Uber Rock’s Guilty Pleasures: Vinnie Vincent Invasion
Written by Gaz E
Sunday, 16 March 2014 03:30
Uber Rock’s Guilty Pleasures: Vinnie Vincent Invasion – ‘Vinnie Vincent Invasion’ (Chrysalis Records 1986)
Before the internet, before pseudo-anarchists railed against ‘the man’ by posting personal information regarding where they shopped, ate, holidayed and worked, before people informed burglars of when their homes would be empty, nuggets of information were more highly sought after rather than being part of the virtual battering ram smashing into your eye sockets every time you looked at your television, computer, or smart phone.
For the music fans of three short decades ago the luxury of seeing a photograph of what their favourite rock star was eating for breakfast remained a, surely unachievable, futuristic dream.
No, for those of us living a billion miles away from the heroes whose images adorned the walls of our teenage bedrooms, the smallest piece of information, however true, was treated like the Patterson/Gimlin Bigfoot footage – looked at in detail, puzzled over, equally celebrated and questioned. For fans of counter culture music the merest mention of one of your favourite bands in the mainstream media – be it in a daily tabloid, or on a music show on one of the three terrestrial television channels – was celebrated like the second (pretend) coming of Christ. We scrapbooked cuttings of every shape and size: they made us feel a part of something and, somehow, closer to something that mattered to us.
When I woke up this morning, prior to turning on my computer to type this future-classic article, I performed an age-old ceremony alongside a modern trait: scratching my balls with one hand and scrolling through my phone’s social media apps with the other. It’s a sorry state of affairs, and one that makes me yearn for the ‘old days’: the days before every statement was met with underserved plaudits or inappropriate savaging, before every shitty action of every shitty person was treated like it was the only thing we needed to know that day – forget the children killed by military drones, forget repression and homophobia and racism, let’s all marvel at the self-important prick and his/her photo of the temperature gauge on their car’s dashboard, or of their pet, or of their dinner, which basically consists of parts of an equally cute animal but coated in mint sauce…because that makes it a-ok.
As ironic as it seems as I type on an expensive home computer keyboard while listening to music on one of those new-fangled compact discs, my phone constantly buzzing with messages from wanton females, sometimes I want to be Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s hugely flawed yet enjoyable Escape From L.A., pushing the button on the Sword of Damocles remote and ridding the world of all technology…
Nostalgia is a funny old thing: adored by those who choose to remember rather than forget the actions and influences that put them where they are today, made them what they are today; oft-ridiculed by those desperate to forget and move on from past fashions and fuck-ups, generally due to the unexploded bombs of embarrassment that sit in the back of their tiny minds, waiting.
Now, if your past contains criminal convictions, racist opinions, homophobic outbursts, conservative votes, or a sexual history that simply doesn’t fit into the fake plastic suburban ideals that you now live by – see the lyrics of Everclear’s ‘Volvo Driving Soccer Mom’ for further insight – then I can understand you wanting to forget all about what happened to you before you were you. The now you.
What I don’t get is how people, adults, grown men, shy away from admitting to liking bands and albums from their past. Sure, the potential is there for ridicule, but this shit was supposed to be entertainment. Should a viking metaller be scared to admit that he grew up knowing every word of his mother’s Abba records? If so he should be shorn of beard and mullet and forced to leave the longboat. Should I be ashamed to admit that the first record I bought myself was by Showaddywaddy, before moving on to The Police, then bands like Motörhead and Girlschool and Iron Maiden? Should I not tell people that my first ‘rock’ t-shirt featured the cover of Saxon’s hit 1980 album ‘Strong Arm Of The Law’? Should I not admit to getting into US rock, and ultimately hair metal, by way of KISS, my hair ending up peroxide blonde and teezed up to the stratosphere? Fuck no, because then I would be no different to the cocks who drive their 2.4 children to school in earth-killing SUVs before unwinding on the weekends (after a hard week at the office sucking corporate cock) with a game of rugger and a spot of wife-beating. And, as we all know, those people are cunts.
If it wasn’t for Dave Bartram’s creepers, Stewart Copeland’s taped-up fingers, Phil “Filthy Animal” Taylor’s crazed look, and hair designed on the Sunset Strip and perfected by way of crimpers and my sister’s hairspray in the South Wales valleys then I guess I wouldn’t be typing this here today. Oh yeah, and Jim’s record shop.
