XYZ

XYZ is the debut a band started by two Frenchmen finally caught in Hollywood. Terry Ilous and Patt Fontaine grew up in Lyon and moved to Los Angeles in 1984. They served as the unofficial house band of the Whisky a Go Go, and signed to Enigma in 1989. By then the line-up had turned over: Marc Richard Diglio on guitar, Paul Monroe on drums. Don Dokken took the production chair, with Wyn Davis engineering. It came out on 17 October 1989. That it sounds like Dokken is no accident. Don Dokken judged that the others could not harmonise with Ilous and sang the backing vocals himself. He tried to disguise his tone, but when the record appeared reviewers called it “XYD.” He has also said Ilous's heavy French accent left some words impossible for him to make out. None of that dulls the singalong of “Maggy” or the hooks of “Inside Out” and “What Keeps Me Loving You,” whose two videos ran on MTV as the album reached number 99 in the US. There is no filler here, down to the ballad “After the Rain.” A record whose only real problem was its timing.