Posted July 2014 by Lisa Fox
http://www.bringthenoiseuk.com/201407/music/interviews/music-interview-reb-beach-winger-whitesnake
MUSIC INTERVIEW: Reb Beach, Winger/ Whitesnake
Some musicians are naturally talented at talking to the press. They chat, they laugh and they give you the party line again and again. Behind their eyes though, you can see they are glazing over. Then there are the rare interviews, the ones where the subject is honest, open and just a genuine person. Reb Beach, guitarist of Winger and Whitesnake, is one of these wonderful people; we spoke to him at Download Festival.
This is Bring the Noise and we’re with Reb Beach.
Hi, I’m Reb from Winger.
So tell me, are you excited to be at Download?
I don’t know…yes! I’m very excited to be at Download. I’ve done it…this is my fourth time doing it. I love these big shows. They’re really fun and, actually, the thing I’m excited about most about being at Download is that I’m seeing old friends that I haven’t seen in years.
Oh, yeah? Like who?
I was just in Steven Tyler’s dressing room because I’m really good friends with his wardrobe lady, and all of the crew people from Aerosmith; a lot of them were on tour with Whitesnake or Def Leppard. I’m also in Whitesnake, and I just did a tour with them and Def Leppard last year, so I’m just seeing a lot of old friends and that’s the best part. We went on at noon so there weren’t that many people here. I mean it was raining, it was slippery, we couldn’t really move and it wasn’t our gear, you know? It’s one of those throw and go kind of things, where you just get up there and do your thing.
How was the show for you, apart from slippery?
I can’t stand it when the audience is that far away from me. I need to feel the energy from the audience and so I don’t dig when there’s a giant eagle ramp that takes up most of the middle of the stage and then on either side of the stage they’re 50 feet away from you. So yeah, it’s not my favourite thing…you get out there and do it.
Would you rather play a small club?
Yes!
…and just interact with the crowd?
Way more, yes. It’s just always…I feed off the audience, from their energy and I can tell when they’re getting into it. And today it was early and it’s not my thing to play at noon really far away from the audience. I hated it.
Aww!
I guess I shouldn’t say that in interviews. That’s why I probably should never do interviews, because I tell the truth.
You should always tell the truth. I bet your mum told you that growing up.
I guess so.
The landscape of the music industry has dramatically changed in the last 10 years. What was the inspiration behind Winger coming back in to the spotlight?
Winger never left.
There’s been a resurgence though, would you not say?
When?
Winger are one of the bands that are being talked about right now.
I’m…we never broke up.
Yeah, but you had a quiet time.
We did. We had a quiet time until we got back in 2005, so it was really only for five years. When we did the Poison tour, we got kind of back together, but we never broke up. We’ve always been best friends and so, you know, I don’t know if there’s a Winger resurgence. Is there a Warrant resurgence, a Slaughter or all the other bands that we’re thrown in with? I don’t know. I mean I don’t know.
Well, there’s a lot of newer bands coming along as well that are doing the same classic rock sound.
Yeah, that’s the thing, we’re nothing like that.
Would you not class yourselves as that?
Fuck no!
What do you classify yourselves as?
Well, let’s put it this way. Our drummer is a professor at Berkley and has been for 11 years or something. Kip Winger arranges for 76-piece orchestras and he plays acoustic and sings his ass off, still sings like he did back then. I’ve played with Dokken, Whitesnake, Night Ranger, Alice Cooper. The list is a mile long. We’re all musicians that have a big roster of accomplishments, whereas other bands that we get thrown in with don’t.
What bands do you not like to be thrown in with?
I can’t say that. There’s no way I would say that.
What bands do you like being thrown in with?
We’re never thrown in with them. You know, people just don’t understand; every time I’ve ever seen a band play Seventeen, they play it wrong. People think that we’re this classic glam band and we’re just not. I mean, yeah, our hits were that because we had to make hits to sell records, but that’s not our favourite shit to play. We have these really complicated, cool arrangements and compositions and all the musicians know, but people don’t think of Winger that way. People think of Winger like Poison.
Would you rather be in with the more technical bands, like Dream Theater for example?
No, Dream Theater are awesome, they’re amazing. They’re better musicians than I am, for sure. But we like to do something a little more poppy than that, you know? Something with an actual chorus that happens more than once or twice.
It is fair enough that you don’t want to be grouped in the same category as the hair metal bands.
But that sounds really snobby. When people read that, they’re like “they think they’re so great”. That’s why it was so funny to make fun of us in the ‘80s, because we professed to be these great musicians. So Beavis and Butthead didn’t make fun of Poison, they made fun of Winger because we said we were great and then our videos were really wimpy. But we were all good-looking kids, so I understand that that’s how we’re perceived and I feel really happy that I sold two million records on my first album and I was on the cover of Guitar World magazine. I don’t think there’s a resurgence of it.
