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Musically
Incorrect
MUSIC FOR NATIONS, 1995
The two albums Y&T made in the
late 90s were knowingly titled. In
an era dominated by grunge and
nu metal, Musically Incorrect and
Endangered Species were widely
ignored, but in both there was
something heroic in the way the
band remained defiantly old-
school, loud and proud.
Endangered Species had meaty
songs in Gimme The Beat, Still
Falling and Hello, Hello (I’m Back
Again) – the latter, wisely, not
a Gary Glitter cover. But it was
Musically Incorrect that rocked
hardest, with Meniketti ripping it
up on guitar in the heavy, blues-
based Long Way Down, and having
a blast with a powerful remake of
I’m Lost from Struck Down.Facemelter
FRONTIERS, 2010
Y&T’s first album in 13 years
came with overt references to
their glory days. The title had the
cockiness of Earthshaker, and the
OTT cover image was by the
artist who had served the band
so well on Black Tiger and Mean
Streak, John Taylor Dismukes.
As it turned out, Facemelter did
not have the fizzog-frying power
of those 80s classics, with
Meniketti’s voice no longer the
force it once was. But this album’s
best songs – Shine On, I’m Coming
Home, and especially the deep
and heavy ballad If You Want Me- proved that Y&T were still
a class act.
Facemelter was a solid
comeback. Sadly it was also Phil
Kennemore’s swansong.
Contagious
GEFFEN, 1987
When Y&T signed to rock
powerhouse Geffen Records, they
thought they had it made. They
were wrong. In the same week
that Contagious was released, the
label also issued Whitesnake’s
1987 and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite
For Destruction. As a result,
Contagious got lost in the shuffle.
But in truth it was a pretty lame
record, a cynical attempt at
emulating the big rock acts of the
period; its title track was a Bon
Jovi knock-off, shiny pop metal
complete with the obligatory
‘whoah-oh’ chorus, while the big
ballad, Temptation, sounded like
a poor man’s Def Leppard.
Contagious duly bombed. From
such a great band, this was
nowhere near good enough.Mean Streak
A&M, 1983
In a year when Def Leppard’s
Pyromania and ZZ Top’s Eliminator
combined hard rock with cutting-
edge technology, there was
nothing fancy about Y&T’s Mean
Streak. These guys were never
innovators, they just rocked.
This album had its subtler
moments, in the grand power
ballad Midnight In Tokyo, and in
Lonely Side Of Town a finely
crafted AOR number with shades
of early Survivor. But on the
whole the record was typically
boisterous heavy metal
rock’n’roll. And while a couple of
songs were throwaways, the title
track was a classic, as hard-
hitting as anything off Earthshaker
or Black Tiger.Struck Down
LONDON, 1978
With their first two albums, both
issued in the late 70s under the
name Yesterday And Today, the
band couldn’t buy a hit. But in the
self-titled debut, from 1976, there
were signs of what was to come,
most evident in the fast, hard-
driving Earthshaker. And in the
follow-up, Struck Down, there was
more muscular rock and also
a greater sense of ambition.
The title track was a mighty
slow-burner, like a heavier Free.
On a grander scale were two
tracks with echoes of Dio-era
Rainbow: Dreams Of Egypt, an
overblown historical epic, and
Stargazer (Round And Round), with
psychedelic vibes the prelude to
flat-out heavy metal thunder.
In Rock We Trust
A&M, 1984
The daft-looking robot on the
cover of Y&T’s sixth album was
transformed (like Maiden’s Eddie)
into a stage prop. It was also a sign
of an increasingly gonzoid
sensibility in the band’s music.
For heaviness they had Judas
Priest producer Tom Allom. For
hooks they had AOR cult hero
Jeff Paris as co-songwriter. And in
two standout songs, the dumb-by-
design approach worked like
magic. Rock & Roll’s Gonna Save
The World had a riff derived from
AC/DC and a super-stupid
chorus, while Lipstick And Leather
was Kiss with a side order of S&M.
As for the robot, its appearance at
Monsters Of Rock in ’84 got more
laughs than David Lee Roth.Essential
PlaylistEarthshaker
Yesterday And TodayStruck Down
Struck DownHurricane
EarthshakerRescue Me
EarthshakerI Believe In You
EarthshakerBlack Tiger
Black TigerDon’t Wanna
Lose
Black TigerForever
Black TigerMean Streak
Mean StreakMidnight In
Tokyo
Mean StreakRock & Roll’s
Gonna Save
The World
In Rock We TrustLipstick And
Leather
In Rock We TrustSummertime
Girls
Down For The CountFace Like
An Angel
Down For The CountDon’t Be Afraid
Of The Dark
TenLong Way Down
Musically IncorrectGimme The Beat
Endangered SpeciesIf You Want Me
FacemelterDown For
The Count
A&M, 1985
Y&T had only one hit song, and
they milked it. Summertime Girls,
first featured as the sole studio
track on the ’85 live album Open
Fire, was also included in this
studio record from the same year.
At a time when hair-metal was
all the fashion, Y&T rode that
wave with Summertime Girls,
radiating California sunshine.
And while their newly glammed-
up image was not a natural fit –
especially for Leonard Haze, who
looked more like John Belushi
than like a member of Poison- they channeled their inner
teenagers in this album’s party
bangers, and nailed a glorious
AOR number in Face Like An Angel.
Ten
GEFFEN, 1990
It was apt that this album opened
with a song named Hard Times.
After the failure of 1987’s
Contagious, their debut for new
label Geffen, the band were in
deep shit. Ten was their last shot
at the big time. And while it didn’t
turn out as they hoped, they at
least gave it their best shot.
With former Journey drummer
Steve Smith playing on most
tracks, this was a high-class hard
rock record, with shades of Led
Zeppelin in the stuttering riff of
Hard Times and the acoustic
textures in Ten Lovers, and AOR
mastery in Don’t Be Afraid Of
The Dark. But as Dave Meniketti
later commented: “Grunge
was coming in. The writing was
on the wall.”
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