The road to rock 'n' roll's hall of fame has been a long and at times rather rocky one for Kip Winger. With the launch of his own band Winger back in the late 80's he was catapulted from relative obscurity to stardom virtually overnight, his pin up good looks and catchy brand of pop rock an instant hit. However, a couple of albums further down the line and the band were derided as irrelevant, the name made out to stand for all that was bad about arena rock by a somewhat over zealous press. With Winger on semi-permanent hold, Kip took time out to reflect, writing his first solo effort in the process, but just as the album was about to be released, personal tragedy struck. Now, with the release of the emotive 'Songs From The Ocean Floor', he finally seems to have found some sort of inner peace. Kip spoke candidly to Dave Cockett.

With grunge sounding the death knell for most of the big 80's hard rock acts, in some ways it was inevitable that Winger would get caught somewhere in the fallout. It was therefore somewhat ironic that their last album 'Pull' would be a rather more sophisticated and mature release, far removed from the arena styled pop rock of 'Winger' and 'In The Heart Of The Young'.

"Well, there were a couple of reasons why 'Pull' sounded so different," explains Kip. "First of all, I don't think it would have been that different if we'd mixed the first two album's differently, and that's a critical point really. We were always a lot heavier live than we were on those first two CD's. I would've much preferred to change the mixes on those album's so that they sounded more like 'Pull' anyway, but what you have to understand is that at the time I was under contract to a producer named Beau Hill, so he was kinda in charge there. But when 'Pull' happened, we pretty much produced it in the way we wanted to, there wasn't that much of a change from the demos. And then Mike Shipley added so much in the way of how to actually record, the sort of technical aspects of recording, that basically I'd say I learned how to make an album for the first time with 'Pull', at least as far as the record path goes from the guitars through the microphones to the tape and so on. Then the way he mixed it is the way I would've preferred it to be done all along...so that's one thing. Then the second thing is, you know, it was a real hard album to make because of the grunge thing. It was a double edged sword in may respects because we wanted to sound heavier on record, and we always had, but by doing it at that time it made it look like we were trying to be heavier just to be cooler. That wasn't really what was going on of course, but to someone on the outside looking in it must've certainly seemed like it. So 'Pull' was the one where we finally found out who we were as a band."

Having had two platinum releases with the debut and 'In The Heart Of The Young', it must've been tempting at times to stick with the same formula in the hope of getting yet another hit album.

"No, not really," Kip offers, "it wasn't tempting at all, I didn't enjoy the experience at all working with Beau. He's the sort of guy who likes to be in charge, to have things all his on way... there was lots of shit that happened, but I don't really want to go into that, it's in the past now. But you know what, he helped us too. Personally I think he was a better businessman than his ears were, but he did have a certain thing about him and I did learn a lot, I just didn't dig the way he mixed. The best album I though he did was 'Midnight Dynamite' by Kix, that was definitely his best thing."

Unfortunately, whilst 'Pull' did win a few converts, to the vast majority of people at the time, it was just another album from an irrelevant 80's dinosaur, and like so many of their contemporaries it marked the beginning of the end.

"Oh man, the people who were stoning us to death," laughs Kip, "you couldn't get them to like us period, no matter what., there was no chance we were ever gonna win 'em over! And it's still tough even now, but I do get quite a few E-mails from people who've latched on to it since, so there's definitely something about it that makes it stand out. But after we finished the Japanese tour, in early '94 I think, we came off the road and that was it. There was no formal break up or anything, we just all wanted to go off and do different things for a while... and that's where we left it."

Of course, the infamous Beavis And Butthead thing can't have helped their cause, especially when bands like Metallica started to pick up on it.

