Vinnie Vincent ESQ.... What If?
By: Ian Danter

Vinnie Vincent intrigues me greatly, you know. I mean, when you actually stop and think about it, he could have achieved everything his heart desired in his musical career thus far, if it wasn't foräwell, a lot of factors, really.

Much has been made of his short stay in KISS between '82-'84, but his tenure within he band keeps prompting me to continually ask myself the question "What ifä?"

I'll give you an example. Just the other day, I dug out the "Lick it Up" CD to play in my car on a long journey. It had been a little while since I last gave the album a real good listen, but it just kind of jumped out at me from the CD cabinetäyou know how it is.

Anyway as I drove, I listened to the guitar work based on all the things that I'd seen and heard about Vinnie in the last few years. We've all read the story in "Kiss and Sell" about the crappy hotel that Gene and Paul put him up in for the recording of the album, which can't have helped his morale at the time. You may also have heard the story about his solo for "Not for the Innocent", where he had recorded 8 or 9 separate solos for the track, gone home, and then returned the following day to find that Gene and Michael James Jackson had cut and spliced these solos together to make "one good one" as Gene apparently put it.

Add to that the fear factor that Gene, Paul and Eric must have had prior to the unmasking and the release of the album (being unsure as they were about how a non-make-up KISS would fare in the 80's), Vinnie must have been under a fair amount of pressure to deliver the songwriting goods, seeing as his 3 contributions to "Creaturesä" had been so well received by KISS fans.

Based on all that, Vinnie's contribution to LIU is little short of astounding. I still maintain that the outro solo he plays on Young and Wasted is one of the best solos on ANY Kiss album (along with Bruce's "Paralyzed" corker and Ace's "Makin' Love" barnstormer) and let's not forget just how many songs he is credited for on the album too.

SOäWHAT IF he'd been able to stay in the band through to the "Animalize" sessions and make another hefty contribution to THAT record? Of course, we shall never know the answer to that one, and so we are instead left with an "Animalize" album which Paul had to carry almost single-handed, and whilst it contains one classic song (Heaven's on Fire), the other tracks are instantly forgettable, containing as they do the worst guitar solos ever committed to a KISS recording ‚ step forward Mark St John. (And before you all moan, yes I DO know that Bruce played "Lonely is the Hunter" and I do like THAT solo).

Let's go back a couple of years here ‚ Vinnie's arrival on the KISS scene came at a pretty low time for the band, particularly in the US with so many deserters to the KISS Army. In the UK, however, things weren't as bad. The video for "A World Without Heroes" was shown on "Swap Shop" a very popular primetime kids TV show, whilst Kerrang! Magazine, and journalist Dante Bonutto in particular, gave the Creatures album and surrounding story plenty of positive coverage. They dedicated issue 41 to the 10th Anniversary tour and gave the Houston show a glowing review, whilst giving readers an insight into Vinnie¼s apparent excitement at being part of KISS.

All of this hype served to give KISS an extremely warm welcome in Britain for the Lick It Up album and tour in September 1983. Even thought the make-up and costumes were gone, the shows were rammed, particularly the one I saw at Stafford Bingley Hall (my first gig ever) where you simply could not move - it was like sardines in a tin!

More positive press followed, and in the end of year polls in 1983, KISS pretty much swept the board in Kerrang! : Best Album, Best Single, Best Gig, Best Bandäthey won the lot ‚ even Most Fanciable Male went to Paul! Much was made throughout all this good press of Vinnie's contribution to the record and his sizzling live performances. After all, he did have a distinctive styleänot as instantly recognisable as Ace's, but you could spot him nonetheless.

Move one year on from this to the gig at Bingley Hall on the Animalize tour in '84, and the audience was roughly half of those who attended one year earlier. I couldn't believe it at the time, thinking that something must have gone wrong with the promotion side, but the truth was that the band were touring on the strength of the previous record ‚ Animalize had sold well initially to the hardcore audience, but the generally lukewarm reviews (Kerrang were not overly impressed, which was a big blow) had an unfortunate effect on attendancesäLike I said before, WHAT IF Vinnie had been in the band for a while longer ‚ would he have helped to keep the momentum of non-make-up KISS going in the RIGHT direction?

