Kip Winger

Serving as lead vocalist and bassist for the group that shares his surname, Kip Winger harnessed the 1980s surge of pop-infused metal to reach fleeting prominence before shifting focus to individual projects in the closing years of the 1990s. Born in Denver, he started formal music instruction while still quite young and left high school after completing tenth grade so he could chase a full-time career in music. He trained on classical guitar and relocated to New York alongside his band at the time in hopes of securing a recording contract; when that effort failed, he went back to his hometown, earned his GED, and enrolled at Denver University to study music while also taking ballet instruction through the Colorado State Ballet, with which he performed for a period. In 1982 Winger moved back to New York, and thanks to his connection with producer Beau Hill, likewise a Denver native, he began to obtain songwriting assignments.

He joined Alice Cooper’s lineup in 1986 for the Constrictor album. After the subsequent tour he collaborated on new songs with guitarist Reb Beach and set out to assemble his own group, ultimately named Winger on Cooper’s advice. The band’s self-titled debut arrived in 1988 and yielded the hit singles “Seventeen” and “Headed for a Heartbreak.” In the Heart of the Young followed in 1990 and enjoyed comparable success, yet the ascent of alternative rock prevented 1993’s Pull from attaining the same commercial peaks. The group then split up, and Winger paused his activities to develop fresh material.

Shortly after completing his first solo recording, Winger suffered the loss of his wife Beatrice, who died in a car crash in late 1996; nevertheless he promoted the resulting album, This Conversation Seems Like a Dream, issued in 1997, through a solo acoustic tour. An acoustic collection of earlier material, Down Incognito, appeared in 1999. His next studio album, Songs from the Ocean Floor, came out in 2000 and confronted his grief over Beatrice’s death. He reassembled the band for IV in 2006 and then released another solo set, From the Moon to the Sun, in 2008.