The three story building on Ashfield Road, Abertillery that housed Jim’s record shop now houses tenants who have to work hard at dragging themselves up at the crack of midday to stagger the fourteen yards to the local DSS office in order to bullshit their way through another meeting whereby they will be gifted housing benefit money to continually deflower the legendary status afforded the bricks and mortar that surrounds them. There should be a blue plaque on the wall of that building because of the effect it had on young local music fans in the early eighties.
I’ll never forget the first time I went into Jim’s after it opened, running home to get more money after spying that Lost Ark of the Covenant in stapled paper form that was a massive pile of well-read yet no less awesome US magazines, many of them featuring KISS covers and centrespreads. Imagine growing up with Look-in and Smash Hits, turning metal with Sounds and Kerrang!, and then discovering the second-hand majesty of 16 Magazine – you call this nostalgia, I call it musical puberty.
For a KISS fan just into double figures age-wise, information about this band of superheroes was always at a premium. We didn’t know about Anton Fig and Bob Kulick and all that scepticism and inner band politics, but we knew about Ace Frehley’s favourite gold star earring, an actual answer in the Kiss Kwestions feature from the December 1979 issue of 16 that I pulled out of my archive for research purposes. That’s the kinda info that was shared with us kids desperate for KISS news.
Actual KISS news, and of the major variety too, came filtered down from older kids and the pages of the aforementioned Sounds music newspaper and its offshoot, the once mighty Kerrang! Ace Frehley, although featured on the cover of the 1982 KISS album, ‘Creatures Of The Night’, didn’t actually play on the album. The lead guitar was played by no less than four musicians, future KISS member Bruce Kulick’s follically-challenged older brother Bob amongst them. The guitarist who featured the most on the album, a Vincent Cusano, performed lead and backing vocals on five of the record’s nine tracks, three of them getting him a co-writer credit.
With Ace Frehley officially out of the band, and after considering or auditioning the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Doug Aldrich and Richie Sambora amongst others (how true these claims are/were will never truly be known, you’d guess), Cusano was recruited as the Spaceman’s replacement. His birth name, however, was “too ethnic” for the always subtle Gene Simmons so, after turning down Cusano’s suggested stage name, “Mick Fury”, he came up with the new name for his band’s new axeman, Vinnie Vincent.
Like Eric Carr, this new KISS member was given all-new make-up, Vincent slapping an Egyptian ankh across his face and adopting the persona of “The Egyptian Ankh Warrior” although Simmons’s rewriting of KISStory has no mention of this, instead referring to Vincent as “The Wiz” in regards to his guitar playing virtuosity.
The Wiz toured with KISS on their ‘Creatures Of The Night’ world tour, being ‘let go’ by the Simmons/Stanley beast at the end of the run, only to be rehired for the recording of next album, 1983’s ‘Lick It Up’. Vinnie Vincent would co-write eight of the ten songs featured on the new album, the one which famously saw the band ‘unmask’ and reveal their hot looks to the world.
After his refusal to sign a contract – Vincent, like Carr before him, would be offered ‘hired gun’, rather than equal, band status – the artist formally known as Vincent Cusano was let go…again. Stories of the guitarist performing an impromptu solo as the other KISS members stood aimlessly onstage on a ‘Lick It Up’ tour date couldn’t have helped, surely? He was replaced by the ill-fated Mark St. John as the KISS guitarist merry-go-round continued to spin. Vinnie Vincent, who must be remembered as some kind of people’s champion given his refusal to bow down to the KISS hierarchy that troubles so many of us these days, was, remarkably you’d think, recruited to write a trio of songs for the 1992 KISS album ‘Revenge’ before, you guessed it, falling out with Paul and Gene again. It’s what Vinnie got up to in the years between ‘Lick It Up’ and ‘Revenge’ that interests me, though…
Vincent Cusano had a job as staff songwriter on the television show Happy Days, and its spin-off, Joanie Loves Chachi. That’s pretty cool. He then joined KISS and pranced around onstage with a big, fuck-off ankh painted onto his face. Also pretty cool. His KISS recruitment was down to him being friends with Gene Simmons, we were told. However, it appears that he was found, as was his replacement Mark St. John, by an L.A. talent scout who had introduced Ozzy Osbourne to Randy Rhoads and would be credited as then getting guitarist Jake E. Lee into the former Black Sabbath frontman’s band. This agent’s name was Dana Strumwasser, who would later drop half of his surname and seek out Vincent with the aim of putting together their own band.
