Y&T: YOU HAD TO BE THERE
The Bay Area Band That Still Sounds Like Home
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And let me tell you something about growing up around here.
We had music.
Not one kind of music. Not one scene. Music came at us from everywhere. R&B. Funk. Rock. Punk. Metal. Later, rap would explode out of the region too.
The Bay Area has always had this wonderfully strange musical personality. Different sounds lived next door to each other. Sometimes they borrowed from each other. Sometimes they probably wanted nothing to do with each other.
But they were ours.
Santana.
Journey.
Tower of Power.
Jefferson Airplane and everything that came after it.
The punk scene.
The metal scene.
Eventually Metallica would come roaring out of the Bay Area and help change heavy music forever.
But before I knew where my own musical journey was going, there was another band playing in the background of my experience.
A little band called Y&T.
Image: Y&T. Source: Discogs.com
And like I always like to say:
I was there when it happened.
BEFORE THEY WERE NOSTALGIA
That's one of the strange things about writing about the music of your youth.
Eventually everything becomes history.
Albums become anniversaries. Concert shirts become collectibles. Bands become documentaries. Somebody puts together a playlist called Classic '80s Metal and suddenly the music you remember arriving brand-new has become an artifact.
But Y&T wasn't history when I found them.
They were happening.
They had begun in Oakland as Yesterday and Today before shortening the name to Y&T, and by the early '80s they were part of a Bay Area hard-rock world that was getting louder, heavier and increasingly interesting.
I didn't know any of that history when I first heard them.
I just knew what came out of the speakers.
And the first song I remember hearing was:
“Forever.”
Oh, Lord.
That was it.
I was lost.
AND THEN THERE WAS DAVE
Image: Dave Meniketti. Source: DinosaurRockGuitar.com
Every generation has singers.
Every genre has great singers.
And then there are those singers.
You know what I mean.
There are voices you appreciate because they're technically brilliant. There are voices you admire because they're powerful. There are singers who can hit notes that make other singers sit up and wonder what the hell they're doing with their instrument.
And then there are voices that hit someplace else.
Somewhere considerably less academic.
You hear the voice and...
sigh.
Maybe scream a little.
Maybe have a few other reactions that we don't necessarily need to discuss in polite company.
You get what I'm saying.
Dave Meniketti had one of those voices.
Fire.
Soul.
A little rasp.
Power.
And sexy as hell.
There was something underneath the rock in his voice. Something bluesy and soulful that kept it from simply being loud. He could push the instrument and still make you feel something.
Years later, I would learn that wasn't an accident. Meniketti grew up listening across musical boundaries himself: Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, but also James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Allman Brothers and Coltrane. Y&T's own biography describes that mixture as central to the soulful quality of both his singing and his playing.
Apparently this one knew things.
But here's the really unfair part.
The man could play guitar too.
WELCOME TO THE ROOM
When I talk about my musical journey, I talk about eventually finding heavy metal.
What I hadn't really thought about until looking back was who brought me into the room.
Y&T did.
I became a Y&T fangirl while it was happening.
And through them, I walked into this louder, heavier world and never looked back.
It makes perfect sense to me now.
Because Y&T didn't ask me to give up anything I already loved about music to get there.
They had melody.
They had rhythm.
They had harmonies.
They had soul.
And then the guitars would come in with that wonderful jump that screams '80s heavy rock.
And eventually...
the solo.
Oh, the solo.
This was the world of the Guitar God.
The moment would come when the guitar stopped being something accompanying the song and became a voice of its own.
And Meniketti could do both.
Image: Dave Meniketti. Source: IMDb
Singer Angel could listen to the voice.
Guitar Girl Angel could lose her mind over the guitar.
Everybody was happy.
Y&T's own account of Meniketti's career describes him as a Bay Area guitar and vocal hero, and by 1983 he had won a Bay Area Music Award for Best Bay Area Guitarist.
I didn't need the award to tell me that.
I had ears.
THAT Y&T SOUND
Listen to the journey.
“Forever.”
“Rescue Me.”
“Midnight in Tokyo.”
“Black Tiger.”
“Mean Streak.”
“Dirty Girl.”
“Summertime Girls.”
There is a tangle to Y&T's path that I love because you can hear the band moving through the changing sound of rock without completely losing themselves.
There is heaviness.
There is melody.
There are those crazy harmonies.
There is rhythm underneath everything.
And there is always that guitar waiting for its moment.
By the time you get to something like “Summertime Girls,” you're standing squarely in that glorious mid-'80s rock universe. The song received heavy MTV rotation and became one of the band's best-known tracks.
But that's not where my Y&T begins.
Mine begins with “Forever.”
