The High-Powered Pop Flashback of Enuff Z’Nuff
Are you guys Guns n’ Roses?”
A nervous young schoolgirl has just approached a pair of unusually dressed gentlemen wandering unhappily through the agricultural wing of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
“Yeah, sure, we’re Guns n’ Roses,” says Donnie Vie, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m Joey Guns, and he’s Johnny Roses.” The indignity of being mistaken for another rock group in one’s own hometown is hard on Vie and Chip Z’Nuff, the two leaders of the Chicago-based Enuff Z’Nuff. And if this blow to the ego isn’t hurtful enough, it’s compounded by the fact that Vie, the group’s lead singer and leading wiseass, is already pissed off to find himself doing an interview in, of all places, a museum – or, as he puts it, “a fuckin’ museum.” “This is a complete fuckin’ farce,” he explains. “I don’t go into places like this. I mean, this is the kind of place you only go into when you’re trying to hide from the cops.”
Fortunately, the museum features – among many other cultural offerings – its very own Pizza Hut, a setting more to Vie’s taste. Over lunch he and bassist Z’Nuff gladly discuss their band’s status in Chicago and the rest of the world. “We’re the sort of group that’s been huge in our heads since Day One,” says Z’Nuff.
“We’re completely fuckin‘ humiliated that we’re not playing in stadiums for 50,000 people yet,” adds Vie. “And we’re gonna keep right on being humiliated till we are playing for 50,000.”
Enuff Z’Nuff, the band’s 1989 debut album, combined confident, Beatlesque pop songcraft and ripping hard rock, and it was all topped off by the group’s pretty-boy looks. It was an album that dared to ask the provocative musical question: What if the next Beatles were a horny, hard-partying hair band?
One of the first releases from the reactivated Atco Records label – home to such seminal Sixties rock bands as Cream and Buffalo Springfield – Enuff Z’Nuff sold a respectable if ultimately disappointing 300,000 copies worldwide. Two infectious singles, “New Thing” and “Fly High Michelle,” racked up strong airplay in many markets – Chicago, much to the group’s chagrin, not being one of them – but failed to provide the band with a commercial breakthrough.
Similarly, the group’s psychedelic videos – which featured the band members in heavy makeup – also met a mixed reaction. As Vie – who writes the bulk of the band’s material, much of it with Z’Nuff – puts it, “When we saw ourselves looking prettier than the models in the videos, we said, ‘Hey, there’s something wrong here.’ “
Still, the album built Enuff Z’Nuff a rabid if modest following, and the band’s inspired power-chord pop sound won it a number of famous fans, including Steven Tyler, Robert Plant, Robert Palmer and the members of Cheap Trick (a big influence). Plant told MTV last year that he found Enuff Z’Nuff to be a perfect combination of pop music and metal.
Now, two years, 190 shows and countless joints and groupies later, the band – Vie, Z’Nuff, lead guitarist Derek Frigo and drummer Vikki Foxx – is back with an ambitious follow-up, Strength.
“With Strength the band was close to making record No. 3 instead of record No. 2,” says Derek Shulman, the president of Atco. “I had to pull the guys back just a little bit, because they’re already making Sgt. Pepper in their minds.” (“Sgt. Pepper?” Vie says with a laugh when informed of Shulman’s comment. “We were almost making the solo albums.”)
For Shulman and Atco, Enuff Z’Nuff is clearly a high priority. “I think they’re an important band for the world,” says Shulman. “Actually, important is a dangerous word to use with rock & roll. But they’re great songwriters with a great sense of pop. And there are some real stars in the band. That will take them beyond the usual hair-band-10,000-seater-headlining-and-next yawn.
“I expected their first album to sell 10 million, and it didn’t. It’s easy to explain why with hindsight. Live, they were inconsistent. The videos were beautiful but didn’t sell the band. And as a company we weren’t totally equipped to break them. But this time we’re prepared. We’ll spend as much money as it takes to get them where they should be.”
In fact, Strength cost $300,000 to record, more than double the price of the debut, and more big bucks have been spent on a video for the anthemic first single, “Mother’s Eyes,” directed by Hart Perry (“Sun City”).
“Listen, we know we still have a lot to prove,” says Z’Nuff. “Like, we’d love more support from our hometown. But we know it took bands like Cheap Trick and Styx a lot of years to make it. And we understand we’ve got a lot of work to do. We can’t expect people to bend over backward for us.”
“But the thing is, we ain’t fuckin’ bending over backward for anybody,” says Vie. Still, he, too, is eager to see Enuff Z’Nuff get to its rightful place in the rock pantheon. “We know we have a second chance at making a first impression,” he says. “And whatever we do, we ain’t fucking this one up.”
***
Straight down this fuckin’ road I got my first piece of ass ever,” says Donnie Vie.
Vie and Z’Nuff are driving through Blue Island, the middle-class Chicago suburb where they grew up, and they’re starting to get a bit nostalgic. Everything they pass elicits some vivid memory. The apartments they didn’t pay rent for; the houses they trashed. “Hey, Chip, remember the little chick we met there we used to tag-team on?” Vie asks a tad wistfully as they pass one hamburger stand. No matter what the topic, the charmingly rude and quick-witted Vie and the infinitely more diplomatic and cheerful Z’Nuff play their traditional roles as good cop and bad cop. “I’m the one who kisses ass,” explains Z’Nuff.
“And I’m the asshole,” adds Vie.
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