Tyketto
Don't Come Easy

The band Tyketto has recently reformed, and it seems they're coming to play near us, in Bologna next January. I highly recommend going to see them live: they have a bunch of fantastic songs and they rock hard on stage. They are one of many American melodic hard rock bands (Class Metal? Hair Metal? AOR?... you decide) that emerged towards the end of the eighties, whose careers were brutally compromised in the early nineties by the unforeseen turnaround of the major record labels, dismayed by the incredible success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and thus determined to redirect all efforts and investments towards the new grunge trend: flannel shirts, depression, and off you go (and great songs, too, naturally). This shift, which remained epochal, had its positive side, as it was indeed time to move on from all those curly perms, those insatiable stallion poses by the smuggest singers, those tedious two-handed runs on guitar and bass keyboards, and those Judgment Day synthesizer fanfares. But on the other hand, this also clipped the wings of many musicians and bands (Extreme, Dokken, FM, Harem Scarem, Mr. Big, Winger... and also these Tyketto) engaged in producing great music, powerful and melodic. Before disbanding in 1996 due to a clear lack of sponsorship, Tyketto managed to release three studio albums and one live album. As often happens, it is their debut album, this "Don't Come Easy" from 1991, that is best remembered, although one can comfortably start getting to know this band with their second album "Strength In Numbers," which emerged with difficulty in 1994 from the grunge fog. The third and last one, "Shine" from the following year, suffers instead from a very low-budget production, purely homemade, yet maintaining a high level of songwriting. It is songwriting that makes the difference in these cases, considering that a certain degree of aesthetic, eighties radio seduction is almost implicit in this type of rock. And so this New Jersey quartet boasts songwriting well above average, capable of ensuring that re-listening to their repertoire remains exciting even today. In this album, the compositional "pearls," to begin with, bear the title "Forever Young", an explosive opening with an absolutely classy performance by the excellent guitarist, especially rhythmically, named Brooke St. James: a killer riff, able to burn itself into the imagination of those seeking lasting sensations from rock, rather than ephemeral fashionable sounds and melodies. Another strong piece in the collection is the semi-acoustic "Seasons", with a ballad-like verse and hard rock chorus, somewhat like Zeppelin's "Ramble On" to understand, but everyone can choose their favorites, as the average quality is high, and it’s just a matter of taste to prefer one or the other of the ten tracks. Above all, much above all, the great voice of frontman Danny Vaughn, a truly outstanding singer and also a real man: he left the band in 1994, to always stay by his wife, who had fallen ill with cancer (Steve Augeri, later with Journey, took his place). People with the guts, both musically and humanly, like him, deserve much more luck. I’ll be there, in Bologna next January, at their concert. I already know there will be two hundred of us or so, but we'll make sure to give them a round of applause.