"That was the point where the whole thing about any press is good press became so not true," winces Kip. "What can I say, that just crushed us man, ha, ha! It was like they picked on Winger and made us out to be everything that was bad about the 80's, so my name is synonymous with all that to a lot of people which is difficult to overcome to say the least. As for Metallica, I don't get that at all. I think Lars was the one behind that really, not the rest of the band. He was up to his usual shenanigans, and nobody backed him down. I don't know what his beef was with me because I've never met the guy. I could say a lot about that, but there's nothing really to say is there? They did that thing on their tour, and then there was the Beavis And Butthead thing... We were just victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time I guess. It was interesting that he would've picked on us though because we were more of a muso band, you know, it's not like we can't play or anything. I'd go up against them any day in that respect, bring 'em on because my band can fuckin' play... Not that they can't, but there was no reason for them to be doing it that way, so I guess it must just have been something personal."

After the last Winger tour, Kip took time out to put his life in order before considering what it was he wanted to do next.

"I was just so burned out," he admits, "but more than that I really wanted to build my own studio, somewhere where I could work at home and really free my mind, overcome all the opposition that was in there. Somewhere I could really just sink in to whatever I wanted to do and not just come up with any old piece of crap. So I spent eight months rebuilding the inside of my house and shit, me and this other guy with a couple of hammers... that was real therapeutic. And when I finally set up the equipment and started writing, it happened slowly at first but it was really cool. I really dig the 'Conversation' album, I think it's a great album." Reflective, slightly introverted, yet very spacious, 'This Conversation Seems Like A Dream' was certainly not the solo album many would have anticipated. "It's kinda funny how that happened," recalls Kip, "because I wasn't really aiming at anything. Before I was in Winger I was very much influenced by British bands like Duran Duran and Thomas Dolby, Depeche Mode, old Peter Gabriel... I was just hardcore into all that stuff. So the hard thing to understand is that when I was in Alice Cooper's band, one week I was into Tears For Fears and recording a lot of solo shit like that, then all of a sudden I got the opportunity to play with Alice who I was a huge fan of when I was 14 or whatever. Who's not gonna do it? I was like 'Too right I'll fuckin' do it!' That whole year spent playing with Alice really heavied up my consciousness, because we were touring with Megadeth as support, and the whole thing just re-stirred the heaviness from before when I was in a band with my brothers. So when I put Winger together it was right off the tail end of all that, and I was like 'Reb, plug in your Marshall and let's rock!'. So that's kinda where I came from really, but when you hit big like we did with Winger, that's what you are to people. "And in a way it's tempting to try and perpetuate that," Kip continues, "that's what a lot of bands do, that's the formula of their success. I don't know if we could've done that though, not because of all the shit that went down, but because that just freaks me out creatively, I would just fucking die! So I'm risking huge album sales by doing this, and I don't sell that many albums anymore, but the people who do buy 'em really dig 'em and that kinda means everything to me. It'd be great to be playing 10,000 sealers each night once again, but I'm not, so I'm really into the fact that people dig what I do hardcore, not just kinda fickle. Because when we were big, it was us one week, then Slaughter the next, then Bon Jovi, although Bon Jovi was always bigger than everybody else, then Skid Row. There was a whole smorgasbord of rock bands at that time and the audiences were very fickle but that's the way pop music is, just look at Elvis. The thing is, there was nothing special that happened to the band when it finished... it happened to John Travolta, and it happened to the Bee Gees who were way bigger than we were. They made our fallout look like nothing. They still sell a lot of records man, but I dunno... life's kinda strange like that."

With 'This Conversation...' finished and ready to go the future post Winger looked to be on the up again, but then tragedy struck when Kip's wife Beatrice was killed in a car accident.

"Yeah… it was all done," he hesitates. "She'd done the artwork, and we were tied on it, but when something like that happens... man that just spins you into the abyss. Promoting 'Conversation' was really the last thing on my mind, but in a way it kinda saved me because I couldn't just sit around at home like 'What am I gonna do?'. So I hung out for two or three months, and then I thought 'I gotta to do something', so I went out. And it was a bitch, it was really, really fucking painful for me to do that, but when I look back at it now it was kinda like therapy for me to keep going. I was traveling all over, fuck I must've been to something like 20 countries, and in the end I think that was the best thing for me because it was so reflective, but the scenery was changing all the time. So it wasn't like walking round the same room for a year. So it was good...and I mean, she wouldn't have wanted me to give up, she would have wanted me to carry on. And I'd never do that, I don't do music to be rich. I'm not selling enough records to be rich, I do it because that's what I am. It sounds kinda clichéd, but it's true. In many respects, music is my life you know. I still study. I study with these two guys at university in New Mexico doing really hardcore theory in classical composition and stuff like that. I'm a total infant in that whole thing, but I'm coming along, my string arrangements and stuff are getting better."

