Kip Winger is set to be one of the featured mentors at the upcoming Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp when it returns to the UK in November, alongside such luminaries as Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and The Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman.
The camp itself is designed to give students the chance to learn from and share the stage with some of Rock music’s legendary figures, which in the past has included Roger Daltrey, Slash and Roger Waters.
Winger himself has no small pedigree, both with the band that was named after him, as a solo musician and through working alongside some of the industry’s biggest names, including Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister and Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess.
Komodo Rock's Ben Christo caught up with Winger to find out more about the camp itself, how he hopes it will benefit the students that plan to attend, and to talk about his own career as a musician.
The Camp gives people a great insight into the art of song writing. Chords and scales are one aspect of this, but how to you encourage innovation and conviction in students? How do you get them to inject personality into their writing and playing?
With song writing, you have to discover the voice in you that really wants to say something. You have to ask yourself what you're trying to say or convey. It's not just coming from the point of a generic "let's write a song about nothing." You really have to know what you want to write about. And, by the way, I'm guilty of writing plenty of songs when I was a kid just because I wanted to be a rock star!
As time went on, I realised more and more how important it was to realize why you're doing it and what you're doing it for. Given that, if you're an amateur songwriter, that's the most important time to do it, because if you're a professional songwriter, maybe you need to write a song for a movie or something and you've been told what you have to write about. But as an amateur, you want to understand where you're coming from.
The biggest thing I learnt about song writing over the years is that it's really about the lyric - although I was never really lyric orientated, I was always music orientated! But understanding what the lyrics are all about is always a key point, even if you do the music first, which I always do. So we try to help people understand that when you write a song you're really conveying one point, so you try to encapsulate one small point in a very short amount of time. And I think that's the most challenging thing to do, to write very concisely about a certain idea and then express that idea with power, emotion and interesting chords in a never-heard-it-before manner - it's very difficult.
Of course, as translating a theme or an emotion into a sound is an abstract concept. What themes or emotions have inspired you?
Yes, you know, Blind Revolution Mad off my third record [Pull, 1993, Atlantic] was written about the L.A. Riots, Who's The One came out of great pain about a lot of stuff I was going through at the time, but then again, Seventeen [from debut Winger, 1988, Atlantic] was written about an underage chick I met at a bar one night who was telling me she was older than she really was!
So, it doesn't have to be about something Ghandi would say, but the point is that you take an idea and try and make it as concise as possible and you don't meander through.
Your music has always captured my imagination due to the musical competence therein. For me, Winger always stood head and shoulders over most of the 80's and early 90's Rock movement due to the inspired modulations and key changes that other bands could never have even contemplated. Yet, these never became self indulgent nor compromised the flow of the song - they did quite the opposite. And this was more apparent than ever on Winger IV (2006, Frontiers). My question is thus: When you write, do these more interesting changes come naturally or do you have to work through the more ‘obvious' paths first in order to reach a satisfactory composition?
My template for writing - well, Winger IV, we could do a whole interview on that, which I'd love to do if you ever are interested. What I go by is the feeling of the riff or the chord progression. Is it interesting enough to hold its own through verse or chorus, or does it need to be changed up? Sometimes an idea may be extremely exhilarating.
We did this song on Winger IV called Blue Suede Shoes where the verse is really one note but we just played this riff that was so cool that I didn't have to change the key for that chorus whereas Rainbow in the Rose [from In The Heart Of The Young, 1990, Atlantic] is kind of all over the place! It really just depends on the vibe of the chord progression and the spirit of the music. I don't really have a rule, but what I always try to do, when listening back, is put my mind into the mind of the listener and think: "how soon am I bored by this?" How many times do I go around this chord progression before I think: "ok, I understand this idea - next." And it might just be two or three revolutions and then it's gotta change because you're verging on boring.
The main thing is to not believe your ideas too much. Don't ever think you're that great because Pop music died when the Beatles broke up so no one's ever gonna be that good! You can watch T.V. commercials and it's all very fast. You listen to a chord progression and you'll get it pretty quickly.
If it's extremely interesting, I'll continue the revolutions, if it's just simple and it's only serving the purpose of the melody, then I'll move on.
A good example of this occurs in Headed for a Heartbreak [from the band's self-titled debut] where the mid section takes the song in an unexpected direction.
Kane Roberts was actually a good influence on me, although we didn't write a lot together. He was always the one to say to me: "Have you ever notice how in Van Halen's music the solos go totally somewhere else?" And that made a big impression on me. So in Headed for a Heartbreak [plays a few bars on the piano], I'm in E and instead of going back to the A Flat it's just a half step down. The whole song is in Lydian, which, if you know anything about that, it's raised 4ths.
I gotta tell you, I got lucky on that because the riff came to me at the end of a day when me and Reb had been writing. I think we'd smoked a big fatty and it kind of just popped out!
It's always been apparent, right back to Demo Anthology [2007, Frontiers. A collection of previously unreleased demos recorded before the 1988 debut]. Written in the Wind, for example, is taken in a very different direction by the mid section. That's what I've always really liked about your music.
I appreciate it. The main think people didn't really get about me was that I grew up listening to Prog music - Rush, Jethro Tull, Yes and all that stuff. I was always, dare I say it, a bit of a snob about how those bands really were a cut above in terms of arrangement and musical knowledge and I felt it was my duty to learn music in a way where I could think like that. I just thought - if this is out there then it really raises the bar for me.
People think about Winger as an Eighties band in comparison to Warrant, but if they listen we really compare more to the Prog element in terms of very complex arrangements. Especially on Winger IV where I basically threw out the whole concept of key signatures on songs like Right up Ahead and especially Generica. It's completely key-less, I go all over the place on that one!
Finally, live performance. In the most extreme example, performers either say: "when I am onstage, I am not me. I am someone else," or "When I am onstage that is when I am truly me, that's when I am the most ‘me'." How do you fit in between these binaries?
That changes over the time that you're living. Twenty years ago I would have told you I was a certain person and now I would tell you that I'm a different person. That evolves - the performer element in you evolves. But it's never the real you, that's a bunch of bull****.
If you're a born performer then it's an aspect of you, but I would never pigeon hole my personality in such a way that I'd say - "the real ‘me' is when I‘m onstage, getting accolades from people thinking that I'm great!" I mean, check out what they're really saying, it's kind of ridiculous. Ok, so when Mick Jagger goes onstage it's really him, but it's only a part of him. It's a certain aspect of your artistic expression.
So, guess what, when they're in the studio, I guarantee you he's not jumping around! It's an exaggerated personification of a certain part of your artistic thing. So, you're also getting all this adoration, so who wouldn't say that's the ‘real' them, everybody's thinking you're a god and all that! There's no sense in getting all wound up on how great anyone is. You just try to do the best work you can and get better as you get older. And as you get older, unless you're really stuck in the past, you grow as a performer, so it always changes.
Kip's new solo album, From the Moon to the Sun, is out now on Frontiers Records.
ROCK ‘N' ROLL FANTASY CAMP comes to LONDON, ENGLAND, on November 4th-9th 2008 (6 day Camp). Location: Abbey Road Studios - London, England.
I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED this interview! All the questions that I would have loved to ask! Damn, now there's nothing I have to ask!LOL Just kidding!
