"When VAN HALEN came out they probably freaked out Warner Bros because they had no idea how popular they were going to become."

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Live Photos By Larry Petro

Formed in the early 70's, Yesterday & Today, now known simply as Y&T, set out to leave their mark on the music world, but it wasn't until the early 80's that people started to take notice of this younr bunch of upstarts. With a string of solid releases like Black Tiger, Mean Streak, In Rock We Trust, Down For The Count and Contagious throughout the 1980's, the band served notice that they were a force to be reckoned with. The band quickly built a loyal, almost cult-like following and although mega-stardom remained just out of reach, this did not dissuade the band from continuing to do what they loved doing: making kick ass rock-n-roll.

In 2014 the band celebrated their 40th anniversary, putting them in the over-40 club with other iconic acts such as BLACK SABBATH, JUDAS PRIEST, THE WHO, ROLLING STONES and KISS, which is no small feat for a band that flew largely under the radar for most of their careers. But Y&T is still having fun and playing sold out shows whereever they go around the globe. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Y&T front man and mastermind, the incomparable Dave Meniketti, about being in the business for 40 years, what the late bass player Phil Kennemore would have thought about it, how having his wife Jill manage the band for over a decade has managed to work and the new Y&T documentary that has recently been funded through a Kickstarter campaign, among other things. Pop a cold one and enjoy!

KNAC.COM: So the band is currently celebrating its 40 year anniversary. Did you ever think that you'd still be doing Y&T after 40 years?

MENIKETTI: Well, of course not (laughs). that was not something that was ever in the back of my mind when we were doing our thing in the 70's or the 80's or probably even the 90's. We just kind of took every day as day by day and like most people we're just thinking ahead to maybe that year or what was going to happen in the next couple of months, or 'I hope we get this tour' or 'we’ve got a new record coming out', that kind of stuff. but never thinking 'wow, I wonder how long we're going to be together', or I’m going to be doing this Y&T thing. Yeah, no, that was never in my mind. of course it is now thought the last 10 or so years because it's real obvious that the music business has changed. But the good things is that we've got fans that still love this music and it just keeps going, quite well actually. I don't see an end to it and now I’m thinking 'ok, well maybe we could go for 50' (laughs).

KNAC.COM: It must be somewhat bittersweet for you at the same time knowing that your friend and band mate from the beginning, Phil Kennemore, isn't here to celebrate that with you.

MENIKETTI: Yeah, it definitely is. but, life goes on I guess and at some point you just realize that, given all the circumstances that have surrounded me and Y&T as a band, you just either say 'ok, that's it, no more' or you go 'why should I stop?', we're having fun and if the fans love it and the music's great and that's basically where I’ve been at since day 1 and even with Phil, on his dying bed, telling me 'you gotta go on Dave, we've done all this great work and have great songs and the fans are still there for us, you just gotta keep the legacy going'. of course it was always great to hear it from him, to have him say that himself, but it's just a natural and obvious feeling. I still love what I’m doing, why should I quit?

KNAC.COM: What do you think he would say about the 40th anniversary if he were alive today?

MENIKETTI: Oh, of course he'd be one proud guy. that's the good thing about Phil is that he and I were of like mind when it came to the band and it was always just a proud thing for us that we had created a band that has lived on and on and on for all these years and, of course, the dedication that the fans have for the band has always been pretty impressive. I know there's a lot of guys out there, a lot of bands out there that will say 'hey, our fans are the best', and they probably are for them. We're definitely one of those bands that can say that without question. A lot of them have stayed with us since the very first time they heard about Y&T, whether that was in the 70's, 80's, 90's or even 2 or 3 months ago. It doesn't really matter, once they get into the band they really seem to be dedicated and I think some of that has to do with the fact that when we play live, we really shine and when somebody finally gets out there and has a chance to see the band that they've liked for some many years and finds out that we're still bringing it, I think that's what helps as well. You know, we have some pretty good songs and I think that kind of helps to stand the test of time.

KNAC.COM: And that's one thing that, to me, sets Y&T apart from so many others is the true appreciation that you have for the fans. Associating with the ones who love the band never seems to get old for you.

