.Back to Basics

Hard rock and heavy metal has gone through many phases. It has gone in and out of fashion, and endured the so-called “hair metal” era of the ’80s. But for true believers, the style has never lost its appeal. Launched in Oakland in 1974 and still going strong more than a half century later, Y&T carried the banner of hard rock and heavy metal. Lead guitarist and vocalist Dave Meniketti has been with Y&T since its start, and today he leads a lineup that has been together for nearly a decade. Just ahead of a tour that takes the band to Germany and Austria, Y&T comes to the Catalyst on March 8.

When Y&T first got together, Meniketti and his band mates already had a sense of the collective musical character upon which they wanted to build. The group quickly landed high-profile gigs opening for major acts like Queen. “All four of us had different musical backgrounds,” Meniketti says, “but we had a similar feeling of what we wanted to do, the kind of material we wanted to write.” He says that even then, Y&T’s style was varied: “very fast and heavy rock to mid-tempo to ballads, and everything in between.”

The band signed with London Records, but its executives didn’t seem to know what to do with a hard rock band like Y&T (then known as Yesterday & Today). As a result, the group’s first two albums weren’t promoted effectively; despite good reviews, they didn’t sell. London soon made the decision to get out of the rock business, leaving the band without a label.

But on the strength of Y&T’s heavy touring and growing fan base, the band soon landed at A&M Records. During an era when record labels allowed artists time to cultivate a following, the group continued to release well-regarded albums. Things truly took off with the success of 1984’s In Rock We Trust; the record reached a respectable #45 on the U.S. album chart, leading to touring spots in support of Rush and Dio.

Yet due in part to the success of MTV, rock tastes had changed. So as creatively successful as Y&T’s mid ’80s output was, compromises were made. The group included a studio track on its 1985 live album Open Fire; “Summertime Girls” was a Top 40 hit. But the sound might have confused fans of the band’s earlier sound: uncharacteristically, keyboards would be very prominent in the mix. “That was a ‘producer thing,’” Meniketti says. “I can guarantee you that the band wasn’t interested in putting keyboards [on our recordings].”

But Meniketti was (and remains) good-natured and philosophical about the decision. “For what it’s worth, our producer did a really good job; it worked out well.” Still, Meniketti emphasizes that when listeners hear “Summertime Girls” in the band’s set—“every freaking time we play a show for the last 40-plus years”—they’ll hear it the way the band originally played it: heavy guitars, bass, drums, vocals … but no keyboards.

Another ’80s trend was the widespread use of “song doctors.” Always in search of the next mega-hit, record companies foisted collaborative writers upon established acts. Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and many others were forced to co-write with pop songwriters. The same thing happened to Y&T.

Meniketti says that when A&M brought in an outside co-writer, the band was wary. “As far as we were concerned, we were an all-encompassing band; we could write good—and great—songs.” But the writer assigned to the band proved his worth, and won over the trust of Y&T. “It was weird at first, having this fifth guy,” Meniketti recalls. “But it was a good thing for us.”

Meniketti says that he learned a lot about songwriting thanks to that experience. One important thing he learned was how to write songs that made the best use of his voice. “On previous records, I was just a singer,” he says. “In Rock We Trust is when I started to become a really good singer.”

In those days, Y&T was swept up in the hair-metal movement as well. Meniketti says that from the beginning, he and his band mates had taken a casual approach to how they dressed onstage. “We would just buy our clothes locally and then just figure something out,” he says. “But then when MTV came along, the record company was onto us, saying, ‘Hey, we need to get you a stylist and wardrobe person.’” And, he admits, “even bigger hair came out of all that.” Meniketti looks back on that era as a time when everybody had to do it. “But we were still a band that really only cared about having [musical] chops and kicking ass live,” he says.

Along the way, the band has placed six of its singles on the charts, selling in excess of 4 million records. And in the years since their A&M era, Y&T got back to their core values: the glam hairdos, the flashy outfits and the co-writers have all faded away into the mists of time. What remains is what was there from the start: a hard-rocking foursome cranking out dazzling lead guitar fireworks and memorable songs in a powerful, no-frills heavy metal style.

Y&T’s last studio release of new material was 2010’s aptly named Facemelter. In acknowledgment of industry trends, these days the band focuses more on live shows than record releases. Meniketti says that he and his band mates know what their live audiences want. “No matter how many new records we might come up with, they’re still going to want to hear the classics,” he says. “There are only so many minutes in a set… and we have a lot of classics.”

‘All four of us had different musical backgrounds, but we had a similar feeling of what we wanted to do, the kind of material we wanted to write.’

—Dave Meniketti