Winger. Killer instrumentalists. Great songwriters. Born performers. Although their commercial fortunes have ebbed and flowed with the whims of pop culture, musicians have always known these guys are the real deal. With Winger heading to Australia for their final tour here and first with the original line-up, I Heart Guitar caught up with virtuoso guitarist Reb Beach for a chat about guitar nerd stuff.
I Heart Guitar: So Reb, it’s great to talk to you again. I was looking it up the last time we chatted was for Guitar World. About ten years ago I interviewed you and David Coverdale about Whitesnake’s Purple Album.
Reb Beach: Oh, that was a good record.
I Heart Guitar: Yeah, that was fun.
Reb Beach: Actually, the remix was really good. I I hated the mix on that record, like a lot. David brought someone in to remix it, and it was such a difference. It really is amazing how much of a difference a mix makes. Crazy.
I Heart Guitar: You know, one of my favorite examples of that is the Pearl Jam album Ten when they got Brendan O’Brien to do a remix for like a special edition. And he took all the reverb off and he put everything up front and it’s like ‘Oh, that’s what they sound like.’ But let’s get to the reason for this interview: Winger is coming to Australia for the last time. You’ve been here before, obviously, but not with the original Winger lineup. It’s gonna be cool. See, for me, I started listening… Okay. I was born in ’78, so I started listening to you guys in my teens when Pull came out. That was my kind of introduction.
Reb Beach: You got the best record on your first try!
I Heart Guitar: Haha. I was like a shred kid already. I also love grunge and all that stuff. And you guys were able to find the perfect synthesis to me of keeping the melodic and the technique and stuff all in balance. It’s all there, but also this darkness that I don’t think you guys would’ve been able to present as fully say five years earlier.
Reb Beach: Not with Beau Hill! No. That when we basically fired Beau Hill and and were able to do Kip’s vision. Big difference.
I Heart Guitar: How would you classify that vision? Like obviously we’re hearing the results of it, but what did it take to bring it out?
Reb Beach: Well, it wasn’t about, you know, ‘Okay, you need at least four top 40 singles.’ Like, In The Heart Of The Young, we gave them that record and they said ‘The only hit we hear is Miles Away and that’s gonna be the first single.’ And we said ‘No, that’ll be the death of us. A lot of bands were doing power ballads at the time andafter that they weren’t as cool and they sold less records. Those bands were getting known as ballad bands. ‘Oh, that’s a power ballad band.’ And they don’t have a cool, you know, Eddie Van Halen or kind of vibe or anything like that on there. So we wrote Easy Come, Easy Go and Can’t Get Enough. Both songs took a half an hour to write. Kip wrote Easy Come, Easy Go and I sat down with him and took half an hour to write Can’t Get Enough. And they were big hits. And actually, probably without them we probably wouldn’t have sold as much. But that wasn’t the focus doing Pull. It was more of just what we liked. The heavy factor. we knew we had a hit with Down Incognito and that’s really kind of all we really needed, I think. And we got to really branch out on that record and do some crazy stuff on there.
I Heart Guitar: Yeah. Musically and also texturally it’s great. And it’s a great headphone album as well, you know?
Reb Beach: Yeah. And on the next one, Kip went even further out. And Winger IV, that was dedicated to the troops. And that record, there’s some stuff that really went out there and some people hated it, and when it came out I didn’t like it. And now it’s one of my favorites.
I Heart Guitar: And of course, Seven is a killer album. Proud Desperado, amazing track.
Reb Beach: My least favorite song. [Laughs]. Really!
I Heart Guitar: Oh?
Reb Beach: Okay, I take that back, it’s not my least favorite song on the record. But it’s hard to recreate that one live. It sounds great on the studio track. And it used to be my favorite when we were writing it and when we were listening to all the songs on the demos, that was my favorite. But as it progressed it was a sort of Euro pop song. We were obviously going for that and it’s great for what it is, but I preferred a couple of other songs. It’s a really dark record, Seven. I was so surprised that people love it the way they do. People love that record.
