Rick Derringer music interview

December 13, 2007

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Rick Derringer music interview

Recently, Living Legends Music had the opportunity to catch up with Legendary

Guitar player, Rick Derringer. Regardless of whether you go back to 1965 when

his band The McCoys bumped the Beatles’ song “Yesterday” out of the number one slot, or you just finished playing Guitar Hero to “Rock N’ Roll Hoochie Coo,”

Rick Derringer’s music has been in your world, forty-two years and counting!

Here are Rick’s thoughts…………………………..

On getting gigs as a fourteen year old starting out in Dayton Ohio.

Its funny, my dad helped a little bit, he was kind out a manager or what

would be a road manager today. We just started out gathering a reputation.

Anything we could do to get our name out there we would do.

We would play for a Kiwanis meeting or a used car lot opening, pretty soon people starting saying “hey those kids are pretty good”. We had no real manager or agent.

Pretty soon the McCoys were playing for radio station concerts and opening up for

big groups and that’s how we got the opportunity to record Hang on Sloopy.

The events leading up to the first Number One Hit.

At the New York World’s Fair in 1964 we met a band called the Coronados who were also record producers. They brought us into the studio to record Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow which we all thought would be a huge hit, it wasn’t.

We went back to Ohio and continued to do what we had been doing previously for about another year. Then a band called the Strangeloves came to Dayton who were also record producers. Bang Records had asked them to go find a band that looked just like the Beatles. They wanted someone to record My girl Sloopy which was number one on the R & B charts. By coincidence, the day we were scheduled to play as their backup band we had all gone out to buy Beatles suits because we liked them and wanted to look just like them, haircuts and all. They said one of the songs they wanted to do was play My Girl Sloopy and we went wild because we loved that song and already knew it real well.

Since they hadn’t found the band they wanted and it was the last show on the tour,

The Strangeloves brought us to New York the very next day to record. After we recorded it, the engineers went wild yelling Number 1, Number 1. Within a few weeks it went all the way to number 1.

The recording process for Hang on Sloopy

We did a four track recording, same as you do today we put down the tracks without the vocals and they recorded an acetate copy and they gave us a portable player which was battery powered and very rare in 1965. We rehearsed the vocals over and over again in Central Park to get ready to do the vocals the following week. With four tracks in those days they were able to bounce tracks around a little but if you bounced too many times you would lose the fidelity. We ended up with a stereo Hang on Sloopy Track and then two tracks of vocals. By the time it became a hit, technology was moving so quickly that they ended up remastering it and simulating stereo.

Early defining moment of success.

It became a hit very quickly but very soon we were traveling through Washington DC and listening to the Huntley Brinkley report which was the big evening news program of the day in 1965. The report was that today, the Russians have decided to play Rock & Roll for the first time. They said today in Red Square, the Communists have broadcast

Rock & Roll. The camera panned to an antique outdoor loudspeaker and out of it was blasting Hang on Sloopy so that really blew us away.

On new ventures

We do all kinds of recordings together as a family. We have a Christian CD out as

a family called Aiming for Heaven which has covers songs and originals, plus a Christmas album. My wife Jenda is a great writer and comes from a family of writers.

Both of us have teamed up and we use our talents together.

On my recent jazz album called Free Ride my wife wrote the song Hot and cool.

It was in the top twenty for five months on the Billboard charts. The CD was top forty

for the year and that was the first time we venture into a jazz project.

On Changes in the music business

When I was a kid the big thing was that the era of the Big Bands is over and it was.

Today, the music business as we knew it is dead. Rolling Stone had an article about

new bands and a full page of photos. They asked how easy it was to recognize faces

And it was almost impossible to tell. The music business that I knew created big stars,

You could look at a picture and say, look, that’s Jimmy Hendrix, or there’s a shot of Robert Plant. Now there is music and it liked by people but the way it use to function

is over. However it has opened the doors for someone like me to do whatever they want.

I can go into the studio and record whatever I want. We record Christian, jazz, rock,

The sky’s the limit. My wife and I just recorded a country song and now it’s easier than ever to release a record. You don’t even have to worry about a record company. We

Send it to a company like IODA and they distribute to all the outlets on the internet.

So you can send it to one company and they take care of distribution and you have just released a song. You really don’t have to worry about getting a record deal. What you

Are going to get back is not going to be the same thing. It may not big a big album hit

But you do get the opportunity to get your music out to people and they can buy if they

Want to or not. So from that point of view it is freer and more open than it has ever been and that’s cool!

In 2008

I am currently touring with my new band, and playing the Rock & Pop Masters tour

with Larry Hoppen of Orleans and David Pack from Ambrosia. Next year I have

a reunion with my band Derringer and we open up in

Sweden

and we just released

a DVD from a show we did in

Germany

. We will also play Europe with both Edgar Winter and Johnny Winter.