Chip Z'Nuff on New Enuff Z'Nuff Rarities Box Set
The band is still going strong with a 40-song box set from the early days and a lot more music on the way soon.
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This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Chip Z’Nuff. His band, Enuff Z’Nuff, hit the scene in the late 1980s and has been releasing music and playing live ever since. I’ll admit I was late to the party with Enuff Z’Nuff, as I was entering a busy time in my life when they were coming along and everything I thought I knew about that band was wrong. I started listening to their catalog a few months ago and discovered a band that should appeal to fans of power pop, glam, hard rock, and even psychedelic rock. Coincidentally, just weeks later I was speaking with one of the band’s founders.
Even if you haven’t been following the band, I urge you to give them a listen. Now let’s get to this week’s newsletter.
Sometimes it pays to be a packrat. Chip Z’Nuff of Chicago rockers Enuff Z’Nuff saved piles of tapes that he and fellow band founder Donnie Vie — who is no longer with the group — recorded in the mid-1980s. Those tapes contain a lot of songs that were never professionally recorded or officially released, during a time when the two musicians were learning their craft and were full of the energy and willing-to-try-anything-ness of youth. Nearly 40 years later, 40 of those old songs have made their way onto a new Enuff Z’Nuff box set, Never Enuff: Rarities & Demos.
The collection is just the first release in what will be a series of them during a productive time for the band. Enuff Z’Nuff will also release a hard rocking Beatles tribute album later this year and there are plans in the works for a Chip Z’Nuff solo album. There will also be new original material coming from the band, which now consists of Z’Nuff (bass, vocals), Tory Stoffregen (guitar), Alex Kane (guitar), and Dan Hill (drums). The band is currently on a live show hiatus due to Hill sustaining a broken foot — in five places (!) — after recently falling from an unlit stage in Atlanta.
Often erroneously lumped in with 1980s hair metal bands due to their appearance and the timing of their arrival on the scene, Enuff Z’Nuff melded power pop, glam rock, and psychedelic sounds with hard rock. They created their own uniquely melodic melange that set them apart from their peers.
Emerging from Blue Island, Illinois, the band made an immediate impact with their 1989 self-titled debut album. That debut included the hit power ballad “Fly High Michelle,” which reached No. 27 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and No. 47 on the Billboard Hot 100. Singles “Fly High Michelle” and “New Thing” propelled Enuff Z’Nuff to No. 74 on the Billboard 100 album chart and earned the band plenty of airplay on MTV.
Enuff Z’Nuff has released 15 studio albums, five live releases, and three compilations, along with the new rarities and demos box set, which just came out on Friday, Aug. 27. Many of the songs in the set were pushed aside in favor of others that Z’Nuff and Vie liked better, but a listen through Never Enuff, especially opener and first single “Bye Bye Love,” shows that Enuff Z’Nuff had better throw-away songs than many bands put on their official releases.
“That's material from when we were kids,” Z’Nuff said. “I just happened to be intuitive enough to hold on to all those DAT tapes, and when we were approached by Cleopatra Records to do an album, we thought maybe it was in our best interest to let them hear the stuff.”
It’s not the first time Z’Nuff has dug through his past. His band’s 2016 Clown’s Lounge release — the band’s first album with current label, Frontiers Music — also featured several archival songs from the vault. Both the Clown’s Lounge and Never Enuff releases have been signed off on by Vie.
Perhaps “vault” is a bit of an overstatement. Chip said the songs came from “the flightcase downstairs in my house.”
“And in the flight case is about 200 DAT tapes,” he continued. “I've saved everything we recorded from the early days up to today — every single thing — and never thought they'd see the light of day.”
Chris Steinmetz helped polish the Enuff Z’Nuff demos as much as possible, which wasn’t easy because of the way they were originally recorded.