MENIKETTI: No, it doesn't, and of course that's the impetus for us to keep going forward. If there weren't the amount of people that were so into it of course it would have made it very difficult for us to keep going because how are you going to get gigs if nobody comes to the shows (laughs). It's been anything but that. My wife has been managing the band now for 11 years plus and the one thing that she's quite shocked about, at least for a while there she was, now it's become a little bit more normal for her to see, is people just calling us up all the time wondering when we're going to come back. She doesn't even have to work that hard for some places. It's nice to see because you don't burn bridges, I mean when we go into a town or play for a promoter or a venue or whatever the case may be, it's usually a pretty good relationship that gets started because we're all professional guys and nobody's a jerk and we come in and we're very good at what we do. The fans love it, which also ends up being a compliment to the venue owner or whatever so it's a good symbiotic relationship we have with most places that we play.

KNAC.COM: Speaking of Jill, you mentioned that she's been the manager now for over 11 years, but typically when family gets involved in a band dynamic like that it doesn't historically end well. How has this arrangement managed to work for Y&T?

MENIKETTI: Well, I'll tell you. Originally, when we had let our previous manager go, it was a suggestion from Leonard (Haze), our old drummer at the time actually said 'you know, Jill could do this job, man you should let her do it'. Of course I was the whole time knowing that but at the same time just like you said, thinking the worst you know, oh god, I've seen this movie before with other people trying to do this stuff and sometimes it just ends in disaster. I didn't want to have that for me. I certainly didn't and to have my wife get involved in something that I thought could end up being a real hassle at the end of the day and create all sorts of personal problems between band members and such. But at the same time I also knew how Jill was and how these guys are and I kinda figured, let's give it a go for a little while and see if it turns out the way I think it will, and of course it did.

Jill is the kind of person that just works so hard and works every day, doesn't matter, weekends, weekdays, and she also is the type of person that she's kinda one of the guys, so they don't feel bad when she's around. They can talk as lewd and crazy as they want to (laughs) and there's never any concern about that. I've been around the business for all this time and Jill has the knowledge of being with me to know that we don't talk about anything that goes down on the road amongst even our friends, it's the old Vegas thing you know, 'what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas', that's pretty much what goes down about Y&T, so there's a trust between all of us that never gets broken and there's no craziness, there's no wife of one of the band members requesting crazy stuff or something, it's quite the opposite. It's all about business and taking care of business the right way and being respectful. It's been exactly the opposite of what you would think it could have turned out to be. It's been quite, quite good actually.

KNAC.COM: I'm sure you're real pleased with that.

MENIKETTI: Oh yeah, of course, and you know it keeps the family life going well, too. I must admit that there are some down sides too because Jill is such a workaholic that I can barely wrench her out of the office (laughs). So, it does kind of impede a bit on our standard life together as husband and wife, but it's cool, I'm used to it now (laughs).

KNAC.COM: So, four decades of memories. Any ones stand out to you as far as favorites goes?

MENIKETTI: (Pause) Well, that's a tough one because you can imagine 40 years, 41 years now, there's so many of them. You know, I think probably when certain things happen that remind me of certain things we've done in the past. You know it's been an important thing when it still hits you in the gut like 'wow man, that was so cool', and one of them was our very first tour through the UK as a support band with AC/DC and we also did Europe with them that same year as well. Because of the timing of everything it ended up being a special moment in time for us. We had just finished doing our very first tour through the UK, which was the first time that we had played outside the US borders in 1982. We were recording the Black Tiger record over there and that was a shock to find that all the venues that we played on that small tour as a headliner were just packed and all these people were so into the band that we realized the power that music has, it's such a universal thing. When you're just playing in the US, playing in your own area you just don't sometimes have the concept of how there's all these other people that are just as into you that are 5,000 or 8,000 miles away from you and you just don't know it until you finally get your butt out there and get right to them and play for 'em.

It was an exciting time for us because we were growing internationally and seeing how that was coming down firsthand and then we got probably one of our favorite bands of all-time to ask us to support them on a two- month tour Europe and the UK. We were very impressionable at the time and excited about our future and at the same time watching as each one of these sold out shows just filled with amazing stuff that was going on, you know, with the cannons going off because it was the For Those About To Rock tour and one of our favorite bands, to watch them every night, looking at all the fans, denim and leather out there with their heads in unison banging, it was just an amazing time that we had and I'll never forget that one. That's gotta be first and foremost on my list of amazing events that Y&T has been through.

KNAC.COM: Ok, so other than the outfits you guys wore in the "Summertime Girls" video, what about a least favorite?

