BraveWords had the honour of chatting with legendary Y&T frontman Dave Meniketti at the recent Time To Rock Festival in Sweden and the uncut audio of the entire conversation is now available on YouTube below. Keep in mind, there have been some big lifestyle changes for the Meniketti family. They sold their house. Sold most of the Y&T collection and are literally road warriors. Living life as rock n’ roll nomads and playing shows across the globe. But it’s time to get a little less serious, dig deep into the past and try to get a more personal look into the mind of a hard rock icon! We call it the BraveWords Rapid Fire questions. And Dave was up for the challenge!
BraveWords: Who’s your rock star or a metal god?
Meniketti: “Well, that’s a tough one. It changes from decade to decade, year to year. When I first started out, it was Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix was the god for me. When I was getting into playing electric guitar, that was inspirational, so much so, for me. And in my bedroom, I always at least prided myself on having some sort of little stereo rig or something, even if it’s just literally a transistor radio, I would have that hooked up to a little three inch reel to reel deck. And if I heard something new on the radio, I’d just record it for a second to find out, you know, who was that band, and I could go buy the record. So like I said, from the beginning, it was Hendrix. I actually saw him twice, live.”
BraveWords: Wow!
Meniketti: “Yeah, I know. Some people freak out when I tell them that. It’s true. I saw him in 1969. I think it was Berkeley Community Theatre, and in fact, they came out with a movie called Jimi At Berkeley, I think, many years later. And I was at one of those two shows because they played two shows in one night, and I was in the first one of the two. And then I saw him at the Oakland Coliseum, and their opening act was the first time on the road for the Chicago Transit Authority. So it was Terry Kath playing guitar for Chicago, and he was amazing. Yeah, that was so cool. So those were the two times I saw him, and, you know, embedded in that brain.”
BraveWords: Metallica played it.
Meniketti: “Yeah, exactly, yeah. We played one of those. And Metallica was one of the opening acts, actually, back then. But this was one where I think Journey was one of the headliners or something, because I said Journey a couple times because Journey and Y&T were first managed by the same manager when they were first starting out, and when we were first starting out. So we played lots of shows together and became friends with those guys. So we went to the show and I was watching them from backstage and Jeff Beck was right in front of me, and I was literally looking at his fingers because he had his hands behind his back, and I’m like, going, ‘Wow, look at those, those are Jeff’s fingers! Look at those short – and they’re stubby – but they look powerful’. But I could not go up and say anything to him. I was too afraid. And then years later, we did this thing where we played at what was a celebrity theatre, they call it. It’s a theatre in the round in Anaheim, for the NAMM show. And Jeff Beck was backstage, and I could not go up to him. For some reason, that guy just freaked me out so much because I was such a fan that I couldn’t do it, you know? But the other people that I have over the years, it’s generally because we’ve met them at a concert or something like that. And, yeah, I’ll just shake their hand and tell them, you know, I love your playing or, you know, you’ve been an influence or whatever, you know, what most people say as a fan. And I’ve been lucky enough to play with a lot of the people that I really have a lot of respect for – Ronnie James Dio, I mean, we did a tour of them in 1983.”
BraveWords: For Holy Diver.
Meniketti: “Yes. That to me was, it was a real privilege. We were on the Mean Streak record, they were on that record, and it was just the two of us playing shows together for about three weeks. It was a short tour that we were on, but it was awesome. It was so awesome to be right next to Ronnie all the time, you know. A couple of times we would go to radio stations together to do interviews, for the local shows we were playing and things like that. I didn’t spend a lot of time with him, but just being on stage with such a legend and in fact, coming in the very first time, the very first of the show of the tour, walking into the venue, and they were doing a sound check and hearing that voice of God coming out of the PA system and looking up at Ronnie and I’m just going, ‘Oh, my God’. It was just so amazing. The voice that that guy had. And then, many years later, becoming a sort of a friend, I guess you could say, somebody that I would see on rare occasions, but when we did, it was always like a hug and a half an hour conversation or something. He was just a sweetheart of a guy, amazing.”
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