So why did it all fall apart for Mr. Cusano? To look at his subsequent career - where he ended up being sacked by his own backing band, who then went on to US success (Slaughter) before filing for bankruptcy ‚ tells its own story really.

I was lucky enough to meet Gene and Paul when they travelled over to England in 1994 to promote the KISS My Ass album, and I went along with Kerrang journalist and KISS fan Steve Beebee to interview them on the tribute record. They were in the process at the time of putting together material that would eventually become "Carnival of Souls" and we asked Gene and Paul whether they were continuing to work with Vinnie, as his writing work on Revenge had obviously had a positive effect on the finished article. However Gene and Paul simply shook their heads and told us that he had "gone back to his old ways" .

Books like KISS and Sell and Kisstory give us a fairly good idea of how and why Vinnie was jettisoned from KISS after the Lick it Up tour. Gene and Paul clearly could not get on with him, whilst Vinnie seemed to want a bigger slice of the pie, due to his songs, which gave the album such a kick. Money was tight in those times and Gene and Paul quite simply refused to budge on cash or royalties. Without a Bill Aucoin or a Neil Bogart around anymore, Gene and Paul had an autonomy that oversaw everything in the organisation, and Vinnie had no-one to turn to with a sympathetic ear, so the end was inevitable.

However a story Paul told us in that interview in London still sticks with me to this day. He mentioned a time where Vinnie had received a free guitar from a company (presumably Grover Jackson) but then proceeded to SELL that guitar to a fan for what Paul called "vastly inflated prices". This is clearly not the done thing, and if this was common to Vinnie¼s behaviour, then clearly Gene and Paul had no choice but to let him go.

So compare if you will, the Animalize album to the Vinnie Vincent Invasion debut that emerged around the same time. Firstly, I would say that the material on the Invasion album was not in a KISS-style, but then to my mind, neither was Animalize. Invasion has its flaws (outrageously loud and widdly guitar solos, lyrics that were hard to make out and, well, outrageously loud and widdly guitar solos!) but Animalize was more crucially flawed for a band with 11+ studio albums under its belt. You could almost forgive Vinnie's soloing on "Invasion" as it was obviously a chance to release plenty of pent-up aggression, but to my mind Gene and Paul knew how to get the best from his solos without resorting to "fret wanking" as we call it here.

For example, Vinnie plays several solos on Creatures that were definitely under Gene and Paul's direction i.e. "Play it like Ace would ‚ we want everyone to think he¼s still in!" I believe I'm right in thinking that he definitely played the solos on Keep Me Comin, Danger, Saint and Sinner and War Machine (I'm fairly sure that Mr Mister's Steve Farris played the Creaturesäsolo with bluesman Robben Ford playing I Still Love You, although I could be wrong) and these solos were great examples of how to take a basic technique like Ace's and give it a new lick of paint. It's a shame that Vinnie saw this as a climbdown for him as a musician, and proceeded to overdo it on "Invasion" (although the 2 solos on the slow songs on "All Systems Go" were far more melodicäperhaps he had someone whisper in his ear!).

So, WHAT IF you were to combine the sheer brute energy of the "Invasion" songs and soloing with Gene and Paul¼s knowhow? You'd have got a better record than both Animalize and Invasion, that's for sure! To sum it up, 1982 to 1984 was a fascinating period for both band and Vinnie, but one that never reached its full potential for either party, which I find really frustrating.

Finally, before I go, has anyone like me noticed just how impossible it is to obtain any footage of the 10th Anniversary Tour, save for the Rio gig, of course. I have yet to find any such footage, and I for one believe there is dirty work afoot ‚ I think we should be toldä

KISS ASYLUM -- KISS Museum News Archive Features Tour Dates Photos