie Montrose actually produced. And there's one
- 54:00song on there called new Kid in Town that Ronnie wrote, and it's on
- 54:05one of his albums. I don't know which one, but so it's a
- 54:10song that Yan T recorded. But there's also a I don't think it's I
- 54:15don't think it's on the Mean album Manty seven. I think it's on one
- 54:19of Ronnie's albums. I don't know. I don't have any of Ronnie solo
- 54:22albums, but but yeah, he came very close to producing Yant and that
- 54:27stuff sounds really good, but the labels like, no, we need need
- 54:30a bigger name producer, and it ended up being Mike Stone. So so
- 54:36there's a connection there. But in twenty and thirteen, when Sammy he was
- 54:43doing four Decades of Rock tour and Ronnie Montrose had passed away at this point,
- 54:49and he had a set where I'm pretty sure he had Denny Carmassi and
- 54:53Bill Church come up to do some mantro songs. He had Dave play lead
- 54:59guitar. You can see it on YouTube. That's where That's also where I
- 55:05remember that name from then because they did rock Candy. Dave sang the second
- 55:08verse, which is really cool because then you get to hear the two of
- 55:13them side by side singing. So yeah, definitely definitely connections there. Cool.
- 55:21Yeah, I remember that tour too, so I'm gonna check that out
- 55:23on YouTube because I gotta go back and watch that. But it's interesting because
- 55:27you talk about the commercial success or lack thereof by Y and T. They
- 55:32were rising as you can go through the eighties, right, first half of
- 55:36the eighties, Mean Street Cracks the Billboard two hundred and one oh three and
- 55:39Rocky Truss is forty five, and then they got the huge hit single with
- 55:44Summertime Girls. But as for that song, I find this interesting because a
- 55:49lot of times the band's biggest hit single may not be the favorite of a
- 55:54diehard fan like Jump right, but you are a fan. In fact,
- 56:00you said it should have been an even bigger head. I think it's a
- 56:02great pop rock song and there's no reason why. You know. It's like,
- 56:09I'm a huge Night Ranger fan and I've never gotten sick of hearing Sister
- 56:14Christian on the radio. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like,
- 56:16it's just the problem is is that with Yant, when you're supposed to be
- 56:22a hard rock band, people expect I don't know. And incidentally, you're
- 56:27talking about DIO best Claude Schnell that plays the keyboards on on those songs that
- 56:31have keyboards on for Yant. So okay, he's on Sometime Girls. Yeah,
- 56:37oh okay, but that's another hit fifty five on Billboard, which isn't
- 56:40bad, but yeah, it's just respectable. It hit sixteen on the Mainstream
- 56:45Rock chart, so yeah, it was getting airplay. But here's another example
- 56:47of where I think A and M kind of dropped the ball because it came
- 56:52out in Open Fire. It was the lone studio song on a live album
- 56:57that came out in I want to say May or June of eighty five.
- 57:01It was like first part of eighty five, and that's really when Summertime Girls
- 57:07was getting the airplay and on the charts, and they stuck it again on
- 57:15Down for the Count, which was their final studio album for A and M,
- 57:16which didn't come out until November of eighty five. By then, Summertime
- 57:21Girls had completely fallen off the charts, and who's going to make their first
- 57:25purchase of a group a live album full of songs they've never heard before,
- 57:30for the most part, doesn't make any sense. I just there's a lot
- 57:35of logic. And the whole story about Summertime Girls, explained very well in
- 57:40the documentary, is that one A and M exec heard the song because they've
- 57:45kind of worked it up, you know, jam session. And by the
- 57:47way, if you ever hit the song live, it's all guitars. There's
- 57:51no keyboards in it. That makes it even cooler. I don't mind the
- 57:54studio version, but I'm just saying they can do it live and it sounds
- 57:58like it should. This A and M executors, like that's terrible, kicked
- 58:01the cassette across the park then, so they didn't think anything more of it,
- 58:07And so then they did start playing it live, and they sent the
- 58:12label sent a recording truck out or however that goes, you know, to
- 58:15record live shows, and another exact from A and M heard that song,
- 58:19going well, well, wait a minute, what's that? What's that song
- 58:22that sounds like a hit? So, you know, I've always wished that
- 58:32from the beginning. I mean they you know, they had London in the
- 58:36first couple of albums, but instead of signed to A and M. I
- 58:38always wondered what it would have been like if they'd assigned to Elektra or Atlantic,
- 58:43you know, labels that kind of knew how to market these types of
- 58:46bands. It could have been a very different story. Which label were they
- 58:51on for eighty seven's Contagious Geffen? Geffen? Okay, because that and they
- 58:55and they reached number seventy eight with that album, which isn't bad. Here's
- 58:59the problem with that. There's there's a couple of things about that first single
- 59:04too, because you feel that first single should have been huge, Oh my
- 59:07goodness, and that was a slam dunk hit as far as I'm concerned.
