Y & T The Newest Beginning Yet

Paul Suter

Memories can be painfully short in the wicked world of rock 'n' roll; even with conservative signing policies, labels come up with an onslaught of new pro-duct each and every month, all of it ser-ving to whittle away at the status of even the hardiest of rock icons.

Y&T were an icon; hard-working and spected maybe, inarguably well-known, t let’s face it, Earthshaker was the title an album and not the title afforded to 3 band itself. And that album was a long le ago, too—six years—and it’s nigh on o years since the aptly named Down r The Count marked the end of the nd’s liason with A&M Records. Ironicalthe split had come soon after “Sumsrtime Girls,” the single which had emed to mark a crucial turnaround for a band apparently doomed to be forever known as also-rans. Yes, there’s a story there...

But whatever the past, Y&T are back now. Their bubbling enthusiasm in the face of the press is inevitable—there aren’t many bands prone to tell writers that their new album sucks, whether it does or not (they tell you that their last album sucked instead). But equally—in Y&T’s case—the enthusiasm must have something to do with the fact that they’re a traditionally hard-working bunch who have been inactive for far too long. There’s something about the infectious enthusiasm the band exhibits for their new album, Contagious, which seems convincingly genuine though, something rather more persuasive than “it’s our best ever, man” (yawn), and even a peremptory run-through suggests that Y&T are, indeed, back to what they do best after going round in circles far too long.

Y & T The Newest Beginning Yet

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“Bands are all the same,” concedes guitarist Joey Alves. “They always say ‘this one’s heavier, this one’s the best.’ * Every fucking time it’s the same, but let the album speak for itself. If you’ve got to explain it, then it just isn’t there.” The fact is that the band do seem to

Riave hit paydirt all over again, returning o Earthshaker-era metal excess, and they have Geffen right behind them, keen to |justify their picking up an ostensibly lifeless band. In company with bassist Phil

rennemore, Joey Alves is optimistic enugh about the future to do some plain talking about the past...

“We’re back to our roots, real heavy again. On the last couple of albums we had an identity problem; we had to take a stand on what we wanted to do and it’s paid off. When you’re capable of doing different things it can sometimes work against you, but now we’re definitely back to the heavy side of things.”

"We had to change labels to get the chance,” continues Kennemore. “We’d had ‘Summertime Girls’ out, which should have been a monster—we gave A&M all they'd been wanting from us and they still couldn’t take it all the way. We realized then, for sure, that they just didn’t know how to handle us, and they admitted it.”

‘It was a real scary move to break away, though,” admits Alves. “We were out on the road so we sent our managers into A&M—we had nothing to lose, so we told the label what we thought about them. They’d been asking us to deliver a hit for them for six years, and then we gave them one, they blew it!”

You have to sympathize with A&M just a little, for Y&T were one of the most faceless bands in rock, and identity is a big part of making hit records. Never big enough to get their faces in the magazines every month, the band also lacked any truly unique quality which could give them an unforgettable identity. They tried to emulate Iron Maiden’s Eddie with their ¶ rubber robot Rock, but that inspired nothing more than giggles and disdain. “In Rock We Trust?” Pah!

‘Yes, we’ve been faceless, but then we always chose to be a band," stresses Kennemore. “Whitesnake may mean David Coverdale, but Y&T was never intended to mean Dave Meniketti or any one (of us. Plus Y&T isn’t a name that creates an image you can relate to the band you can’t pull any marketing tricks around a name like that. But now Geffen are really committed to getting behind us; A&M never really knew what to do with us, but with Geffen we’re not going to be faceless anymore.

“We’re retiring Rock to the Hard Rock (ouch!) Cafe in Los Angeles. We were thinking of blowing him up, like Jack In The Box did with their clown, but they really wanted him in one piece! Rock first came about to try and establish a focal point for the band, to make up for our loss of image. We even thought about changing our name at one stage, but that was just a little too drastic, so we came up with Rock instead, adding something instead of changing something.”

It was around the same time that Y&T made another addition, in the form of John Nyman—who had previously been a member of the Eric Martin Band, back in the Elektra days. He has subsequently helped out the band on.the road and in the studio, playing anything put in front of him as well as providing backing vocals. Plus he has other uses as well..

