Song of the Day 6/2: Rick Derringer, “Real American”

When he died last week at age 77, the obituaries for Rick Derringer all mentioned the two songs he was best known for: “Hang On Sloopy,” a No. 1 hit for his band the McCoys, recorded when he was 17 and still went by his birth name, Zehringer; and “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo,” the classic-rock standard he wrote for Johnny Winter that became Derringer’s only solo hit.

If that’s all there was to say about Rick Derringer I would have written about him right away. But I tried instead to listen to all the music he’s been involved with as a producer, sideman and studio guitarist over his 60-year career. I had to stop because it’s damn near impossible.

There are musicians from the ’70s and ’80s Derringer didn’t work with, but that’s only because they didn’t ask. After spending the first half of the ’70s playing guitar with the Winter brothers, first Johnny and then Edgar, he went solo. When that petered out as the ’80s dawned he switched to session work and production with people like Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, Cyndi Lauper and Weird Al Yankovic, among others.

Back in the day he hung out at Andy Warhol’s Factory, but he went Christian and conservative in the late ’90s. (It must be something about rockers growing up in Ohio – Richie Furay and Eric Carmen also turned into right-wing Trumpers). He kept touring into the last decade with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr bands.

Derringer wasn’t a subtle songwriter, but he was facile. He said he wrote “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” when Johnny Winter hired him in 1970, after the McCoys disintegrated, to signal that Winter was expanding his blues-based sound into more commercial rock. And, as wrestling fans probably know, he produced and wrote most of the songs on the “The Wrestling Album,” the World Wrestling Federation’s 1985 cash-in on the rock-wrestling connection. It started as the theme for the U.S. Express tag team but soon became Hulk Hogan’s entrance song. It was later adopted by various politicians, from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump. Unlike, say, “Born in the USA,” it doesn’t lend itself to misinterpretation.

Here’s a smattering of Derringer’s other work.

Steely Dan’s famously persnickety duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker employed Derringer’s lead guitar on several tunes, including “Show Biz Kids” and “Chain Lightning.”

He produced six albums for Weird Al Yankovic, and also contributed this imitation-Eddie Van Halen solo (starting at 2:12) on their Grammy-winning “Eat It,” a No. 12 hit in 1984.

He played on Jim Steinman-produced ballads for various artists, including Barbra Streisand and Meat Loaf, as well as Bonnie Tyler’s smash hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” He claimed his favorite solo came on another Steinman effort, Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All.” If you want to spare yourself the sap and bad cinema, it starts at 2:50.