Vinnie Vincent

Vincent John Cusano (born August 6, 1952), better known by his stage name Vinnie Vincent, is an American guitarist.

According to the site "Kiss Related Recordings", Vincent has played with Dan Hartman as well as the bands Hunter, Warrior, Hitchhikers and Heat going as far back as 1970.

After being introduced to the band by songwriter Adam Mitchell, Vincent was brought in as the replacement for guitarist Ace Frehley.

Vincent's personality meshed well with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, thus enabling him to play lead guitar on six of the nine tracks on the Creatures of the Night album as well as co-writing three.

After a commercially disappointing Creatures of the Night/Tenth Anniversary tour, that finished on a high at what ended up being the "last" makeup show (and Kiss' largest crowd attendance) at Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, Vincent returned to the studio with Kiss to record the Lick It Up album.

His work was productive, yielding eight co-writes out of the ten songs on the album (a record for any member until Bruce Kulick's nine out of 12 on Carnival of Souls and Stanley's 10 out of 13 on Monster).

This resulted in an album of the same name being released on Epic Records in 1977.

It was recorded in New York City at Sound Ideas recording studios In 1980, Vincent moved to Los Angeles, California where he became a staff songwriter for the television series Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi.

Many of the series songs were written on Vincent's acoustic guitar while sitting at the Cunninghams' kitchen table on the Happy Days set, during off-time from the show's rehearsal schedule.

Vincent has said the times of working at the Paramount lot were genuinely "happy days".

That same year Vincent was hospitalized for mental health related issues, and also wrote songs and recorded demos of his new songs intended for Kiss with drummer Hirsh Gardner Then he formed the band Vinnie Vincent Invasion with, among others, former Journey singer Robert Fleischman in the mid-1980s and released two studio albums: Vinnie Vincent Invasion in 1986 and All Systems Go in 1988.

He is a former member of the rock band Kiss from 1982 until mid-1984 during the band's transition out of their 1973–1983 makeup period.

Though contributing to Creatures of the Night as a session player before being named as Frehley's replacement in December 1982, Vincent, for all the public knew, was the official guitarist in Kiss and played all the lead guitar tracks on Lick it Up.

In what was a frequent occurrence for former guitarist Frehley, a "ghost player" was asked to play on the album, with Rick Derringer recording the solo on the opening track.

Though Vincent performed well live with Kiss, he refused to sign an employment contract which strained the relationship with Simmons/Stanley.

This arose because of disputes over his role in the band and pay (some reports indicated that Vincent had asked for, and was flatly denied, a percentage of the band's gross profits).

Consequently, Vincent never formally became a member of the band.

This ultimately led to him leaving after the North American leg of the "Lick It Up" tour.

He was replaced by Mark St. John.

Vincent was the last member to wear a unique makeup/costume configuration, as the character of The Ankh Warrior (a design created by Paul Stanley), until he and the band were first shown without the makeup during an interview on MTV in September 1983.

He founded his own band, Vinnie Vincent Invasion, which had minor hits in the hair metal genre.

Vincent John Cusano was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Theresa "Terri" (Ferraro) and Alfonso Cusano, musicians.

Both of his parents were of Italian descent.

He picked up the guitar at an early age and was inspired by bluegrass and rock and roll.

Cusano's first introduction to working with internationally renowned artists was working with Felix Cavaliere (mostly widely known from The Rascals and their hit "Good Lovin' ⁠") as part of the band "Treasure".

Following his departure from Kiss in mid-1984, Vincent used the money he made from his tenure in the band to take a long vacation, traveling the world for a full year and visiting places like Tahiti, Philippines, Mozambique, India, and Europe, including a visit to the small town of Mora in Dalarna, Sweden.

The band broke up in 1989.

After that, the band's singer Mark Slaughter and bassist Dana Strum formed Slaughter.

Despite parting on bad terms, Vincent was later used by Kiss as a songwriter on the 1992 album Revenge, contributing to the songs "Unholy", "Heart Of Chrome" and "I Just Wanna".

Vincent again fell out of favor with Simmons and Stanley, as they claimed that Vincent again began "making all kinds of crazy demands and pulling the same kind of crazy stuff all over again".

In 2022, Kiss released a super deluxe multi disc version of the Creatures of the Night album, which featured demos and outtakes with Vincent as guitarist and songwriter, as well as two full CDs of live recordings from the Creatures of the Night/10th Anniversary Tour, the first officially released live recordings with Vinnie Vincent.

In 1996, Vincent released a solo EP from the studio sessions he did in 1990 (some say 1989–91), called Euphoria, once again with Robert Fleischman on vocals.

Vincent, as well as playing all the guitars, played bass and did the drum programming under the guise of "V. Meister".

Andre LaBelle provided drum tracks to the CD but they were replaced by Vincent's drum programming.

LaBelle can be heard on various tracks on the bootleg Guitarmaggedon/Guitars from Hell CD that featured five more songs than the Euphoria EP.

A tribute album entitled Kiss My Ankh: A Tribute To Vinnie Vincent was released by SplitScreen Entertainment on August 27, 2008.

The album consists of new recordings of songs from Vincent's careers with Kiss and the Vinnie Vincent Invasion.

Featured artists include Steve Brown of Trixter, Troy Patrick Farrell of White Lion, T.J. Racer of Nitro, Mike Weeks of Robert Fleischman's band, Sheldon Tarsha of Adler's Appetite, Chris Caffery of Savatage and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Ryan Roxie from the Alice Cooper band and rock and roll comic C.C. Banana, who performs a parody of the Kiss song "Unholy" (rewritten as a roast of Danger Danger vocalist Ted Poley).

After 22 years of being off the radar, Vinnie Vincent agreed to appear at the 2018 Atlanta Kiss Expo in January.

Vincent fulfilled his commitment and appeared at the sold-out expo, playing a four-song set including the live premiere of Kiss's "A Million to One" from Lick It Up and a VVI song "Back on the Streets" where he was joined by original VVI vocalist Robert Fleischman.