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WINGER group and solo

http://www.kipwinger.com/

http://www.myspace.com/kipwingermusic

_____________________________

http://www.wingertheband.com/

http://www.myspace.com/wingertheband

Biography

The Early Days
Born Charles Frederick Kip Winger in Denver, Colorado, on June 21, 1961. His parents were Jazz musicians and growing up Kip was always involved in music. At the age of 5 he was enrolled in a pilot Yamaha music program for preschoolers. Blessed with supportive parents, he was given music lessons and supplied with instruments. When he was 7 years old, Kip, his brothers, Nate and Paul, and a neighborhood friend, Pete Fletcher, started a band, "Blackwood Creek". Kip grew up listening to pop radio and what is now considered progressive rock. As a band his favorites were Yes, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heep, Rush, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and, of course, the Beatles.

When Kip was 9, he did a gig at his elementary school and later a few gigs at different schools. Kip eventually left Golden High School after the tenth grade because he felt school was getting in the way of his musical education. Around that time, 1976, Kip became interested in classical music and started studying classical guitar. At the same time he started appreciating dance. Kip's girlfriend at the time wanted to take ballet, and since none of her friends would do it with her, she convinced Kip to. This was a broadening experience for him, considering his eclectic schedule--in the morning ballet class listening to Tchaikovsky or Mozart, then on to the gig, doing a sound check, and playing Van Halen and Zeppelin all night.

Later that year, Kip's manager Cliff Powers was back stage at a Heart concert and met another Denver local, Beau Hill. He asked him to produce a demo tape for Kip's fledgling band. They were the first band, other than Beau's own, that Beau produced. At that time the band were calling themselves Colorado but the group changed their name to Wingerz. A lot of writing and recording went on in those days despite Wingerz lacking an actual record deal.

Rise To Fame
In 1979, now a three-piece band, Kip and the boys ventured to New York to try to "make it." They played all over a tri-state area and opened for bands that were big in clubs at the time like Twisted Sister, Zebra, and The Good Rats. They had no luck getting a record deal, and after about eight months, the group decided to go back to Denver and concentrate on writing and recording. Unfortunately, soon after, the band started drifting apart wanting to go in different directions. Kip was living near Denver University, and after he got his GED, Kip enrolled in music theory, guitar, voice, and acting classes. He obtained a small role that year in Follies, a musical by Sondheim and got a small taste of musical theatre, but Kip knew that school wasn't for him. Kip was really into writing songs and dance classes, and he soon started taking dance classes with the Colorado State Ballet. Because of the shortage of men, Kip got recruited into the company. When Kip wasn't painting apartments as a job, he was studying dance three hours a day, then going home to write songs or going to a gig to do 3 sets of heavy metal.

Kip stayed in Denver writing and studying for about two years, but he desperately wanted a record deal, and it wasn't happening anytime soon. So, Kip set off to New York again in 1982 at the age of 21. Beau Hill was in and out of New York and had a place across the river in Hoboken, NJ. He let Kip stay there. Kip slept on his living room floor for a year or so and got a job waiting tables at the Madison Café on the corner of 14th and Washington. He had an 8-track tape machine, and Kip wrote and recorded songs when he wasn't working.

It was at that time that Kip met Sandy Stewart, who had previously written songs with Stevie Nicks. She was writing for her second album, and the two co-wrote many songs, but none of them made it to her second LP, Blue Yonder.

Kip also found himself studying composition with Edgar Grana on 53rd Street. This was a profound and enlightening experience for Kip. He encouraged Kip to analyze music by deconstructing and reconstructing. It was late 1984, and Kip had written 57 songs that year. Beau was starting to have significant success, having just produced a then new band called Ratt, which was really taking off. He hired Kip to do bass and vocals here and there, and Kip got his first writing credit on "Bang Bang," a song on an album by Kix called "Midnight Dynamite."

Beau was working on Fiona's (Flanagan) second LP, Beyond the Pale, and for that, Kip had also written a chorus part on a song called "Tragedy." One day Kip was introduced to Reb Beach, a new studio guitar player. The two hit it off, and Kip had him play on his demos. This group, besides Kip, consisted of Reb, and a drummer named David Rosenberg. They called themselves ViceVersa. But they still had no luck getting a record deal.

Beau's next production was Alice Cooper. Kip had been a big Alice fan for a long time. Fortunately for Kip, Alice and Kane Roberts needed a bass player for the Constrictor album. It was Kane who suggested that Kip tell Alice that if he needed a bass player on the road, he'd love to go. A few months later Kip got a call to come to Los Angeles and start rehearsing for "The Nightmare Returns" tour. This was when Kip met Paul Taylor.

