In Metallica's music video for The Black Album track, "Nothing Else Matter", drummer Lars Ulrich can be seen throwing a dart at a poster of Winger frontman, Kip Winger. In a new interview with Lyndsey Parker for AOL.com, Kip talks about the band's '90s backlash, as well as apologies from Metallica, and Mike Judge. An excerpt follows...
Winger says it was “very interesting” that he was “the guy that was singled out from the whole industry, really, because my name was on Beavis & Butt-Head.” This was right around the time when the metal market had become “oversaturated” and it was “time for something new to happen... but nobody saw the grunge thing coming. Nobody. And then here comes Kurt Cobain, and I was on the wrong end of it,” Winger explains.
The year Nirvana broke, Winger’s peers Metallica actually made a successful transition with 1991’s grunge-adjacent blockbuster The Black Album, and in the video for one of that LP’s singles, “Nothing Else Matters,” drummer Ulrich could be seen gleefully throwing a dart at a Kip Winger poster. And that dart was more like a nail in the proverbial Winger coffin.
“I liked a lot of songs Metallica did. ‘Enter Sandman’ is a great song. And by the way, the irony is that before that happened, The Black Album came out and I called my drummer and said, ‘Man, you should check out the drums on this record, it’s really awesome!’ I love the drumming on The Black Album,” says Winger. “And then next thing I know, Lars has got a dart in my forehead.”
Soon after the Metallica dart diss, Beavis & Butt-Head took over ’90s MTV. At the time, getting any mention on Mike Judge’s subversive cartoon series — which boosted the careers of everyone from Rob Zombie to the Flaming Lips to the Cramps — was a rite of passage and a badge of honor for most artists, even when the show’s titular couch potatoes/armchair critics had absolutely nothing nice to say. But the snark aimed at Winger was at a whole other level, with Beavis and Butt-Head’s nerdy nemesis, Stewart Stevenson, always wearing an ill-fitting Winger logo T-shirt. Kip found it difficult to laugh that one off.
Read more at AOL.com.
Winger's new album, Seven, was produced by Kip Winger and recorded in Nashville, distributed worldwide by Frontiers Records. Order on CD/LP/Digital here.
Seven tracklisting:
"Proud Desperado"
"Heaven’s Falling"
"Tears Of Blood"
"Resurrect Me"
"Voodoo Fire"
"Broken Glass"
"It’s Okay"
"Stick The Knife In And Twist"
"One Light To Burn"
"Do Or Die"
"Time Bomb"
"It All Comes Back Around"
"Tears Of Blood" video:
"It All Comes Back Around" video:
"Proud Desperado" video:
(Top photo from Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" Music Video)