- 59:09That's what we're talking about. Uh, what's the name of the song.
- 59:15It's Contagious. It's the title song, Yeah, the title track. Yeah,
- 59:17okay, I mean it's a super catchy song. I mean gis on
- 59:23drums by the way on that album. Yeah. Geffen was a great power
- 59:30rock label. You know, they're Sammy, They resurrected Aerosmith, Guns and
- 59:37Roses, Tesla, White Snake, you know, The problem is is that
- 59:45Contagious came out right around the same time that the White Snake album was kind
- 59:52of like siphoning all promotional dollars out of you know, as big label as
- 59:58they were, which is understandable if you know the story behind that, because
- 1:00:01John David Claudner, the famous ay and our guy from Geffen, basically staked
- 1:00:06his reputation on breaking White Snake and it was not an easy thing. Band
- 1:00:10members being replaced and attention Coverdale and Sykes and all that stuff. Yeah,
- 1:00:15people on the album are not in the ones in the video and who toured
- 1:00:20big time promotion for that album, right. Appetite for Destruction comes out around
- 1:00:24that same time, and yes, that album took about a year or more
- 1:00:28to really take off, but Geffen was pushing it from the start why and
- 1:00:31he kind of fell in between the cracks unfortunately, And again there was that
- 1:00:37misconception of you know, geez, they've been around a long time and if
- 1:00:40they haven't made it by now, But it certainly didn't stop David Coverdale from
- 1:00:45becoming bigger than he'd ever been, and it certainly didn't stop Aerosmith from becoming
- 1:00:52bigger than they've ever been so why didn't Why and t you know, why
- 1:00:58couldn't they have worked them a little bit longer? The problem? The other
- 1:01:00problem I think with Contagious that there was no real clear cut second single because
- 1:01:06you couldn't just count on that one song doing it. And I think that's
- 1:01:08what all the exact sid Geffen did. They heard the song Contagious, that
- 1:01:12that's it, that's a hit. That's all we need to worry about.
- 1:01:15Do whatever else you want on the album, and you know it'll sort itself
- 1:01:19out. And it didn't. It just didn't. It only hit forty two
- 1:01:21in mainstream rock, which is crazy. But record label stuff, man,
- 1:01:25I mean, every band's got a story about it. Booked on rock podcasts.