Whilst the death of his wife, quite understandably put paid to his inclination to write for a while, it transpires that the 'Conversation' sessions had been very productive indeed.

"That was kinda weird," Kip admits, "because when 'Conversation' was finished, there was something like three or four months before it was due to be released, and my studio was just rockin'. I was just writing and writing, and I wrote most of the music in that period, just dreamed it up. And then that happened, and I just got blown out. So promoting the record and doing acoustic shows was all I did for about six or seven months, but I was listening to the tapes of all those other songs I'd written which was well over an album's worth of material...I had like 17 or 18 tracks. So whilst I was getting all these requests to do acoustic shows, I was writing and conceptualizing 'Ocean Floor'."

Those acoustic shows too seem to have been a fundamental part of the healing process.

"Oh man, you should've been there in London recently when I played with Bob Catley," Kip enthuses. "It was real small, but it was so cool… there were a couple of hundred people and I was just playing my 12 string. I've done about 200 shows like that now, I'm really happy with it. People were surprised to see me play at first, they were like 'I thought you just played to tape!', ha, ha! And it's fun to do it you know, I studied classical guitar for like 7 years, so I can play. I think the quality of the songs really surprised a lot of people too, then when people started asking me for the recording of that, that's what gave me the idea for the 'Down Incognito' record. I just took a month out from doing 'Ocean Floor', and brought the players in as and when to do it."

Previously released under a couple of different names in both Europe and Japan, 'Down Incognito' is basically a studio acoustic recording of the songs from the live shows. Begs the question though of why not just put out a live recording with all the associated vibe and atmosphere built in.

"Funny you should say that dude," laughs Kip, "because I just wasn't catching on to that at all back then. Right now I'm really excited about the acoustic thing because it has that vibe and atmosphere, but it didn't even dawn on me before. I was just walking out on stage in the beginning of all that, and feeling pretty insecure because of the history of all my shit in the music business...it's a little tough to overcome that 'walking out on stage with an acoustic' beast, man that's some fuckin' beast. So if I was to do it now, yeah I would've just put a live recording out. I have quite a lot of live recordings from those shows, but I'd like to do a few more and really make it properly with a good audience and stuff."

As anyone who's heard 'Songs From The Ocean Floor' will testify, it's a deeply emotional, deeply personal record, a real outpouring of the soul as it were.

"That was therapy too man," Kip admits. "I was trying to work out all that shit with her death and all that, trying to figure out how to deal with it all and address it so that I could at least come to some kind of closure. But you're right about the whole emotion thing, that's absolutely the way I feel. It's like coming to a bridge, crossing the bridge, and then knowing that you've crossed the bridge...it's got such a pang to it when I feel it, it's a bitter sweet kind of deal. And the reaction's so far have been really, really good... except for a couple of the Germans, and they were like 'too boring!', ha ha! They don't seem to get that this isn't Winger anymore. But I'm really into the fact that people get what it is, they understand that it's an album with a lot in it, that's what means the most to me."

Winger fans should note that both Reb Beach and Rod Morgenstein play on the track 'Resurrection', the first time the three have played together since the last Winger tour.

"'Resurrection' was always one of Beatrice's favorite music tracks I'd ever written," confesses Kip, "she was really into the music, and always telling me that I should finish it. But I never could because the melody and the lyrics would just never happen. So I finally did that... and I was writing with my cousin Noble who is... he was like my piano teacher when I was 19 years old, he's a great classical pianist, kind of a folklore artist in a way. And we were writing it, and he was really confronting me with it saying 'what would you be saying to her right now?', kind of in a confessional type way. So it kind of turned into a whole...when I sang the word 'Resurrection' he was like 'Yeah!', and I'm like 'No way dude, I can't start with 'cross' and then sing 'resurrection', there's no way!'. We really just went for it and it turned into like a highlight of emotion in our lives… He and I were just sobbing in the frequency of what that song has, you know, I was just tripping out on it because I hadn't known what to write for so long, and then it all just came out. And then Reb... she always was really into his guitar playing, so I'm thinking 'It's her favorite music track I've written in a long time, I can't not put her favorite guitar player on there'. So I phoned Reb up and asked him to come down and play on it, and when he was in town with Dokken he just came on over and played the solo... man I love that solo."

