Q and A: Danny Vaughn (Tyketto)

By PAUL SOUTHWELL

AMERICAN hard rock band Tyketto are determined survivors. Decades ago, the band had all the groundwork set to become an international heavy hitter. But it was a case of right place, wrong time – partially in tandem with changing fashions – as the grunge movement took hold and label machinations meant many a band was dismissed from rosters, all for various reasons that can only be speculated upon to this day. However, the good news is that Tyketto were resilient and resourceful enough to find ways to continue and are now in Australia as part of the current GlamFest lineup.

The second iteration of GlamFest is stripped back slightly itinerary-wise from ambitious beginnings, with the tour hitting parts of the eastern coast. The Melbourne show is already creating noise, including some sideshows, and following suit, the Sydney one looks set to be a success. Hot Metal conducted a recent Zoom chat with Tyketto frontman Danny Vaughn, whereby he offered up some intelligent insights, balanced with some unexpectedly amusing anecdotes.

Hot Metal: Tyketto are finally coming to Australia.

Danny Vaughn: “We are, indeed.”

HM: Your debut album from 1991, Don’t Come Easy, included the powerful single “Forever Young”, but by the next album in 1994, Strength in Numbers, Geffen dropped the ball. What happened?

DV: “It is still a bit of a mystery because of how far they let us progress with Strength in Numbers. You know, I mean, it was not a cheap record. We were making it with Kevin Elson who had been working with Mr. Big and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and we did it in both San Francisco and in Los Angeles. Money was spent and we actually got to the point – and you’ve got to be older to remember this, but record companies used to send out blank cassettes with just the name on it, like, ‘Here’s a new song from Tyketto, coming soon, you’re going to want to check this out,’ and they actually sent those out to radio stations, before they pulled the plug. I think that it was a case of a group of accountants just going over the books, saying, ‘ah, we’ve got to trim the fat, we’re not making money like we wanted to make money, so this group of bands here; they’ve all got to go,’ and we were on the list.”

HM: Nice. Well, the good news is that you will find your way down to Australia, alongside a great lineup that includes Lynch Mob, Slaughter, JetBoy, the fantastic H.E.A.T and others.

DV: “Yep, H.E.A.T are a great band, and I think I have met pretty much everybody, although I may not have met the JetBoy guys before. But everybody else includes people that I know, or that I have encountered, or, in the case of Janet Gardner and Justin James, I am good friends with them, so, you know, it is going to be fun, and it will be like summer camp.”

HM: George Lynch is one of the few guitarists from the eighties that stands out as an original and one that defines the style of guitar playing at the time.

DV: “Yeah, well, I mean, he kind of set the bar. Everybody else had to try and follow him.”

HM: Can you divulge what sort of set list we can expect from Tyketto for GlamFest?

DV: “There are no secrets but the worst of it for us is that we don’t have a lot of time. I am not exactly sure, but I think it might be 50 minutes. So, for the first time in, we’ve got to deliver as much as we can from the album that introduced us to everybody. Our set is going to be heavily influenced by Don’t Come Easy and Strength in Numbers, and I cannot remember if we are doing anything off of any of the other albums. I don’t think we are, so we are playing what people have been waiting to hear.”

HM: You’ve recorded and released a lot of live sets, so there are plenty of deep cuts you could throw in. These days, what do you prefer, studio works or live releases?

DV: “Ah, I wouldn’t say either is better or worse; they are both completely different animals. I mean, not every musician enjoys the studio because it can be very precise and exact. I love it, and most of the time I find it to be an incredible and an inspiring place to be. Every now and then you will look around the studio and everyone has the heads in their palms and then it is time to go home. It is called decision fatigue and at that point, nobody has any idea about what is good, or what works, anymore. But, of course, playing live is another artform entirely.”

HM: Studio wise, you’ve also got your own solo albums, worked with your band Vaughn and clocked up some time with Waysted. Have you found working with producers to be beneficial?

