Greg Prato, reporting for Ultimate-Guitar.com:
Although he will probably be forever best known as the singer/bassist for hair metallists Winger, Kip Winger is certainly a multi-talented fellow - whether it be playing with others (including a long-standing association with Alice Cooper), supplying bass and/or vocals as a session musician (Twisted Sister, Kix, and…Bob Dylan!), and perhaps most surprisingly, becoming a classical composer.
While recently being interviewed by Ultimate Guitar in support of Winger's just-issued box set, Chapter One: Atlantic Years 1988-1993, the subject of how he became involved in classical music came up - while discussing how MTV helped "make" Winger (due to the popularity of such videos as "Madalaine", "Seventeen", and "Headed For A Heartbreak"), but also, ultimately hurt the band's career (being poked fun of on the channel's Beavis And Butt-Head show).
"Everybody knows Beavis And Butt-Head had favorite bands and then made fun of a lot of bands," Winger explained. "And was hugely influential. I dare say that without Beavis and Butthead, you would have never even heard of White Zombie. The grunge era decimated the 80s bands, but it's no different than The Beatles decimating Elvis, or the Bee Gees becoming really huge and then being thrown out when punk happened. It's junior high school kids wanting their own music and to separate themselves from their high school siblings, And we just happened to get on the wrong end of it.
"For me personally, although it hurt the band, it helped me, actually. Because I don't know if you know this, but I write classical music, and it became the time when I studied - when I had the time to actually go back and really dig into my classical chops. I studied with three major composers, and that was the period of time when I learned about composing. And then, ended up getting nominated for a Grammy in contemporary classical composition in 2017.
"And had that all not happened, I would have never had the time to do the amount of 'musical woodshedding' on orchestral composing that I did. So, not good for the band, but pretty good for me, actually."
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