A Guided Tour of "Battle Stations" by Winger

Right away, the combination of crunchy rhythm guitar and cymbal-heavy drumming signals that this isn't Kansas, Dorothy. We're square in the era of Cheese Rock, the mentally challenged cousin of the already mentally challenged Hair Metal phenomenon. This nugget of squeal was recorded for the Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey soundtrack and used for all of 20 seconds in the finished film, which was the sequel to a middling comedy made to possibly celebrate, possibly ridicule the very existence of Cheese Rock. What was Kip Winger doing here? No, what was Kip Winger going to do except be here?

There are only a few acceptable themes for Cheese Rock, being the photocopied photocopy of pop music that it is: rock and roll, school sucks, and eternal love for the supermodel cast in the ballad video. "Battle Stations" hits the first two and hints creepily at the third.

"Breaking out, I'm on a mission / been caught between heaven and hell."

The artistic addition here is a war theme, though it's first and foremost a song about rock and roll. Cheese Rock -- having somehow ascended to dominance of the rock landscape the same way that Red Bull and Axe Body Spray somehow ascended to dominance of bro culture -- often sang of nothing but itself. As a commissioned piece for this movie, certain dues had to be paid in the lyrics as well. Thus, the awkward insertion of 'hell' to nod to the main plot of the movie (Bill and Ted are killed and escape the Grim Reaper in hell to rescue their girlfriends). More awkwardness when we hit the chorus.

But the real thrust of the lyrical theme is the Rambo-like Lone-Gunman-of-the-Army trope that was already hoary by the early '90s. The idea of satiating testosterone by injecting some and then grabbing a machine gun was ripe-to-rotting in the '80s, and the default parody of the American mindset by the time this song hit the shelves of big box stores across suburbia.

"My guitar is my ammunition / raise the flag, sound the mission bell."

Rock and roll is still unalloyed rebellion in the crass marketing mind of Cheese Rockers, so any chance to equate music with potent weaponry is taken. "Mission bell," which I guess references the Alamo, only warrants inclusion here as a safe pairing for the mandatory movie plug an A-B rhyme scheme earlier. The flag, one presumes, is American, given that the movie never received worldwide release. (Amazing fact: Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey still managed to lock up the coveted 8th-highest box office gross of all time for God-related comedies!)

"Everybody always wants control over me / the only way to get it's over my dead body."

Here we enter "school sucks" territory and also introduce a slavish aping of Def Leppard's stadium-singalong backing vocal trick, which is so neatly accomplished it could only be Kip Winger singing along to his own vocal track like a shower enthusiast with a repeat button on his 5-disc CD changer.

The "give me liberty or give me death" rhetoric, when applied to this particular brand of rock and roll, is only too apt given how disco-quick the death of Cheese Rock would be once the world heard Nirvana.

"Take no prisoners, open fire / Battle stations (stations) (stations) (stations)"

At the time, even my Poison-addled teenage brain absorbed how clunky this chorus was, repeating "station" over and over in an obvious ploy to tie into Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey's most awkward flaw: its attempt to make "station" a slang term. There was some sort of alien pair named Station who repeated his name? And it was meant to be a Smurf-like stand-in for all other slang? In any case, the overall effect was about as strong as that time you tried to make up a new nickname for yourself.

"Someone tried to brainwash me / Battle stations"

So the ur text of this sentiment has to be Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" and its infamous anthem about not needing no education. This would be exploited heavily by Alice Cooper and KISS and then recycled to crumbly pulp by the latter day Cheese Rock bands until it was merely the expected pablum for a song like this. Someone tried to brainwash me with knowledge! Kill them! With a guitar solo!

"Six-string shooter, hear it screaming / slashing your head like a laser beam"

See because a guitar can behead you with lasers when it shreds. If this song had accomplished a tipping point into tone-deaf self-parody (instead of riding the comfortable horse of mediocrity) this line would be the endlessly quotable apex of ridiculous awesomeness. I mean, a guitar that beheads you with lasers! That's the stuff of a Lonely Island SNL Digital Short.

"It's true love when I'm cranking the metal / M-m-m-makes me, makes me ... makes me cream!"

I don't know what cranking the metal is, but I know it ends with Kip Winger coming. This is the only reference to sex in the song, and it's oblique in a calculated way, so we can't quite check off the true love box (especially since this is anything but a ballad), but it's interesting that he went so quickly from lasers to jizz in the second verse, just when nobody would be paying attention. I would buy a Winger box set if it had reproductions of Kip's Pee-Chee doodles, which were probably charmingly obscene.

"Never let you get between me and my guitar / no use, you can try it, you won't get very far"

And here we have the crux of the message: I don't care what you think I should be doing (boss, teacher, girlfriend) because I'm going to play a guitar instead. And while I'm playing that guitar, I'm going to fantasize about killing you with the might and metal of the United States Army. And this isn't creepy in the least. Come on, sing along!

The best part is the sly insertion of a bass echo on "you won't get very far" with just a hint of digital manipulation, because in the early '90s, with the sudden proliferation of cheaply produced techno music, there was an irresistible siren call to sing along to synthesized bass voices. Even now, I can feel my vocal cords pulled by the desire to chant "you won't get very far" every time that sexy, sexy robot jumps in with its echo. It's like an old doo-wop trick (give the big guy a line) run through the filter of a new electropop trick (the instrument is singing!) in such a way that white kids are m-m-m-made to, made to ... made to cream.

The chorus repeats, then a modulation into:

"Open fire, raise your fists / Battle stations! / It's the season to resist / Pre-programmed morons / computer sleaze"

So the enemy is ... okay, we jettison the internal logic of the song to once again pay homage to the movie, in which cyborg doppelgängers threaten our heroes. Winger must have really been gunning for the title song with this one.

Modulations were a five-year rage roughly equivalent to the now-dying (thankfully) mania for abused AutoTune. I can't pinpoint the exact late '80s progenitor (Billy Ocean's "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car"? Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror"?), but it seemed like any song aiming for pomp and party dancing had at least one in the vicinity of the bridge. What's notable about this song, which is again in the death throes of a trend, is that it backs out of its modulation for the guitar solo, almost as if it's ashamed of itself for popping the cherry too soon. Then again, this is a song in which the singer ejaculates in the second verse, so it's definitely no stranger to premature climaxing.

The guitar solo is a tap-tastic Steve Vai rip-off like so many in the post-Eddie Van Halen world of Cheese Rock. It has the decency to end with an overly melodic take on the Anthrax/Metallica four-to-the-floor metal beat before immediately undermining its own cred with a drum fill so lame it might have been written by Casio.

And then we just repeat what came before. The (very) minor decorations come in the form of lead-singer-Kip holding his vocal past the pre-recorded-backup-troupe-Kips -- a kind of desperate differentiation from his own crowd to prove his worth, like a man trying to make a face in the mirror that his reflection can't copy -- and the phrase "back off baby" snuck in to suggest that the nameless villain of this particular poem is indeed an ex-girlfriend who wanted to eat ice cream and watch "Twin Peaks" instead of attending an umpteenth band rehearsal. Then, the return of the modulation, like a second woody that appears to tell you that the first orgasmic spasm was a dry jack and there's plenty of spunk left in the tank, pardner, so keep humping through the jeans until she gives in or her dad gets home from work.

"You're mine baby / oh / oh / oh / whooooaaaaaaaaa!"

Pyrotechnic effect, blaze all stage lights, thunderous applause, and go towel off before the encore, buddy. You've won the war.