DV: “Ah, primarily I like working with producers, because I like collaborating and you’re tapping into somebody else’s musical education which will not be the same as yours. Sometimes, if people are brave enough and if there is not too much ego in the room, people are willing to make what would seem to be odd suggestions. Things like ‘what would you think about a mandolin solo?’ and then you run the risk of everybody going,’oh, fuck off!’ But that could be the thing that takes it. Sometimes, those happy accidents work and I really do enjoy writing with other people because they are not going to write and think the same way that I think about music. And if you are willing to do some push and pull, well, that is what Tyketto was all about. You had Michael [Clayton, real name Arbeeny – drummer] and me who were very much Zeppelin, Stones and blues based, and then Brooke [St. James, real name David Rundall – lead guitar] came along and he was more into the newer breed of Lynch, Eddie Van Halen and more guitar centred. So, we had a push and pull between us that created those first two albums.”

HM: How did you find going from Waysted to Tyketto, because Waysted was very English hard rock style of music. You went from a UFO musical sensibility into a more melodic style of hard rock.

DV: “Yeah, well I think it was more natural to me and to the guys that I was with, to do the melodic hard rock thing because it was everywhere and it was what was happening in America. When we first started, I think the very first band where we said ‘oh, we want to be like that’ was Night Ranger because, man, they were coming out with brilliant songwriting, great singing, and they had these two ridiculous guitar players that didn’t sound like each other at all. Tyketto was originally supposed to be a two-guitar band but then we thought ‘oh, this is too much hassle, we will just have one’.”

HM: Yep, I remember “You Can Still Rock (in America)” and “Sister Christian”, and of course Brad Gillis’ mad guitar tricks, and Jeff Watson’s eight finger playing. It was amazing, indeed. But when you came from Waysted, did you find Pete Way was a bit ‘my way or the highway?‘

DV: “Let me think about that. Unfortunately, with Pete, his opinion generally was the same as the other strongest person in the room’s opinion, and he was very mercurial in that way. So, if the manager, who was an absolutely horrible, evil human being, if he was in the room, everything changed. Pete would just go ‘yeah, yeah, let’s do that’ and you could see Paul Chapman in the corner just grinding his teeth because he had a bit more backbone and he knew. In the end, it was management that convinced Pete that he needed to get rid of Paul because Paul was bad, and it was like, ‘what are you doing?’ then Paul suddenly wasn’t in the band anymore and none of us knew anything about it. Pete was the frontpiece of it, or the Jaguar on the hood but decisions were being made by other people and that was kind of a shame.”

HM: Understood. You did an acoustic tour with Dan Reed, under the name of Snake Oil & Harmony where, aside from playing songs, you’ve relayed stories and anecdotes, so I gather that is quite therapeutic for you.

DV: “Yeah, probably so, bit it is tough, and it is not that he does it on purpose, but with some of Dan Reed’s stories, when you trade off stories, I might be talking about my experiences of opening up for Iron Maiden, or working with Status Quo, he’ll come back with the Rolling Stones, and David Bowie, and then he will venture off into ‘and then there was the time I interviewed the Dalai Lama’ and it’s like ‘oh, come on!’ 

HM: Beaten there but on a good note, how was working with White Lion? I believe you had a good working relationship.

DV: “The bass player, James LoMenzo, was and is one of my very best friends. We lived two blocks apart in Brooklyn before there was White Lion, so we knew each other. We were also in the same management team and that is kind of the reason that that whole tour happened because Geffen Records was not slightly interested in sending us to the UK. They were like ‘nah, who cares about the rest of the world? America is all that matters. We are not going to pay for anything’ and so we had to do it off our own backs. And because we were with the same management, you could consolidate and that sort of thing, so on paper, it all worked very well. It was a great tour for us, but you can never discount how people are going to react and at the time, there were guys in White Lion who were just not happy with how well Tyketto was going down.”

HM: But really, is that your fault?

DV: “No, and we just went over thinking ‘no-one is going to know who we are’ and we read Kerrang and we heard about the Brits liked throwing bottles of something at bands and we thought ‘well, this is our fight, this is what’s coming’. But we thought that we just have to convince people, one at a time, and on the first night, at St Davids Hall in Wales, we stepped out on stage, it was very unusual, certainly back then, for everybody to be in the venue in time for the opening band – and they were. We opened up with a song called ‘Wings’ and everybody knew it and sang along to it and we thought ‘hang on, what’s happening here?’ because Geffen was just utterly unaware that for every song like ‘Wings’, that it had all taken off in a very vibrant UK club scene and these songs were being played all the time. So, for us, it was a complete triumph, and it laid the bedrock for being able to come back. To this day, I talk to people all the time who said they were there.”

