Tyketto – Interview met Danny Vaughn
Danny Vaughn: “We wanted it to be an album that you could put on in the car, start driving and never have to take it off. You know, just keep driving”
In 1991 bracht de Amerikaanse melodieuze rockband Tyketto het magistrale debuutalbum ‘Don’t Come Easy’ uit, dat (terecht) uitgroeide tot één van de absolute klassiekers binnen het AOR-genre. Zo’n vijfendertig jaar later is zanger Danny Vaughn het enige overgebleven originele bandlid en met hem had Arrow Lords Of Metal een gesprek over het nieuwe studio-album ‘Closer To The Sun’.
Sjak Roks Ι 16 maart 2026
Your previous studio-album ‘Reach’ was released in 2026, so it took you about ten years to come up with this successor ‘Closer To The Sun’?
Well, you know, we should have had it out a lot sooner. We were supposed to have a record out in 2022, but then Covid hit and it kind of stopped everything for two years. And then after Covid, I had two very important band members (Michael Clayton Arbeeny and Chris Green) quit. Well, not quit, they retired as they spent the last two years at home with their families and they really liked it. So when I decided that I would continue with Tyketto, I couldn’t just get a bunch of studio musicians and go make a record. The next record I made had to be with a band so that took a couple of years. We got the guys that we wanted and then we played out live for about two years, road tested everything. And that’s when it was time to make a new record so yeah, it took probably four years longer than it should have been.
Was the material already written pre-Covid or did you still write some new stuff during the recording sessions?
No, most of it was written already. ‘Higher Than High’ started we a riff from Chris Child and ‘We Rise’ and ‘Bad For Good’ were mostly done by Harry. There are three or four songs that I wrote by myself and there are a couple that were written together with outside writers like ‘Starts With A Feeling’ which I co-wrote with Jim Peterik from Survivor.
What did you want to accomplish with this new one after a hibernation period of about ten years?
Well, first of all we wanted to make a very positive record. There’s so much going on right now and we seem to be talking only about the negative aspect. And I don’t want to ignore that, but I just thought there’s enough being said about all the negative. I got to put something out there that I hope will make me feel better, will make other people feel a little bit better, put it on and just maybe step away from the world for 45 minutes to an hour, you know. We always still have to kind of happily fighting the anchor of your first album. Thank goodness ‘Don’t Come Easy’ is still considered a classic but people expect that you can write another one like that some more than thirty years later. That’s just not possible as it was done at a particular moment in time by a particular group of people. We tried to take the essence of that album though and put it into what we wanted to do now. We wanted it to be an album that you could put on in the car, start driving and never have to take it off. You know, just keep driving.
So what are in your opinion typical elements that need to be in a good song to be able to do just that?
It needs to hit something emotionally for me. Because I’ve been doing this a long time, sometimes younger bands will come to me and ask me for advice and I can’t advise people anymore because nobody knows what the fuck is going on in the music business anymore. So the only advice I ever give people is make the music you stand by. It doesn’t matter if it’s popular, just make the music you believe in and I think that Tyketto has always done that.
Do you also want to portrait that positive message in your lyrics?
I think so and we always have to a certain degree. Even a song like ‘Standing Alone’ which is about loneliness ends with a positive note because you’re going to get back up and negative things won’t be able to keep you down. Some lyrics are just for fun and don’t really have any big higher purpose. Sometimes that’s just how it’s supposed to be as music is all about emotions. And if you listen to music you should get a happy feeling from that.
A lot of singers lose their power as they grow older, but your voice seems to be getting stronger by the year. So how do you keep your voice in such a good shape?
I’m pretty fanatical about it, to be honest. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I became vegan about nine years ago. Changing my diet had a very interesting effect, I was surprised. But I actually felt myself getting stronger, which is good because I was having problems about ten years ago. I was having problems with my voice that a lot of singers get. So I had to change my diet to fix that and it really had a positive effect. Furthermore the fact that we don’t do 200 to 300 shows a years also really helps as the throat isn’t meant to do that. So in a sense, the fact that we’ve been not as successful as the major bands has been lucky for my voice. What’s amazing though is that we seem to be growing again and are becoming more popular. Who would have thought that after so many years?
You seem to have a keen eye for extremely talented guitar players?
Well, I mean, when you see a good guitar player that really suits you and fits you, you make sure you get his phone number. It was like that when we got Chris Green in. I knew Chris already for about fifteen years before I approached him to join Tyketto. It was more or less the same with Harry who played in a band called Chez Kane and they asked me to listen to their first album which I really liked. We ended up having them open for us on a tour, I think it was the 25th anniversary ‘Strength In Numbers’ tour in the UK. During that period we really became good friends and I was really impressed by the playing of Harry. So when Chris told me he wanted to stay home and spend more time with his family, he suggested me to get Harry in and he just fits excellent in the band.
For this new record you switched from Frontiers Music to Silver Lining Music?
Silver Lining was present during a show that we did opening for Uriah Heep. They were very impressed with what we were able to do in the half hour that we got playing for an audience that didn’t know us and was only there to see Uriah Heep. So they asked us if we very interested in doing an album with them when we were up to it. I was contractually set up to make a record with Frontiers, but in the end we kind of mutually decided it wasn’t going to work between us anymore. Silver Lining was right there and so far I’m absolutely over the moon with them. I think they’re doing a terrific job.
Why did you choose for ‘Higher Than High’ as the first single?
