FTV: Rick Derringer

 

     ‘Derringer’ was probably the perfect stage name when nine year old Rick began playing Country & Western tunes in the bars around Fort Recovery, Ohio with his uncle Jim.  It was 1956 and he had only recently gotten a Harmony-type guitar model with one pickup and a copy of Mickey Baker’s Complete Course in Jazz Guitar.  Derringer told Guitar Player Magazine’s Joe Bosso, “Right away, I started playing chord sequences like a pro.  I was totally hooked, and it all came very easily to me, I know some people hate to hear that, but I was just blessed by the good Lord with the ability to play anything I heard.”  No, the name wasn’t destined to make him a C&W star (his last name then was ‘Zehringer’), but the whole guitar gig was there for the taking.  He told Bosso, “It seemed like the most normal thing.  What wasn’t normal, at least to me, was the money we made.  The first time I played a gig, they passed the hat around and I made $43.  This was in the 1950s, so that was a lot of money at the time.”

     C&W got Rick started but when he bought his first record (by Buddy Holly), he found himself at the cusp of Rock ‘n’ Roll:  “There was electric guitar on all the Elvis records.  Suddenly, the electric guitar came of age, and it was being used as a lead instrument.  People became famous because they could play guitar.  That’s what I wanted.”  To do that, he would need a band.  After the family moved to Union City, Indiana, he started one with his brother Randy on drums and a neighbor named Richard Kelly on bass.  They actually started off as ‘The McCoys’ (a name they lifted from the B-side of the Ventures’ hit Walk, Don’t Run), changed names a couple of times and then cycled back to being The McCoys.

     They hit the Midwest circuit and got some regional airplay for a single they recorded called You Know That I Love You.  By 1965, Randy Jo Hobbs had replaced Kelly on bass and organist Bobby Peterson had also signed on.  The hit single Hang On Sloopy soon followed but most people do not know it was a cover of a previous hit by a R&B group called The Vibrations.  Derringer points out an entry on Wikipedia claiming he only sang over a music track recorded by The Strangeloves is incorrect.  He said, “I played all the guitars on Hang on Sloopy, including the solo.  I sang lead and I also sang with the group.  The Strangeloves were music producers – shysters actually, from New York – and they were in the business of cheating people.  They did that very well, but they didn’t play guitar.”

     Rick should know the provenance of his own hit song – after all, he points out, “I was there for every second of it.  Here I was, 17 years-old, and I was in a successful band with a hit record, and we were playing all over the world.  I was so happy.” Bosso asked if the McCoys experienced anything like The Beatles or Rolling Stones in terms of hysterical fan reaction.  Rick told him, “Yeah, it was like that.  We opened for the Rolling Stones on their very first American tour.  And of course we received the same adulation that the Stones would get, so yes, we knew what it felt like to be a Beatle.  We had the number one record in the world while Yesterday by The Beatles was number two.”

     Like so many bands of that era playing Top Forty tunes, The McCoys got labeled as a ‘bubblegum’ pop group.  This didn’t hold them back:  “Before Sloopy, we played R&B, soul, jazz – lots of different kinds of music.  We looked at ourselves as a quality musical group, and suddenly we were pigeonholed in a genre we didn’t feel good about.”  Their contract with FGG Productions ran out and their label president (Bert Berns from Big Bang Records) offered to have the band continue with him rather than FGG.  Berns said, “I’ll show you how much money they’re cheating you out of and make sure that you get a fair shake.”  Wanting to get away from what was happening with FGG and Big Bang, they turned him down and signed with Mercury Records instead.

     By the end of the 1960s, The McCoys would no longer be a band and Rick Zehringer would now be Rick Derringer.  Before they disbanded, I had the pleasure of seeing them perform at Northern Michigan University’s Hedgecock Field House during the annual Greek Week celebration.  When asked by Guitar Player if Mercury tried to steer them away from exploring psychedelia and push them to keep playing more pop music, Rick said, “The label didn’t stop us and they allowed us to do anything we wanted.”  They were leaning very much in this new direction when I was them perform at NMU tossing in doses of electronic noise and songs by The Mothers of Invention. 