“He was kind enough to get in there and help me tweak up and clean up these masters that we had, because it's all two-track,” said Chip. “There was nothing we could fix up, really. It was, you know, turn it up or turn it down. So, he was able to clean up a lot of this stuff and make it a little more presentable, which I thought was very, very important.”
Several of the songs sound good enough to be barely recognizable as demos. Many are of much higher quality than the kinds of demos or outtakes that usually show up as bonus tracks on reissues. But there is a rawness to them, and that might be attractive to some listeners while others might not enjoy them quite as much.
While this isn’t an essential collection for the more casual Enuff Z’Nuff fans, there are some fantastic songs in this box that perhaps should have been revisited for album releases, including “Bye Bye Love,” “Never Let You Go,” and “Just What You Want.”
With 40 tracks to choose from, there’s something for everyone. And although the songs may not have the same production as the much more expensively produced early albums by the band, the vintage Enuff Z’Nuff sound is unmistakable.
Never Enuff is a solid document of the early Enuff Z’nuff sound. It’s available as a three-CD set (with each CD named after a location where several of the tracks were recorded), a four-LP box, or digitally. The physical box sets are stunningly beautiful, especially the gorgeous colored vinyl version, with a booklet containing extensive notes from Chip and a plethora of rare and never-before-seen early photos of the band. Some of those photos were shot by photographer Paul Natkin, while others were submitted by fans over the years. Chip’s liner notes detail the band’s early days.
“You can't beat the stuff that Brian Perera and Cleopatra did with this demos-and-rarity record,” Z’nuff said. “They went out and they found Paul Natkin, who does stuff for the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, and everybody, and got him to put all the artwork together, and that's what made the package so special, I think.”
As mentioned above, the band has been busy. Their Beatles tribute album Hard Rock Nite should be released in November, according to Chip. The album will feature rocking versions of several well-known Fab Four songs. One of those songs will be “Magical Mystery Tour,” a song with which Enuff Z’Nuff has been opening recent concerts.
“Just picture Stone Temple Pilots and Cheap Trick in an alley fighting together and some other rock star musician comes in and breaks it up. That’s (Hard Rock Nite), to be honest with you,” Z’Nuff said. “It's really paying homage to the Beatles. It's a very, very hard rock record — all analog recording, a lot of fun. We're in the studio playing live together. It's just very exciting to us. Very minimal overdubs. And we're paying respects to our forebears.”
The upcoming solo album, Perfectly Imperfect, will feature 10 songs with Z’Nuff backed up by members of Whitesnake, Guns ‘N Roses, and Cheap Trick. Chip wasn’t sure what the time frame of the solo record release will be, as the albums are stacking up.
“I just make the records, come up with the songs and that's already a challenge as it is,” he said. “Maybe we get a chance to go out and tour it. That's the best thing about making records, is you get a chance to go out and work.
“It's a creative time, and the fans are happy because they get new music.”
One thing Enuff Z’Nuff has never done is cheat its fans of new music to consume. With multiple albums coming and so many already out there, it would take a new fan a long time to get to know every release. My suggestion is to start with the self-titled debut album and work forward. By the time you get to Never Enuff: Rarities & Demos, there will already be several more either out or just about to hit the stores and online outlets. That vast catalog is a great source of pride for its creator and he’s ready to produce even more.
“We’ve got 300 songs on Spotify. Am I bragging? I certainly am. It's been a long career for me and I'm very grateful to have all these songs out there,” Z’Nuff said. “Donnie and myself, we were the catalyst for most of those songs. He's got a solo career, I’ve got Enuff Z’Nuff. Anything that we do with the Enuff Z’Nuff catalog, he’ll be a part of it. I feel good about the future moving forward right now with the songs, and maybe there'll be a director or a movie or soundtrack or TV show...somebody who needs some material. We’ve got plenty of it right there and we'd love to share it with you.”
The video below includes my entire conversation with Chip. We cover several subjects, such as the first record he bought — a surprising choice! — his desert island discs, his eclectic taste in music, and more.