- 1:01:30We'll be back after this, I will, we can you Jassy,
- 1:01:35I will be bad. We mentioned Sammy Higar. Interesting bit of trivia regarding
- 1:01:43this album, and it's the track La Rocks right. I had a different
- 1:01:47title. Yeah, you can get the pressings of the album and the second
- 1:01:52song on Contagious is called Boys' Night Out. And I used to have a
- 1:01:57cassette. Well, I don't know what happened to it. I you just
- 1:01:59have a cassette version where it was listed as Boys Night Out. But yeah,
- 1:02:04Sammy had a song on his eighty seven album, this Contractual Obligation album
- 1:02:08with that title, and for some reason that ended meant that Wyant ended up
- 1:02:14having to change it. I don't know why. I actually that Kelly Rocks
- 1:02:16is a cooler title. Yeah, that's that's the song Sammy mentions Eddie,
- 1:02:22Me and Eddie get into a fight. It was the lyrics to that song,
- 1:02:25that's off I would never say goodbye. Yeah, yeah, who knew
- 1:02:29there was so much of a Sammy Hagar connection here as who we've in and
- 1:02:32out of that They talked to him for the documentary because yeah, it was
- 1:02:37it was. It was cool to see him give his two cents and and
- 1:02:42and you know, talk about what a great band they were, so and
- 1:02:45they opened for him. I think in eighty three probably been the three lock
- 1:02:49Box tour. Well, speaking of great Canadian rock bands, Sammy's bringing out,
- 1:02:53uh, Sammy's bringing out for this tour lover Boy. Yeah, and
- 1:02:59that's so cool too, because a lover Boy also opened for They opened for
- 1:03:04Van Halen on some of the Canadian dates on the fifty and fifty tour,
- 1:03:07and of course Diehard fans. I'll know Mike Reno duets with Samuel Remember the
- 1:03:10Heroes? Great too? Yeah, Which how cool would that be if they
- 1:03:15brought that song back into the set and had him come out. Yeah maybe
- 1:03:19he will there. I mean it'd be cool. Yeah, that'd be cool
- 1:03:23if I get a great, big band or Remember the Heroes. Yeah,
- 1:03:27and he'd be like, oh yeah, yeah, it's a great song.
- 1:03:30Yeah. One more album before the band splits up in ninety one, and
- 1:03:34that's ten you've been talking about that one. Jerry Steve Smith plays drums on
- 1:03:37some of the tracks along with Jimmy DeGrasso. Joey Alias had left the band
- 1:03:42most of the tracks. Joey Alas had left the band was replaced on rhythm
- 1:03:45guitar by Steph Burns. The album peaked at one ten. Four years later,
- 1:03:50the quartet of singer guitarist Dave Manichetti, bassist Phil Kennemore, drummer Jimmy
- 1:03:54de Grasso and guitar Steph Burns reunite for two albums. So these aren't just
- 1:04:00albums the nineties. YE team musically incorrect in ninety five, and Endangered Species
- 1:04:05was I believe two years later ninety seven yep, yep. Okay, So
- 1:04:11for you, ninety five is musically incorrect was extra special since you had become
- 1:04:15a fan when the band split up. So for you, this was cool.
- 1:04:18This is so I bought well, I bought ten when it had been
- 1:04:23out for a couple of months, and I bought the best of as soon
- 1:04:28as I knew it existed. And I bought their live album Yesterday Today Live,
- 1:04:30which came out ninety one, which I would if somebody wanted to start
- 1:04:33with the live album, to start with that one. They just reassed it
- 1:04:36last year with two extra songs, get that one. But yeah, but
- 1:04:41then they're done. Correct. It was the first studio album that I was
- 1:04:44anticipating. Yeah, and it wasn't until ninety six that I could track down
- 1:04:48a copy of it. Yeah. Interesting album cover two, The two little
- 1:04:53kids are blocking the stock photo. Yeah, it's a stock photo that de
- 1:04:57Grosso found in a in a library. Okay, And the title was very
- 1:05:01apt because it's like, yeah, bands like us, you know, we're
- 1:05:06musically incorrect as far as the industry is concerned, but we're doing it anyway.
- 1:05:12Yeah. And then the twelfth and last studio album, Face Melter twenty
- 1:05:15ten, the first there, first since eighty seven's Endangered Species. Uh,
- 1:05:21the longest gap between two Wine t studio albums is that I have that right,
- 1:05:26let's say, yeah, I mean, and so far it's on We're
- 1:05:29going on fourteen years and it's still the newest studio album. I hope they
- 1:05:32do something else, yeah, yeah, or ninety seven's Endangered Species. So
- 1:05:38yeah, yeah, yeah, last to feature Bassis. Phil Kennimore sadly passed
- 1:05:43yeah, following year. And then you mentioned in the book it's it's hard
- 1:05:45not to get emotional. We're listening to the album opening track, prelude and
- 1:05:50not get emotional that opening track. Yeah, he's you know, he filled
- 1:05:55as a spoken word intro on that. He was really really passionate about that
- 1:05:59album. That album was his baby, and you know he sought to fruition.