I Heart Guitar: I mean, people need that darkness, you know? I think at one time we’re all holding down the dark and now it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s embrace it cos it’s here anyway!’
Reb Beach: Hey, it’s the first time we’ve gotten a million hits on a video in the first couple of months.
I Heart Guitar: So let’s talk guitar stuff, guitar nerd stuff, because yeah. I’m a big ol’ guitar nerd and it’s a guitar website. I am fascinated by your choice in guitar. You the whole Koa, EMGs, Floyd Rose, there isn’t really anything out there that does that, you know? Tell me the history of that guitar… Unless you’re bored of story!
Reb Beach: No, no, it’s fine! I was doing sessions in New York City in 1986 and that story is kind of interesting. I was a singing waiter in New York City and heard about an audition in Long Island for a girl named Fiona on Atlantic Records.Beau Hill was producing he used me for all the guitars. And I had never even played through a Marshall before! So I needed Kane Roberts to come in and show me how to get a good sound outta the Marshall because he was working with Alice Cooper in Studio B and we were in Studio A. Yep. So I did all the guitars and, and Beau was really, really happy. I replaced a bunch of other guitar players like Rick Derringer and they had all these guys and it just wasn’t right. So I did all the guitars and when it came time to pay me, Beau said ‘Listen, I’ll give you 500 bucks. I hope it’s not putting you down or anything, but it’s kind of a low budget.’ When it was a huge budget! And I was like, ‘Five hundred bucks, that’s great!’ It should have been at least $5,000! And so the good news of that is that Beau spread the word that there’s a kid who can do all the Van Halen stuff he’ll do your record for 500 bucks! Because of that, I did Chaka Khan, Howard Jones, Kenny Loggins, Roger Daltry, they all wanted these Van Halen solos on their record because that year Beat It came out with Van Halen playing the solo. So it’s right place at the right time. That’s how I got that.
And then I was doing Twisted Sister and I was going to Rudy’s Music Stop, which is where John Suhr worked. And I saw this KOA guitar, which was actually just a Tom Anderson body with a Warmoth neck that had Suhr painted on it, or Pensa-Suhr at the time. It had a Floyd and EMGs and I fell in love with it, the weight of it, the look of it, just like a beautiful piece of wood. And I took out a loan and bought it for $1,800 in 1986. I took it back and showed it to Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and he said ‘It looks like a coffee table! What the hell man, that thing doesn’t rock at all!’ But I used it on every session after that, and it was my favorite guitar. I love a beautiful piece of wood. And that kind of caught on. You know, like Nuno was always into the wood guitar and there’s, there’s us guys that just love a nice natural, beautiful piece of wood. The coolest guitar players I knew growing up who lived around me, like guys that were older than me, always had some guitar that cool looked homemade. I always thought that was so cool. Rather than a painting of a girl or something on your guitar that was all flashy. And it made you look like a pro as well.
I Heart Guitar: And of course that obviously served as some kind of a template for the Ibanez Voyager signature model.
Reb Beach: So I was sitting on a plane and it was time to design the Reb Beach model. And I was drinking and I drew a million drawings on a napkin. And I loved the the cutouts of the Steinbergers at the time. I thought that was really brilliant. And I’m like, ‘What if you take that and do a Koa top and then take out the wood back there?’ I remember saying to Mace Bailey, who was kind of their master builder, ‘Does it make any difference when you take out wood from the beautiful girl shape of a guitar?’ He said ‘Yes, it does.’ I said ‘What if we add some wood to the horns and make the horns go in like a devil shape?’ And he said the problem is you can’t make the horns too pointy because they’ll just snap off. And I said ‘Screw it. Make the horns pointy. And we did. And so the prototype guitar, which is a beast – it’s so awesome, the first one we ever made – it has really, really pointy horns. And they broke off. So he was right! So that’s the story. And they sold really well for Ibanez and they’ve talked to me about bringing it back out again. And because you can’t find ’em on eBay. They’re, they’re selling for like $20,000. It’s crazy.