“He sings and he can play virtually anything, so he’s really useful on the road,” explains Kennemore. “He’s very talented, he can do so much, and we’ll always use him, whenever he needs a job there’s one here for him. Plus most of the band are married, so he’s our stunt dick. ‘Go fuck her, John’ and off he goes...”

Nyman is being relieved of one of his more odious duties though—he was the poor sucker inside the Rock outfit. Trapped inside the heavy, unventilated suit under the hot stage lights, perspiration and other smelly stuff tended to be major problems, and his extra-curricular 'activities were only just compensation for the torture of having to pose as the rock ’n’ roll Michelin Man. . .

And speaking of Michelin Men. . no, that’s not fair, but I couldn’t resist the temptation. Rock isn’t the only departure from the Y&T camp with the emergence of Contagious; following the band’s departure from A&M they also split with founding member, drummer Leonard Haze. More of his successor—Philadelphian Jimmy DiGrasso—later, but many rumors circulated about Haze at the time of his departure concerning an alleged over-fondess for pharmaceutical thrills plus an unwillingness to strive for the slim, trim look his former colleagues are certainly sporting now as they re-emerge into the spotlight. Joey Alves was the man to clarify the situation (sort of!).

“Leonard seemed to be losing interest over the last couple of years—he was getting into other things and not showing up for rehearsals, stuff like that. With the new situation we wanted to work real hard, but nothing seemed to stir him; with all the shit we’d been through he’d lost his heart for the band along the way.

“He’s still a good friend of mine; I hated having it happen, but I’m glad it went down when it did. If he’d stayed on and the disinterest had started to show on stage it would have been much worse.

“The auditions were really something-drummer, hell! We had about 200 applicants and we called about 40 to actually audition. Jimmy came up seventh and I knew right then that he was the man, but the guys wanted to hear the rest of them just to be sure, and it got a little tedious! We gave them all six songs to learn, and even if they were terrible on the first one we felt that we had to let them continue through all the others. You can’t just say ‘next please’ after one number when a guy’s just got off a plane from New York or somewhere like that. Five drummers a day, it was a nightmare! We learned something from it all though— the ‘somebodies’ were the ones who played like wimps, but the kids who came in with the battered kits that looked like shit were the ones who made no excuses and attacked like maniacs."

Given the refreshing enthusiasm of the youthful DiGrasso to chase their tails— and to point out to them when they were doing something grossly old-hat—Y&T were primed to plunder again, and the resolution to get back to basics was firmly set. No more second-guessing public taste; it was time to shake a little more earth, and the new label was in total accord with the new resolve.

“We had listened to too many people." Kennemore explains, “and tried to satisfy too many different ideas about what Y&T should be doing. We lost our identity, and started questioning ourselves."

“We were losing heart because of A&M too," continues Alves. ‘Whether we gave them what they wanted or not. they still couldn’t do anything with it. We didn’t know which way to turn, we were trying to find something they would react to. and that’s why our direction fell apart even more.

“Summertime Girls" was the final blow for the band, a palpable hit single which the label failed to push as far as both the band and their management felt it could go. A compromise for Y&T to make the record in the first place, perhaps, so would they do another song like it now?

“If we came up with a song that had the potential to go all the way. in the way that could have done, but which still kicked ass in the Y&T style we’d do it." concedes Kennemore. “But we re not going to sit around and force-write one. We’d do a ‘Summertime Girls’ but we wouldn’t do shit like ‘Any Time At All’ again, or American Boy.’ "

“We’ve got a grip on our identity again now," confirms Alves. "And Geffen agrees: they told us that they weren’t signing the confused Y&T, they wanted the old Y&T back. It’s been like being let out of a cage, taking all the pressure off—we don’t have to worry about anything except doing what we naturally want to do.’

“They’re getting really involved," says Kennemore, “and showing a genuine interest. Like they’ve been listening to all Dave Meniketti’s solos and telling him to really go wild, when a lot of labels would have told him to hold back and be more ‘tasteful.’ We played them demos of all the tunes we’d come up with to consider for the new album, and they got us to throw out all the tunes with even the slightest traces of pop in them. They really believe in us and what we want to be."