- 1:06:04Unfortunately he couldn't complete the tour. That's when they got Brad Lang.
- 1:06:08But I mean, but the story about Steve Smith playing on ten is a
- 1:06:12fascinating one. That one. Yeah, yeah, again, the documentary goes
- 1:06:17into so much detail about that. But Jimmy DeGrasso was mad at Mike Stone,
- 1:06:24the producer, and Jimmy's a great drummer, so it doesn't make a
- 1:06:30lot of sense. He's only you know, Jimmy is only credited on three
- 1:06:33of the twelve songs on ten. Steve Smith plays on three quarters of that
- 1:06:39album. But they had Steve Smith for the documentary talking to him and he
- 1:06:44was so classy about it because it was, you know, it would be
- 1:06:47a revolting situation for the drummer of this happens a lot, especially to drummers
- 1:06:54for some reasons. For some reason, recording in the studio was a different
- 1:06:57animal than recording live. I mean Fred Corey having Fred Corey with Cinderella.
- 1:07:01There's a lot of bands that happened to where it's you know, there's a
- 1:07:04lot of times where it's not the band, it's you know, it's session
- 1:07:06guys, right, because it's a young band. This is not a young
- 1:07:10band. And Jimmy DeGrasso is a good drummer, great drummer. But Mike
- 1:07:15Stone, I guess, had had a reputation of, you know, not
- 1:07:20taking very good care of himself. He died young. He died in two
- 1:07:23thousand and two. He was only I think he was only fifty. But
- 1:07:27Mike Stone, of course said work with journey, So that was probably why
- 1:07:30so get Steve Smith in here, because Steve Smith is you know, he's
- 1:07:36not just a good rock drummer, He's just he's just this master musician,
- 1:07:40right, could play anything and the drop of a hat. But what he
- 1:07:43did and what he told Jimmy, he wrote out Jimmy's drum parts and he
- 1:07:49said, I'm not gonna here and just do whatever. I'm gonna play your
- 1:07:54parts because you came up with some cool parts Like that was just so much
- 1:07:58respect. I'm going to anywhere. But I just said, I have so
- 1:08:00much more respect for Steve Smith after that. I'm like, that's so classy
- 1:08:03how he handled that. So, yeah, it is a different sound.
- 1:08:09It's definitely a different sound. You can tell the tracks that Jimmy played on
- 1:08:12because he plays like a hard rock drummer and Steve Smith just plays like like
- 1:08:16he does. He's got that lighter touch, right, He's fantastic, But
- 1:08:20you can tell it's a different feel. It's a different sound. He doesn't
- 1:08:25hit his hard. But of course I didn't know that when I first got
- 1:08:30the album. I wasn't as savvy. I'd like to think I've learned a
- 1:08:33few things since then. But yeah, that was a really interesting story and
- 1:08:38the two the two albums in the mid nineties were really good. Of course
- 1:08:43they were on smaller labels, so they even had you know, they're hard
- 1:08:47to find now, I think, and I think Face Melter. I think
- 1:08:49you can still get face Melter on the on the band's website. The problem
- 1:08:55is with face Melter, and I'm not going to call it a problem so
- 1:08:58much is you kind of have to get two different versions of it to get
- 1:09:01all the songs unless you buy the vinyl because they did a bonus track for
- 1:09:05Japan and a bonus track for Europe. Yeah, so you're losing my mind
- 1:09:11in Europe. And yeah, they're both good songs my opinion, my humble
- 1:09:16opinion. They're better than some of the songs that made the proper album.
