Winger would rise to popularity in the late 80’s and early 90’s
thanks to the strength of their first two albums. But a few short years later it
all came crashing down. Today let’s explore whatever happened to Winger
Growing up in Colorado, Kip Winger was surrounded by music at a young age having parents who were
jazz musicians. In his youth Winger along with his brother would play in a rock band while he
was a student & he would lie about his age so he could play at local venues with his brother.
They would call themselves “The Wingerz.” Kip would privately takes classical piano
and guitar with a Julliard trained teacher. At the age of 16 Kip attended ballet with
his girlfriend and it would be his first exposure to classical music telling Billboard
“I thought, ‘I’ll try it. I’m always up for an adventure,’”‘We went in, and I was completely
transfixed. I heard this music coming out of the studio and people are holding their leg up over
their heads like Bruce Lee, and I’m like, ‘I’m in.’ I was hooked ever since.” Winger would end
up becoming a student of ballet and would continue to study the artistic dance well into his 30s.
Kip would perform with the Colorado State Ballet Company in the early
‘80s before moving to New York to pursue a career in music in 1985,
But even after moving to the big apple, ballet was never far from his mind as he still found
himself attending classes revealing to the LA Times “I even took classes with the Joffrey
Ballet company. But I only took classes, I wasn’t part of the company. . . . I used
to play in a band all night and then go to a dance studio the next day from 10 to 3.”
At the age of 16 while still living in Colorado, Kip would end up meeting a producer named Beau
Hill. At the time Hill had a band called Airborne who were signed to Sony owned columbia records
and he was living in Denver. While kip was playing with his brothers band they had a manager who was
a local radio DJ who met beau backstage at a heart concert and he offered to produce
The Wingerz. Hill took an immediate liking to kip revealing in the book nothing but a good time “kip
is truly a very gifted guy. And I wanted to help him as much as i could. So I would get kip gigs.”
.Hill would end up moving to New York & Kip would end up following him there in 1985. One of Hill’s
artists he frequently worked with at the time was Alice Cooper and it was that connection that
got Kip the opportunity to play with Alice in the studio and go out on tour with him as his bassist.
Alice Cooper would reveal in book Nothin but a good time. “I heard about kip winger from one of
my producers. He said “i know this kid that plays bass that looks really good.” We brought him into
the studio and said “hey why don’t you come out and play bass with us. I never realized kip was
as creative as he was. He was a black belt in karate. He could score a movie. He could score
a symphony. He took ballet." he'd remember. After kip came off the road with Alice Cooper,
hill had him work on a Fiona record where he met guitarist Reb Beach. Hill would recall in the same
book “I introduced reb and kip and i said ‘this could be the nucleus of a really great band.’
Reb Beach had done two semesters of studying guitar at Boston`s Berkley College of Music, but
he cut his losses revealing in the same book “i was only there for two semesters because rock was
frowned upon at the time. It was “you’re holding the guitar the wrong way. You’re holding the pick
the wrong way.” So i got in my car and drove away. Beach would head to new york and took up a job as
a singing waiter at a seafood restaurant located across the street from CBGBs In his free time
Beach played guitar and it would be a friend at a local music store who mentioned that Fiona was
looking for a guitar player. Beach started to make a name for himself as a talented studio musician
and was easy to work with. He would nab work with the Bee Gees, Chaka Khan and Twisted Sister.
It was during Kip's time with Alice Cooper that he was working on demos to pitch to record labels to
get signed as a solo artist. After clicking with Kip, Beach would end up playing on his demos,
which by his own admission was heavily influenced by Peter Gabriel.
Kip had also written some stuff with alice cooper keyboardist paul taylor during their
time on the road together and he would suggest himself, Taylor and Beach record together, form
a band and go get a recording contract and try to make it on their own. Eventually they would quit
Alice Cooper and by 1987 himself and Beach would move into Beau Hill’s apartment in Hoboken, NJ
and commit to not taking any outside work for six months while they wrote more songs and shopped
around for a label deal. By this point in time they had already written seventeen and time to
surrender. Beau Hill would use his conections at atlantic records to try and get the band a deal
recalling in the same book “i took some songs to doug morris and i played them...he listened to the
band and he said “no this is crap. So I went back to kip and said ‘doug didn’t like these, do some
more” They’d write some more stuff and I’d go back to Doug and i would change the name of the band so
Doug wouldn’t think I was still pitching the same band over and over again. Eventually he agreed to
sign the band after hearing the track state of emergency. However once doug morris learned he
what beau hill had done he got pretty pissed off so the band was never officially on Atlantic,
instead signed to a production deal with beau hill. It would result in the band making a lot
less money than their peers as hill took a significant portion of their earnings.
It would be doug morris who suggested the band be named Winger. Kip would recall in
the same book “I hated it because i didn’t even want to be the namesake of the band.
I wasn’t into having it be like a bon jovi. But i asked Alice about it and he said ‘that’s a great
band name.’ ...i still hate the name.’ he'd say Released in 1988 Winger’s self titled debut album
initially performed poorly. Within the first month, the album sold about 16,000 copies.
To support the record , the band skipped clubs and small venues and immediately started playing
arenas opening for the Scorpions. The group almost got fired after the first night of the tour
as they had limited experience playing live and it showed, but by the second show things
had improved and the band spent several months on the road with the german band.
Winger almost never even got an opportunity to make a video for their debut record.
Back then it was expensive to shoot music videos & Winger had to audition in front of several
Atlantic representatives to see if they were worthy of getting the money to a do a video.
