A co-founder and axe man supreme for melodic rock band Winger, Reb Beach carved out his guitar hero bona fides over the band’s successful run from the mid-1980s through to the early 1990s on songs such as Seventeen, Heading for A Heartbreak, Hungry, Easy Come Easy Go, Can’t Get Enuff and Down Incognito.
Since then, he has reunited with the band, as well as becoming a key cog in the musical machinations of the legendary David Coverdale as a member of long-standing in Whitesnake, and more recently joined up with bassist/producer Jeff Pilson (Foreigner, Dokken), long-time MSG vocalist Robin McAuley, and Ace Frehley’s drummer Matt Starr, for that band’s critically acclaimed debut album, Shake the World, released in 2019.
With the entire music world on hold because of the Covid-19 crisis, Beach felt it was as good a time as any to unleash some solo music into the world, which he has done with the release of his new solo instrumental album, A View From the Inside, earlier this fall on Frontiers Music.
From his earliest forays into the music scene more than three decades ago, Beach has wanted to write, record and release instrumental guitar music, in a similar vein to his highly respected heroes such as Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. Some of the music that appears on A View From the Inside comes from past writing sessions, and brought up to date for modern production techniques, and his more mature compositional acumen.
“It’s like when you’ve got all these berries, and you have nothing really to do with them, so you make all this jelly and put it away in a cupboard somewhere, and pretty soon you’ve got cases and cases of jelly. So, like that I worked on this just for the fun of it. At night, late at night when I was home, piece by piece just writing and trying to make music that was really listenable, where every section was a good section, throwing away a lot of crappy ideas along the way. This album was like a little project of mine that I had for years. When Winger broke up [in 1993] I thought maybe I would be like a Joe Satriani kind of dude and just do instrumental stuff and be the guitar player guy, and not have to deal with writing for and working with a singer or even singing myself, because playing and singing is a really taxing thing when you’re up there,” Beach said.
“In 1993, I made demos of some fusion music, exactly like this stuff and couldn’t get signed to a label. Everyone was wanting something with vocals at that point, so I just made a little CD and put the demos out for sale on my own, and they started selling like hotcakes. I still get people telling me that their favourite thing that I ever did was that demo. I was like, ‘oh wow, maybe I should make a proper record of this one day.’ Little by little, when I finally got a studio of my own, I would just do little songs and found riffs that were good to jam over. When Covid hit, I was talking to Kip Winger about what the heck we were going to do and he said, ‘what did you ever do with that fusion stuff you’ve been working on for so long?’ And I was like, ‘oh God, it’s done. It’s been done.’ He said I should release it and I thought that was a good idea, so that’s why this thing came to pass.”
In terms of content, as Beach stated, some of the stellar tracks on A View From the Inside are built on the bones of ideas laid down to tape (yes folks, tape!) decades ago.
“Cutting Loose was released on my instructional video 31 years ago, in 1989. It didn’t have a name at that point; the name of the video was Cutting Loose, but the first song was just a jam song that I wrote. I’ve never had more questions about a song in my whole career than I did about that song. People kept asking me what’s the name of the song and I kept telling them it didn’t have a name. I figured since it was on the Cutting Loose video, why don’t I just call it Cutting Loose?” he said.
“And the original recording for that, and Black Magic, which was released on a Guitar World compilation record also in 1989, were horrible recordings, like, as bad as you can imagine – a little Alesis SR16 drum machine that you can hold in your hand, and the whole thing put down on 8-track cassette. I always wanted to redo those two songs in particular because of that, which is why they ended up on the record. Little Robots, which is the second song on the album, is probably my favourite song on the record and that one was written in 1986. It was the first fusion song that I ever wrote. Now, they call it jazz fusion, but I am more rock fusion. You can say it’s fused with jazz, but if a jazz player heard my record, they would say it isn’t jazz. ‘This isn’t a jazz player; this is a rock player.’ And that’s because I taught myself how to play. I don’t read music; I know three scales. So, I don’t play complicated jazz music at all.”
Beach said his intent was to release a record that had some dynamics on it, one that appealed to the non-guitar nerd as much as the shredding aficionado.
“I am not making a guitar record of rocking music because that’s really hard to do and make it interesting for 10 songs. So, it’s really varied with lots of different sounds. There’s a ballad, there’s a couple of funk songs, there’s Black Magic, which is a full-on rock tune, with Cutting Loose and Infinito 1122 being kind of heavier songs. But there’s all different styles on there to keep it really interesting, and it’s not all guitar solos on there, there are keyboard solos too. It’s kind of inspired by Jean-Luc Ponty, who is one of my favourite instrumental artists,” he said.
