Our conversation takes place just a few weeks before the world premiere of Ghosts in San Francisco, the ballet production which for the first time features Winger as a composer writing in this genre. The timing of our interview couldn’t have been better suited to illustrate not only to the particular point he is making, but his entire transformation from the exemplary ‘80s glam metal pin-up into a Renaissance Man.

Renaissance Man is, in fact, the perfect term Winger uses to explain where he finds himself now as an artist. Somehow the expression seems ideal to define not only his views on creativity and artistic progress, but also to describe the reasons for wanting to go beyond the confines of rock—the genre to which he owes his initial fame.

“Music has 11 notes, that’s all you get,” Winger says. “My whole purpose is to write the best music I can write. I just happen to be interested in more genres than one. My image solely serves the purpose of music. When I show up at a Winger show, I will be in a pair of boots and a shirt, but I don’t think about that anymore, I’m over that”.

When you hear Winger talk about the clichés so many people to this day associate with the rock’n’roll lifestyle, as well the attitudes and fixations of musicians themselves, noting how he was able to grow beyond it all, you realise that it is a rare artist who doesn’t become defined by the decade they first became famous in. This, of course, holds especially true for the ‘80s—the time which defined its styles so strongly and imposed its rules so rigidly that the majority never managed to shake off its edicts. Given the circumstances, Winger’s departure from these restrictions makes him perhaps the most unusual rock star of his generation.

But not only has Winger managed to escape from the box, and not only did he survive the grunge revolution, but he did it with aplomb—now writing music for orchestras and ballet productions, while still not forgetting how to rock with his old band. Being able to go forward and to explore new things might have taken a lot of courage, but Winger’s self-knowledge and his honesty in dealing with himself had also played a role here.

“There are two ways in which you can handle insecurity,” Winger tells me. “And everyone in the world is insecure on some level. Some people handle it with drugs and alcohol, some people handle it by trying to repeat that one thing that made them famous a long time ago, keeping writing that one song that was a huge hit because it may be again, and others mine the vein of creativity and see where it leads them.”

As anyone would realise, you don’t simply start writing orchestral music, not even after making a name for yourself in the world of rock. But while Winger has gone on to study orchestral music formally under such acclaimed names as Edgar Grana, Richard Hermann, and Michael Kurek, his first contact with classical music dates back to the time long before he became a rock star.

“I had a girlfriend who wanted to take ballet, and none of her friends would take it,” he recalls. “So I was like, “I’ll go with you,” and I got in, and she didn’t have a knack for it, and I totally took to it—like duck a to water. The whole idea of moving and hearing the sounds of the music, that was when my mind was exploding. I was like, “Who the hell wrote this? Before I die, I want to know how to do this.” It just happened by a fluke and I danced at a small company in Denver from about 18 to 20, and then I told them that I was going to New York to become a rock star. Music was always the thing I wanted to do.”

It’s the adrenaline of rock which he says still inspires him. “Now when I’ve had a world-class orchestra play my music, and my ballet premiere is coming up, the one thing that I need to teach orchestras is how to rock,” he says. “There are a few players there that can rock, but generally they still haven’t pushed over into the edge of rocking as much as I’d like,” he adds, laughing. “We live in a percussion world. Drums and percussion, and loops and beats are the core of all pop music now. So classical music is left behind by all that.”

Winger’s latest album Karma, released last year, is the perfect example of what he means when he talks about adrenaline. There are plenty of such moments on this gem of a record—from the shout-along chorus of opener “Deal with the Devil” to the high voltage romp of another highlight titled “Pull Me Under”, which ties rock and pop into such a neat ball, you instantly know the band’s magic not only hasn’t run out but is responsible for what is perhaps their best record to date.

But there are also tracks on the album that show Winger’s interest in digging deeper as well as wider, betraying his interest in prog-rock and his willingness to experiment with styles outside the traditional straight-ahead hard rock formula. “Big World Away” is one of those songs—both energetic and languid, poignant and wistful, showcasing perfectly how the band is capable of cohering opposite influences into one seamless whole.

Winger says that songwriting comes organically to the band: “I hear it exactly the way you are listening to it,” he says. “With that particular track I just tried to experiment in the studio until it worked.”

Asked if he challenged himself vocally on the new Winger record, and if there was a lot of preparation involved for any of his vocal parts, as opposed to approaching them spontaneously, Winger replies that nothing he does is totally spontaneous. “I work like a classical musician; it’s all worked out,” he says. “But I did sing spontaneously to the point where I’d get the lyrics up and I’ll take the melody that I’m hearing, and if they didn’t work, I’d change them”.

“But it was vocally challenging because it’s so high,” he says. “And the thing that sucks about it for me is that my voice doesn’t really kick into the rock’n’roll Hoover mode (I call it Hoover mode like a vacuum cleaner, you know?), until I’m up in that register, so I could sing high. If I reach for it, then it sounds rock. It’s unfortunate because live it’s extremely difficult and I have to really stay in shape and all that stuff”.

To become involved in writing orchestral music but at the same time retain a vivacious interest in rock’n’roll to some may seem like an almost impossible head-trick, but Winger makes it all sound logical and natural when he explains how both classical and rock worlds can successfully co-exist within the framework of one career.

