Post by Henny Macc on Jul 7, 2020 0:16:45 GMT
Vincent John Cusano (August 6, 1952 - )
Years active: 1970-1997, 2018-present
Country of origin: United States of America
Recorded vocal range: B2-E5 - 2.4 octaves
Band history:
- 1976 - Kid Cashmir & Winnie LeCoux (lead vocals, guitar)
- 1977-1978 - Laura Nyro (guitar)
- 1977-1979 - Treasure (guitar, vocals)
- 1978 - Dan Hartman (rhythm guitar, backing vocals)
- 1981-1982 - Heat (guitar)
- 1982 - Warrior (lead vocals, guitar)
- 1982-1984 - Kiss (lead guitar, backing vocals)
- 1984-1988 - Vinnie Vincent Invasion (guitar, backing vocals)
- 1989-1997 - Vinnie Vincent (guitar)
- 2018-present - Vinnie Vincent (guitar)
Recorded high notes:
E5: "Boys Gonna Rock", "It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)"
D5: "Baby Oh Why", "Back on the Streets" Warrior demo, "Boys Gonna Rock", "Hot Nights", "Innocent Eyes", "Lick It Up" live Quebec 1984
C♯5/D♭5: "Baby Oh Why", "It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)"
C5: "Baby Oh Why", "Back on the Streets" Warrior demo, "Boys Gonna Rock", "Forbidden", "Hot Nights", "Innocent Eyes", "It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)", "Lick It Up"
B4: "Baby Oh Why", "Boys Gonna Rock", "Fits Like a Glove" live Nashville 1984, "Gypsy in Her Eyes", "I Need Love", "It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)", "No Substitute" Warrior demo, "That Time of Year" Warrior demo, "Young and Wasted" live Quebec 1984
A♯4/B♭4: "Hot Nights", "More Than Friends"
A4: "And on the 8th Day", "Baby Oh Why", "Back on the Streets" Warrior demo, "Boys Gonna Rock", "Forbidden", "I Need Love", "Innocent Eyes", "It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)", "Lick It Up", "My Generation" live acoustic Nashville 2018, "No Substitute" Warrior demo, "That Time of Year" Warrior demo
G♯4/A♭4: "Forbidden", "Gypsy in Her Eyes", "Maybe It's the Rain", "Tears", "Turn Yourself Around"
Recorded low notes:
F3: "Back on the Streets" Warrior demo
E3: "Maybe It's the Rain", "My Heart Goes with You"
D3: "It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)", "More Than Friends", "My Heart Goes with You"
B2: "My Heart Goes with You"
.......................................................
*Blue marks soft falsetto notes.
*Italics mark non-melodic notes.
*Underlines mark notes in backing vocals or otherwise muffled/obscured in the song mix.
{Detailed bio}
While best known as an '80s guitar shredder made famous by Kiss and his own band the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Vinnie Vincent was also somewhat known as a singer-songwriter before his rise to stardom with Kiss. Though there is limited information known about his musical origins, it seems that he came into the music scene sometime in the 1970s, playing in a variety of short-lived projects or serving as a guitarist for hire for solo artists. Among these was the band Treasure, whom he formed with Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals and contributed some lead vocals to, and the solo artist Dan Hartman, for whom he recorded rhythm guitar and backing vocals on an album...playing disco, of all genres!
In 1982, Vinnie (still under his birth name at the time, Vincent Cusano) formed a band called Warrior, comprised of himself and the former members of the band New England. He started writing and recording demos with this band, in which he handled both guitar and vocal duties, and really let his vocal abilities shine on some of them. Several of the tracks from these demos would go on to become songs with Vinnie's later project, the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and the main riff of the song "Boys Gonna Rock" would later be featured as part of the Kiss song "And on the 8th Day". The song "Tears" was also later recorded by Peter Criss, who had recently left his role as Kiss' drummer at the time. Warrior was ultimately disbanded later in 1982, however, when Vinnie was recruited to play for Kiss, and several of his bandmates in it went on to becoming founding members of the band Alcatrazz. The recordings remained shelved for several years afterward.