Strum and Vincent teamed up with a drummer named Bobby Rock and went on the lookout for a vocalist. Former Journey singer Robert Fleischman, who had worked with the band prior to them hiring Steve Perry, joined the trio and they got to work on ‘new’ material, although much of it was actually reworked from songs Vincent had written with a band called Warrior prior to joining KISS. Demos landed on the doormat of the Chrysalis Records offices and so impressed were the suits with the new sound that fused OTT shredding guitars to an outrageous glam image – two hot movers and shakers in the mid-eighties music world – that they offered the freshly-christened Vinnie Vincent Invasion an eight-album deal worth $4 million, the presence of a former KISS member helping just a little, you’d think.
Released in August 1986, the band’s self-titled debut album, produced by Vincent and Strum, famously stated on its sleeve notes that it featured no pedals, outboard gear or synthesizers: a curious claim to those who read every inch of an album sleeve prior to even hearing all of it, yet obvious once that needle had hit the groove. Vinnie Vincent had reinvented himself as, not only a be-wigged glam alien, a mess of pink and black, but also as the craziest guitarist around. While other ‘guitar heroes’ were rehashing classical music, VV was out on his own, fashioning a style that was a blur of guitar noise, so much so that his obvious talent was often drowned by the ridiculous amount of notes crammed into a mental guitar solo. This was the six string equivalent of future diva vocals: why have one note when you can have two hundred and fifty?
Throw a former KISS member with a band overstepping the then-glam rock threshold – Strum looking like the quintessential Sunset Strip blonde rocker, Bobby Rock with actual animal print painted onto his buff body to match his trousers – at a fifteen year old KISS fan just about to step full-on over the glam rock threshold and, well….guilty as charged, your honour.
At age fifteen the anticipation of what would greet me, musically, in the seconds between the needle hitting vinyl and the music starting was what I thought it must be like for a parent waiting to hear its baby’s first cry after being pushed out into the world in a soup of grue. Wailing was what would meet my ears, yes, but of the guitar variety. At least I thought it was a guitar: this could have been a new supersecret military weapon created in high security desert silos, its aim to blow minds with its ultrasonic aural viciousness.
‘Boyz Are Gonna Rock’, ‘z’ added for necessary glamness, somehow (and this must have been the work of voodoo or black magic or some equally mysterious shit) perfectly mixed ridiculous guitar histrionics with a song catchy enough to be a hit. How daring of these hair metal infidels? Even Eddie Van Halen had been forced to put his guitar to one side and plonk away on a keyboard to get his band a hit single!
Robert Fleischman’s vocals soared with the angels, diving into bedrooms to rid buxom eighties blondes of their clothes with every note, second song ‘Shoot You Full Of Love’ his groin-aimed calling card. “I wanna lick your fire,” he sang, asking the back street pussycats to whip him blind.
Incredibly, these words appeared to not always have the desired effect. “I want you but you never reply,” Robert sung on third track, ‘No Substitute’, an arrow-through-the-heart of a song, pop rock in all but guitar solo, Vinnie thrashing wildly away like a mentally-challenged boyman yanking away at his cock on public transport: yes, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it was excusable.
The sci-fi hi-fi opening of ‘Animal’ questioned the non-inclusion of synthesizer use, yet, with Dana Strum’s restrained plodding bass (so typically eighties that it almost sounds like the clacking of a Rubik’s Cube), no doubt simplistic to allow for a) Vincent to shine, and b) maximum bassist shape-throwing, the song is one of the more laidback affairs on the ten-tracker…..until it comes to song end when Vinnie goes batshit bonkers over his fretboard, wasting more notes than his former band mate did when he formed $immons Records.
‘Twisted’, again, throws doubts about synthesizer use – I’d love to hear this intro sung a cappella – but perfectly sums up the album as a whole: lyrically focussed on things being bent out of shape – “in is out, 6 is 9” – and musically splattering fret ejaculate all over the speakers.
The first song to feature on the album not solely written by Vinnie, ‘Do You Wanna Make Love’ (co-written with Fleischman), is a hip-thrusting piece of glorious ’80s pop cock rock that has, no doubt, been used as a seduction aid ten million times. Robert’s vocals feel like cherubs massaging your prostate, Vinnie’s soloing throbbing like your arse when you’ve been gagging for a shit and, when you finally get to the toilet, you hold on that little bit longer to feel the burn. Yes, that sexy.
‘Back On The Streets’, originally co-written by Vincent for the band 3 Speed and used on the soundtrack of 1984 Pia Zadora movie, Voyage Of The Rock Aliens, is the nearest that ‘Invasion’ gets to having a power ballad. The song is a slow burner, Vinnie’s soloing come song end reduced to a mere 277 miles per hour. The song would later be covered by Europe guitarist John Norum, though played with a little more…umm….care.
