How can you talk about Hair Metal and not
mention Winger.
Pg 140 (Intro page 1988)
Pg 153 - 154
ROD MORGENSTEIN (DRUMMER, WINGER):
We were on some very interesting tours with Kiss and Poison and Bon
Jovi, so there were a lot of wild, crazy people out on the road. . . . I
have incredible memories of just being on a tour bus and careening
down the highway at seventy-live or eighty miles an hour with a
hundred cars of fans keeping up with you, yelling and screaming
and girls popping out of the moon roofs and pulling up their tops. All
that wild, hilarious stuff that is like folklore now. You know what—I’m
probably the most G-rated guy. Winger’s probably the only metal
band, between the four of us, that didn’t sport one tattoo. so that could
be our claim to fame [laughs].
BEAU HILL:
Kip is probably the single-most talented guy that I’ve ever known. He
was greatly maligned by the rock press because he’s a good-looking
guy, and I feel that he was very unfairly maligned, vis a vis his bass
playing and his writing. There were two things [sic] that happened to
Winger that destroyed their career, in my opinion. The first one was
when Kip agreed to appear in Playgirl magazine. The second thing
that happened was not his fault. It was when Lars, the drummer of
Metallica, in one of their videos, threw a dart at Kip’s poster. And
then the third nail in the coffin was after all of these other things that
happened, and Kip had kind of become the MTV punching bag,
then Beavis and Butthead showed up and the nerdy kid in one at the
cartoons was wearing a Winger T-shirt, and Beavis and Butt-head were
wearing Metallica T-shirts. So Kip was being lampooned from one end
to the other. This had absolutely nothing to do with his tremendous
depth as a musician. I mean, he plays acoustic, classical guitar, he
plays piano, he’s a composer, he studied with a Juilliard professor
in composition. So, far as just depth of musicality and legitimate
physical chops, Kip has forgotten more than probably anybody I’ve
ever worked with.
Pg 153 full page view
Pg 166
BEAU HILL (ON THE RICHES HAIR METAL WAS GENERATING):
I saw this happen a lot of times, with Ratt, Warrant, and Winger to a
certain extent. When you have guys who are broke on Monday, and
then a month from Monday they are all millionaires . . . obviously
that’s an exaggeration; I’ve condensed the timeframe, but it still exists,
Ratt, when I met them, if they had fifty cents between them, I would
be shocked. And then at the end of that particular album and tour
cycle, they all had a net worth of seven figures. When you’re a young
kid, some people can really put that in proper perspective and some
people can’t. As well as the concept that, we are so lucky and that this
gravy train is not going to last forever. That was my philosophy, was
don’t get cocky because just as quickly as this thing started, it can
stop. I was battling that with these guys. Because when people start
looking at their bank account and they start believing the press that
is written about them, then they have someone like me coming in and
sort of dousing the flame and going, “Okay guys, that’s really great.
Now let’s get back to work.” It was a wet blanket, I guess.
Pg 191
Pg 192
JACK ENDINO (INDIE PRODUCER. ON HAIR METAL):
We all hated it. Everybody hated it. With the exception of, say, Metallica and Slayer,
which were considered cool. And you know Priest, everybody grew up on JP. But
‘80s metal, such as it was, I don’t consider ‘80s metal metal, other than the obvious
exceptions. It was pop metal. And it really was not particularly metal in any sense
of the word. Pop metal, meaning the sort of Def Leppard et al, Winger, and Warrant,
all the LA. hair metal bands—nobody considered it metal. It certainly wasn’t . . .
it was barely rock. That stuff was absolutely despised up here. There was a scene
of that kind of music that existed in Seattle, as it existed in pretty much all suburbs
throughout the United States at the time, but it didn’t really get anywhere. I think
the only bands that successfully came out of that ‘80s metal scene here in Seattle
were Queensryche and the original version of Alice in Chains, kind of came out of
that scene, and they were smart enough to evolve and change their sound. And
Queensryche just happened to be very good at what they did, so they rose to the top
of the pile, but they certainly didn’t come out of any punk rock background or do the
club scene or any of that “paid our dues” thing.
2014
The Big Book of Hair Metal
by Martin Popoff
Front & Back Cover
