Living Colour is an American rock band formed in New York City in 1984 by guitarist Vernon Reid — one of the most genuinely original and culturally significant bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s, an all-Black rock group whose music fused heavy metal, funk, free jazz, hip-hop, punk, and avant-garde elements into a sound that had no real precedent and whose lyrics confronted racism, politics, and American cultural identity with directness that the genre rarely attempted. Reid was born in London to West Indian parents and raised in Brooklyn, and had built a substantial underground reputation through his work with Ronald Shannon Jackson's jazz-fusion band The Decoding Society before forming Living Colour. He recruited vocalist Corey Glover — an aspiring actor who had appeared in Oliver Stone's Platoon — reportedly after seeing him sing Happy Birthday at a party. Bassist Muzz Skillings and drummer Will Calhoun completed the classic lineup, and the band began playing the New York club circuit including regular gigs at CBGB. Reid was also a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition, an organization he co-founded with journalist Greg Tate to support Black artists working in rock and other non-mainstream genres.
The path to a record deal ran through an unlikely ally: Mick Jagger caught the band at a New York club, was immediately impressed, and produced two demo tracks — Glamour Boys and Which Way to America — that the band used to secure a deal with Epic Records. Those tracks were remixed and appeared on Vivid (1988). The album was slow to find traction until MTV began playing the video for Cult of Personality later that year. The song — built on Vernon Reid's unmistakable riff, referencing Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin in its lyrics, and opening with a sample of John F. Kennedy's inaugural address — reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number nine on the Album Rock Tracks chart. Vivid climbed to number six on the Billboard 200. Cult of Personality won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 1990 ceremony. The band appeared on Saturday Night Live in April 1989, and that summer opened for the Rolling Stones and Guns N'Roses on the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour. The band was named Best New Artist at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards.
Time's Up (1990) was their most ambitious album, reaching number 13 on the Billboard 200 and winning a second Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. It featured collaborations with Queen Latifah and Doug E. Fresh, a guest appearance by Little Richard, and contributions from Maceo Parker and Mick Jagger, spanning hardcore thrash, jazz fusion, punk, Delta blues, hip-hop, and electronica in a single record. Stain (1993), the darkest and most sonically challenging release of their career, followed with Skillings having been replaced by studio veteran and former Sugarhill Records/Tackhead bassist Doug Wimbish. The band disbanded in January 1995 amid creative disagreements. All four members pursued solo and side projects through the late 1990s — Reid recording Mistaken Identity (1996), Calhoun and Wimbish forming drum and bass project Jungle Funk — before reuniting at a CBGB show in December 2000 when Reid joined the other three onstage and the reunion took hold. They have continued recording and touring since, releasing Collideoscope (2003), The Chair in the Doorway (2009), and Shade (2017). Cult of Personality received a significant second wave of cultural visibility from 2011 onward when professional wrestler CM Punk adopted it as his WWE entrance theme, introducing the song to a new generation of listeners.
Wayne Dennon photographed Living Colour as part of an archive that documents rock's most culturally charged moments. Living Colour arrived at the exact intersection of race, music industry gatekeeping, and artistic ambition, and forced the question of who rock music was actually for — and then answered it with some of the most technically accomplished and lyrically charged music the era produced.