- 1:09:20But you know, hey, okay, but the song I'm Coming Home I
- 1:09:25thought was interesting reading online. It's the most viewed video on YouTube but from
- 1:09:30the band, over two million views. Yeah. I think there's a lot
- 1:09:34of reasons for that because you know, it's a small fan base, but
- 1:09:38it's a dedicated one, and that's the you know, it was their first
- 1:09:40new music in thirteen years. It was their first new video since nineteen ninety
- 1:09:47and it's a really cool looking video. The band looks great, and it's
- 1:09:50classy. It's well done, and I just think people were tuning in a
- 1:09:54lot when that came out. Yeah and Why, like a lot of you
- 1:09:58know, like a lot of bands, not all of their videos of age
- 1:10:01that well, but most bands from the eighties, they have videos that you
- 1:10:05look back, even if the songs are great that video. So yeah,
- 1:10:12Well, I want to finish now with a sort of a rapid fire series
- 1:10:15of questions shortening Why and T's catalog. Okay, so let's start with well,
- 1:10:20I think you already may answer this, but Yan T's best album.
- 1:10:24Okay, Well, my favorite album is ten, but their best album is
- 1:10:28probably Meanstreak. Okay, that's like a unanimous choice too among Y and T
- 1:10:34Vans or earth Shaker one of those two. Best song I'm gonna say,
- 1:10:43don't Stop Running from which album from in Rock We Trust? I think that's
- 1:10:47the best combination of hard rock and melody and guitar and vocal prowess and vocal
- 1:10:56harmonies. I think that sums up Hyant pretty good. One song, Okay,
- 1:11:01best album cover Dracula making out with a robot? What's that one?
- 1:11:08That's is that? Which is that down? For? Definitely not that one
- 1:11:13Dracular's biting a robot's neck. I'm gonna say Mean Streek, Mean Streak is
- 1:11:16just stunning, stunning album cover. Okay, so mechanical snake and yeah it
- 1:11:21looks awesome. Do we know who did the cover art? John Tayla Dismukee's
- 1:11:27okay, all right? Best Dave Mannichetti riff man, he has so many.
- 1:11:35I mean, the Mean Streak riff is really cool. It's kind of
- 1:11:39a twisty turney thing. But if we're just talking about the power of a
- 1:11:45pure power chord riff, I'm gonna say black Black Tiger, okay, which
- 1:11:53that's one of my favorites now, and that's got that helicopter sound and if
- 1:11:58you like that sound, I'll tell you right now where else you can hear
- 1:12:00it straight through the heart on Mean Streak. He does it life life,
- 1:12:05life on in Rocky, Trust, anything for money on Down for the Count,
- 1:12:11and Eyes of a Stranger on Contagious. They all have. So what
- 1:12:15he does is to be your guitar player. Like he always played the less,
- 1:12:17usually played the less. Paul so he would turn the pickup so that
- 1:12:23one pickup wasn't active and the other one was, so the toggle switch would
- 1:12:27go back and forth between active and inactive, so it would cut out.
- 1:12:30And that's how he came up with that. Now people do it with foot
- 1:12:34switches and stuff. But he still he'll wear that toggle switch down to you
- 1:12:38know, if you see him play, he's still got the same like he
- 1:12:43comes on stage. I don't know if he could tell from that picture,
- 1:12:45but he's got the sunburst less Paul, but you know, some of the
- 1:12:47finish has worn off. I mean, you know, some guys just have
- 1:12:51that guitar that they stick to all the time, just like Brad Gillis from
- 1:12:55Night Ranger. He's got that red and black strat and it's all worn down
- 1:12:58and it's so cool. Most underrated wyan T album, I'm gonna say in
- 1:13:06Dangered Species, just because by virtue of the fact that smaller label albums just
- 1:13:13rarely get their due. And finally, the most underrated wyan T song,
- 1:13:20most underrated WYANT song, Yeah, because I mean within the fan community,
- 1:13:27songs like Mead Street, Black Tiger don't stop running those are you know,
- 1:13:30quote unquote hits for fans, but an underrated song A boy making me think
- 1:13:42here, you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna go with well. Contagious was
- 1:13:45a single out of the running Eli Rocks. Eli Rocks is pretty good,
- 1:13:51but you know, I am okay. It was a single in a video,
- 1:13:55but again smaller label. I'm gonna go without Coming Home because that shows
- 1:13:59that after for all the years of not recording and being around as long as
- 1:14:01they had, they can still deliver songs that are heavy yet melodic and just
- 1:14:05pack everything in. Here we go down for the count the Y and T
- 1:14:10album review that is out now. You can find it wherever books are sold
- 1:14:14Amazon, and that's basically where you yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it.