MENIKETTI: (big laugh) Well, there's a lot of those kinds of least favorite, yeah. I can't tell you how many people have given me hell for my pink jumpsuit that I had on during the Live At San Francisco Civic video that we did in the 80's too. I tell you, my least favorite part of being a professional musician was when in the mid-80's the record companies kept pushing and pushing and pushing at us to do things that we weren't really wanting to do and of course, that's going to happen, that's just the music business as a whole, really ANY business as a whole, but certainly entertainment. There's a lot of people out there in the entertainment field that try to go for what they think is the obvious way to go in order to sell product, and it's usually the safe route. You know, instead of looking at this guy's script for a brand new movie that's completely different than anything else, why don't we just do another remake of something that was popular 40 years ago, or 10 years ago, you know it's that same kind of mental attitude they have in the film industry that is in of course the music industry.

When VAN HALEN came out they probably freaked out Warner Bros because they had no idea how popular they we’re going to become. Then everybody in the music industry in L.A. in all the other record companies all wanted to find local L.A. bands that sounded like VAN HALEN, you know what I mean? They're all just followers and there's very, very few leaders. All of those followers have got the money and your career in their hands and they're telling you 'we want you to do this, why don't you hire VAN HALEN's wardrobe consultant?. Well, there you go, guess what happened? And 'why don't you guys do this and why don't you guys do that and hey, when you do this kind of a video why don't you try ding this and that and look like that?'. Of course, weeks, months, years and decades later you look at that stuff and you just have to laugh at this point. So that's the kinds of stuff that drove me crazy my entire career was having to deal with these buffoons that work in the record companies that really didn't care what the band's sound was like or anything like that, it was just a marketing thing and most of the time it was follow the leader rather than lead. That was always a struggle to have to fight against that all the time.

KNAC.COM: Y&T is one of those bands that you never really read about drama in the press. How has the band managed to avoid the infighting and the other pitfalls that have seemed to become the norm with bands from the 80's era in particular?

MENIKETTI: I'll tell you, it's as simple as this: Most of the guys in this band were brought up in what I consider to be reasonably healthy households and I could go to almost any one of these guy's families and say these were some good people and they did their best in trying to raise their son and I think that it starts from there quite frankly. There's not a lot of spoiled brats in this band, not a lot of complete, out of control people. I mean sure, there was some crazy stuff that went on in the 70's and 80's with the drugs and of course that created problems with certain band members that ended up guiding us to have to do some things we didn't want to do but we also respected every single person that has ever been in this band. Why would we want to throw our buddies under the bus because of some unfortunate situation that left us with no other option than to let that person go? It was already devastating for them and for us to have to do that, so why would we want to completely browbeat them in the public and tell stories that would only make them feel worse? It doesn't make any sense to us. Our parents didn't raise us to be those kinds of people and maybe by nature of the fact that we're too regular of guys that we didn't have enough drama in the press to keep us as bad boys like everybody loves their rockers to be seemingly. But you know what? I'll forego that and go 'hey man, if normal is not the best thing to be when you're a rocker, I don't care'. What am I doing? I'm playing 41 years into my career so something else worked about it and I respect these guys and I know that they respect me as well. We just don't talk shit about each other in public. I've never done that and I don't plan on doing that anytime soon.

KNAC.COM: Well, and you've never seem to have caught the Lead Singer's Disease either.

MENIKETTI: No, I'm an atypical rocker. I was straight for most of my career, the 70's, the 80's, the 90's, I didn't start drinking wine until about 11 years ago. I did all my drugs and abuse to my body when I was in high school, stopped it early and then did my own thing after that. I never bothered anybody else about it, I'm certainly not a good-two-shoes kind of guy. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy and my motto for myself was just 'if it doesn’t feel right for me then why force myself to do it because other people are doing it?'. It just didn't make any sense so I just stuck with my thing and my thing is just very atypical, especially of a lead singer or a lead guitar player in a rock band that plays heavy rock music. It doesn't really matter to me, I mean none of that really means anything from the outside. All that really matters is do you love what you're doing, do you have a passion for what you're doing and are you doing it well and do you care about it enough to where you make sure you do a good job for yourself and for you fans and be respectful to everyone around you. That's what we've done and I think that that really is why we're still here.

KNAC.COM: And that says a lot about your character and personality as the band's founder and leader. It's like Y&T is a model of band cohesiveness, at least from a certain point on anyway.