All of which brings us nicely back full circle to the much mooted Winger reformation.

"We've been talking about getting back together for a really long time now," Kip says, "and I'd really like to do it. The main thing is that I've got another Winger record in my head, and after doing 'Ocean Floor' I'm thinking I won't be able to wring out another solo record for probably another year I would think. But I do hear a lot of Winger music, so I'm trying to figure out how I could get together with Reb and start working on that. My main problem is 'How do you follow 'Pull'?' ...that's Kip talking to Kip... I don't really want to go back to 'In The Heart Of The Young' or anything like that. So I've been wondering how we could do that, and it hasn't been until recently that I've started to hear the combination of sounds that I think could follow 'Pull', and take it one step further in a cool way. I think I'm up for it now, but we'll see."

"The other guys are totally into the idea," he adds, "we've been looking tentatively out there for packages that we might be able to get on to go out and play. We're definitely coming out with a compilation though, that's gonna be out later in the summer, but the main thing is, I'd like to record a live album because we never did a live album, and then maybe a new studio album. Or maybe a new album then a live album because it would be cool to put some of those new songs onto a live album."

Had he any firm ideas for new Winger songs I wondered?

"Just stuff I've started myself in my head really," Kip replies, "but that's the way we always did things anyway. I'd come over with some germ of an idea, and I'd say to Reb 'play a riff over this', and he'd always come up with some killer riff, then we'd just take it from there. Basically, I'd conceptualize the shape of the music, take some mental notes, and then start to work on little pieces of the blueprint. After that I'd get together with Reb, he'd add his elements, and we'd just take the best of what we had. That's how it always worked for us - it's the same way that I do all my solo stuff."

One potential fly in the ointment of a full on Winger reunion is Reb Beach's involvement with Dokken.

"I don't really care if he's in Dokken," Kip shrugs, "because Winger to me is a separate issue. It's kind of like...our thing is more progressive, and we're not gonna go out and tour for a year anyway, it'd be kinda how Rod does the Dixie Dregs thing in a way. I'd rather keep the quality in the music than run the band into the ground by playing every pizza joint between here and New York, if you know what I mean. I don't think I have anything to prove in a rock 'n' roll sense, but what I am into is trying to make good albums. I know that probably sounds pretty stupid, but you get my point, ha, ha!"

Having finally laid a few ghosts to rest, Kip seems quite upbeat and optimistic about the future.

"I've got several projects on the go right now," he explains. "The coolest thing is that some choreographer wants me to write this four movement piece for some dance shit… I haven't really had time to get into it yet, but that's something I'm really keen to do. I've got some more acoustic shows to do in April here in the States, and also over in Germany. At the moment I'm in the middle of rewiring my studio with a whole new bunch of equipment to upgrade the status of it… that's costing an arm and a leg. And I'm writing bits and pieces of songs all the time… actually, the last time I was in London, I've done this a few times now, but I met up with some other writers to just write... kinda pop songs, and we've been working on some really cool shit. I'm kind of into all that just for a break, again I think it's therapeutic. That's what was really good about the whole 'Ocean Floor' thing, now I can just relax. If I need to write a pop ditty then I can, that's cool, I'm not gonna beat myself up over it anymore, it doesn't always have to be some sort of epic. Except if I do the new Winger album I want to make it a kind of cross between 'Down Incognito' and 'Rainbow In The Rose' on the pop side, but way on the progressive side to take advantage of the musicianship in the band. We can't do another 'Seventeen' or 'Madalaine', that's just not what we're about anymore."