- 1:14:18And you also have a brand new book out which we want to have
- 1:14:20you back on for that's let it be your guide, the Kansas album review,
- 1:14:25so you can look that one to another kicking book. Cover size book
- 1:14:30Kansas Kansas Books a little longer. I find this is a very very good
- 1:14:34size to bring books and it's not too big, you know. And and
- 1:14:39who did the cover ar for the Kansas book. That is my good friend
- 1:14:44Matt Phillips with some AI assistance, all right, give them props for that.
- 1:14:47Man. It's a beauty yeah, with a lot of tweaking, a
- 1:14:50lot of tweaking. Yeah, yeah, And again, where can people find
- 1:14:55you online? On YouTube? TIMS Final Confessions? Is you know my name?
- 1:15:00On on YouTube? On on Facebook, on Instagram, and most recently
- 1:15:08I joined uh TikTok? You did you really understand TikTok? But I'm working
- 1:15:14on it. Your wife talked to you into it. You're gonna do like
- 1:15:16those crazy dances, you know, I did you know what? It's funny
- 1:15:21you mentioned that I wouldn't call it a dance, but I I did a
- 1:15:27trailer recently for an episode with which will have aired by this time, and
- 1:15:30it's I just did it an iMovie on my phone, but it looks like
- 1:15:33a horror movie trailer. Yeah. I had a lot of fun with that,
- 1:15:35So I might get into doing stuff like that. You know you mentioned
- 1:15:39today. I was just watching you put up a short which we can even
- 1:15:43mention here too. It's it does It does? Does you a huge favor
- 1:15:45if people can get on Amazon and give these books a good review. And
- 1:15:49also, you don't take a picture of yourself with the book and put it
- 1:15:51up on social media because I say, this is just this is just you
- 1:15:56here. You don't have you don't have you know, like HarperCollins behind you,
- 1:16:00I don't know. Yeah in the UK like Martin does you know?
- 1:16:03Or yeah? And I thank you and and and people like yourself having me
- 1:16:09on word of mouth is everything. I'm just one guy. I don't have
- 1:16:14an agent, I don't have a publisher. So yeah, if people like
- 1:16:16the book, please leave a review on Amazon. It may not sound like
- 1:16:20much, but it keeps the book, you know, it'll keep it in
- 1:16:24people's suggestions, it keeps it up there. Like when this first came out,
- 1:16:27it was number one I think a recorded sound for a day, which
- 1:16:30is pretty cool, but it didn't stay there. Right books, new books
- 1:16:32are coming out all the time, so leaving a review is a great way
- 1:16:36to help out with that. And if you out there have a book of
- 1:16:41your own, I will leave a review for you. So yeah, it's
- 1:16:45it's just sharing and posting. People like seeing people with the books. For
- 1:16:49some reason, it seems to make a difference. So I really appreciate all
- 1:16:53the support so far. But yeah, a lot. I put a lot
- 1:16:57into these books, and it means a lot. If I do a book
- 1:17:00on a band, it's a band that I love and I think are worth
- 1:17:02checking into. And when people let yourself say yeah, I listen to more
- 1:17:06of their music, that's fantastic. That's that's the goal. Yeah. Yeah,
- 1:17:12And will hopefully have you back on. It's mid July right now,
- 1:17:15so maybe you know, middle to late August. We'll have you back on
- 1:17:17and we'll talk about the Kansas book. I'm really looking forward to that one.
- 1:17:20Thanks to him. Thanks. That's it. It's in the books.