HM: You’ve also played Download in the UK, festivals in Europe, including in Barcelona, so clearly there is an audience.

DV: “Yeah, and this year we are back at Sweden Rock Festival, we are playing festivals in Belgium, we have more dates in Holland, and in Germany, and in Switzerland. So, yeah, it’s after that kind of dead stop of lockdown for two years and coming back with a couple of new band members, I was really uncertain how it was going to go. But we’ve had our best attendances and we are doing more shows per year than we ever have.”

HM: Is it a new rhythm section and what sort of rehearsal is needed to bring them up to speed?

DV: “We have a new guitar player and a new drummer in the band and now it is all solid. We put the work in at the beginning of last year. The drummer is Johnny Dee and we were in Waysted together and he still plays with Doro, so it was an easy one. We are still dear friends. I love him to death and he brings so much energy and kindness to everything he does. Harry Scott Elliott, our guitar player, was someone that we had met through playing with Chez Kane and her band. He and Chris Green [ex-lead guitarist] hit it off and Chris handpicked Harry and said ‘that would be your guy to take my place, now that I am retiring’ and I always like to say both Michael [Clayton – ex-drummer] and Chris retiring was an absolutely zero drama affair. I am very proud of that. We all talked about it and after lockdown, they both kind of said ‘you know what, I want to stay home with my family, I’ve learned how much this means to me and I don’t want to travel anymore’. That was it, no fighting, no dirty laundry. So, I am really quite proud of that.”

HM: Chez Kane is a fantastic new talent, doing things on her own terms to some extent. You must enjoy seeing someone like that coming up, as, pardon the term, a veteran vocalist.

DV: “She is a wonderful singer and yes, veteran is a better word than legend. That one kills me and makes me feel like I am a hundred years old when that word gets used. Ah well, I’m still standing and that is the important thing. But with Kane’d, we had done a tour with them and really liked the Kane sisters and their whole band and the approach. When we did a thing [2019 live album] called We’ve Got Tomorrow, We’ve Got Tonight, which was a sit down concert over two nights where we took a bunch of Tyketto tunes and completely restructured them, reimagined them, added horns and strings, and then we thought ‘let’s get some backing vocalists’ so we got the Kane sisters to be these wonderful backing vocalists on songs. And of course Harry was along for the ride. He was playing with them and he ended up, just a really kind soul, he was helping us with our guitar gear and everything else. Eventually, in a private moment, he admitted to me that Tyketto is the band that got him through university and he had been listening to Tyketto since he was six years old. Ha-ha and yeah, that was kind of like ‘alright, that spells out the age difference’ but it has been wonderful and touring with those guys, they get what Tyketto’s ethic is all about, how we relate to our fans, and what we do on stage, and how we deliver it. They just slotted right in, beautifully.”

HM: Some music fans would see seventies music as the golden era, and in that light, it’s worth mentioning that you contributed to a Yes album [Union], a bit later in their career, but on an interesting album.

DV: “Oh, good God, now there is a skeleton in my closet, yeah. I performed on what is probably the least favourite Yes album of all time. Ha-ha, I don’t mind but as that is as far as I have seen Yes fans rating it but I think that is kind of cruel because there is some great stuff on it. But calling it Union is probably the worst name that they could have given that album because they all hated each other and they not only didn’t record in the same studio, they didn’t record in the same country as each other, it was ridiculous. It was supposed to be an Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe album that we were working on. And then Trevor Rabin was doing his thing with Chris Squire and another drummer [Alan White] plus Rick Wakeman were working together and at some point, Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin starting talking again and so they just took the combined stuff that they were doing, and combined it into one album, and they ended up calling it Yes. So, I never met any of them and my experience with that was that I worked with the producers, the engineers, and a few other vocalists and our job was to come in. The songs had been relatively done but Jon Anderson had lost interest in just layering on the various vocals that Yes is known for, so the idea was that we would write and sing whatever it was the came into our minds. Now, of course, with Yes music, you can really push the boundaries. Jon would come in at another time when we weren’t there and he would listen to what we had done, then we would decide what he liked and what he didn’t and then he would sing those parts, sometimes keeping our voices behind him or sometimes just him. But it was a real experience in what happens in the corporate recording world.”

