Location: Prosecco near Trieste / Kulturni dom Prosek Kontovel (Cassa Delle Culture Prosecco) / Italy
Concert date: Thursday, 15 December 2022
Reb Beach is an American guitar virtuoso, composer, and producer. He is widely regarded as an original founding member of the criminally overlooked yet absolutely fantastic hard rock act Winger — stars of the ’80s and ’90s — and for the past 18 years has been a permanent fixture in the hard rock legend that is Whitesnake. He is also known for his work with Dokken, Alice Cooper, and Night Ranger, and more recently formed the band Black Swan alongside Jeff Pilson (Foreigner), Matt Starr (Mr. Big), and Robin McAuley (MSG) — a group that already has two studio albums under its belt. Reb counts Montrose and Aerosmith among his influences, and in terms of guitar playing has long drawn inspiration from musicians in the realms of progressive rock and jazz, including Allan Holdsworth, Steve Morse, and Larry Carlton. Over the course of his career, Reb Beach has worked alongside some of the biggest names in rock and roll: Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Roger Daltrey, Chaka Khan, Howard Jones, and Twisted Sister.
Anyone who attended Whitesnake concerts between 2006 and 2019 along the Ljubljana–Zagreb circuit has already crossed paths with Reb more than once. And anyone who was at the German hard rock titans Scorpions’ Zagreb concert back on 2 December 1990 saw Reb on stage even earlier — with Winger, who opened the show that night.
Good memories all around. Including the distant year of 2001, when Reb released his second solo studio album, »Masquerade« — a very different beast from his most recent, »A View From the Inside« (2020, RockLine review). On the new album, Reb steps away from the microphone entirely and delivers a fully instrumental record. Regardless of the fact that he cites guitarists like Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple, Kansas), Larry Carlton, and Allan Holdsworth as his inspirations, »A View From the Inside« will always appeal more to fans of guitar shred than to jazz-rock fusion purists.
After that thorough introduction to this remarkable musician, one conclusion is clear: here is a multi-layered artist with an enormous guitar vocabulary — tricks and tunes he handles effortlessly and with which he earns his living every single day!
The announcement of a European tour with his backing band The Bad Boys was a welcome balm for every Whitesnake devotee who had drawn the short straw back in July, when David Coverdale’s legendary Whitesnake crew completely collapsed mid-European-tour (officially due to illness), resulting in nearly half of the tour dates being cancelled — including a planned stop in Zagreb.
After three years away, Beach was back on European soil as a solo act. Three years ago he also played relatively close to the Slovenian border — in Villach in Carinthia — and this time around he added a date that proved even more convenient for visitors coming from Slovenia. He rolled into Kulturni dom Prosek Kontovel, just across the Slovenian-Italian border (a stone’s throw from Fernetiči). This was just one day after he had played again in Villach. His touring companion was once again a fellow regular Whitesnake member: Italian multi-instrumentalist and composer Michele Luppi, who serves as keyboardist in Whitesnake and takes on bass duties — and occasional lead vocals — in Reb Beach’s band The Bad Boys. The rest of the lineup consisted of technically razor-sharp Italian musicians: vocalist Fabio Dessi, drummer Paolo Cariddi, keyboardist Enrico Varisco, and additional guitarist Khaled Abbas.
Reb Beach & The Bad Boys had decided to dedicate the evening to hard rock. Classics, let’s call them. Nothing from Reb’s solo albums — just hand-picked cuts from Whitesnake, Winger, and Dokken, hitting the stage around nine in the evening and kicking off the party in a venue that drew a bare hundred people — more like seventy, if we’re being honest — with the Deep Purple evergreen Burn.
The good vibes were driven above all by the irrepressible and cheerful Michele Luppi (sporting a Bud Spencer tee), who spent the whole night playfully working the crowd and, right from the opening, was flinging guitar picks out into the audience — some of them sailing several metres from the stage. Luppi also took the top prize in glam that evening, as evidenced beyond any doubt by his bright yellow trainers. An entertainer without equal, full stop.