I Heart Guitar: If you can find one for sale! People tend to hang onto them.
Reb Beach: Yeah. And not the blue and red ones. That’s all crap. What you need is the Koa one. Huge difference.
I Heart Guitar: I guess there must have been a time for you where you were on everyone’s radar and you must have had all the companies coming after you. Right?
Reb Beach: It was short-lived but yeah, I got guitars from every guitar company shipped to my house, and I shipped them all back. And George Lynch told me I was an idiot! [Laughs] He said ‘You keep that stuff, you don’t send it back!’ I just didn’t know any better. But I always try and do the right thing. So I stuck with The Ibanez, which was the nicest one… although when I signed with Ibanez, my guitar cover for Kramer had just come out on Guitar for the Practicing Musician. The cover with me with the Blue Kramer that I used in 17 video came out and Kramer called me and said ‘Thank you. We’ve sold so many of these, all of us have made so much money because of you this year! This guitar is outta stock. And it’s incredible, what being on the cover of magazine with a guitar could do. I guess makes that guitar sell.
I Heart Guitar: I guess a follow on from that is, there also would’ve been a time where you must have been like ‘Yeah, this is working out!’ What was that like for you as a career kind of thing where you’re like, ‘I’m getting consistent work and I appear on guitar mag covers.’ How do you deal with that? Are you like ‘Yeah, I’m meant to be here.’ Or you’re like, ‘Whoa…’
Reb Beach: Well when Winger first came out, we bombed. Like we were over, it wasn’t gonna happen. They were gonna put us up on a shelf. And only because Rod Morgenstein knew a big guy at MTV did we get one play at 1:55 in the morning on Head Bangers Ball. That got calls into radio and that took off. But it took six months to go Gold, so when it started happening and we were playing arenas, at first it was really, really exciting. But then you’re always looking forward: ‘What’s next? What are we doing? How’s the next album writing?’ You’re just working so hard when you’re touring so hard. We did a hell of a lot of shows every year but we were always an opening band except for a really short tour we did with Extreme, the little-known band from Boston. Every night they’d play this song on acoustic, and Kip Winger went to them and said ‘Hey, you guys are idiots. You need take this song, go to radio and play this song every morning at 7:00 AM on the radio live with your acoustic. And that song’s number one.’ And they did. And it was number one. And they thanked Winger on their record for that. But that was, that was short lived. We were always kind of an opening band, unfortunately, even though we sold millions of records.
I Heart Guitar: You know, we didn’t get MTV out here, all that stuff. We didn’t have it but we got the results of its influence. We had our own music video shows but there was no channel because we didn’t have cable. We would see the impact on the culture of where things would get popular on MTV and then by virtue of that would be popular elsewhere but we missed out on all that. So what I do these days is I get on YouTube and I watch old MTV videos ’cause like, I feel like I’m catching up on the culture that we couldn’t get down here back then.
Reb Beach: It was everything. It made us and it broke us. Overnight. Both things. It was a really cool channel. I had it on all the time and we actually had a room where Beau Hill paid like 25 people and put them all on a phone and had them call radio stations to request, and call MTV to request. And that was one of the things that, that helped us!
I Heart Guitar: Stuff you gotta do cut through! Now that’s just influencer marketing, and stuff like that works the same way!
Reb Beach: Yeah! There was payola back then. You got 12 points on a record, which is 12% of the record. And we got, I think, six points as a band, and then Beau Hill got like four points. Ridiculous. He got everything. And then the other points were for Payola, for like radio stations, disc jockeys and all the big players to give them little slice of the album.
I Heart Guitar: Man, those days must have been interesting and slightly unregulated and chaotic.
