The last time Kip Winger and Paul Taylor appeared on the stage at the fabled Newcastle City Hall, they stood alongside Alice Cooper on the blood-soaked, slasherfest Raise Your Fist and Yell tour back in 1988.
Not long after that Winger and Taylor decamped from the goodship Cooper and formed Winger, the band, alongside hotshot shredder Reb Beach and drum legend, Rod Morgenstein, who dazzled in Progressive Jazz Rockers, Dixie Dregs alongside Steve Morse in the 70s.
The hits flowed and the albums sold by the bucketload until Grunge arrived and the ghastly Beavis and Butthead put the boot in and all went quiet with the band members going their separate ways into solo careers and other bands such as Whitesnake, in case of Beach.
Winger reconvened in the early 2000s, dusted down their chops and delivered some of the best material of their career in Karma and Better Days Coming showing that their technical flair married to skyscraping melodies had lost none of its potency with this rich vein of form continuing with Seven, literally hot of the press a matter of days ago.
As special guests to Steel Panther, Winger were playing to the already converted and the pretty full hall by showtime at 8:00pm was testament to the esteem that they are held in as they kicked off with vintage duo “Can’t Get Enough” and “Seventeen” before coming bang up to date with “Proud Desperado” from the new album.
Winger himself was in impressive form, relishing being back at the City Hall reminiscing about his last show there with Alice Cooper. Reb Beech and John Roth provided the musical muscle and Beach is particular let rip with some tasty solos aided and abetted by Taylor, who switched between keyboards and guitar.
There was plenty of appropriate arm waving during mega Power Ballad, “Miles Away” before the tight groove of “Down Incognito” kicked in. “Pull Me Under”, with its biting riff, rocked as hard as absolutely anyone while Morgenstein let fly with some astonishing fills during “Headed For A Heartbreak”, where Winger was joined by Michael Starr from Steel Panther, who took lead vocals on one verse.
Some tasty harmonies during “Easy Come Easy Go” and a cracking triple guitar assault towards the end of set closer “Madalaine” showed a band at the top of their game and the crowd responded accordingly.
Review and Photos By Mick Burgess
I saw them two weekends ago at the M3 Rockfest (https://m3rockfest.com/). They had an hour-long set and people will say what they will and tease but they still rocked! The new album “Seven” is a good one but regretfully they didn’t play anything off that album for the hour-long set.