ENUFF Z'NUFF Submitted By Cassie on 06/13/06 Link to Enuff Z’Nuff Discography The story of Chicago's Enuff Z'nuff has the makings of an epic rock n' roll novel or at least an insightful mini-series. It has all the ingredients of a classic story. There are heroes, villains, high drama, success, disappointments, conflict and unity. Few bands have had such a colorful journey down the rocky road to rock n' roll stardom. Through all the highs and lows, the band has never lost perspective on what is truly important, the music! Throughout their journey, Enuff Z'nuff has moved forward honing their craft, creating music that has won over the hearts and devotion of listeners and critics worldwide. What follows is a story not just about rock n' roll, but about the strive for the great American dream. It's a tale about never giving up, staying true to yourself and always aspiring to give your best. So sit back, pop in your favorite Enuff Z'nuff CD and enjoy! Enuff Z'Nuff's Chip Z'Nuff met band co-founder Donnie Vie through a mutual friend of theirs in 1983, when they were 15. "I was playing in a band called 'We're Staying'," Chip commented, "And our friend said he met this guy in our hometown of Blue Island and I went down one night, listened to some of his songs and listened to him sing, and I loved him. I drove him home that night and asked him if he wanted to put something together with me and he said he'd love to." As Chip recalls, "We sat around one day and with my little four-track, and boom, we had 14 songs by the end of the day. We played the songs for some friends, they went 'Wow!,' and realized we were on to something." Although Chip had a promising career ahead of him as a minor league baseball player, he felt he had more to say writing songs than throwing baseballs, so Enough Z'Nuff soon went into full gear, incorportating members Gino Martino and B.W. Boeski. And Donnie, well he was born to write music. Donnie admits, "When he (Chip) met me, I looked like Howdy Doody. I had these little orange hairs that stood straight up, tons of make-up on--Hollywood Square look... "My mom worked and I had no father, so I had to raise my two little sisters. I played bars at 14, 15, places I had no business being, with a 2 and 3-year-old sitting in a stroller under a bunch of coats sleeping while I played. So how do you tell one working parent with three mouths to feed, 'Hey, Mom, I'm gonna be a rock star?' She was like, 'No, you're either gonna get a job or get the hell out of here.' So I got my own apartment at 15. But I understand where she was coming from. Not a lot of cats from Blue Island make it in the music business." Donnie was quickly adopted into the Z'Nuff family, and they continued to hone their craft with Chip's tape recorder in the basement of their Blue Island home. And "make it," they soon would. Quickly after the band formed in 1985, they got funding (with the financial help of a fellow police officer) to record a demo tape they aptly titled "Hollywood Squares." The band altered their name from "Enough Z'Nuff" to the now familiar "Enuff Z'Nuff," band members Gino Martino and B.W. Boeski left, and Enuff Z'Nuff replaced them with drummer Vikki Foxx and ex-Le Mans guitarist Derek Frigo. They built a strong following in Chicago and in 1986 aspiring director John McNaughton chose one of their songs, "Fingers On It," for the soundtrack of his soon to be cult-classic movie Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer. After 4 years of playing local gigs and recording countless demos, the band got their big break. With offers from Atlantic (ATCO), Capitol, Chrystalis, and Warner Brothers, the band signed in with Derek Shulman (Bon Jovi, AC/DC) and ATCO records. In 1989, Enuff Z'Nuff released their self-titled album. "New Thing" quickly tore up the radio charts and became a favorite on MTV. They responded by releasing a touching rock ballad called "Fly High Michelle," a true story about the death of one of Donnie's friends. That too became a hit and elevated the band's hot album to near gold status. But, life for the band wasn't perfect. The co-producer of the record, Ron Fajerstein, issued a statement claiming he owned the band and funded their demos (both of which were lies), and although the band fired him, lawsuits kept the band from making the money they deserved. Also, the band's glam image became a problem. The music videos showed the band in lipstick and were a lot more colorful than anticipated. "We looked like idiots," Donnie would quickly admit. "Most people didn't even pay attention to our music." And the image was out of place. Enuff Z'Nuff ultimately got lumped with "party-rock" bands of the era, when in reality their music had the depth and stylings of classic '60s British rock. Legal problems made their tour with Motley Crue fall through, and the band's image cost them a major tour with Aerosmith. "It was completely the opposite of what we started out to do," Vie said in an interview. "Maybe we did a little bit of jumping on the bandwagon, because Poison and the look were happening at that time, but we aren't a heavy metal band." Still, the band had a lot going for them, they earned a legion of fans, praise from their peers (Kiss' Paul Stanley called their album a classic) and eventually landed a very successful tour with label-mates Mr. Big. Enuff Z'Nuff tracks get chosen for T.V. shows ("Hot Little Summer Girl for Beverly Hills 90210 and "I Could Never Be Without You" for Northern Exposure). In late 1990 they once again settled into the studio, this time to record their follow-up album. Enuff Z'Nuff was disappointed that people seemed to be listening to the band with their eyes instead of their ears. Detirmined to show the world that Enuff Z'Nuff wasn't the glam/hair-metal band the press made them out to be, they happily ditched the make-up and concentrated on making deep, powerful songs for their next album they would appropriately name "Strength." The band settled into the studio for 3 months, recording their second album. When asked if the "sophomore jinx" was a factor for the band, Donnie confidently replied, "No, we've got hundreds of songs. We pulled a fast one. They told us to go in and record ten songs and we recorded 22 on the same budget. We ended up putting 15 on this record. It says 14 but we put two together ("The Way Home/Coming