The Winger era
Kip roomed with Ken Mary, the drummer who went on to House of Lords and is currently producing. Ken and Kip were conceptualizing a band and began including Paul Taylor who was a good writer. After about nine months on the road with Alice, there was a break before the recording of Raise Your Fist and Yell. During the break Ken, Paul and Kip went to Boulder to record demos. Kip's brother, Paul, had a studio, and he let the group record there. The group worked a week with the working title, Rome. They recorded four songs. "Miles Away," which Paul had written a few years earlier, was one of them. The tape was sent around without much luck. It was time to return to L.A. to begin recording Raise Your Fist and Yell. This album was produced by Michael Wagner. To his delight, Kip got to write a little classical bit which ended up as "Gail."

All this time Kip had been in contact with Reb, who was becoming quite the session guitarist in New York. Twisted Sister wanted him to go on the road at the same time as Alice was getting ready to go back out. This was the turning point. Reb and Kip made a pact not to take anymore outside work and just write and record. A friend and potential manager, Eiichi Naito, currently the owner of Domo Records, let them use a room in his office to work. Reb and Kip pulled out all their best riffs and just went for it. 6 months later, they got signed to Atlantic. Ironically, the song that got them signed was "State of Emergency," which never really did anything on the charts.

In 1988, the boys went into the studio. Kip knew Paul would be in the band, but he was still touring with Alice Cooper. They did manage to get Rod to do the album. Going into the studio, the group spent about four months on the first album. Reb and Kip went through many band name ideas. Call Your Doctor was one that stuck for a while. They ended up with the name Sahara, but changed it when they received a letter from another band's attorney stating that they already owned the name. Alice Cooper had suggested Winger. Kip didn't like the name, but they were under the gun, and without any better ideas. Thus, they became Winger. They decided to call the album Sahara, but there was a communication breakdown at Atlantic, and that fell through the cracks. (But if you look at the bottom right, you'll see the word Sahara.)

The album was stagnant at first before it finally broke. MTV put "Madalaine" on Headbangers' Ball, then radio picked it up. The group also went on six weeks of a Scorpions tour to help boost popularity. When the second single, "Seventeen," came out, they decided to go all-out on a tour. Winger were on the road for over a year, writing as they went along. After the first tour, Kip took about two weeks off before starting work on the second LP. The second album took about six months. Two versions were made. The first version had "All I Ever Wanted," and "Never." Everyone had a listen, and the group decided to go back to the drawing board to write a couple more songs. Those sessions produced "Can't Get Enough," and "Easy Come, Easy Go." They replaced the other two songs and used them for B sides.

In the Heart of the Young came out in 1990 and went gold in two weeks. Winger jumped on the Kiss tour and started the touring process over again. The second tour was even longer than the first. However, it wasn't long before the group wanted to take a break. During the tour in Europe the Gulf War broke out. Winger cancelled a few dates in England and went home. Without a place to go, Kip headed to New York and got a loft in Tribeca. It was during this period that Paul decided to go a different direction, and he left in November of '91. Reb, Rod and Kip pressed on. However, grunge was hitting big, and Kip began to feel unsure of the group's place in the rock world now that the scene was changing. During the early 90s, Mark Cote was lighting director for a concert in Denver, Colorado.

All in all, it took a year to write Winger's next album, Pull, which Kip noted was his favorite Winger album. During the second tour, Winger managed to get Mike Shipley to do the record.

During work in the studio, Kip bought a house just north of South Beach. Reb and Kip were finishing up the writing, and, one day Reb played a riff on the acoustic, C D C G. Kip quickly grabbed the guitar away from him and messed around with a couple of other chords and "Who's the One" was born. It went on to be Kip's favorite Winger song. The group also continued to record Pull in L.A. for about six months. Grunge had taken over, and the perception of Winger was far from cool. Despite the musical climate at the time, Pull did pretty well. John Roth took Paul Taylor's place on guitar and keyboards. The tour lasted six months ending in Japan.

Solo career

Afterwards, Kip went back to Florida to start thinking about his solo career. He eventually moved on to Santa Fe, New Mexico and took a long break, spending the better part of eight months swinging a hammer under the direction of his old friends, Kevin Walsh, who helped Kip remodel and build a studio in his home. Without expectation, Kip began experimenting with different sounds separate from Winger. After three or four months a few songs began to emerge. "Monster" was the first song Kip felt was strong enough for an album, and the rest unfurled from there. Many of the songs Kip wrote during this time ended up as out-takes that didn't fit the sound he was going for at the time. The album was finished around July of 1996. Kip was already working on the follow-up music to This Conversation, because he had some time before the release.

On a cold November day, Kip's first wife, Beatrice, died in a tragic car accident. After the burial in December, Kip went to Egypt to escape. The music he heard in Egypt became very influential on the songs he was working on. With a DAT, Kip recorded a great deal of sound from his travels, much of which showed up on Kip's latest record, Songs From the Ocean Floor.

