 |
| |
|
| |
Interview
by SashaS
19-9-2002
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Dave Meniketti rocks on the blue side |
|
Summertime songs
Meniketti – rocking it with blues and classic affection
Listening to Reef’s forthcoming ‘Greatest Hits’ album, ‘Together’, as well as The Music’s self-titled debut (because of its closeness to Led Zeppelin, if you are not clear), I was greatly reminded of a time when Rock meant something else than Metal. There was a time when bands like Bad Company rocked melodically, riffing passionately, keeping it bluesy, with instruments playing harmoniously rather than clashing with each other and at a reasonable volume. (Damn it, even Clapton was good!) Then, punk rock happened and it all disappeared into other mutations, long way from its classic-moments.
But the spirit of these times hasn’t died and few flames keep it alive; apart Reef we have others like Y&T guitarist Dave Meniketti and his solo album that simply bears his surname. It is a disc full of solid, mature rock songs, from a man who’s played that geetar for 25 professional years: when he gets down, emo-dirty on ‘Hard As I Try’, the six strings cry their hearts out but a track like ‘All In This Together’ would satisfy a nu-metal kid, it is that contemporary! Bluesy, jazzy, rockingly poppy even!
“Thank you, that’s great to hear,” Meniketti remarks from San Francisco’s Bay Area base. “There are no more albums like mine because people prefer to follow trendy, in-things, and are not really honest to themselves. As an artist you have to follow what feels natural to you. I don’t listen to the music that is played today because it is all derivative. For me, my albums is the first record where I got my solo band in a studio and wrote it all right there.”
“I didn’t have a band until after I released ‘On The Blue Side’ (1998) which made this a completely different experience… I have other three musicians with me and we can make a lot of noise, we are not bad at it… Well, I’m very pleased and equally surprised about ‘All In This Together’, because I have no idea about it. But, I’ll trust you it is modern.”
Messin’ with...
Dave Meniketti is a well respected guitarist who is regularly included on the top players’ lists and among people who offered him place in their bands are John Mayall, Peter Frampton, Ozzy Osbourne and Whitensake but he refused them all to remain independent and playing his kinda rock. Any regrets?
“Of course there are,” Meniketti echoes down the line, “it is only human to wonder what would have happened if I had done so and so… But, looking at it from this perspective, I’m glad I wasn’t tempted because I wouldn’t had what I ended up experiencing… Sure, I might have had much more money, but that’s never been my point. I always wanted to be free, and that means to me, to have bits of time when you can spend it like you want after having worked on something you like… A lot of people don’t have that, they are stagnating on the inside…”
“Time can be a prison that keeps you locked inside,” he sings on the concluding ‘Take My Time’. After quarter-century of playing, what’s still there to drive him?
“It’s my love of music,” he sounds modest, “love of playing and the emotional contact that I have when playing and singing. That’s the thing that excites me the most about being a musician. People often ask me how I didn’t do this and that, which I had been offered. Well, it didn’t feel right to me… I’m very stubborn about my music but I didn’t get into music to become a huge superstar and make a lot of money… I do it to express myself and not to be locked inside and this is the only way I can do it and you feel like you are not fulfilled if you don’t do it.”
Take it together
Meniketti spends his downtime also helping out with his wife’s band and often composes songs for her outfit. He finds it challenging because it is a strange musical concoction, “There are three girls playing harps but there is a drummer and bassist; harps are played like guitars and it sounds really strange.”
“It’s good to have different outlets,” Meniketti states something not so obvious to an army of ‘specialised’ artists, “because I have different ideas that are not all Rock’n’Roll; I might get a jazz-fusion idea, put it on tape and see if somebody else can use it later.”
Meniketti has been missing from Euro-venues in many a year and we could certainly benefit from some rocking of his kind.
“Yeah, I’d love to come and play,” he opens his heart, “and it’s been a long time… I’ve not played Europe since the 1980s and my band and I would love to come and perform for fans we have…”
Thus spoke one of the great rock guitarists, in the league with Hendrix, Page, (Jeff) Beck, bluesmen… You get a picture.
SashaS
19-9-2002
Dave Meniketti’s album ‘Meniketti’ is released 23 September 2002 on Dream Catcher Records
|
|
|
