Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991 TAG: 9102220148
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TRACIE FELLERS/ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But to the group's newest fans, it may seem that Living Colour, the brainchild of founder and guitarist Vernon Reid, had a swift ride to rock 'n' roll stardom.
After all, "Vivid," the group's debut album, ended up selling over 2 million copies and spawned two Top 40 singles. One of those singles, the blazing and thought-provoking "Cult of Personality," earned the band a Grammy for best hard-rock performance.
But behind all the accolades and critical acclaim is the fact that it took "Vivid" nearly two years to catch on after its 1988 release. Initially, instead of being judged on its music, Living Colour found itself having to confront longstanding biases.
The band - made up of Reid, singer Corey Glover, bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun - had to fight the perception among record producers and radio programmers that four black guys just didn't belong at the top of the heap in hard rock.
The group's struggle for acceptance - and the fact that Reid's vision for and commitment to Living Colour goes back more than a decade - makes it easy to understand why the group feels vindicated, yet uneasy about its success.
"I knew it was possible," Skillings said in phone interview from Providence, R.I. In the mid-'80s, when the band was more than paying its dues in clubs in New York and New Jersey, "I could see people were ready for something different," he said.
Skillings said he would think: "If 500 people could like this, why not 5,000 or 50,000?"
But the question in his mind was always "would we have equal access to the masses like some other rock bands do," he said.
The group still grapples with stereotypes and segments of the music industry that would just as soon not see Living Colour in the spotlight, but there's no doubt now about its appeal to a wide audience.
"Time's Up," the band's second album, "represents the fulfillment of the band's promise," Rolling Stone said in a review last September. Since its release last fall, "Time's Up" has taken off, selling out an initial shipment of 400,000 copies in its first week in record stores. The album was honored Wednesday with a Grammy for best hard rock performance.
Southwest Virginia fans can catch Living Colour - known for rousing, roof-raising live performances - in Virginia Tech's Burruss Auditorium at 8 p.m. Tuesday. Funk-metal band King's X will open the show.
With "Time's Up," which brings house music, rap, Middle Eastern and Afro-Caribbean influences to the band's blend of metal and funk, "it wasn't so much that we tried to do something different . . . [it's more] that we changed," Skillings said.
"We tried to capture what was there, what were the concerns on our minds, where we were at musically."
The songs on the album range from the title track, a musical look at the endangered state of the Earth, to "Elvis Is Dead," a wry look at Presley's legacy and the role of racism in shaping rock 'n' roll, to "Love Rears Its Ugly Head," which addresses what it's like to know you're falling in love when you don't want to be.
"We toured with `Vivid' for about two years. We went all across America, went to Europe. We saw a lot of differences in people and we saw a lot of similarities," Skillings said.
"We went through a lot of personal changes, which happens when you spend a long time away from home, and `Time's Up' is a reflection of that. We just wanted to do something that tickled our fancy."
Case in point is the first half of the "Time's Up" single, which Skillings describes as "polka thrash, mixed with funk, mixed with speed metal.
"We wanted to see how many more vegetables we could throw in the stew . . . of rock and roll."
Skillings, a native of Queens, N.Y., joined Living Colour after attending a Black Rock Coalition meeting. Reid co-founded the coalition in 1985 to create opportunities and public access for black musicians who don't fit into the mainstream.
"I got a call from him [Reid] a couple of days later. He asked me if I could do a gig and I said, `Sure, how much does it pay,' and we've been gigging together since."
Skillings, 30, who graduated from the City College of New York with a degree in music, was an electrical engineering major until he "had a massive change of values," he said.
After taking black studies and psychology courses in college, "I realized just how much I had been socialized and how much the people around me had been socialized. The values we grew up with and cherished were very commercial-dependent," he said. "That told me I didn't want to be a part of corporate America."
Skillings started to think he might be able to "contribute something musically or lyrically to the world, and that's what really made me want to become a musician. When the lean times came, it didn't really bother me."
And there were plenty of lean times for Living Colour before it signed with Epic Records in late 1987. Even now, "there are radio programmers who say `I still don't like them,' " Skillings said.
"No one says it to your face, but once in a while, a manager pulls us aside and says, `It's still out there.' "
That's part of why Living Colour has to come from a different perspective than bands like Whitesnake or Poison, Skillings said.
"You can be in the same city and live in a totally different cultural dimension from somebody two miles away," he continued.
"There are a lot of people in Middle America that can afford not to be aware. They can live with their heads buried in the sand. It's really uncomfortable for them to confront the horrible problems in America," he said.
"It takes courage to look and see what's going on. But we have to look and see what's going on. I become a statistic if I'm not aware."
LIVING COLOUR with King's X: 8 p.m. Tuesday at Virginia Tech's Burruss Auditorium. $10 for Tech students, $15 for non-students. 231-5615 or 800-843-0332.
by CNB