Y&T - In Earthshaking Rock We Trust! Page 3
by Martin Popoff

Now, were they fair with you on this stuff? I've heard a lot of stories about these major labels asking exorbitant sums to do this sort of thing...

"At first, they were a little bit over-the-top, absolutely (laughs). And in fact, so much so, that even their willingness to allow us to license the product was almost impossible to get from them. They just weren't even talking to us about it. And then when they started to talk to us, the first numbers they gave us were so outrageous, that there was no way we could even possibly spend that kind of money to get records out. They wanted us to put out tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of CDs, and it just didn't make any sense. So actually when we changed management, in the beginning of 2005, we really started hammering the record company and trying to get closer to something real. Once we got on with this one person in the East Coast, it just started coming into place. It was still expensive to do. I mean, they wouldn't have been anywhere near as expensive if we were able to get the masters ourselves and reproduce the record ourselves, but it's not so terribly unreasonable. It's close, but it's not (laughs). It was close enough to do; let's put it that way. Because really, this is not a big moneymaker for the band. This is more just something we want to do. The band want to do it, number one, but also for the fans, who've been asking for the last 20 years, 'When are we going to get Earthshaker and Black Tiger and Mean Streak on CD?' There are two things Y&T were getting tired of hearing over the last 20 years. One is, 'You guys should've been bigger. How come?' And 'When are we going to get this, this, and this CD?' (laughs). So we just had to do it. If it was even reasonably in the ballpark, we were going to do it."

Dave clarifies the situation on 1976's earthy Yesterday & Today and 1978's incendiary and bombastic Struck Down. Both of those were issued on (sleepy) London, but in the past, have indeed seen CD reissue.

"I guess what happened was, ten years ago or better, some independent guy - record company, I guess you could say; I don't know how big of a record company they really were - they got the idea of releasing those and he got the licensing rights of whoever it was back then. And he put them out in a somewhat limited release, and then he fell off the face of the planet. We couldn't find him, we couldn't get paid (laughs), there were all kinds of things going on, and whatever he put out in the market was just out there and that was it. So we would like to do that again ourselves, and really somehow or another get the masters, and remaster them one more time, and do a good job, and have it reliably out there."

Y&T - In Earthshaking Rock We Trust! Page 4