Vinnie began working with Kiss in wake of their split with original lead guitarist Ace Frehley, who stopped writing/recording with the band after their their 1981 album Music from "The Elder", but was still credited for guitars on their next album, 1982's Creatures of the Night despite not playing on it. Instead, Vinnie was called in to record guitars for this album as a guest musician, and also worked with the band as a co-songwriter on the tracks "I Love It Loud", "I Still Love You", and "Killer". After the release of this album, the band officially parted ways with Frehley, and Vinnie was hired as his replacement. As part of his membership in the band, Vinnie was asked to come up with his own stage name, which was when he stopped going by Vincent Cusano and adopted the moniker Vinnie Vincent. Additionally, he was required to come up with his own makeup design to don onstage as a member of Kiss, for which he chose the character of "The Ankh", and created a design inspired by Egyptian deities. He ended up being the last member of Kiss to ever come up with a new makeup design for their role, as the band only ever recycled preexisting designs for other members after this.
Kiss toured for the remainder of 1982 into 1983 promoting Creatures of the Night with Vinnie as a full time member, and they then entered the studio to begin working on their next album - 1983's Lick It Up. This marked a historic period for the band, as this ended up being the album on which they decided to take off their stage makeup (which they normally would be seen in for all public appearances since the beginning of their career) and revealed their faces for the first time ever, as can be seen on the Lick It Up album cover. Despite the other members of Kiss acknowledging and praising Vinnie's singing abilities, they steered away from having him sing more than backing vocals in the band (apart from a few small solo lines in the songs "Lick It Up" and "And on the 8th Day"), and instead limited lead vocals on the album to Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Additionally, as time passed, tensions between Vinnie and the rest of the band grew continuously - one point of conflict in particular being Vinnie's refusal to ever actually sign his contract, due to disagreement over his pay rate. Furthermore, the band grew increasingly frustrated with Vinnie's tendency to play lengthy guitar solos at every show, well over the agreed-upon time limits for them - sometimes to the point that Paul Stanley was forced to interrupt him to move on to the next song in the set. The growing tensions that escalated from this resulted in Vinnie's firing from the band in 1984, at the conclusion of the Lick It Up tour.
While Vinnie never recorded or performed with Kiss as a full-time member again after this, he did contribute to some of the songwriting on their 1992 album Revenge, co-writing the songs "Unholy", "Heart of Chrome", and "I Just Wanna" with Simmons and Stanley. Apart from this, however, Vinnie focused on his own musical pursuits from 1984 onward, starting with the Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Though Vinnie was the band leader for this group and was involved in all of the songwriting for it, he was encouraged by his record label to seek out a vocalist to sing on the band's material rather than handling vocals himself. This resulted in him hiring vocalist Robert Fleischman, who sang on the Vinnie Vincent Invasion's self-titled first album in 1986. Fleishman left the band shortly after the album's release though, and was replaced by vocalist Mark Slaughter. Slaughter recorded on the Vinnie Vincent Invasion's second album, 1988's All Systems Go, only to have the group disband not long after, which eventually led to the other members' formation of the band Slaughter.
In 1996, Vinnie released a solo EP entitled Euphoria, once again featuring Fleischman on vocals, then ultimately retired from the music business in 1997, and mostly disappeared from the public eye for about 20 years. Only recently has Vinnie slowly started to make a return to music; having made his first live appearance in almost two decades in October 2018, playing rhythm guitar on covers of "Lick It Up", "I Love It Loud", and "Cold Gin" with Tod Howarth and Four By Fate as part of the Kiss Kruise VIII pre-party in Miami. He has also appeared at several other Kiss Expos celebrating the history of the band, and in 2019 finally released the Warrior demos as compilation albums as well. What will come of his career remains something of a mystery at this particular point in time, but I for one would definitely welcome more vocals from him if he ever would consider doing such a thing again.
While best known as an '80s guitar shredder made famous by Kiss and his own band the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Vinnie Vincent was also somewhat known as a singer-songwriter before his rise to stardom with Kiss. Though there is limited information known about his musical origins, it seems that he came into the music scene sometime in the 1970s, playing in a variety of short-lived projects or serving as a guitarist for hire for solo artists. Among these was the band Treasure, whom he formed with Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals and contributed some lead vocals to, and the solo artist Dan Hartman, for whom he recorded rhythm guitar and backing vocals on an album...playing disco, of all genres!
In 1982, Vinnie (still under his birth name at the time, Vincent Cusano) formed a band called Warrior, comprised of himself and the former members of the band New England. He started writing and recording demos with this band, in which he handled both guitar and vocal duties, and really let his vocal abilities shine on some of them. Several of the tracks from these demos would go on to become songs with Vinnie's later project, the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and the main riff of the song "Boys Gonna Rock" would later be featured as part of the Kiss song "And on the 8th Day". The song "Tears" was also later recorded by Peter Criss, who had recently left his role as Kiss' drummer at the time. Warrior was ultimately disbanded later in 1982, however, when Vinnie was recruited to play for Kiss, and several of his bandmates in it went on to becoming founding members of the band Alcatrazz. The recordings remained shelved for several years afterward.
