KIP WINGER Reflects On Touring With Late WARRANT Frontman JANI LANE: 'He Insulted Me In A Way That Was Beyond The Pale'

In a new interview with Andrew McKaysmith of the Scars And Guitars podcast, WINGER frontman Kip Winger was asked how he managed to "avoid the pitfalls" of success in the late 1980s and early 1990s when so many other musicians succumbed to the rock and roll lifestyle, including late WARRANT singer Jani Lane. Kip responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Man, first of all, alcohol made me physically ill. I could drink, and by the way, my grandmother was an alcoholic, so not only did it make me ill, but I could also drink anyone under the table. So it was just not a good thing for me to be around. If I drank one bottle of wine, I'd get in the car to go get my second one. And then when I moved to Nashville, it was like a badge of honor to drive drunk. And one day I just put the bottle down and said, 'I ain't doing this again.' 'Cause it was starting to fuck my voice up. I was never an alcoholic. I only drank when I didn't play because it fucked my voice up so bad."

Kip continued: "Look, I've had some bad encounters with Jani, but he was the nicest guy ever when he wasn't wasted. I don't know what it is. I wanna say it's some type of weakness, but I don't wanna be mean and I don't mean it in a mean way. If you have a propensity for drinking, that's a tough one. I mean, Vince Neil [MÖTLEY CRÜE] is another one. Nicest guy on the planet when he's straight, worst motherfucker you'll ever meet when he's wasted. And I think that a lot of the clichés, especially in the '80s with GUNS N' ROSES when they were all with the bottle of Jack and all this bullshit, a lot of people followed suit. That was never my thing, man. I was like, 'Man, I want to be a better musician.' And so I never partook in any of that shit. And by the way, in all these autobiographies, like, 'Yeah, man, I OD'd that night and they took me to the hospital and there was 10,000 people…' And I'm, like, 'You know what? You OD'd on drugs because you're stupid. You did drugs 'cause you're stupid.'"

Circling back to his exposure to drugs while on the road, Kip said: "I was in Alice Cooper after he was out of rehab. I never saw one drug on any of these tours I was on — never, ever, ever, ever — except once. On the POISON tour, FASTER PUSSYCAT — we used to call it the 'Evil Bus', 'cause they'd be on there doing absinthe and coke. If you wanted, if you wanted to go get crazy, you'd go on the 'Evil Bus'. And that was the only place I ever saw it. And God bless Taime [Downe, FASTER PUSSYCAT singer]. He's sober now, and I'm so sorry about his [recently deceased] girlfriend and stuff. And he's a beautiful dude, man. But we all outgrow that stuff, hopefully, after a while. Jani just never outgrew it and drank himself to death in a hotel room.

"We all have that one song. [Jani] couldn't get over the fact that he wrote [WARRANT's] 'Cherry Pie', 'cause he felt like it delegitimized him as an artist. And I'm thinking, 'Yeah, okay, but it funded you to do everything else, so who cares?'"

Asked if he ever had the opportunity chat with Jani about the WARRANT singer's alcohol addiction, Winger said: "We did an acoustic tour one time, and we were all on a bus, but he was such a dick. And like I say, when he was straight and sober, he was really, really nice. And he insulted me in a way on that tour that was beyond the pale. And we actually kicked him off the bus. At one point on that tour, he brought his preacher along with him to try to keep him in line and all that stuff. And then he turned to religion and was trying to do all that stuff. And listen, my dad was a preacher, all my uncles were preachers, all my grandfathers were preachers. And my dad left the church, and we're not religious. I'm not a practicing religious person other than believing that the universe has mysteries that none of us could ever answer in this life. I could talk to you about that for hours, but I'm not a religious guy. But when he started preaching all that stuff to me — that, along with his deep cutting insults —I just was, like, 'Go away, man.' And we actually kicked him off the bus. But that's not to say that he couldn't have been saved — not religiously speaking; I'm talking about if he had gotten sober and cleaned up. 'Cause I know a lot of guys that have gone through the AA thing, and it's all good, man. Look at the GUNS N' ROSES guys. They were famous for being shitfaced non-stop. Duff [McKagan], when I used to hang with Duff in the early GUNS N' ROSES days, that guy was never so sober. And you wanna talk about somebody who got their shit together? He went back to school for business, and he got his black belt. I mean, that motherfucker, he slayed the dragon more than anybody I've ever met."

WINGER issued its seventh studio effort overall in 2023, the appropriately titled "Seven". Kip is also a respected and successful symphonic composer, having issued recordings under the name C.F. Kip Winger, while Reb has been a member of WHITESNAKE since 2002, and drummer Rod Morgenstein has served as a professor at Berklee College Of Music (in addition to playing in a variety of other more jazz-fusion-based projects).

WINGER formed in the late 1980s and soared to immediate success with its 1988 self-titled release. The album spawned the hit singles "Seventeen" and "Headed For A Heartbreak" and achieved platinum sales status. "Winger" also stayed on the Billboard 200 chart for over 60 weeks where it peaked at #21. Their next album, "In The Heart Of The Young", also achieved platinum status behind the singles "Can't Get Enuff" and "Miles Away". The change in musical climate of the mid-'90s, compounded with unprovoked ridicule on MTV's popular "Beavis And Butt-Head" show, led the band to go on hiatus in 1994. In 2001, WINGER reunited and has not looked back since. Kip also earned a 2016 Grammy nomination for the classical album "C.F. Kip Winger: Conversations With Nijinsky", recorded with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.

WINGER recently announced that it was embarking on "farewell" tours of Australia and Japan in 2025.