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For nearly 40 years, as a member of two major hard rock acts, Winger and Whitesnake, Reb Beach has shredded his way across some of the world’s biggest stages. But lately he’s been letting it rip before much smaller crowds and in small rooms – sans guitar, in fact – and he’s having a blast.
“Don Jameison from That Metal Show on VH1 does this thing on the Monsters of Rock Cruise where he has artists do stand-up comedy,” Beach says. “They asked me to do it, so I told a bunch of stories about growing up in Pittsburgh and how I got started as a musician.
“I’ve got a ton of band stories, so I do them in my David Coverdale voice. People really loved it; they even played snippets of my act on the TVs in people’s cabins. So Don asked me if I wanted to open for him in some nightclubs. I said sure. I love making people laugh.”
He’s been at it a while. On tour buses and in dressing rooms, Beach cultivated something of a reputation as a cut-up. As the 46th member of Whitesnake (“I counted,” he laughs), he took particular pride in perfecting his David Coverdale impression. “David is such a fun character. He just has a way of rubbing off on you,” he says. “Lots of band members do him. No – everybody does him. I’ve been told mine’s pretty good.”
His affectionate take on the flamboyant Whitesnake frontman is both over-the-top and spot-on; it’s campy and melodramatic, charming and cheeky, and Beach wraps his booming baritone around each word as if he were auditioning for Shakespeare Dinner Theatre.
His impression was such a hit on the road that eventually Coverdale caught wind of it and asked for a private performance. “We were drinking, so I did it for him,” Beach says. “He loved it and went, ‘Oh, dahh-ling, that’s mahh-velous! Reb, that is so good!’”
Beach insists he’s only moonlighting as a stand-up comic. “There’s funny people like me, and there’s real comedians. I know the difference,” he says. “Plus, I wouldn’t have a clue how to handle hecklers.”
In truth, he’d do anything to be back on stage with Winger or Whitesnake, and he’s still grappling with the sad reality that both groups are now a thing of the past.
Winger, which the guitarist co-founded with singer-bassist Kip Winger in 1987, packed it in after a farewell tour last summer. “Kip isn’t crazy about singing, ‘She’s only 17’ anymore when he’s 64 or however old he is,” Beach says. “Besides, he’s got his classical career going, and he really wants to do that.”
Whitesnake’s end was more gradual: The band began a farewell tour of Europe in May 2022 and planned to join the Scorpions in North America that fall, but a series of health issues dogged the group from the start. Coverdale tried to soldier through a persistent respiratory infection until he finally canceled the remainder of the tour following a performance at Hellfest in France on June 23, 2022.
Beach had hoped that “farewell” didn’t necessarily mean “goodbye” and that Coverdale might consider recording new material, but late last year the singer officially announced his retirement. None of which strikes Beach as being very funny. He draws a deep breath and says, “It sucks. I miss being out there rocking. It’s what I’ve done forever. It’s what I know.”
We all kind of knew David was winding down, but we hoped maybe he’d want to keep going
You have something of a rare distinction. I don’t know if I've ever talked to somebody who was in two bands that broke up in the same year.
We all kind of knew David was winding down, but we hoped maybe he’d want to keep going. He canceled the Scorpions tour, and that was heartbreaking. I was really looking forward to that. We didn’t hear from him for a year, and I thought, ‘Okay, this is probably going to be it.’ I left some equipment at his place just in case, per his instructions, so now he has to ship it back.
I was fortunate to be in two bands, and I was able to make that work. Kip was really accommodating in that way, because he would look at the Whitesnake schedule and then just book around it, which definitely was great for me. He basically got me that gig, so he didn't want me to lose it.
How did Kip get you the Whitesnake gig?
He heard through Michael Mack, who was David's right-hand man, that they were looking for a guitar player. He called up Michael and sent him all my stuff – music, DVDs, all that – and I was in the running. I didn’t know if I would get it at first. Somebody else was in the mix, a name guy. In the end, the other guy couldn’t sing, but I could.
That’s how I got Alice Cooper as well. It helps to have a strong voice. Whitesnake were a really good band. David had only the best musicians with him. Playing with [drummer] Tommy Aldridge was such a thrill. I was a fan of his since his Pat Travers days.
