Vincent John Cusano, better known by his stage name Vinnie Vincent, was born on 6 August 1952, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he picked up the guitar at an early age, being inspired by bluegrass and rock and roll. In 1980 he moved to Los Angeles, California where he became a staff songwriter for the television series 'Happy Days' and 'Joanie Loves Chachi', with many of the series songs being written on his acoustic guitar while sitting at the Cunninghams' kitchen table on the 'Happy Days' set. After being introduced to the band KISS by songwriter Adam Mitchell, Vincent was brought in as the replacement for guitarist Ace Frehley when he left the group, as his 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 Tenth Anniversary tour, that finished on a high at what ended up being the last "makeup" show in 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, but although he 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, and so 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, where he was replaced by Mark St. John. Despite parting on bad terms, Vincent was later used by KISS as a songwriter on the 1992 album 'Revenge', but he soon fell out of favour with Simmons and Stanley, as they claimed that he again began pulling the same kind of crazy stuff that led to him leaving the band in the first place. After he left KISS, Vincent formed the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and released a self-titled solo album in 1986 with Robert Fleischman on vocals, then followed it up in 1988 with 'All Systems Go', featuring Mark Slaughter on vocals and Dana Strum on bass. Demos for a third album were recorded, but this was never released due to the Enigma record label going bankrupt, but the eleven tracks saw Robert Fleischman return to the band in place of Mark Slaughter, who had gone on to form his own band Slaughter, taking bassist Dana Strum with him, and they were joined by Chris Lee on bass and Andre Labelle on drums. The album was originally to be titled 'Revenge', but Gene Simmons like the title and convinced Vincent to let him have it for the next KISS album, so it was renamed as 'Guitars From Hell', and with nine of the tracks having since surfaced, that's just enough for a storming 43-minute glam-metal shred-fest.
Track listing
01 Rocks On Fire
02 Nuke It
03 Shocker
04 Invincible
05 Truth
06 Full Shredd
07 Wild Child
08 Youngblood
09 Genesis
