VERNON REID

From Vivid to Time's Up to Stain: How Vernon Reid's expressionist shredding juiced Living Colour through the grunge era

- Matt Wake

UNLIKE MANY BANDS that got big in the late Eighties, Living Colour’s sound didn’t require an overhaul to avoid obsolescence once the new decade hit. The prismatic metallics and social consciousness on the New York band’s 1988 debut album Vivid scanned alternative immediately. Their dino-riff breakthrough hit, “Cult of Personality,” in addition to being one of rock’s best singles ever, was an off-ramp from Eighties hedonism to the next decade’s underground-music uprising. In a Reagan-rock sea of perma-sloshed white dudes, Living Colour was full of thoughtful Black virtuosos. So the band, which featured singer Corey Glover, guitarist Vernon Reid, bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun, was a refreshing contrast to say the least.

Although they were future-proof, during the Nineties Living Colour’s music grew new vines. “We evolved with the times in a way,” Reid, the band’s guitar-artiste, tells GW. “Vivid is a very upbeat record, even though we talked about social things. We were on our mission. We were happy to be in the mix. We were filled with a kind of realistic optimism, you know?”

In the coveted opening slot for the Rolling Stones’ 1989 U.S. stadium tour — Stones frontman Mick Jagger was a fan and did some production on Vivid — Living Colour saw plenty to reflect on. “And on [1990’s] Time’s Up,” Reid says, “we kind of took on a lot of the landscape around us.”