Kip toured solo acoustic in support of This Conversation Seems Like A Dream in 1997. In total he performed 110 shows in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The response to the album and to the acoustic shows was a warm one, although nowhere near matching the success of the Winger years. However, the positive feedback inspired Kip to release an acoustic record. The record was released in three incarnations. In Europe it is called, Made By Hand, in Japan it is called Another Way, and in the U.S. it is called Down Incognito. The difference is that Down Incognito has two live cuts from a show in Paris in 1998.

In May of 1998, Kip produced an album for a very talented acoustic guitar player named Rob Eberhard Young. The mostly instrumental album is called Speak. In 1999, Kip scored the music to a movie called "The Greenskeeper".

Meanwhile, during this time Kip had been working on his third solo album, Songs From The Ocean Floor. On six of these songs, Noble Kime co-wrote lyrics with Kip. Unlike Conversation, Kip knew which songs would work all along. Songs From the Ocean Floor became the culmination of all of Kip's influences in music. False speculation arose soon after release that Conversation was the album that reflected Kip's process about Beatrice's death. In actuality, the album was a culmination of songs dealing with loss, redemption, and struggles we all have in common. Songs From The Ocean Floor was released in 2000.

In 2002, Winger reformed to do the Poison tour. After the tour Kip moved to Nashville and remodeled another house while keeping busy with various projects in between all of his acoustic performances. During this time, Kip was also offered the position of lead singer in The Alan Parsons Live Project. Kip sang for them briefly, but scheduling problems made it impossible for Kip to be a permanent member. Kip still occasionally performs with Parsons' group.

In 2003, Kip went on the Whitesnake's Rock Never Stops Tour as a solo acoustic performer and in 2004 he scored another movie called "Sorority". In 2005 he contributed on the album Grounded by XCarnation, a solo project by Turkish artist and composer Cenk Eroglu.

Currently...
As of September 2006, the latest news on Kip Winger is his decision to reform Winger, with the Pull-era line-up, to record the band's fourth studio album and go on tour[1] to support it. He is also recording a new solo album, working with the power trio "Blackwood Creek", producing a band called "Ligion" and studying with composer Michael Kurek.

In 2006, Winger contributed the song "Sure Was a Wildflower" from his Songs from the Ocean Floor album to the soundtrack of the horror comedy feature film Swarm of the Snakehead starring Gunnar Hansen.

He is now remarried to his second wife, Paula.

Discography

Albums

Winger

Winger (1988)
In the Heart of the Young (1990)
Pull (1993)
The Very Best of Winger (2001)
IV (2006)
Demo Anthology (2007)
Winger Live (2007)

Solo

This Conversation Seems Like A Dream (1996)
Down Incognito (1998)
Songs From The Ocean Floor (2000)

Other

Kix - Midnight Dynamite (1985)
Alice Cooper - Constrictor (1985)
Alice Cooper - Raise Your Fist and Yell (1986)
Fiona - Beyond The Pale (1986)
Bob Dylan - Down in the Groove (1987)
Kane Roberts - Kane Roberts (1987)
Blue Yonder - House of Love (1987)
Various artists - Hearts of Fire Soundtrack (1987)
Twisted Sister - Love Is For Suckers (1987)
Alice Cooper - Trash (1989)
Fiona - Heart Like A Gun (1989)
Various artists - Smoke on the Water - A Tribute to Deep Purple (1994)
Orange Swirl - Orange Swirl (1998)
Seven Days - Ride (1998)
Rob Eberhart Young - Speak (1999)
Under Suspicion - Under Suspicion (2001)
Various artists - Stone Cold Queen - A Tribute (2001)
Jordan Rudess - Rhythm of Time (2004)
Various artists - Spin the Bottle: An All-Star Tribute to Kiss (2004)
Various artists - Subdivisions: A Tribute To Rush (2005)
XCarnation - Grounded (2005)
The Mob - The Mob (2005)
Jordan Rudess - The Road Home (2007)

Winger is an American rock band formed in New York City that gained popularity during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The band's two platinum albums, Winger and In the Heart of the Young, along with charting singles "Seventeen", "Headed for a Heartbreak", and "Miles Away", put the band on the top of the charts by 1990. As the music scene changed in the early 1990s with the popularity of grunge, the band faded when their third release Pull sold poorly.