The small but loud and fully committed contingent of enthusiasts, who couldn’t have cared less about the torrential rain that accompanied the evening, absolutely got their money’s worth. Ten tracks from the legendary Whitesnake catalogue, threaded together with three Winger and two Dokken treats, is pretty much a guarantee of a show where nothing can go wrong. Sound-wise you did have to move a bit left and right to find the sweet spot, which sat a few metres from the stage, dead centre. It would have been a shame to miss Reb’s solos — they were genuinely breathtaking. It has to be said that this six-piece band is technically extraordinary. Instrumentally, they impressed on every front. The vocal parts came off slightly shorter — particularly where Luppi doubled Dessi and the two weren’t quite locked in. And that happened, of all places, during the stunning Winger ballad Miles Away (although on the Winger front, Reb had already sent fans of that band into orbit early on with Headed For A Heartbreak). But the moment you start watching Reb’s performance, you simply forget about every other detail around you. The silkiness, the control, the extreme speed, more control, the fluidity, the wit, the explosiveness, the tornado of shaken arpeggio bursts — and then back to softly bending and coaxing tones out of his guitar with the touch of a true sensualist — those were what we came for. And Reb never stopped delivering. At the same time, the guitar master radiated genuine approachability throughout — not an ounce of ego, a stance of real modesty in response to the crowd’s calls and encouragement, and an arsenal of authentic reactions that made him burrow even deeper under the skin of everyone in the room. And Dokken! A snarling, furious Tooth And Nail was hands down the concert’s biggest surprise. Paired with the slightly more radio-friendly In My Dreams in the first half — one of Dokken’s genuine hits.
Dessi handled the vocal challenges brilliantly — he didn’t crack even on the highest lines and screams in Here I Go Again. The excellent Khaled Abbas also made his mark; Reb gave him plenty of room to show off his exceptional technical prowess through several guitar solos. The keyboards were a bit low in the mix, and Luppi had some microphone trouble towards the end of the show, though the issue was sorted quickly enough.
With a setlist like that, nothing can really go wrong. Reb Beach and the band delivered a brilliant hard rock party. One for the ages. In front of a small crowd, they came out swinging with everything they had. As if they were on the biggest stages in the world. No energy conservation whatsoever. It was a fantastic experience to finally catch one of the great hard rock guitar heroes of the ’80s at a club show. After a run of Whitesnake concerts in arenas and venues that hold upwards of 10,000 people, the chance to catch an artist like this practically in your living room is one you simply can’t turn your back on.
One small footnote — trivial in isolation, but more than significant for Slovenians. Reb and the band were cooling their parched throats with Laško beer during the show. Priceless. In every respect, then. We don’t know what will become of Whitesnake, but it looks like that particular fairytale has finally run its course. Nothing is official, but Coverdale’s silence is becoming an increasingly suspicious hint that the story is over. Winger have been nearly impossible to catch live in Europe for years now — outside of the biggest festival stages, all of which are a serious distance from Slovenia and come with astronomically priced tickets to boot. That’s why gatherings like this, at club level, with a guitar icon like Reb Beach — and to top it off with a fellow Whitesnake colleague, the outstanding Michele Luppi, along for the ride — are becoming more and more precious concert experiences. In a way, something that feels like a genuine concert treasure.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
Photography: Aleš Podbrežnik (1-33) & Edita Klemen (34-47)
Setlist:
1. Burn
2. Bad Boys
3. Headed For A Heartbreak
4. Fool For Your Loving
5. In My Dreams
6. Love Ain’t No Stranger
7. Crying In The Rain
8. Is This Love
9. Tooth And Nail
10. Slow And Easy
11. Slide It In
12. Miles Away
13. Madalaine
14. Give Me All Your Love Tonight
15. Here I Go Again
16. Still Of The Night
