Union: The Forgotten history of the 90's/2000's supergroup featuring ex-Kiss and Mötley Crüe members

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I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.


I’ve covered a number of supergroups on my channel, but today I want to talk about one of the lesser knowns or forgotten about supergroups from the late 90’s. Featuring ex- members of Motley Crue, Kiss, David Lee Roth’s solo band and Slash’s future band with Myles kennedy the supergroup Union would be pretty short lived only putting out two studio albums. This was due in large part to just bad luck and timing. Today let’s take a look at the history of Union.

Union members Bruce Kullick and John Corabi were both going through some pretty similar things in their personal and professional lives by the time they met in the mid to late 90’s.. Kullick left Kiss after 12 years after they reunited with their original lineup in 1996 and something similar happened to Corabi after Motley Crue reunited with Vince Neil. On top of that Kullick would get divorced from his wife in 1996 and Corabi would end up splitting from his longtime girlfriend around the same time. Given their similar set of circumstances both musicians bonded pretty quickly with Corabi telling ultimate guitar how the pair met “The way I recall it is that I had just been given my walking papers from Mötley, and Nikki had a barbecue at his house. And supposedly Bruce was there, and he and Nikki got to talking about this and that, and at some point, I came up. So, Nikki knew Bruce was just out of KISS, and I think he was like, 'You should call Corabi and do something. You guys have a lot of the same influences.' Bruce must have agreed because he reached out, we talked, and I decided to go down to his house to hang out and see if there was anything there. I want to also point out that former kiss manager larry mazer was also said to be instrumental in suggesting kullick and corabi work together and mazer would go on to manage Union.

Kulick would tell UCR. "We both feel like we got left behind by our personal lives and our professional careers. So let's make some music." Their first time writing together they would come up with the song Around Again.

Calling themselves Union they would round out their lineup with future Slash drummer Brent Fitz,Eddie money and david lee r bassist Jamie Hunting

The supergroup would sign a deal with indie label Mayhem Records who flubbed the pressing and promotion of the group’s self titled first album, which came out in early 1998. It was probably a lack of experience, staff and money that resulted in some pretty big mistakes. Kulick would tell UCR

. "The first CDs pressed, our first song from the record is 'Old Man Wise.' The first batch they printed, it doesn't even list the song. So whoever approved the artwork was way too high on something. Then, there's a poster that went along with it, and John was also in this very good band on Hollywood Records called the Scream. They spelled it 'Sceam' and left the 'r' out on the poster – and then they spelled Motley Crue completely wrong."


When it came time to promote the album the band struggled to get any attention from radio and couldn’t get prime touring spots. The music on their first album was what the members referred to as straight forward rock , which was at odds with what radio and MTV was playing. While they attracted some good size crowds in south america and europe, in America it was a different story. Corabi would tell Ultimate Classic Rock in America, we couldn't get arrested." The band seemed to be stuck in two different worlds. On one hand they were a new band, but their music was deemed too retro
The band was in negotiations to open for Poison during the summer of 1998 but the promoters didn’t want a newer band on the bill and instead were looking for group’s with recognition like Cinderella and RATT to open instead. the same thing happened when a tour with Sevendust was also discussed. While Sevendust wanted Union to open for them, promoters didn’t like the billing and thought the band’s sound was current enough.
Corabi