Winger On Their First And Last Australian Tour

Legendary hard rock band WINGER is set to electrify Australia for the final time, bringing their farewell tour to rock fans across the country thanks to Silverback Touring and Loud Lemon. For one unmissable tour, all of the original members – Kip Winger (vocals, bass), Reb Beach (guitar), Rod Morgenstein (drums), Paul Taylor (guitar, keyboards) and John Roth (guitar) – will travel to Australia to deliver the ultimate send-off, celebrating decades of iconic music in a career-spanning spectacle.

Formed in 1987, WINGER quickly rose to fame with their triple-platinum, self-titled debut album, which spawned hits like Seventeen, Headed for a Heartbreak, and Madalaine. Their sophomore album, In the Heart of the Young, solidified their place in rock history, delivering anthems such as Miles Away and Can’t Get Enuff. The band most recently released their seventh album, Seven in 2023.

Known for their virtuosic musicianship, tight harmonies, and high-energy performances, WINGER has remained a force in the rock world for nearly four decades. Over the years, the band has gained critical acclaim, with Grammy nominations and widespread recognition for their intricate compositions and electrifying stage presence. Each member of the band has built an impressive resume beyond WINGER— Reb Beach has been a longtime guitarist for Whitesnake, Rod Morgenstein has played with the Dixie Dregs, Paul Taylor has collaborated with Alice Cooper, John Roth has played with Giant and Starship whilst Kip Winger has enjoyed a successful solo career and a critically acclaimed career as an orchestral composer which has earned him a Grammy nomination.

Now, Australian fans will finally get the chance to witness WINGER in their full glory, as they bid farewell with an explosive, career-defining set list that promises all the classics and deep cuts that fans have cherished for years. This historic tour marks a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see WINGER’s original lineup on Australian soil for the first and final time before they take their final bow. Kip Winger talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

Does it feel like a full circle kind of moment being the first and last tour of Australia?
Yeah, I love Australia. I toured there with acoustic, in 2021 or 2022 and loved it. Was very excited to bring my band back, then we were going to come and then I had some performances in Berlin and conflicting schedules. I promised I would come back, so we are coming back.

How hard has it been to get everything to line up and actually make this tour happen this time?
It was a bit of a trick because we’re really busy. We’ve been doing tons of shows and I really wanted John Roth to come with us because he’s what we consider to be an original member, even though he didn’t join until the third album. It’s been so long he’s been with us. He’s with Starship and so he’ll sub out with Howie Simon, who we love too. But he’s an earlier member and I really wanted John to be able to be available for it. So that was part of the reason why it took a little bit of a trick to get it together and fortunately John will be with us on this run.

Being the last time that we’ll see Winger, does it change the approach to the shows and the type of set list that you may play?
We had a lot of popular songs, I’m one of those people, like people want to hear the popular songs, we do some deep cuts like Rainbow In The Rose, my favourite song to perform is, was a song off Better Day’s Coming, maybe nobody even knows that album, but a song called Midnight Driver of a Love Machine. It’s my favourite song to perform. I love that. It makes me feel like a rock star, which normally I don’t. I’ll try to change it up because we’re doing five shows there. So I’ll try to throw in a few different songs because I know there’s some fans going to several different shows.

How deep are you going to go into the back catalogue and play some of those rarer gems?
We don’t do anything like Battle Stations or something like that. We’re not doing that. We used to get a lot of requests for that and we did that for a while. It’s terrifying to sing that song, and there’s a couple songs that are just absolutely impossible to sing, even though I can still sing, but they’re really, really hard. We just did the Pull album in its entirety in Atlanta. That was terrifying. I sang it, but it was really, really difficult. So, given the fact that we have five shows and I don’t want to suck, I’m going to pick the set list, including some deep cuts that I know that I can deliver very well and nobody’s going to be, you know, kind of bumming on my voice and stuff. Hopefully! I mean, at sixty-three singing this stuff, it’s difficult, but I can still do it.

Beyond these shows with Winger, what is next for you?
Oh man, my orchestral career is just booming. I’ve got a premiere with my violin concerto with Nashville Symphony on May 9 and 10. I’ve got three new projects in the works for my classical. This is the reason why I’m, what I would call, how do I say without sounding any other way than the truth. How I can fulfill my musical goals basically is to move towards the orchestral stuff. because I’ve been working on it a long time. I’m getting a lot of work doing it, it’s very time consuming, very fulfilling, and I’m on fire. I just don’t have enough time to do it basically and right now my voice is starting to give out enough to where I’m like, man, I ain’t going to be that dude on stage that can’t sing anymore. It’s all original members. We’re all still here. The travel is just too intense. I can never get anything done, so think of me as a guy who’s just getting started, it’s just that the kind of music that I’m writing is with a full orchestra.

Not saying that Winger is not satisfying but do you get greater fulfillment doing what you’re doing with orchestral music?
It’s weird, I understand your question and Winger is extremely fulfilling, especially since its original guys and I can still sit back and watch Reb play the solo for Headed for Heartbreak and be blown away every single night or, or Rod doing something that, you know, I’m never not amazed by those guys. It’s great to have been with these guys for now it’s like thirty-six, thirty-seven years with me. So, that’s very fulfilling. But yes, I’ve written every kind of rock song that could possibly be written by me and I’m excited about it mind you. I have a whole world of sound to explore, it’s when you put your music in front of a symphony orchestra and they kill it, there’s nothing like it.