Vinnie began working with Kiss in wake of their split with original lead guitarist Ace Frehley, who stopped writing/recording with the band after their their 1981 album Music from "The Elder", but was still credited for guitars on their next album, 1982's Creatures of the Night despite not playing on it. Instead, Vinnie was called in to record guitars for this album as a guest musician, and also worked with the band as a co-songwriter on the tracks "I Love It Loud", "I Still Love You", and "Killer". After the release of this album, the band officially parted ways with Frehley, and Vinnie was hired as his replacement. As part of his membership in the band, Vinnie was asked to come up with his own stage name, which was when he stopped going by Vincent Cusano and adopted the moniker Vinnie Vincent. Additionally, he was required to come up with his own makeup design to don onstage as a member of Kiss, for which he chose the character of "The Ankh", and created a design inspired by Egyptian deities. He ended up being the last member of Kiss to ever come up with a new makeup design for their role, as the band only ever recycled preexisting designs for other members after this.
Kiss toured for the remainder of 1982 into 1983 promoting Creatures of the Night with Vinnie as a full time member, and they then entered the studio to begin working on their next album - 1983's Lick It Up. This marked a historic period for the band, as this ended up being the album on which they decided to take off their stage makeup (which they normally would be seen in for all public appearances since the beginning of their career) and revealed their faces for the first time ever, as can be seen on the Lick It Up album cover. Despite the other members of Kiss acknowledging and praising Vinnie's singing abilities, they steered away from having him sing more than backing vocals in the band (apart from a few small solo lines in the songs "Lick It Up" and "And on the 8th Day"), and instead limited lead vocals on the album to Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Additionally, as time passed, tensions between Vinnie and the rest of the band grew continuously - one point of conflict in particular being Vinnie's refusal to ever actually sign his contract, due to disagreement over his pay rate. Furthermore, the band grew increasingly frustrated with Vinnie's tendency to play lengthy guitar solos at every show, well over the agreed-upon time limits for them - sometimes to the point that Paul Stanley was forced to interrupt him to move on to the next song in the set. The growing tensions that escalated from this resulted in Vinnie's firing from the band in 1984, at the conclusion of the Lick It Up tour.
While Vinnie never recorded or performed with Kiss as a full-time member again after this, he did contribute to some of the songwriting on their 1992 album Revenge, co-writing the songs "Unholy", "Heart of Chrome", and "I Just Wanna" with Simmons and Stanley. Apart from this, however, Vinnie focused on his own musical pursuits from 1984 onward, starting with the Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Though Vinnie was the band leader for this group and was involved in all of the songwriting for it, he was encouraged by his record label to seek out a vocalist to sing on the band's material rather than handling vocals himself. This resulted in him hiring vocalist Robert Fleischman, who sang on the Vinnie Vincent Invasion's self-titled first album in 1986. Fleishman left the band shortly after the album's release though, and was replaced by vocalist Mark Slaughter. Slaughter recorded on the Vinnie Vincent Invasion's second album, 1988's All Systems Go, only to have the group disband not long after, which eventually led to the other members' formation of the band Slaughter.
In 1996, Vinnie released a solo EP entitled Euphoria, once again featuring Fleischman on vocals, then ultimately retired from the music business in 1997, and mostly disappeared from the public eye for about 20 years. Only recently has Vinnie slowly started to make a return to music; having made his first live appearance in almost two decades in October 2018, playing rhythm guitar on covers of "Lick It Up", "I Love It Loud", and "Cold Gin" with Tod Howarth and Four By Fate as part of the Kiss Kruise VIII pre-party in Miami. He has also appeared at several other Kiss Expos celebrating the history of the band, and in 2019 finally released the Warrior demos as compilation albums as well. What will come of his career remains something of a mystery at this particular point in time, but I for one would definitely welcome more vocals from him if he ever would consider doing such a thing again.
{Album ranges}
Treasure:
Treasure:
- Treasure (1977) - F♯3-D5
- Warrior (recorded 1982; released 2017) - D3-F3-E5
- Warrior II (recorded 1982; released 2019) - B2-E5
{Best displays of vocal range}
"It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)" (D3-E5)
"Back on the Streets" Warrior demo (F3-D5)
"More Than Friends" (D3-B♭4)
"It's Not Pretty (Being Easy)" (D3-E5)
"Back on the Streets" Warrior demo (F3-D5)
"More Than Friends" (D3-B♭4)