     At the time, I was a high school sophomore going into my third year learning to be a rock and roll drummer.  I never missed an opportunity to see live music, especially when it was taking place at Hedgecock Fieldhouse (which was only a quarter of a mile away from our house).  The ‘go see a live band’ dress code was simple then – jeans and an old army shirt (courtesy of my Uncle Leo’s time as a supply sergeant).  I liked to stand at the side of the stage so I could watch the drummer.  This is where I was stationed before the opening band took the stage.  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see Gordon MacDonald.  He was the leader of a Marquette band called The French Church (whom I had known from HS band the year before when he was a senior trombone player).  Gordon said, “Hey, when we finish our set, we need to get our stuff off the stage in a hurry.  Can you help?”

     The band included Gordon’s brother Warren on drums (their father owned MacDonald’s Music store), guitarist Larry Spratto, and vocalist Mike Cleary.  They had a minor regional hit with their own single (Slapneck) about an old ghosttown and were a popular local dance band.  When they finished with their signature song, they started dumping amps, drums, and guitars at the side of the stage and I hauled them to the side door so they could load up their van.  After Gordon said, “Thanks, man,” I settled back at the side of the stage to watch The McCoy’s crew get their drums and backline of amps ready.  All of a sudden, I felt another tap on my shoulder.  I turned around expecting to see Gordon again (he was a head taller than I was back then) and I saw nothing….until I looked down.

     Standing before me was Rick Zehringer himself.  I was nearly six foot tall back then and he came up to about my chin.  He asked, “What are you doing back here?  This area is for band members only.”  I told him I was just helping The French Church with their load out.  “Oh, okay,” he said, “Make sure no one else comes back here.  We don’t want anything to get broken or to disappear.”  I nodded and replied, “Sure,” but the truth be told, the 15 year-old me wasn’t going to be mistaken by anybody as ‘security’.  I went back to watching The McCoys do a quick sound check and then enjoyed watching their set from the same vantage point.  They played some ‘out there’ music by Frank Zappa but naturally, they closed with Hang On Sloopy.  They were a tight band from all the time they spent on the road.  The one thing I could not help but  notice was the keyboard player.  He had a dazed smile on his face for the whole set and even when they were not playing, he couldn’t stay still.  Plus, you could smell him from ten feet away.

     Others must have also noticed this because when Rick came off stage, he was talking to a small crowd around him.  “What’s with the keyboard player?” someone asked.  I remember the diplomatic way Rick handled this:  “Well, let me just say that some of us have been overdoing it with substances and not taking care of themselves on this tour.  We will have a new keyboard player when we get home next week.”  Zehringer couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20 himself but I always remember how professionally he handled his band.  He was in charge.

     Signing with Mercury opened more doors for Derringer once The McCoys were history.  Once they disbanded, Derringer and his core band (minus the keyboards) hooked up with a Mercury Records label mate, Texas blues guitarist Johnny Winter.  Teaming up with Winter was just the ticket for Rick to escape the whole ‘pop’ genre, but at the time, the move confused some fans.  None-the-less, it also introduced Derringer to a whole different fan base.

    Winter had recently signed what was the biggest record contract in the history of the music business.  The label kind of forgot that Winter was a blues guitar player and blues records were not known to move a lot of units.  Mercury encouraged him to bring more Rock ‘n’ Roll into his act.  This made Derringer and the rest of his former band the perfect fit.  “Johnny was well received, so suddenly I was playing with a legit guy.  That opened the doors for me.  He asked me to produce his records.”  They were not about to keep using The McCoy name, so the band became ‘Johnny Winter And’.  

     I was not aware of any of this in the two years after I had seen The McCoys at NMU.  Working in the kitchen at the Huron Mountain Club the summer before my freshman year in college, I got to know Chuck the pot washer.  He could often be found in the employee’s recreation room after work spinning his favorite records at top volume.  Listening to a terrific live album one day, I picked up the cover to discover it was Johnny Winter And with Rick Derringer taking a prominent role in the band.  Not only did he and Johnny duke it out, guitar wise, Rick was also responsible for writing Winter’s first true cross over hit, Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.  “The rock was me and the ‘hoochie koo’ was Johnny,” Derringer told Bosso.  “He was the band leader, so we did it his way.  The first opportunity I had to do it my way was on my first solo album, All-American Boy.”  By the time Derringer’s version of Rock ‘n’ Roll Hoochie Koo hit the charts, we started playing it in my third band, Sledgehammer.