Reb Beach: Oh yeah. There was promiscuity everywhere. It was a great time. Maybe not as open and free as the sixties. I mean, they only had herpes, you know!
I Heart Guitar: So you ever think about writing a heavily redacted book or anything? I mean, these stories are rare and those conditions don’t exist anymore. Those stories are gonna disappear one day.
Reb Beach: The stories about my family are much better! I do like a comedy routine and tell stories about my family that are very funny and they’re, they’re much funnier than the Winger stuff. Winger, we didn’t really get into trouble, which is one of the reasons why we didn’t make it as big as like Guns N Roses and all those bands, because we weren’t bad boys at all. We never trashed our hotel room. We never really got into trouble. We were all just four really good looking studio musicians, which just doesn’t sell. So it was just all in the music for us. And you know, in hindsight we probably would’ve sold more if we had just worn jeans and a t-shirt. ‘Cause We came out in 89 when the eighties was almost over and we were still doing the poofed-up hair. I mean, everyone was the poofed up hair and the spandex and the whole thing. You know, I had a waiters’ jacket on in the Seventeen video, like ‘May I take your order, sir?’ That’s kind of what it looked like to me these days. But that’s what it was. But it ended as soon as we came out. It screwed us. You know, I think if Pull had been released a few years earlier, I think we would’ve been a lot bigger.
I Heart Guitar: Yeah. It was an interesting time. I mean, for me, I turned 13 in 91 and a month later, Nevermind. And Metallica’s Black album came out in like the same week or something. And it was like all my friend group, you either went down the metal path and then you got into Pantera, Sepultura and all that, or you went down the grunge path and you kind of did that. It was such a bifurcating of the the cultures, even down to my high school in regional Australia.
Reb Beach: They didn’t have that when I was 13. When I was 13, four albums came out that I got for Christmas. It was Boston, Kansas, ELO and Styx. Those are the four albums I got. And so I wore those records out and all such great music. And Aerosmith and all the bands when I was 13 in 1976, all the bands were cool! Everything that came out was cool. There wasn’t another road to go unless it was punk. But what was on the radio was heavy rock songs, you know? And well-written songs and great singing and killer guitar playing. The guitar players when I was a kid were Ronnie Montrose and Peter Frampton, just really great guitar players as opposed to today when there’s kids on YouTube that are unbelievable, but they can’t write a song so you’ve never heard of them.
I Heart Guitar: Yeah. Or they can’t perform. That’s the thing. You get gotta get in front of people and learn those skills. I’m a totally different person when I’m on stage, and that person only exists up there. I can’t summon him otherwise.
Reb Beach: That’s really interesting. That’s something I never really thought about. I never thought about that factor. I was on stage from like the third grade when I had a stage mother who was pushing me to be on the stage all the time, singing in all the school plays. I have a good strong in-tune pleasing voice. I’m not a lead singer but from third grade I was performing and I was I was used to it. I was also the class clown. I was always outgoing and never had a problem there. But like you’re saying, a lot of these incredible guitar players that you hear on YouTube they may very well have a hard time being in front of people and performing. It takes a certain kind of person, I think, or practice.
I Heart Guitar: Yeah. You kind of develop that part of yourself by doing it.
Reb Beach: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
I Heart Guitar: Well that’s our time up. Thanks for the great chat. It’s been really fun.
Reb Beach: Well thank you very much Peter. It was nice talking to you too. And I actually learned something so that was good. Thank you. Maybe I’ll see you at the show!
Tickets from: silverbacktouring.com
VIP Upgrades available at: wingertheband.com
WINGER April 2025 Australian Tour Dates:
Friday 4th April – MELBOURNE 170 Russell
Saturday 5th April – SYDNEY Manning Bar
Sunday 6th April – ADELAIDE The Gov
Tuesday 8th April – BRISBANE Princess Theatre
Thursday 10th April – PERTH Magnet House