MENIKETTI: (laughs) Yeah, we're definitely sort of reliable kind of guys. Every one of us had relationships that lasted forever and ever and ever, not within the band itself, but in their personal relationships. I think that went kind of hand in hand with the type of personalities that we were, we weren't the kind of guys that we're looking for the next best thing at the same time as being in a band. We were always dedicated to the band that we were in. Hence, the type of band that we were, we didn't make a move until we absolutely had to and our hand was pretty much forced by what was going on around us. That's just the way it is. If you get in this band and you don't screw up (laughs) and you just do your gig and are respectful to the people around you, chances are you'll always be in the band. That's kind of the way it is, it just makes sense to us.

KNAC.COM: The years have been very kind to you. When I ran into you at the Houston show a couple of years ago I had mentioned that I look older than you despite the fact that you're almost old enough to be my father (Big laugh from Dave!). Actually, you and Jill both are very youthful looking. What's your secret?

MENIKETTI: Uhh, genetics, I don't know (more hearty laughter). You know what? Honestly, I always say and get the feedback that music keeps you young and I think it's true. I think that in general, not even just music, but if you're doing something that makes you feel good or that you are proud about , I think that keeps you young. It's the whole idea about having something to get up for every day rather than just 'ugh, just another day of work, damn'. I think that all helps, there's no question about that. I just don't feel my age, I mean at least what people are supposed to feel I suppose, but you know what? That's all a bunch of BS too because we're all working off of maybe what our parents were like or our grandparents were like but seemingly I don't know, these last couple of generations it ain't what it used to be. I mean, my dad lived to be 90 years old and when he was in his 80's people thought he was in his 60'. And there's a lot of people out there that are like that, that are living a long life and acting and looking younger than their years seemingly say they are and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that maybe we're a little more health-conscious than we used to be. And I do take care of myself, there's no question, I mean I'm not the perfect model of it for sure, I could probably be in a little bit better shape than I am but not for the lack of trying. I'm out there trying to exercise all the time, trying to eat right and taking care of my voice #1, to make sure that this thing hangs in there and I think in some ways that it's much better than it ever was so I'm very aware of all that kind of stuff, trying to keep it together here the best I can (laugh).

KNAC.COM: It's quite obvious when you're onstage that you give 120%. Do you ever feel it the next day?

MENIKETTI: (laugh) Eh, not really, I mean if we have a couple of months off and then we go out and play a string of shows, every once in a while your neck might hurt from banging it back and forth or something. But not really, although the Les Paul does feel a bit heavier than it used to be for my back and my shoulders (laughs), but that's why people go to Stratocasters sometimes later on because they're lighter (laughs).

KNAC.COM: The band's last studio album, Facemelter, came out in 2010. What are the band's plans for any new material?

MENIKETTI: Well, that is a subject matter that is much talked about in the last 6 or 8 months and we are of the mind that this is the time that we're writing for another record and I haven't gotten my butt off and into this yet because I've been so busy doing other things for the band. I'm gonna stop for a while being a person that helps out run the business and get back out there and be a songwriter again and get this thing going, so that's the plan. We're expecting to write all this year in between all the shows that we've got, and we've got lots of them, and eventually get down and record all the stuff and get something out for next year.

KNAC.COM: Is the process of creating a new album in the present easier or more difficult for you than in the early days?

MENIKETTI: Oh, it's more difficult because in the early days we didn't really do any band business, we were not in the middle of any of that stuff. Nowadays you almost have to be your own advocate for yourself and you have to be in there helping yourself out all the time. I've always been a kind of hands-on person, I would just go for it. You know the old saying 'if you want something done right you have to do it yourself', that's been my way of life forEVER, and it's the same way when it comes to handling certain business things of the band and keeping things going on the accounting level. Every one of us has our own duties that we have to do to keep ourselves going as a band and that definitely impacts the time that we have to just hang around together and write together as a band unit. It used to be that's all we did and that's the only thing we did every day. We'd all go down to the rehearsal studio and hang out and jam all day long and come up with tunes. That's a LOT harder to do nowadays with all the bits and bobs that we have to do for ourselves just to keep ourselves going here. It just makes it a little more difficult but we know that there are ways to make it happen and to sort of portion time away from touring to give ourselves time to get together and write.

KNAC.COM: Have you given any thought to doing something like a box set?

