Kip Winger: don't hate me because I'm beautiful...(though my early lyrics were pretty ugly) Jul 27 '05 (Updated Nov 22 '06)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line Kip Winger is a talented singer, a good bass player, but rarely gets recognized for these things, since people get hung up on the lyrics of his first two albums In the early nineties, Nirvana did us all a huge favor by single-handedly destroying the stranglehold of hair metal on rock radio and MTV – the market value of Spandex and hair care products plummeted as the nation began to Smell Like Teen Spirit. Within the space of a few months, the music industry began to pull their support for glammed-up party boys in favor of unwashed, casual Friday rejects. Some hair metal acts tried to roll with these changing times, making half-hearted attempts at becoming pathetic creatures with a song of woe to sing, but no one bought it. And so, no longer wanted: dead or alive, the party boys packed up their leopard skin pants, their make-up kits and their colorful guitars and headed for a heartbreak in the Hollywood hills, doomed to a life of sex scandals, drug rehab, and very little rock and roll… Kip Winger came late to the headbanger's ball, having been busy playing bass for Alice Cooper. The Alice Cooper tours of the mid-eighties were his calling card to the big time - he'd been doing the typical Hollywood aspiring artist thing, waiting tables, playing any gigs he could get, trying to make the scene any way he could. He'd been a musician since he was quite young, blessed with parents who made sure he got music lessons, and Kip had taken advantage of it. He was only 9 years old when his first band Blackwood Creek began playing for small local events; Kip was so addicted to his love of music that he dropped out of high school to pursue his dreams of music stardom. (Interesting side note: a good friend of mine was in a band (Mae West) that played with some minor success in the Los Angeles area during the early eighties. Kip recruited Mae West to help record a demo album for him to shop around to the industry – my friend still has a tape of this demo, and it includes a couple songs that would eventually be recorded for Winger's first album) When Kip finally did make the scene with the band that bore his name (a pick borne of haste and need rather than any real consideration or forethought), they quickly broke into national prominence on the strength of a couple singles from their first album, Winger. It was probably Kip's good looks shown in heavy rotation on MTV that initially drew fans more than anything, because the lyrics weren't going to win him any awards. The lyrics on these first two albums are the main reason a lot of people dismiss Winger out of hand, as the words really aren't that original. Unfortunately, people are missing out on some music that is actually a cut above most of the music hair bands were putting out. Kip's stellar vocals and his decently crafted songs garnered some critical attention for their atypical chords and rhythmic structures that often owed more to prog rock than metal. Two hit songs from that first album are perfect examples of Winger's lack of lyrical range, but they also show that Winger's music was a cut above most metal of the day. The songs traded on two popular hair band songwriting stereotypes – sexual conquest and bad breakups. Definitely a Van Halen clone, Seventeen surged ahead on raw lust and sexual innuendo, taking a devil-may-care attitude about the age and feelings of the girl in his sights; Headed For a Heartbreak seethed with emotional pain, a scream ripped from the depths of Kip's tortured soul… Well, at least, that was how the spin played out on these songs as the video cameras rolled, putting Kip's stubbled face and luxuriantly abundant hair into heavy rotation on MTV for a while. To many people, Winger was just another band singing the same played out words, posing and preening for the slow motion cameras, wind machines whipping their hair lovingly around their faces. But some people saw through the glamour and the hair, and could hear that Winger was actually a talented and capable group of musicians playing some fairly decent songs. Behind the manicured stubble and the overly teased hair were a fabulous singer and his skilled players, riding the popular wave for all it was worth, a decent band hiding incognito behind the de rigeur poses and lyrique stereotype. Winger managed to release just one more album during the hair band years, In the Heart of the Young that yielded only one radio hit, Miles Away, which rocketed to the top more on the power of it's timely lyric as it applied to the Gulf War of 1990 than anything else. This would be their last major appearance in the charts as the Seattle sound suddenly took the nation by storm, and the airwaves were flooded with the sounds of grunge rock. Winger's third album Pull was easily their best work and a critical favorite - full of wonderful prog rock passages combined with Def Leppard-style vocal choruses and some outstanding guitar work - but against the onslaught from the northwest, Winger never had a chance; hair metal was done, and Winger faded quickly from public view. Kip didn't retire to Hollywood – instead he went to New Mexico, where he spent time remodeling his home, and building a home studio from the ground up. Inside this studio, a new Kip Winger began to emerge, as he began experimenting with new sounds and new styles, music that would go on to become his first solo album after Winger disbanded, This Conversation Seems Like a Dream… Just a few months later, November 1996 – Kip's wife Beatrice was killed in a car accident. The experience led Kip into an exploration of his soul and the music that he wished to make. In the months following his wife's death, Kip traveled through Egypt, recording the sounds he encountered there and he incorporated much of what he learned in these months in a subsequent solo album, Songs from the Ocean Floor. Kip says of that album, "It comes out of one of the deepest places I've been in myself. Songs of loss and redemption, and in the end, things we all have in common."1 In early 1997, Kip took his music on tour, playing over one hundred solo acoustic concerts in the U.S., Europe and Japan. These shows were very well received, and he decided to record an album of acoustic arrangements of his favorite songs from his days in Winger, and from his solo material. The album was Down Incognito, and the music on the album is miles away from the original recordings, revealing in their simplicity the soul of the man who wrote them. Since the release of his solo albums, Kip has scored music for a few films, has toured in various hair metal reunion shows with and without his Winger band mates, and he fills in as lead vocalist for Alan Parsons Project shows from time to time. He is currently working on a rock album with his very first band Blackwood Creek, as well as producing recordings for other artists and continuing his musical education at Vanderbilt. Chart Performance (highest position): 1988 Winger #21 Billboard Albums - Headed for a Heartbreak #19 Billboard Singles - Seventeen #23 Billboard Singles - Hungry #85 Billboard Singles 1990 In the Heart of the Young #15 Billboard Albums - Miles Away #12 Billboard Singles 1993 Pull #83 Billboard Albums Kip Winger Solo Albums 1997 This Conversation Seems Like a Dream 1998 Down Incognito 2000 Songs from the Ocean Floor 1. Some biographical details used in this review can be found at Kip Winger's official website: www.kipwinger.com/i_about_bio.htm

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