For the first one you have to go for something rocky and cool, while the second one should be a real catchy one that sticks in the heads of the people. For us ‘Higher Than High’ was the song that best represented the requirements for the first single. ‘We Rise’ became the second single from the album.
You’re a melodic hard rock band, but you incorporate some bluesy influences in your music too. What bands were an influence for you personally?
For me personally, there are so many, but the first that come to mind are Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones, as both those two front men were kind of my heroes. The funny thing is when Tyketto first got together, we didn’t have any songs and we were just in a room kind of staring at each other. The band we wanted to emulate the most was Night Ranger as we were originally going to be a two guitar band. They wrote great hooky songs as well and were masterful musicians. So that’s kind of what we were originally shooting for but along the way things changed a bit and we felt that we didn’t really needed another guitar player next to Brooke. So yeah, little influences creeping really from all over the place.
I understood that the album was recorded across multiple studios across Europe and the UK?
Well, that’s a little misleading as most of the little studios across Europe are our home studios. The bulk of the record was recorded in two studios in Wales, one of them being the very famous Rockfield Studios, where we did drums and bass. And then we moved to Flip-Flop Studios in Wales to do the rest of the album. And this is why I feel that this record sounds as good as it does because we did it the old way. Both those studios are great facilities. So you get up, everybody comes out of their bedrooms, you have coffee and breakfast together, into the studio, you stay there till lunchtime, you get an hour for lunch, back in the studio till eight o’clock at night every day. No e-mailing files, everything was done on the spot with the band in the room.
So what are, in your opinion, the biggest difference and maybe also improvements when comparing ‘Closer to the Sun’ to your previous album ‘Reach’?
There’s a few differences in the way we wrote, because for ‘Reach’ there was a certain amount of experimenting going on. Normally we always start with a melody and the guitar parts, but for a lot of the songs on ‘Reach’ we started with drums and rhythm guitar with me writing lyrics over that, which is a lot harder to do, but it was kind of an interesting challenge. For this one, words and melody came first which is the way we always worked on our earlier albums. Having the basics in place, we then looked how we can make the sounds more interesting and make it really sound like Tyketto. So ‘Closer To The Sun’ was more of a group effort than our previous album and you can hear that.
I really dig the whole album, but for me the ballad ‘The Picture’ is one of the highlights.
Well, I do think that ‘The Picture’ is some of the best singing that I’ve every done and the song was actually a demo from several years back actually. When I played it for the guys, they really connected to it right away, so this song is really special to me. Also the last song on the album ‘The Brave’ is very important to me because of its message. It has a bit of a Springsteen vibe to it and it’s about the fact that we’re all taking things for granted again unlike during the Covid period. We tend to forget how important we are as a community and that song was really a tribute to the working class people who try to make our lives better or at least try to do that.
The song ‘Harleys And Indians’ is not on the vinyl version, why’s that
You only have limited space on each side of a vinyl record, so I had to pick one song that had to go. As ‘Harleys And Indians’ is the first time that Tyketto did a cover song (of Roxette), I preferred to have our own material on the vinyl and leave this cover track off. Originally we were doing this track for the Japanese version as a bonus track, but it came out so good that we decided to put it on the European version as well.
What are your expectations from this new album after a ten year break?
Well, the first reactions have been very positive as the second video is getting more than ten thousand views a day so far. So I’m really excited about this. I’ve been talking quite a lot to the people who got an advance copy of the album and they were saying that this new album reminds them quite a lot about the ‘Don’t Come Easy’ and ‘Strength In Numbers’ days. I hope that the fans will feel the same when they listen to it.
Doesn’t it bother you that every new album will always be compared to ‘Don’t Come Easy’ which of course is rightly seen as a landmark release in the melodic rock scene?
Well, you just can’t go back to your first album. There are lots of bands who do it and it doesn’t work. They make an album that sounds exactly like their first record, but they only make it twenty years later. That starts to feel like nostalgia and that’s not really what we’re about. We’re going to make music that first of all, excites us and whether it’s in fashion at the moment that’s never on our mind. For this album, we were looking over our shoulders at ‘Don’t Come Easy’ and thinking what people love so much in that album? Can we distill some of that and put it in this new album? So we’ll wait and see what people think.
Don’t you every think what would have happened if ‘Don’t Come Easy’ would have been released five years earlier?
Yeah, all the time but you can waste your life away thinking about that. It doesn’t help if you remain stuck in that thought. I’m a musician that can still go out and play and make music and that’s what counts for me. I’m able to make a small living out of that and that’s all I’m asking for.
So what are the plans after the release of the album?
There’s a lot of plans in the making. There are already some summer festivals booked and we’re doing a small tour through the UK. We’re in a nice position that there are two possible tours in Europe in the September/October time frame, which will most probably be announced end of March. Next to that we’re talking to a promoter to do some shows in South America so there’s a lot of stuff in the making.
What’s the ambition that you still have with Tyketto after being in the business for more than thirty years?
I would still like to get us on one big tour, like with Def Leppard for instance. I’d like to team up with one time with another big heavy hitter. But that’s really the only thing and I think that’s going to come. But really, I’m so fortunate as it is. Everybody in the band gets along great. We love each other’s company. We travel together, we laugh, we have fun and as long as you love what you do, it’s not work! We are still able to connect to our audiences and that’s the most important aspect for me. So if that big tour ain’t going to happen, I’m still happy with how things are progressing at the moment.