We love Poison but you know what, people do take the piss out of Poison. There’s always going to be haters.
I love Poison. I’ve done tons of tours with Poison. I played with them so many times, so many tours in different bands with them and they’re just fun and Brett Michaels is a great performer.
Do you still love making music?
Yeah! That’s what I love. That’s the best part. And I’m a performer ? I’ve been on stage since I was a little kid, I love to get up there and make music, and that I’m paid for it is amazing because for me it just…comes really naturally. And I love to be in front of an audience. I love to just drink beer and play rock and roll and that’s what I do best. I don’t listen to any new music.
Why not?
It usually sucks. I listen to my own music and I write my own music, and if I listen to music, I’ll listen to classic rock. When I listen to music at home, it’s my own music, trying to write my own music. And yeah, I’ve never heard anything that’s impressed me. I rarely hear anything that impresses me from a new band, but maybe I just haven’t heard it yet. I don’t know. Where’s the next Van Halen? Have you heard anyone like Van Halen since Van Halen? No, fucking way, and I’m a guitar player! So unless you play me guys that play their asses off with killer guitar solos and excellent melodies and total radio smash hit melodies, I’m not going to be impressed. There’s always something wrong and it’s always produced like shit. I mean if you listen to a Winger record, sonically it’s unmatched, period. Take any band that you like from the 80s or any new band and compare it sonically to Winger, it’s not going to be the same, because it’s Kip Winger. He’s a fucking genius and no one knows it. They just think he’s this namby pamby, big haired…
Cock rock star?
Yeah, exactly! He’s not. He’s super talented.
You’re obviously very passionate about your music and very proud of your music. Would you say that you’re a perfectionist?
People tell me I’m a perfectionist.
So many bands aren’t now though and they just go in and record something really quickly and get out.
Listen to any Winger record and there’s no mistakes, there’s no…you know, all the arrangements are perfection. Compared to other records, everything else is sloppy.
What have Winger got going on at the minute?
We’re touring for the rest of the year. We have a new album that just came out, so we’re touring for the rest of the year.
So tell us about the new album that just came out.
The new album is different. We’re always trying different things; we don’t want to make records that sound exactly the same so we do different things. I wasn’t around as much for this record, so there’s a lot more of Kip’s influence on it, and Kip is the composer guy and he does his thing ? our previous album was all me and Kip. I’m the 80s guy who writes guitar riffs. That’s all I do, drink beer and play guitar, and he’s the composer guy. So he takes my ideas and makes them into songs. He’s like, “right, go to A, write another riff” and I can write a riff in five seconds. So we wrote that whole album in ten days. This latest album, I wasn’t around as much for it. So it’s more like Karma - the album before it- with a lot of Kip’s wild, cool, composing feats of wonder. The first half of the record is all stuff that I was there for, so it’s bang your head, like Rat Race and Midnight Driver. Then he got to do his thing and show his talent towards the second half, where there’s stuff that I could never write, Kip stuff.
It’s really nice to hear you talking about Kip in the way that you do, it sounds like you’ve got such a good relationship…
He’s my best friend. I can’t really make any decision without him. He’s like my manager or something.
And he’s trusting you to do an interview on your own?
He’s probably not happy about it probably. It’s just I’m bad at interviews because I always tell the truth.
So you’re touring the rest of the year, where are you playing?
Just America. When you say “Winger are being talked about just now”, I don’t think so because we only have four shows here and all the offers have been crap. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s that interested over here, so we’re just doing shows in America. We’re doing really well in America and we’re going to go over to South America, and Japan has been great. We’re going back to Japan and that never happens. I mean, you only go to Japan once, but we’re actually going to go again. That’s pretty exciting because I love Japan, it’s my favourite place. But the thing is, Kip does well over here just by himself, so you would think that we’d do well as a band. So I think just the booking agent just wasn’t happening because I do think people know us over here and they’ve heard of us. And definitely in Europe they appreciate the musicianship way more than they do in America and that’s what Winger has going for it, hooky songs with cool musical parts that no else can really play, you know, with our own sound. I mean you can tell Winger as soon as you hear it. As soon as you hear my guitar with his voice, you know that’s Winger. But if you hear Kip on a solo album, you’re not sure because you need it to be him and me for that Winger sound.
Is there anything else that you still want to achieve?
Yeah, there’s a lot of shit I want to achieve, but it’s all for myself. I want to release a solo album that is instrumental. I made a solo album a long time ago, 2003, where I produced it, I wrote all the songs, I sang all of it and it was good. It was a little dark, but that was the time. Now I’m working on a solo record that’s instrumental and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Like when I put a band together where I can just play guitar and don’t have to worry about signing, because that’s the hard thing. I can play all day long. But that’s just something I’ve always wanted to do, Im a fan of that kind of music.
Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us.
Interview By: Lisa Fox
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