In Whitesnake, you were part of two different guitar duos. There was you and Doug Aldridge, then you and Joel Hoekstra. Was the chemistry immediate between you and each guy, or did it take a while for you to sort that out?
Doug's a cool, really aggressive Joe Perry kind of player. He kind of prowls around the stage and looks really cool. Hoekstra is a perfectionist – he knew every note we played backwards and forwards
Doug and Joel are so different. Doug was music director, so he made the decisions. In the second version, I was music director, so I made the decisions. When it was me and Doug, I had to follow what he said.
Can you elaborate on the differences between Doug and Joel?
Doug's a cool, really aggressive Joe Perry kind of player. He kind of prowls around the stage and looks really cool. Hoekstra is a perfectionist – he knew every note we played backwards and forwards.
His parents were classical musicians and taught him a strict practicing regimen. He would just practice all the time. Doug would practice all the time, too. Joel was very animated on stage and would run around a lot. I had to tell him, “Don't jump in front of David.”
Was the last Whitesnake tour a bit of a bummer because you knew it was coming to an end?
It wasn’t, but it was an all-new organization – new tour management, sound people, guitar techs. We didn't really have time to get all the kinks ironed out, and there were some problems.
Such as?
The sound guy had only used analog. He’d never used a digital board, so he was turning up Joel's rhythms while I was soloing.
That does give a new perspective to the music.
[Laughs] That’s one way to look at it! Sure, I go into a solo and all you hear is rhythm guitar. There were so many things… People started getting sick, and it was crappy hotels and long, shitty journeys. Then the Covid thing happened, and that was the end.
![Whitesnake - Six String Show Down [Doug Aldrich VS Reb Beach] [Made In Japan] [Blu-ray * 1080p HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/j43qu1oq2wg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Then came the end of Winger. Was it all Kip’s decision? Was everyone on board?
[Rhythm guitarist-keyboardist] Paul Taylor was fine with it. [Drummer] Rod Morgenstein was melancholy – he could have gone another couple years. When you talk to him about it now, he gets really sad and wants to do shows. It’s hard, though; touring can be hard, so everybody was kind of cool about it. I was the one who said, “No, let's go!” I love Winger. I love it because it's my music. I wrote all the riffs, so it just feels so good to play your own music.
You could form Winger without Kip.
Nope. No one would go.
You don’t know that.
Come on. Who would see… I don’t know… Slaughter without Mark Slaughter? David actually asked around to see if promoters were interested in a Whitesnake without David Coverdale, and no one wanted to even touch it.
So David would own the name and put out another band…
Yeah, and he would get a percentage of it, which is fine with me. I would do it, but I worry that it wouldn’t be received that well. I mean, you can get guys who kind of sound like him, but nobody sounds like David Coverdale.
What if you got Kip in Whitesnake?
It would sound like Winger. I mean, when Kip sings, it sounds like Kip Winger. Nobody sounds like Kip Winger either.
Just think of it: Wingersnake. White Winger’s no good.
Kip doesn’t want to sing. That stuff is so hard to sing, man – it’s way up there for a 64-year-old guy. He's quitting while he's ahead. He's not like some other singers who choose not to do that.
You were a hard-partying guy when all this started. You drank a lot of beer, had plenty of good times.
Sure.
As you get older, health starts to be a concern. Are you taking better care of yourself when you tour?
I am, and I hate it. I wish I could do all the stuff I used to, but I have to limit everything – limit the calories, limit the beer. Everything I do is a lot less now.
Do you travel with a gastroenterologist, that kind of thing?
No, but that would be rock ‘n’ roll. I would do that. That would be fun.
Back in the day, Winger were skewered on Beavis and Butthead. Does that feel like a million years ago?
No, it’s still there. You know how many people say Beavis and Butthead? Any time we post something on Facebook, there's a Beavis and Butthead guy saying stuff, or they post a little thing of Stuart, the character with the Winger T-shirt who got hung by his underwear. It's the Winger stigma, and honestly, it really broke Kip's heart.
Did the band ever feel like they were the Rodney Dangerfields of rock?
Yeah, we don’t get no respect. I think had Winger come out just a little earlier, we could have been a sustainable arena band. I mean, we did play some arenas, but 98 percent of the time we were an opening act.