WINGER

History
Winger was formed in 1987 by Kip Winger after he did some backing vocals on Twisted Sister's 5th album Love Is for Suckers. Kip was a former member of Alice Cooper's band as was to be the lead guitarist Reb Beach. Paul Taylor was also a natural recruit for Winger, having also played with Alice Cooper's band. To round out the line up they recruited former Dixie Dregs drummer Rod Morgenstein. The band's first choice of name was Sahara, but that name was taken by another band, so they all decided on Winger instead. Although they changed the name to Winger, the word Sahara can still be seen on the lower right corner of the debut album's cover

The debut album, Winger, was released on August 10, 1988 on Atlantic Records. The record was a success, achieving Platinum status in the United States, and Gold status in Japan and Canada. Radio and MTV hits from the album included "Madalaine", "Seventeen", "Headed for a Heartbreak", and "Hungry". In 1990, the band was nominated for an American Music Award for "Best New Heavy Metal Band". Shortly after, Winger released its second album In the Heart of the Young, which went double Platinum in the U.S. and Gold in Japan. Hit radio tracks and MTV videos included "Can't Get Enuff", "Miles Away" and "Easy Come Easy Go".

Winger followed the release of its second album with a 13 month world tour, playing over 230 dates with Kiss, Scorpions, ZZ Top, Extreme and Slaughter. Paul Taylor left the band after the tour. Their third studio album, Pull, was recorded in 1992/1993 as a three-piece band. It was originally going to be called "Blind Revolution Mad", after the opening song. At some point though, the title was changed to Pull. Reportedly Kip Winger, anticipating that critics would dismiss the album out of hand, re-named it "Pull" as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the CD being used by critics as a skeet shooting target. The album was produced by Mike Shipley, but was not as successful as the previous album. On the following tour John Roth was called in to replace Paul Taylor on rhythm guitar.

After the Pull tour, the band split due to poor record sales. Kip Winger embarked on a solo career and the other members worked on other projects. Guitarist Reb Beach went on to play with Dokken and Alice Cooper.

In 2001 the band returned to the studio to record the song "On the Inside" for The Very Best of Winger. In 2002 they reunited to tour the US and Canada on a bill with Poison, but they once again disbanded afterwards.

Kip performed as the lead singer for the Alan Parsons Live Project, for their July 16, 2005 show at the Common Ground Music Festival in Lansing, Michigan USA. In May 2006, a press release announced that Winger has reformed to record another album and tour Europe. The album IV was released in Europe in October and the nine-country "Winger IV Tour" ran in the last two weeks of the same month. The band has booked tour dates into 2008.

Criticism

Winger was the subject of constant ridicule in MTV's animated series Beavis and Butt-head during the mid 1990s. The neighbor boy Stewart, who was always trying to be accepted by Beavis and Butt-head, was usually depicted wearing a Winger T-shirt, as opposed to the heavier Metallica and AC/DC shirts worn by the title characters. Beavis and Butt-head thought of them as 'wussies'. According to the documentary "Taint of Greatness: Part 2" on the Mike Judge Collection Volume 2 DVD, this was due to Winger telling MTV he would not let the show make fun of him. This has been cited as a reason for the band losing popularity. About the same time Lars Ulrich of the band Metallica could be seen throwing a dart on a poster of Kip Winger in the video for Nothing Else Matters. When asked about this Kip Winger once stated: "Our band was known to musicians, and a lot of musicians showed up to see me play - watching trying to figure out how I'm playing - we were like the 'hair band' [version of] Dream Theater -- That is why it's the great irony that we ended up on that geeky guy's shirt on Beavis & Butthead, because Metallica couldn't play what we play, they couldn't do it, they literally - technically couldn't do it. And I'll fucking challenge those chumps to a fight any day of the week, but we could play their music with our hands tied behind our back. And so, I was a little t'd off about that, but in the end, none of that shit matters..."

Line-ups

(1987-1993)

Kip Winger - bass, lead vocals, keyboards
Reb Beach - lead & rhythm guitars, backing vocals
Paul Taylor - rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Rod Morgenstein - drums, percussion, backing vocals

(1993-1994)

Kip Winger - bass, lead vocals, keyboards
Reb Beach - lead & rhythm guitars, backing vocals
John Roth - rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Rod Morgenstein - drums, percussion

(1994-2001) (Winger disbanded)

(2001-2003)

Kip Winger - bass, lead vocals
Reb Beach - lead & rhythm guitars, backing vocals
John Roth - rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Paul Taylor - rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (back)
Rod Morgenstein - drums, percussion

(2003-2006)

(Winger disbanded)

(2006-present)

Kip Winger - bass, lead vocals, keyboards, acoustic guitar
Reb Beach - lead & rhythm guitars, backing vocals
John Roth - rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Cenk Eroglu - rhythm guitar, keyboards, effects
Rod Morgenstein - drums, percussion

Albums
Winger (album) (1988)
In the Heart of the Young (1990)
Pull (1993)
The Very Best of Winger (2001)
IV (2006)
Demo Anthology (2007)
Winger Live (2007)

Article ajouté le 2008-04-21 , consulté 9 fois

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