In a revealing interview with Badass Network, guitarist Reb Beach opened up about the highs and lows of his band, Winger, and how their skyrocketing success came to an abrupt halt.

Reflecting on their breakthrough in the late ‘80s, Beach said that those early years felt like “everything I thought it would be.”

“I thought it would go on forever, you know, but it was a lot shorter than other bands from our genre. If Winger came out in 1986, I’d be a rich man,” he added.

Despite their momentum, the music industry was rapidly changing by the early 1990s. As grunge and alternative rock took center stage, glam and hard rock bands from the ‘80s saw their popularity plummet almost overnight.

When asked how these industry shifts impacted Winger, Beach didn’t hold back. He recounted a shocking sequence of events that he believes led to the band’s downfall.

“The shows were canceled. People stopped buying tickets overnight. Beavis and Butthead came out. Metallica threw darts at a poster of Kip Winger. We were on tour at the time. Tour was canceled. Ticket sales ended the day Beavis and Butthead came out. Like a week later, done. No one would be caught dead at a Winger concert.”

The controversial moment Beach refers to took place in Metallica’s music video for their hit song “Nothing Else Matters.” In it, drummer Lars Ulrich is seen throwing darts at a poster of Kip Winger. According to Beach, this public jab had lasting consequences for their image.

He also shared personal hardships that followed the band’s rapid decline. Believing in their 1993 album Pull, Beach had made major financial commitments — only to see it fail commercially.

“I had a big house in Florida that I just bought because my next publishing advance was for $300,000 for the album Pull, which I thought was a genius record, and we were going to be humongous. It bombed, even though, in my opinion, it was our best record until then.”

“And so, I sold my house, sold all my guitars, and moved back home, and I lived on selling 20 guitars for a year, until I got to Alice Cooper. I didn’t have the money to fly to go to the audition, and Kip had to lend me 500 bucks.”

“So it was bad. It was really bad. It didn’t just happen to Winger. Winger got it worse than anybody, but it happened to all the ’80s bands, even Mr. Big.”