The whole thing didn’t affect me personally, but it affected Kip. He would walk into a McDonald’s and people would laugh at him. It was Beavis and Butthead, and then Metallica came out with the Nothing Else Matters video where they’re throwing darts at Kip…
Do you feel like you got to sort of employ the full breadth of your guitar skills more in Winger or in Whitesnake?
Winger, for sure. I did a record with Doug Aldrich at his house, but we didn’t have an amp, so I went direct. He said he would do the thing where you mic up the amp later – re-amp it. That didn’t sound good. I wasn’t happy with that. David Coverdale, for some reason, wanted my solos to be a certain way.
The record I wrote with him, he said to Joel Hoekstra [in a regal voice], “You can play whatever you want, but Reb, I am going to take you under my wing.” He had to kind of approve my solos. It wasn't as much on the one I wrote with him, Flesh and Blood, but The Purple Album, he was all over my…
David Coverdale, for some reason, wanted my solos to be a certain way. The record I wrote with him, he said to Joel Hoekstra, ‘You can play whatever you want, but Reb, I am going to take you under my wing’
Ass?
[Laughs] No! No, what’s that Deep Purple song? Mistreated! Yeah, he was all over me on that one. I had to make David happy on that. Now, with Winger, I had to make Kip happy, too, but he’s like a musical genius and he had some great ideas for me as well. I’d worked with Kip since I was a kid. I don't know… I felt more freedom. I wrote the songs, too; we would always write the solo sections for me. Kip would say [in a dry voice], “Okay, and that's good to solo over.”
You put out a solo record in 2020. Any plans for a follow-up?
Right, A View from the Inside. I’m actually writing now. I wasn’t going to do another fusion album, because I love writing songs and I really like to sing. I sang on my 2003 album, Masquerade. People love that record. So I wanted to make another record with me singing a few songs, because I can’t sing as high as I used to. I would have real singers come in and sing on it. That was my plan.
I could do a G3 tour, or I could call up Andy Timmons and Vinnie Moore and Paul Gilbert. There’s a bunch of those guys – even Nuno – and I could do a… [long pause] Guitar Summit!… or something
And then both my bands quit! So I'm going, ‘Okay, do I want to do [sings over-dramatically] ‘She's only 17!’ and ‘Here I go again on my own!’ for the rest of my life?’ No, I think it'd be cooler to play guitar.
I have an Eighties rock band here in Pittsburgh, and all these people say to me, “I just love watching you play guitar.” They love it when I play Red House. So I’m like, ‘Maybe I should do another guitar album.’ I’m thinking something more straight-ahead, kind of a Joe Satriani vibe.
That puts me in another realm of music. Instead of getting on the Eighties rock bandwagon that everybody seems to do at my age – [barks like a TV pitchman] “Reb Beach’s Rock Extravaganza!” – I could do something and just not worry about vocals, which people seem to want more of.
I could do a G3 tour, or I could call up Andy Timmons and Vinnie Moore and Paul Gilbert. There’s a bunch of those guys – even Nuno – and I could do a… [long pause] Guitar Summit!… or something.
You can workshop the title.
Yeah, that sounds like an instructional thing.
Guitar-a-Rama!
Guitar Heroes!
That’s no good.
I’ll think of something. Anyway, I'm writing a record. I’ve got bassist Greg Smith; he played with Nugent and Alice Cooper, and he was in Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore. We put this band together and we’re going to do my fusion stuff. We’re booked on this prog-rock cruise with Adrian Belew and Marillion and all these cool bands.
You like the cruises.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the new Black Swan record, Paralyzed, is out. I wrote all the music on that. It's Eighties rock and very guitar oriented with long solos. Robin McAuley is singing and Jeff Pilson is on bass. It's our third album. It rocks.
It would have to be cool. I wouldn’t want to join something that didn’t rock. I would need to rock
Last question: If some major band contacted you –
I’m there, baby!
You can think about it for a second.
Gone! I’m on the fucking road, dude. That’s where I belong. I’m a road dog.
Well, we’re getting the word out there.
Yeah, but I would have to like it. It would have to be cool. I wouldn’t want to join something that didn’t rock. I would need to rock.
“Must rock” – got it! But what if the band had some other vibe, like, “It’s not rock, but we still want you.”
I mean… yeah, I’ll do Beyoncé.
What if they said, “When you solo, we’re going to put the rhythm guitar really high in the mix”?
[Laughs] No dice.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