I’m not really that into performing anymore. I just want to give the music, talk about the music and have the people deliver the music and be the guy that wrote it. Because my mind works like this, this is the reason, you know, if you listen to Winger records, they’re very detailed, very precise and that’s the way my mind works and this has taken that to a new level.

Without that pressure of touring, do you see yourself making more music with Winger or is that pretty a full stop there?
No, no, no, man, I went very specifically to organize the last Winger album to have all the members of the band be included. I really wanted Paul on there playing keyboards, I wanted John on there and of course Reverend Rod. I wanted a cross between the first album and some of the latest stuff we’ve done to bring it kind of full circle. If you notice, I went back to the original logo and was thinking, okay, well this is probably our last record. I mean, never say never because I love those guys and if I just feel like I want get in the studio and write with Reb again because it’s a blast, witnessing Reb just come up with riffs it’s like a privilege. I’ll knock out a drum thing and I’ll be like, what do you got here? He’ll just go, okay, cool. because we work so well together. Early on we realised that my deficiencies are his attributes and vice versa. I don’t know what the landscape is for him out in the world, what people think of Reb Beach because I don’t pay attention to the internet, but this guy is one of the greatest riff writers of all time bar none. If you listen to Pull Me Under, Seventeen, and Down Incognito these are classic heavy guitar riffs and I’ve witnessed him just come up with this shit off the top of his head and it’s just been unbelievable.

So never say never, but for now, um, I have no plans of making a new Winger record. I mean that in the best of sense, I tried to do my best on that album. We all had a great time. It was good vibes, and they knew when I was making it. These guys know where my head is at. I’ve been saying this shit for years. I mean, I think you could even probably find footage of me when I’m twenty-five years old going, well, when I’m sixty I’m going to be doing orchestral music.

Will you revisit any of the old albums, remastering those or reissuing anything like that?
We just did a box set of the original albums, remastered with Ted Jensen, so that recently came out and that’s actually really cool for anybody that doesn’t know about it. I don’t know if there’s any left because it was a limited run of fifteen hundred, but it had all this cool artwork in the middle of it. We’re selling a tour book on this tour that’s got a few of the artwork pieces from that, which is weird because we’ve never done a tour book since the early nineties. I’ve always wanted to remix the first and second records and I keep threatening to do it, but at this point in my career, I probably would have farm it out to somebody who I think is really good because there’s some things about the first and second records that just weren’t okay for me.

Well, let’s put it this way, when if you put on Pull, you’ll hear what I always intended the band to sound like, more heavier, a little bit more raw, so the first album especially had that snare and stuff with all those samples on it because that was like the thing I’d like to strip those first two records down and show what that was all about. I probably will get to that at some point, but I’ve got two years of writing ahead of me that I’m kind of panicking on getting done. Also, I have probably a double album worth the material to make a solo album. So, you know, eat healthy because we all want to live to be a hundred I guess.

Sounds like it’s a real sort of exciting period of time as well for you just keeping busy…
Yeah, for me it is, Covid and all that stuff made me quite weary. I had a really bad case of long Covid and I’m just kind of coming out of it, but there was a year or so there where I was just like, man, I got to go back to bed. I’m kind of coming out of that and so that’s good. I’m seeing the light of day where I can really focus on the kind of compositions that I want to. Interruption is the death of creativity! The next phase of my life is going to try to find a new place to live where I can really just focus on these works.

Hopefully some of the Winger fans, I’m not expecting anybody will come along with me. I’m resolved to the fact that no one will come with me, and I’ll have to build a whole new fan base in a whole other genre. That’s okay. A lot of close Winger fans have already made the transition, it’s different, it’s not for everybody. Some people just want to rock but I would challenge anybody to say that if I showed them certain things that are going on in my music, it totally rocks. That’s what I’m trying to bring to classical music is a rock and roll vibe in terms of the mentality of what’s going down on the paper.

Do you worry about the future of rock ‘n roll and kind of where it’s actually heading?
Hell no, I’m not worried about that at all and nobody else should be, but I mean look two things. One is whoever is into this kind of stuff go, oh, music was never as good as what it was because that’s just generational. But the other thing is that for artists, nothing is more energising and soul satisfying than plugging into the universe that’s bringing you this thing and when you’re in the studio and it just happens and the song starts going, oh my God, and the creation of this thing that you’ve brought in from the universe that’s totally intangible, becomes tangible in by way of your hands and you’re moulding it and all of a sudden it becomes this thing. And, and there’s, there is nothing like that.

That creativity, it lives in everybody. What I would actually say that it doesn’t matter what you do, even an accountant could find a zen doing numbers. That thing will never die. Music will continue to be evolving and inspired by who’s ever coming next and whoever wants to grab that bolt of lightning and ride it. We might all sit here and go, oh, it was great back in the eighties, that music was so much better. There’s so much cool stuff out there right now. You just have to dig for stuff that you like, but it’s all there, people are out there, they’re just flooding the airwaves in the internet with really cool stuff, so much so that often times I’ll be like, Hmm, what do I have to contribute here? To answer your question, No!

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Winger on the following dates, tickets from Silverback Touring…