Home") and slipped it past you." Some of the extra recordings would be later released on albums ("Style" on Tweaked, "Kitty" and "Let It Go" on Peach Fuzz). With the extra studio time, the band gets increasingly experimental. The band hires Derek's father Johnny Frigo to play violin on some tracks. Donnie uses an E bow on the track "Blue Island," which he describes as "Sort of like an electric violin, only it's actually a guitar." They incorporate a mellotron on "The Way Home" and "Strength." Donnie described the eeriness of the situation. "We used the same one they used on 'Strawberry Fields.' On John Lennon's 50th birthday, we had the mellotron in here." Peers invited into the studio from L.A. Guns, The Quireboys', and Cheap Trick are blown away by what Chip and Donnie play for them. Cheap Trick's lead singer Robin Zander offers to sing the last track "Time To Let You Go" as a duet with Donnie on the album. The band, who idolizes Cheap Trick, is flattered but turns Robin down. As it turns out, "Time To Let You Go" had been sent to rock legend Paul McCartney, who loved the track and agreed to sing with Donnie on it. Unfortunately, that falls though, so the band chooses to keep the song as it is. Enuff Z'Nuff starts promoting their album, a 15-track masterpiece that ebbs and flows from metal to pop, an album that remains a fan favorite. The band's efforts pay off. Strength gets released to critical acclaim, Rolling Stone calls Enuff Z'Nuff "Hot New Band Of The Year," MTV Europe starts running mini-specials on the album on Headbanger's Ball, and The King-Of-All-Media Howard Stern invites the guys on his radio show. The band and Stern hit it off, marking the start of a long mutual friendship. The band gets invited to the NBC Studios to appear on Late Night With David Letterman. The band happily accepts and performs "Baby Loves You," complete with Paul Shaffer and Anton Fig on drums (Vikki Fox had to settle for playing air guitar in the background!!). Everyone loves the song (which, ironically, is a track the band unsuccessfully fought to keep on the first album), Dave becomes a fan and in the future will invite Enuff Z'Nuff back on his show. Enuff Z'Nuff plays the prestigious Radio City Music Hall and goes on tour with The Nelson Brothers. The ball is rolling, but trouble seems to follow the band. Strength does well, but doesn't tear up the charts like the band's debut had. The video for the first single "Mother's Eyes" turns out cheesy and as a result their follow up single "Baby Loves You" gets buried by MTV. The band's track for the soundtrack of Home Alone 2: Lost In New York got cut out, a Christmas gem called "Happy Holiday" that would eventually surface on a future album. Someone on the inside starts ripping off the band left and right financially. As Chip put it, "(We found ourselves) a million dollars in the hole despite selling over half a million! We knew it wasn't a ton of records sold, but it was enough for us to have thought we saw something to grow on." The future of ATCO suddenly is up in the air. Management advises the band to file bankruptcy and leave the label. Suddenly finding themselves broke, and without a record deal, the band got depressed and started to self destruct. As Donnie would later offer on a VH-1 special, "We watched ourselves go from 40 with a bullet on the charts to the next week...nothing, it was all the sudden gone, it all happened too fast." Drugs and alcohol became major problems with the band, especially for Donnie and Derek, the latter of which soon earned the moniker "Kurt Fang" for his sudden mood swings. Internal strife ran rampant. Derek quit the band. Although the band spent a short period of their lives up in the air, they soon regrouped. Derek came back, and they started recording demos and label shopping again. Suddenly inspired, they quickly recorded 70 new songs, and got offers from Capitol, Epic, and Arista. The band decided to go with industry great Clive Davis (Janis Joplin, Santana, Aerosmith) at Arista Records. Donnie had quit the drugs cold turkey. "I didn't go through rehab, I didn't use methadone like all these Beverly Hills guys," Vie said. "I sat there shaking and aching for three weeks, most of the time wishing I was dead. As we were recording the demos for the album, my leg didn't work and my left arm went numb. We had to do some live shows where I was standing on one foot pretending nothing was wrong. I couldn't play guitar. Slowly it came back." With Donnie's body still in a state of withdrawl, the band started recording the album Animals With Human Intelligence. When describing the recording of the single "Innocence," he had this to offer. "The vocal was done during this horrible time. I was sitting in a chair, out of my mind. I couldn't stand up. I was singing into a bass drum microphone in the corner, pressing the buttons in the dark. It sounds weird. I never intended for that to be the vocal track. But Clive loved it. He thought it had a character to it, a feeling. I thought I could have perfected things a bit more. But he didn't want letter-perfect." The band was in for another shock. Without warning, drummer Vikki Foxx quit Enuff Z'Nuff to join ex-Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil's band. Vikki had already recorded Animals With Human Intelligence with the band, but was airbrushed out of the cover picture. The band started taking promo shots as a 3-piece while frantically looking for a new drummer for the tour. In the meantime, the album is released and is once again met with rave reviews. Rolling Stone editor David Wild writes the liner notes. Guitar legend Slash from Guns N' Roses fame plays an uncredited sitar on the track "Takin' A Ride." The band was again invited to Late Night With David Letterman. Letterman described the band as "The best. All you need in rock n' roll." They perform the first track of the CD, "Superstitious,"--a track written way back in the mid-80s with Gino when he was still in the band. They rock hard, sounding heavier than ever. Their performance shows every nay-sayer that Enuff Z'Nuff is once again at the top of their game. Bio courtesy of http://www.enuffznuff.com :: GO BACK TO THE METAL EPICENTER HOME PAGE! :: DISCUSS THIS POST ON THE FORUMS! :: BUY WRESTLING DVD'S THROUGH OUR STORE!

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