“I like to think it has my signature sound all the way through it, even though it is pretty diverse at times. I like to think that’s true, and I do know I sound like me. I know it’s me as soon as I hear a couple of notes. And I think I have my own style, which I like. I guess that’s because I taught myself to play and I just do my own thing. A few people have said they like that there’s no vocals on it because they didn’t want to have to concentrate on what the lyrics were. They just wanted to hear the music, which some have said is perfect for jogging and things like that, which is kind of what I wanted it to be. And as well I wanted to show what I can do with the instrument, but at the same time make music that a regular John Smith can enjoy.”
A fan favourite from the album is the Celtic-tinged Aurora Borealis.
“The song was originally titled Finnegan’s Wake, which was the worst title ever. So, I played it for Rod Morgenstein [Winger’s drummer] in the van on the way to a gig and I told him I needed a name for it. He thought about it for a minute and said Aurora Borealis. I said, ‘well, I love the name, but it has nothing to do with how the song makes me feel.’ But I need a name better than Finnegan’s Wake and Aurora Borealis is a nice name. I figured, hell, it’s an instrumental, so I can call it whatever I want,” Beach said, with a chuckle.
Beach said he approached the writing for much of these songs, even the older ones, in much the same manner as he would a song that includes vocals.
“I am kind of telling a story with my guitar, so it is similar to writing music with a singer in mind. It’s the same basic premise that you have a verse or maybe an intro and then a verse, but you always start with a good riff, and typically the riff is the verse, but sometimes it’s the chorus. Just like with Black Swan or Winger, I start off with a guitar riff that is good to sing over. When I write a guitar riff, even for an instrumental, I sing over it to see if it’s good to have a melody over. For this record I would come up with a guitar riff or a keyboard riff and I will immediately play over it to see what it’s like to jam over. That’s how all this stuff started for me when I was just in my little room in Hoboken before Winger. I would make little jams to practice guitar on, and it was stuff that was great to jam over. And these ended up being songs when I added a couple more sections on there. And that’s all this is, it’s just good foundations to make melodies over, which goes good with the three scales I know, and they end up becoming songs,” he said, adding that there is also a different dynamic at play when writing for a solo project compared to writing for the ensemble of Black Swan, or the intense and long-lasting creative partnership he has with Kip Winger in Winger.
“I wrote 15 riffs for the new Winger record, which we’re working on. I came in and showed them to Kip, he heard all of those ideas but wasn’t inspired by any of them, because Winger has a pretty high bar. We’re not just looking for radio songs, he wants stuff that’s definitely more progressive element than what we’re doing in Black Swan, it’s nothing like Winger. And Jeff Pilson [co-founder, songwriter/bassist/producer of supergroup Black Swan] is really happy about that, that I have riffs to come in with for the Black Swan stuff. He called me a few weeks ago and said, ‘hey man, how are you doing? Do you have any riffs in case we’re going to do a Black Swan 2?’ And I told him I had a ton of them. Kip’s not going for anything, and he never does, because he prefers that I write it right in front of him.
“The last time I was with Kip was about a month ago and he said, ‘okay, play me a riff. We need a riff.’ And I said, ‘I can’t do that with you just sitting there. Walk around a little bit.’ And he knows to do that. So, he walks around his house and I will play for 15 minutes or so and then suddenly he will run back in, ‘what’s that, what’s that? There’s something cool there, let’s work on it.’ And then that becomes a song that we will usually finish off in two or three days. It’s always been like that with Kip, always.”
Working with a collaborator or group of collaborators helps keep Beach honest and on point, by his own admission. The story behind how some of the songs for A View From the Inside were literally shelved on pieces of cassette tape from the era before digital recording is testament to that fact.
“I like working with other people because I do need a collaborator. Let’s face it, I am just not a responsible guy when left to my own devices; I will not get it done. I will write myself into a corner. I will have a verse and a chorus, and I will never know where to go and it will stay like that. That’s why I have all these riffs because I never finish them as complete songs. But if I have got a collaborator, an outside opinion, especially one like Jeff or Kip where they studied arranging and composition in college, those guys can take my stuff and they know exactly what to do with it. They know all the options, instantly, so that’s why it goes so well. It’s like a match made in heaven when I can find somebody like that. It’s more challenging for me to do it on my own without a collaborator because I have a hard time stepping outside of myself and listening to the riff as an objective outsider.”
As it has with so many other bands and musical artists, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown a monstrously huge monkey wrench into any touring plans. Beach is no exception as a Whitesnake tour with The Scorpions was peremptorily ended in February and shows with Winger either cancelled or bumped to 2021.
“We had shows booked for this year, so we moved them all into next year, starting in May. And we’re going to try to have the new record out by May as well, or early July at the latest. We’ve written 12 songs but only five of them are going to make the record, because we’re trying to make a record like Boston does – where every song is just undeniably good from front to back. So, there’s a really high bar on this one. Those five songs are epically awesome, and I already like it better than the last album, [Better Days Comin’, released in 2014].”
For more information on Reb Beach, the new album A View From the Inside, and possible post-pandemic shows with Whitesnake, Winger or Black Swan, visit http://rebbeach.com, or the various social media outlets for each band.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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