     Rick continues, “We had a great time playing, Johnny and me.  It was a kind of competition.  Eventually, he got tired of trying to compete, so he disbanded that group, and that’s when I started playing with Edgar Winter’s White Trash.”  The other factor that lead to the end of Johnny Winter And was his drug use.  Johnny had become engrossed in the drug world and when he finally entered rehab, it meant no more touring which effectively ended the group.  Edgar Winter is Johnny’s brother who forged his own career when he and Johnny went their separate ways years earlier.   Derringer says there were no hard feelings when he produced Edgar Winter’s They Only Come Out at Night album:  “That is when I started playing with Edgar Winter’s White Trash.”

      Edgar’s guitarist at the time was Ronnie Montrose who would later from his own band.  The band, Montrose, had a young lead singer named Sammy Hagar who later went on to fame as a solo artist and as a member of Van Halen.  Derringer describes the key element that probably led to Montrose exciting White Trash:  “[Ronnie] was a good guitar player.  He was very inventive and had a good sense of humor.  Ronnie was a brave guy, and Edgar was a very planned-out, nerdy kind of musician.  He wanted things the same every time, and Ronnie was the total opposite.”  Rick’s production on hits like Edgar’s Fankenstein opened even more doors.

     They say the key to success for any business is ‘location, location, location’.  Rick found this to be true in the music world as well.  Bosso asked him if artists sought him out to appear on their records because they were looking for something in particular or was it is reputation.  Derringer explained, “It was pretty simple, really.  They’d be like, ‘Can you come into the studio today and record something for me?’  I lived in Manhattan, so I would say, ‘Yeah, sure.’  That’s all there was to it.  There were a lot of great guitar players all over the world, but they didn’t live right down the street from the studio.”  Not one to drop names to impress, Derringer could certainly take that route because his successful work with others generated even more opportunities.

     Here is a brief run down of artists Rick has worked with and no doubt, most people are not aware that he contributed to America’s soundtrack.  Todd Rundgren featured Rick the player on a few albums (which Derringer laughingly claims was because “I think he just wanted another name on the record – you know, ‘I got Rick Derringer on here!’”).  He continues, “I played on Donald Fagan’s demo that was eventually used to create Steely Dan.  They kind of knew me initially and I was on the road when they recorded the first album.  I didn’t do that record, but I played a little something on almost every album after that.”

     Neil Giraldo joined Rick’s band in 1978 as a guitar and piano player.  They were working on an album called Guitars and Woman when producer Mike Chapman asked if he could borrow Neil to work on an album.  As it turned out, the album was by Pat Benatar and when she and Giraldo met, the clicked and not only did they become a hit making machine, they married.  How about Bonnie Tyler?  “Yeah,” Rick said, “I played on Bonnie’s Total Eclipse of the Heart and also on Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing at All.  That is one of my favoritre guitar solos.”

     Approached to do a single with Weird Al Yankovic, Rick thought, “Why not?  I grew up in a family that liked novelty music like Spike Jones.  When we were done, I asked Al if he had any more songs.  He said, ‘Yeah’ so I said, ‘We should do a whole album.’  I produced his first album out of my own pocket and we released it on Scotti Brothers, and it was an instant hit.  It kind of ruined my production career because of his success.  I kind of became known as a novelty producer.”  Listen to him emulate Eddie Van Halen’s Beat It solo on Weird Al’s Eat It and you will find that his guitar skills were never in question.  

     Touring with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr band in 2010, Derringer said he would tell the story of Sloopy vs Yesterday every night before playing Sloopy.  A roady asked him if he had asked Ringo for permission to tell this story.  Not wanting to insult a Beatle,  Rick knocked on Ringo’s dressing room door and asked the Ringed One if he was okay with him telling the No.1 vs No 2 story.  He was relieved that Ringo hadn’t been offended.  He replied, “That’s okay.  I didn’t play on either one of them.”

     The  pandemic shut down touring rather abruptly.  Since then, Derringer has taken a step back:  “I toured from my teen years till the time COVID shut us all down, and now I understand the good parts of retirement.  I doubt I’ll ever tour like I used to again.”  That is okay, Rick, because you have left a body of work behind that won’t make your career an afterthought.  The music business has benefited a great deal from your work over the past six decades and will remain for future generations to enjoy.

Top Piece Video:  Rick Derringer introduced by Edgar Winter – performs the song that put Edgar’s brother Johnny on the rock and roll map!