HM: I believe that Steve Howe [guitarist] is the last original member in Yes.

DV: “Oh gosh, maybe he is because Jon Anderson doesn’t perform anymore. Trevor Rabin has just released a new album [Rio] and it is absolutely stunning.”

HM: Very few people would expect someone from the hard rock scene to be involved with progressive rock.

DV: “Well, you know, if you sing, you sing but I had that trouble when I moved to Nashville, years ago and it was not a good experience for me, And I was trying to get work, saying ‘look, I’ve got all this experience’ and they would say ‘oh yeah, but you’re a rock guy’ and I would reply ‘I can sing country, trust me, it is not rocket science, I can harmonise with that’ but you really had trouble getting people to let you in because of where you came from, which is bizarre to me, because singing is singing.”

HM: What are your touring recollections from the early days, for artists that you felt offered some mentoring?

DV: “Well, our first tour was with Nelson and they had the number one album [After the Rain] in the country at the time and they were fantastic. The brothers were very smart, aside from being very talented, because they surrounded themselves with top flight musicians; Bobby Rock on drums, Brett Garsed on guitar; these were all monster musicians and they had a similar work ethic to us in that ‘you give it all, you leave it out there, you don’t leave anything behind’ so we were a really good match-up. I thought that was a really enjoyable tour. For the most part, Tyketto tours were off our own backs and we had various opening acts like Shotgun Symphony, and so on, but we didn’t get to tangle with as many of the big boys as I would have liked.”

HM: How would you say your voice has changed over the years?

DV: “I like it better and on talking to a few people, they kindly say that they have still got Waysted’s Save Your Prayers and tell me it is the best hard rock ever, and that kind of thing. I think that it is amazing that people feel that way but I feel like I am so much better now than I was when I did that album. My voice has matured, and you learn what you can do with it and learning what you cannot do with it is also important. But I like venturing into different territories. My last solo album, Myths, Legends and Lies, is not a rock album. You know, it is more of a singer songwriter record that ventures into all kinds of musical territories and I love that. You know, it might be ‘this one is going to be a bit jazzy, so how I approach that one vocally?’ but when we started out, in the Waysted days, and with Tyketto as well, everybody was trying to be like Steve Perry [Journey] or Geoff Tate [Queensrÿche]. So, when I listen to that Waysted album I hear somebody who started almost at the top of his range and we just stayed up so high, all of the time, because that is what we thought everybody wanted. I don’t know what that was except to say that in the eighties, it was a big showing off competition. People were going [mimics high vocals], hitting notes that only dogs could hear.”

HM: Ha, like Nitro?

DV: “Oh yeah, Nitro, for sure. Wow but I don’t need to do that as that is not what communicating a song is all about. Springsteen doesn’t do that but then he has got another vibe all together.”

HM: Does Tyketto push you for nostalgia, whilst doing solo works lets you develop as an artist?

DV: “Yeah, but I don’t think of nostalgia because with my solo stuff, I am constantly exploring and what is nice about it is that when I write solo songs and it sounds terrible. But I don’t think about the audience. But with Tyketto, if I am going to write a Tyketto song, I have a very specific direction that I need to go in. Although we do mess around a bit, which of course, is usually down to me. Your parameters are narrower when you’re writing Tyketto songs; it is going to be this type of melodic rock, and that is what Tyketto is, there is no reason to change it. Tyketto should never do a jazz song, that would not make any sense, but for me, I just tend to write whatever comes into my field of vision at that particular moment. Some of it never see the light of day but there is no pressure on it so it more natural to me.”

HM: Well, you can play the mandolin so you can always try a Stonehenge styled track.

DV: “Oh absolutely, don’t doubt it. It will come out and we will get a triptych on stage sooner or later. Ha-ha.”

HM: Thanks for your time, we’ll see you in Australia, and bring some sunblock, it’s a tad warm.

DV: “See you at GlamFest, I heard that it is hot there, I’m looking forward to that.”