That's important.
Because I didn't meet Y&T through an '80s nostalgia playlist.
I traveled with them.
I heard those songs as they became part of my life.
And there are few bands I can put on today that ooze '80s rock quite like Y&T.
Not music that simply happened to be recorded during the 1980s.
There's a difference.
I mean that particular combination of guitar, melody, swagger, rhythm, harmonies, hair and unapologetic rock excess that can transport you before you've even finished saying:
Ohhhhh, I remember this.
SAME STATE. DIFFERENT SOUNDTRACK.
My husband and I have discovered something funny over the years.
We are both California Gen X.
But we didn't grow up in the same musical world.
I was in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He was down near Los Angeles.
And sometimes we'll be driving when a song from our youth comes on.
I'll light up.
“I loved this song!”
And he'll look at me.
Never heard it.
Excuse me?
How could you possibly have never heard this?
But the more we've talked about it, the more fascinating it becomes.
Because before the internet put practically every song ever recorded into our pockets, where you lived mattered.
Local radio mattered.
Record stores mattered.
Clubs mattered.
Friends mattered.
Who was playing around town mattered.
Bands could become enormous pieces of one region's musical identity without occupying exactly the same place in somebody else's experience.
Y&T wasn't merely some band I heard on the radio.
They sounded like where I came from.
And that's why somebody else's history of '80s rock doesn't necessarily look exactly like mine.
Same generation.
Same state.
Different soundtrack.
THEY WERE BIG IN MY WORLD
I saw Y&T when I was young.
Not at a reunion.
Not as an exercise in nostalgia.
I saw them when they were Y&T happening right now.
That's a completely different experience.
The music hadn't become memory yet.
The people onstage weren't legends from our youth.
They were the people making the soundtrack while we were still living inside it.
And I became a fangirl.
Oh yes.
The guitars.
The hair.
The energy.
The solos.
And...
Dave.
Let's not pretend otherwise.
There are some things Young Angel appreciated on a purely musical level.
There were other things Young Angel appreciated because she possessed functioning eyeballs.
Both can be true.
But somewhere in all that screaming and guitar and hair, something else was happening.
I was being introduced to a musical world that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
Heavy metal.
Eventually there would be more bands.
More records.
More concerts.
More Guitar Gods.
Eventually I'd even pick up an electric guitar myself.
But somebody had to open that first door.
Y&T opened mine.
AND THEN BIG ANGEL WALKED INTO A CLUB
There is something strange and wonderful about getting older with the music you loved.
Image: Dave Meniketti. Source: MusicTimes.com
The giant stages get smaller.
Bands change.
Some disappear.
Some come back.
Reunion tours appear.
Records get reissued.
The musicians whose pictures once covered magazines start showing up on smaller stages and local club calendars.
And if you're lucky, every once in a while you find yourself standing in a little room while one of the people who helped build the soundtrack of your youth walks onto the stage.
A few years ago, that happened to me.
Big Angel still lives in the Bay Area.
And Big Angel caught Dave Meniketti playing with his band in a local club.
Think about that for a moment.
I had seen Y&T when I was young.
I had seen them when it was happening.
Now here I was again.
Different Angel.
Different stage.
A whole lot of life between those two rooms.
And standing in front of me was the man whose band had helped bring that young girl into heavy metal in the first place.
Then Dave opened his mouth.
And damn it.
That voice still got me.
Some things apparently do not require nostalgia.
Some things simply work.
The rasp was still there.
The soul was still there.
And somewhere inside Big Angel was that girl who heard “Forever” for the first time and thought:
Oh.
There you are.
THE BAND THAT STILL SOUNDS LIKE HOME
Y&T's story became much bigger than the Bay Area. They toured internationally, sold millions of records and built a following far beyond Northern California. They weren't simply a “local band” that never escaped home.
But that's not what I mean when I call them a Bay Area band.
I mean something more personal.
They belong to the geography of my memory.
Put Y&T on and I hear more than a song.
I hear where I came from.
I hear the beginning of my journey into metal.
I hear Guitar Gods before I knew I would someday call them Guitar Gods.
I hear a young girl discovering that music could be melodic and soulful and heavy all at once.
I hear a band that was there while my musical identity was still being built.
And now I have another memory layered on top of all of those.
A smaller club.
An older Angel.
And that voice.
Still there.
Still reaching someplace deep inside the girl who first heard it all those years ago.
Some music takes you back.
But every once in a while, you find the music that reminds you:
You never really left.
And Y&T?
They still sound like home.
Sources
Y&T — Official Biography Y&T — Dave Meniketti Biography
Y&T — Discography Y&T — Past Members
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
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