When grunge unseated hair metal at the dawn of the 1990s, many metallers suddenly found themselves out of work.
Few felt the sting more than Kip Winger, the singer, bass player and guitarist for Winger. Almost overnight, he became a punchline — most famously mocked on the animated hit Beavis and Butt-Head.
Thirty-five years on, however, Winger is having the last laugh.
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By the time the New York glam-metal outfit was hitting its stride in the early 1990s, the genre it represented was already slipping out of fashion. After a decade of dominance, the tight pants and flash of hair metal were being pushed aside by the flannel shirts and everyman ethos of grunge, spearheaded by bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
Ironically, Winger became commercially successful just as the tide was turning. Their 1988 self-titled debut went Platinum thanks to the hit “Seventeen,” and landed the group support slots with the likes of Bad Company, Cinderella, Bon Jovi and Poison.
Its follow-up, 1990’s In the Heart of the Young, also topped one million U.S. sales. But as the band found itself in the spotlight, it also experienced the backlash that came with hair metal’s sudden fall from favor.
“Kip was chosen as the poster child of all things to make fun of the hair bands,” former Winger drummer Rod Morgenstein tells 101 WRIF. “He was so unfairly treated as a talentless hack.”
Since 2009, however, Winger has reinvented himself as a composer of modern classical music. His debut orchestral work, Ghosts, written for a ballet, earned a nomination for an Isadora Duncan Dance Awards honor for Excellence in Music.
Kip was chosen as the poster child of all things to make fun of the hair bands. He was so unfairly treated as a talentless hack.”
— Rod Morgenstein
He followed it with the four-part work C.F. Kip Winger: Conversations with Nijinsky, inspired by the legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. The album was nominated for Best Classical Contemporary Composition at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards.
There’s no shortage of rock and metal acts who have dabbled in orchestral projects. Bands from Deep Purple to Kiss to Metallica have reimagined their electric guitar–driven music with symphonies. But Winger stands apart for composing original classical works rather than simply arranging rock songs for orchestra.
“He’s probably the rock musician who has taken the jump into the classical world further than anybody,” Morgenstein says. “You have Deep Purple playing ‘Smoke on the Water’ with a hundred-piece orchestra, but this is a whole different thing. This is not ‘Winger with strings’ — it is modern classical music.
“Kip Winger is a bona fide classical composer now, and I’m so proud of him.”
Winger himself was determined to avoid the clichés of the rock-star-goes-classical crossover. As he explains, he immersed himself in the genre and get a complete education in composition and orchestration.
Half of the orchestra will say, ‘Oh God, another rocker dude tries to go classical’ That’s why I went out of my way to master all the instruments of the orchestra.”
— Kip Winger
“Even now I’ll walk into a room and half of the orchestra will say, ‘Oh God, another rocker dude tries to go classical’ — expecting to hear bad Hans Zimmer material,” he told Classic Rock in 2016.
“That’s why I went out of my way to master all the instruments of the orchestra. I was also lucky that Christopher Wheeldon, the English choreographer recently awarded an OBE, liked my first piece, Ghosts, and ushered me in on a very high level.”
Sure, Metallica scored a Grammy for S&M, their 1999 collaboration with conductor Michael Kamen and the San Francisco Symphony. But that award came in the Rock category. Winger, by contrast, has earned recognition in the classical world itself — complete with commissions to back up his credentials.
Meanwhile, former Winger guitarist Reb Beach has been reflecting on some of his favorite moments on record with the band and beyond.