That’s when Kip’s ballet training came in handy and they soon secured 90,000 to shoot their first
video for the single Madalaine. MTV would play the video at 3am on headbangers ball and the
momentum had finally shifted the band’s way. Add to that the single headed for a heartbreak
and seventeen The album became a big seller going platinum in america.
While the single Seventeen would be a massive hit, the subject matter of the song wouldn’t sit well
with the members decades later. Kip would reveal in the same book “it was a riff that reb wrote. I
stole te title from kingdom come. They had an album out and there’s a song on their record
called 17 so i stole the title and wrote a song. Meanwhile keyboardist paul taylor would recall
“kip’s thing was hey man you know the beatles had a song about being seventeen...Of course
now we’d probably all look back and go okay we probably should call it something else.’
Despite the band’s success more people seemed focused on frontman Kip Winger than the group’s
actual music, frustrating the musicians. Kip would tell the Morning Call Newspaper
A band like Metallica, people find them to be very serious about what they do. Why not Winger?
Meanwhile he would tell the Chicago Tribune he wasn’t comfortable being the sole focus of the
band telling the paper: 'I don`t want to shove the way I look down people`s throats,'' ''I know
that people think I think I am some great-looking guy who wants to put my face everywhere. I try to
play it down.'' Hence why the band’s first two album’s don’t feature Kip Winger’s face on them.
Even his interactions with fans focus on personal details of his life with him telling the tribune
he’d he’d frequently get letters asking him if he had a girlfriend, what his real name was,
and even one’s asking what shampoo he uses. The tabloids didn’t help either as Kip was
linked to model Rachel Hunter. It created fodder for the rag mags and Hunter would eventually
marry Rod Stewart. He would tell the Tribune ''That whole situation just got out of control,
especially in the European press,''. ''Everyone thought she dumped me for Rod when really we had
parted months earlier on very amicable terms.'' 'I am never going to date another famous person
again. It just got to be too much.'' Despite the drama around the band,
something the public overlooked was just how talented the musicians who made up winger were.
Guitarists Reb Beach and Paul Taylor have would be featured prominently in musical
magazines and drummer Rod Morgenstein would be repeatedly been named as the best progressive
rock drummer by Modern Drummer magazine. When it came time to record the group’s
follow up album in the heart of the young the band went in a further progressive direction,
but the label wasn’t happy with the result. Ahead of releasing the album, the label complained
about a lack of radio friendly songs and said they wouldn’t support the record.
So the band had to retreat back into the studio and write several more songs resulting in the
singles Easy Come Easy Go and Can’t Get Enuff”. While In the heart of the young repeated the
same success of the group’s first album, It was now 1990 and Winger started to notice dwindling
crowds on the road at their shows and their peers. Paul Taylor would recall in the same book “By then
we were into what 1990. So we were starting to all notice, like wow, where’s everybody at the shows.
And where’s our chart numbers.” I remember it finally hit home in Cincinnati. We had a night
off and i went to see Extreme & Cinderella with David Lee Roth and it was half full....
I was like “whoa something’s up, because two years prior it would have been sold out.”
As Winger was about to learn their fortunes were about to change . It was very unfortunate for the
band as they came to the party a little too late By 1991, heavy metal band Metallica released their
juggernaut record the Black Album. One of the hugely successful singles off the record was
nothing else matters, whose video featured the band's drummer lars ulrich throwing darts at a
poster of Kip Winger. Kip would look back at the video saying .I ’ve got nothing against those
guys, but [the video] didn’t help me. I thought it was cheap. And unfounded to a large degree. I
don’t think those guys can play a lot of our shit. I think they got some cool albums. Obviously,
they’re huge. It was kind of like, “Hey everybody, we think these guys suck, so you should, too.”
It wasn’t just Metallica who took aim at the band as MTV did as well.
Winger had a complicated relationship with the network as on one hand Winger owed a lot of its
success to MTV. By this point in time rock music had undergone a massive shift, with the type of
music Winger playing become less popular as alternative rock was the flavour of the week.
The members of Winger by their own admission were betting on their third album to be a huge hit.
Guitarist Reb Beach would admit that the band was getting big publishing advances ahead of releasing
Pull Jumping the gun Beach bought an expensive new house and relocated his whole family to Florida.
Pull wouldn’t even sell half a million copies meaning it didn’t even go gold.
Within eight months of buying that house Beach had to sell the property.
But while the band’s record sales dried up, they were still a draw on the touring circuit
with Beach remembering the moment that changed everything on tour in the same book
going on to say “We were on tour for pull, selling a thousand tickets a night in theatrews.
It was going really well. And this guy came on the bus and said “i gotta show you guys something...He
put beavis and butt-head video and when they hung that kid by his underwear on the
tree in his winger t-shirt, we all just looked at each other, i remember going oh no, this could all
be over...The day after it aired, nobody bought winger tickets anymore. We had to cancel the tour.
In a separate interview Beach would also claim radio DJ’s stopped playing the band's music.
The character he was referring to was Stewart was one of the uncool kids
on the show who wore a Winger shirt. Compared to the main characters of beavis and butthead
who wore AC/DC and Metallica t-shirts, the shows message was simple Winger was safe and uncool.
The band split soon after in 1994. Tragedy struck two years later when Kip Winger’s
wife Beatrice Richter whom he married in 1991, was killed in an automobile
accident when she was killed in an automobile accident. Five years later the band reformed
for a brief stint in 2001. They would permanently reform 5 years later in 2006
putting out a series of albums with their most recent being 2014’s better days comin.
Outside of his self titled band, Kip Winger would get into composing classical music for
both orchestras and ballet. In fact his work wit the san franscisco ballet orchestra would
earn him a grammy in 2019. That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure
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