‘I Wanna Be Your Victim’ gets the album back off the streets and back in the hair metal boudoir, the song opening with a guitar lick that owes a little to RATT, and with lyrics – “suck my will, swallow me whole” – that owe a lot to Vincent’s former KISS employer/bassist who was, of course, happily unmarried…until he got married for publicity purposes.
‘Baby-O’ was another prime slice of sleazy, sex-obsessed song writing, heavy on both the melody and lusty lyric, that was further proof that ‘Vinnie Vincent Invasion’ was so rammed full of potential commercial success stories that it made a mockery of wannabes and their pathetic attempts at hit song-making. ‘Baby-O’ was track nine for fuck’s sake, showing that VV was throwing out song gold just for shits and giggles.
The album’s final track, ‘Invasion’, was the most straightforward of all the tracks, sounding more like a typical ’80s pop metal album track than any of its groove-clad brethren….until song end at least when Vinnie treated the listener to a loop of screeching guitar feedback that never ended on the vinyl version: you had to lift the needle or this ear-troubling shite would go on forever. CD and cassette versions would reduce the aural assault to a mere three minutes.
Robert Fleischman, said to be against touring and the band’s overtly glam image (his album cover photograph of a quiff/mullet/whip interface was always a curiosity to me), made his excuses and parted company with the Invasion, the singer Mark Slaughter joining the band in his place. The ‘Boyz Are Gonna Rock’ music video, with Slaughter lip-synching to Fleischman’s angelic vocals, always dampens my hair metal enthusiasm. Slaughter was no substitute (cock rock writing masterclass exhibit A) for Robert Fleischman, his voice whinier and more basic glam sounding than his predecessor. The band’s second album, 1988’s ‘All Systems Go’, would feature backing vocals from Jeff Scott Soto, basically because Slaughter was more of a looker than a singer.
Mark Slaughter and Dana Strum – Bobby Rock too, for a short while – would form the band Slaughter after the break-up of the Vinnie Vincent Invasion following the completion of the band’s month-long club headline tour. The record label wanted more focus on the pretty boy frontman, and Slaughter and Strum become frustrated at Vinnie’s domination of the band…called ‘Vinnie Vincent Invasion’. Who saw that coming?!
Vinnie would team back up with Robert Fleischman to record an album, ‘Pyro Messiah’, in 1990, though the record, also known as ‘Guitars From Hell’, would never be officially released.
The writing of songs on KISS’ ‘Revenge’ album – ‘Unholy’, ‘I Just Wanna’ and ‘Heart Of Chrome’ – would precede Vinnie Vincent pretty much disappearing from the rock world, stories of lawsuits and criminal charges pretty much the only time he has made headline news since. Were you surprised at the lack of Vincent-based chat in regards to KISS’ impending induction to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame? The guitarist who Simmons and Stanley claimed, post-‘Revenge’, “was making all kinds of crazy demands and pulling the same kind of crazy stuff all over again.” Nah, me neither. He should be honoured though because he had a hand in some of the band’s material that towers over anything featured on their last three studio albums.
In May 2011 Vinnie Vincent was arrested on an aggravated assault charge (mugshot photo above), the reclusive axemeister said to have dragged his wife through shards of broken glass during a fight. When police visited the family home in Tennessee they found four dead dogs packed in plastic containers. Vinnie vehemently denied any wrongdoing, in regards to the dogs at least, by claiming that his family had taken in twenty rescue dogs since 1999 and that some of the bigger dogs on his premises had broken free of a fenced off area and killed some of the smaller canines. The dogs in plastic containers were placed there until they could be given a proper burial, Vinnie said, adding that he was a vegetarian out of respect for all animals. At least he wasn’t planning on eating the buggers, then.
Accusations of craziness, spousal abuse and dog killing aside, Vinnie Vincent dusted himself off after being ousted from the gig of a lifetime with one of the most famous rock acts of all time and made a debut album that, somehow, went both against the grain yet totally with it.
Sometimes – not very often, granted – I hope that Vinnie dusts off his black and pink wig, puts in on, and sits there, Tupperwared terriers at his feet, thinking of getting the original Invasion back on the streets for one last hurrah, thundering onto the battlefield of lust, like titans clashing through the night…..
To catch up on the Vinnie Vincent Invasion back catalogue – CLICK HERE