“My purpose is to write the best music I can write,” he says. “To be honest with you, I’m more interested in writing classical music. It’s more challenging and it’s really the last frontier for me. I’ve written a lot of good rock songs and maybe not as good as some, but maybe better than others, I don’t know. Having been there and done that, the reason why I linger is because I love to jam with my bandmates.”

“We are great friends, and being on stage with Rod Morgenstein and Reb Beach is incredible, and that’s why I do it. Otherwise if we were just doing it for the money and were really hating each other, I wouldn’t have been caught dead in a scenario like that. And the other thing to this is that I refuse to repeat myself. I’m not one of those guys who can do the same song on an album over and over and over again, and sell the brand name and t-shirts. That would be sudden death to me. I’d kill myself. I just can’t do it”.

Given Winger’s love for classical music, I can’t resist putting to him what Uli Jon Roth has said some time ago about its decline—the loss of impact in terms of sales, difficulties in financing projects and performances, and the fact that people across the board seem to be less interested in classical music than ever before despite easy access.

“I’d love to talk to him about this,” Winger responds. “I can sit down and blow his mind with some stuff right now that’s been written that’s amazing. The words ‘classical music’ get in the way of this. If I tell you ‘classical music’ and then in the next sentence I say ‘orchestral music’, it’s got a completely different tone, and, by the way, ‘orchestral music’ is the right term.”

“’Classical music’ is actually used to describe the period of time somewhere between the 1700s and the late 1800s, and then comes Romanticism. The public are totally uneducated about this and that’s why it all came to this decline we are talking about, and in that case he is totally right, because there was Baroque music, then classical, then Romantic, then Impressionist.”

“But nowadays it’s just orchestral music, so I could play him a bunch of stuff that he would freak out on. If that could get people over into the theatre, I don’t know, but that’s why I’m really passionate about writing for dance. I had my symphony debut in Tucson and there was a much older demographic. But they are people and they appreciate the music. And I don’t know, in Europe this stuff is much more supported by the government. Like in Finland, for example, it’s thriving. I’d love to talk to him, maybe we could do a project together or something.”

Formal study of music has been known to radically change not only the career path, but the general world outlook of many musicians who ever took this route after having spent years teaching themselves. I ask Winger about his formal studies and how this process is different from the traditional approach of rock musicians who first learn how to play an instrument by working out parts from records. Is there a fundamental difference between the two methods?

“I think there is,” he replies. “What it does, it opens up your head to consider a whole other element that you wouldn’t normally think of. There are a lot of rock musicians who find their own way and continue to grow like that. I’m not saying that formal study of music is the only way. But I’m saying that learning new stuff all the time is going to break you out of complacency rather than doing the same thing over and over again. And it will also make you to look back into the history and to draw from history to move into the future.”

“I think that studying of any kind, whatever it is, is going to break you out of the monotony of your own mind and serve your creativity better. And, by the way, it’s muscle you have to exercise. These things don’t just happen. And it can become very slow. You have to do it every day. It’s like doing ballet, or doing sports, or yoga. If you do yoga every day for an hour a day for a year, by the end of the year you are going to be way better than in the beginning of the year. It’s the same thing with writing music, or studying music, or anything like that.”

So why did so many of the musicians of Winger’s generation find it impossible to move on beyond the confines of glam metal after the genre became wiped out by grunge? “Because they don’t study!” is Winger’s initial reaction. He then pauses and continues: “I don’t’ know… For a lot of people music was a by-product of them wanting to be a rock star and look like a rock star.”

“A lot of people thought that it was an immunity pass to being a real person. And you can fall into this fantasy, and ride in a limo, and all the other trappings that, if you are successful, do go along with it. And it’s amazing, by the way, it’s very fun to be a rock star, and all that stuff, although I’m not on that level anymore. But I did get to experience it for three or five years, and it was great. But to be honest with you, I find it a colossal waste of time because you are not learning anything. You can only ride in so many cool cars and have so many parties before you go, “What’s next?”

Winger’s ability to see things for what they are may have made it difficult for his band to become initially accepted by the ‘80s metal snobs all those years ago, but it also made it easier for him to stay focussed and level-headed, whatever the circumstances.

“I was really lucky, by the way,” he says. “It’s easy to sit here and give you my point of view and say, “I’m all-knowing because I did this, that, and that,” but let’s not forget that there is a lot of luck involved in this. I was in the right place at the right time. Even with the greatest artists, the best of the best, there is still luck involved. It’s such a gamble to go into a career like this and have anything happen. I was lucky because I did go there, I did get to be a rock star, and even though there were a lot of trials and tribulations to it, I was one of the lucky ones. You can’t forget that part of it.”

The man who knows all about being labeled and stereotyped, Winger, in the end has proven that stereotypes can be broken, and that luck in this business comes under different disguises, sometimes masquerading as a hindrance. If not for grunge and the havoc it wreaked on the entire genre of glam metal, who knows if Winger’s career would have changed and grown the way it did.

But being able to draw strength from trials and challenges is, perhaps, one of Kip Winger’s strongest points. “In the end,” he says, “what it taught me the most is that good music is the only important thing to me. I’m not interested in selling t-shirts, but I’m really interested in keeping control over the quality of the music—trying to keep it as high as I can.”