MENIKETTI: Yeah, that has come up and for different ways, I mean, obviously even thinking about the past stuff and putting together the most popular Y&T CDs and putting them into a box set or doing any number of other things, too. There was an idea going around that we had started to work on that may still come to fruition at some point, but it was basically that we all thought it would be a cool thing, especially around our 40th anniversary, if we just picked some of our favorite tunes from every record that Y&T ever recorded and re-record them with the current band. You know, give a new spin to some of the old classics. I always wanted to do that anyway because I think my voice is so much better than it was on the first 5 or 6 records we put out. It sure would be cool to have that down as a real studio version of an old song that has got the goods nowadays that's even better to some degree. Of course we understand that people love the original music for the way it was and you can never one-up that per se, but just for a fun thing and we thought that might be a 3CD kind of package if we ever get around to finishing that kind of thing. Again, that's just more of a cool thing for us to do. A lot of times we play shows and the people that hear us play live now, they'll come up to the merchandise table and go 'hey, you know that song I heard in the set, you got that on CD?'. Then they'll go away with it and it'll be an album that was produced 35 years ago (laughs) and it does not sound like the same thing they heard onstage, and so we thought that might pretty cool to have almost like a 'Best Of Y&T' done by the current band and the way they sound now. That may happen at some point, too. We've got a lot of plans (laughs). We'll see if we ever get done with half of them!

KNAC.COM: And speaking of other plans, it just announced recently that you guys had started a fundraising campaign for a Y&T documentary.

MENIKETTI: Right.

KNAC.COM: How did the concept for a documentary come about?

MENIKETTI: You know, we had seen a few things while we were out on the road, other bands doing some documentary bits and we had talked about doing something like that for Y&T even before we saw a few of those, but then of course once we were on the tour bus going down the road, somebody slipped in a documentary about somebody and that just brought it right back to us. We thought, you know, this is something we've just got to do because we've got a long history in this music business and we've got a hell of a story to tell and it might be pretty interesting. With all that has gone down in the music business since we started from 1974 through 2015, we've got a lot of stuff to say and I think it would be a cool thing to do a documentary. It's been on our mind for a couple of years and finally, I've got to hand it to our drummer, Mike (Vanderhule), because he pushed the envelope on it, he just kept going 'C'mon Dave, c'mon, c'mon, let's do this, let's do this' (laughs). He's the guy who researched all this stuff about crowd-funding and going to Kickstarter. I didn't know anything about it, I had heard about Kickstarter and I knew some tech projects that people were trying to get started on there and stuff like that but he really introduced everybody else to this whole idea of trying to get something done through crowd-funding. I was kicking and screaming all the way until I finally said 'alright, let's do it', cuz I just didn't think that was a cool thing to do, you know, asking the fans for help. Then I found out that that was an old-fashioned kind of scenario nowadays because most people are doing it. So I was like, let's give it a go. Now that we've gotten into it, it makes total sense, because basically you're asking the fans to buy the product in advance, which will help you make it and that's exactly what happened, we have about 9 days left (at the time of this interview) on our Kickstarter campaign for people to buy the DVD in advance or any number of gifts that are on there, rewards or whatever they call them. We met our original goal but of course with most of these campaigns the idea is to get as many presales as you can so in case you did the wrong thing but not putting in enough starting goal for what the project is really going to cost you then you won't get into trouble, but I think we're good, we're going quite well and it's an exciting thing for us. We've got Eddie Trunk that's going to get involved in this as well, he's going to be doing some of the interviews of myself and maybe some commentary as well. Former band members are going to be talked to and there's going to be a lot of good stories and a lot of good information about the band.

KNAC.COM: You mentioned surpassing the goal that you had initially had set of $25,000. What surprised me the most was that you had already exceeded that goal by the time I posted the news release about the documentary!

MENIKETTI: Yeah, it happened in 8 days. Of course we put the campaign up for 30 days and that was encouraging, obviously. The whole thing was that if we didn't reach our goal then the people didn't even get their money charged to the card and probably you're not going to do the project or it's going to be so much more difficult to get it done. That's why we didn't just want to even promise anything to anybody about what's going to happen with this until we knew for sure that it was going to get funded. It has indeed at least reached that initial goal, so it's great, it's a good thing that shows that there were enough people out there that also care to see this happen. It gives us a good drive to know that when we put this thing to bed eventually, it's going to be something that a lot of fans will be really interested in.

KNAC.COM: Obviously you still have a lot of fans, judging from the amount that you've raised for the documentary so far. And that's a nice feeling because now you can actually have more leeway when you're doing thing once you've exceed the money you thought you were going to need for it.

MENIKETTI: Yeah, and it is good from that standpoint and the good thing is that some people go, 'what are you going to do with all that extra money?'. And it's like, wait a minute, you don't realize that most of this money is actually for product or for some thing that is being sent to the people who bid on it, it's not just free money for us. We've done our due diligence with trying to figure out what it's all going to cost us at the end of the day but already since we started the campaign we forgot a few things of course and realized that it's going to be a little bit more expensive than we originally thought. And that kind of stuff happens all the time, but yeah, it's all going towards the product and that's it. Nobody gonna make a quick cash grab out of this, that's not what it's for. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I didn't even want to go with crowd-funding in the first place is that maybe that's what people were doing it for and then later I realized that it's anything but that, it's just for the project and that's it. It's a good thing that we go over it because we're probably going to need every cent that we get to get this done. It's not cheap to do a video documentary. There's a lot of time and effort and money involved in editing and so on and so forth. It's crazy.

KNAC.COM: What do you like to do to relax when you're out on the road, or do you relax I guess should have been the question?

MENIKETTI: Relax? On the road? Those are almost two completely different concepts (laughs).

KNAC.COM: An oxymoron.

MENIKETTI: (laughs) Yeah, Exactly. Most of my relaxing is when we're at home. The cool thing about being on the road is that you see new things all the time, you're exposed to and experiencing new things and you're with your buddies. There are moments where we really are having a great time, but 60, 70% of the time is a lot of work and a lot of sleepless days as you do late shows, you do meet and greets after the show, you get back to the hotel really late, you gotta get up really early for a travel day the next day to play a show and do it all over again. You know ,that stuff does get to wear on you, especially when you have flights in between and you're jumping countries every two, three days and it can wear on you. But it's what we love doing, as soon as we hit the stage all that stuff goes away and when we have days off it's a credit to the kind of people we are, we don't scatter like a lot of bands do where everybody's just doing it because they like playing but they hate everybody in the band and can't stand being around each other, we're nothing like that. We get off the bus and we're like 'Hey, what do you want to do? You wanna go get some food? You wanna do this? You wanna do that?'. So we enjoy hanging with each other and enjoy opening a bottle of wine or something at the end of a show, hanging out at the hotel or doing whatever. Those are the fun times, the in-betweens I suppose, besides the playing part of course.

KNAC.COM: A lot of people have a bucket list of things they'd like to do before they die. Is there anything you haven't done yet that you'd like to do before it's all over?

MENIKETTI: Huh....I haven't started on my bucket list I guess. Yeah, there's a few things. Not necessarily related to Y&T per se, but my wife and I have been considering over the last decade about potentially having some overseas type of place to go a couple months out of the year. I think that would be kind of fun to live in Europe maybe 2 or 3 months out of the year, maybe longer, who knows? I have an affinity for quite a few places over there and I am also an Italian citizen so I have dual citizenship. We may eventually one of these days find a place in Italy and stay there a few months out of the year. It's kind of a cool idea. It's good to change your thing up every once in a while, it's healthy for you to not just stay in one rut all of the time.

KNAC.COM: Last question. Tell me one thing that most people don't know about you or Y&T.

MENIKETTI: Hmmmm. With the advent of social media I wonder if anybody doesn't know everything about us (big laugh). Well, actually that's not true because when you see the documentary I think you're going to find out a lot of things about Y&T that you didn't know. There's a lot of mad and crazy stories out there that occasionally come up and I read what fans are thinking what things are going on behind the scenes and I have to laugh and go 'Wow, if they only knew, it's totally different' (laughs). Yeah, I don't know if there's anything I can really think of off the top of my head although maybe it could be what I listen to on a daily basis. I'll just bring it down to me because I can't think of anything specific about Y&T. I've been a lover of all styles of music and like my wife used to say for the last however many years we've been together, she goes 'Boy, if your fans could see your collection of music, if they came over to the house they'd totally be shocked', because you know, I listen to everything, I listen to classical, I listen to jazz, I'm actually a big jazz fanatic and lot of other styles of music. But that's not that shocking to me, it seems like there's a whole lot of people that are in the music business that listen to other stuff than what they play. It might be though to some of those heavy metal fans that figure all I listen to is SABBATH or DIO or something like that, which I do, but I also listen to Pavarotti (laughs) and all kinds of different stuff.