Dick Wagner gets de-Frosted

Dick Wagner is playing the Magic Bag in Ferndale this weekend. The guitarist and songwriter of Bossmen, Frost, Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and shitloads more was supposed to be playing the show back in August, but he slipped and banged his head, and had to have brain surgery. That incident was just another chapter in what could be a book entitled The Unluckiest Man in Rock 'n' Roll.

Just a few years ago, Wagner had a heart attack and a stroke at the same time. The August show was to be his comeback, the glorious pinnacle of his rehab. And then he slipped in his swimming pool and smashed his poor noggin on a step. Surgery was necessary immediately to relieve the swelling.

The good news is, Wagner's all better and he's ready to play that show. I interviewed Wagner before the accident, back in August. That he was delighted to be preparing for a show after so long in recovery only made the subsequent slip so much more troubling. In the long run, it has proven to be little more than a minor blip.

Wagner should be a name familiar to far more people than it is. He's a supremely talented guitarist and an incredible songwriter. He wrote an Alice Cooper moment of absolute beauty in "Only Women Bleed." He's also a softly spoken gentleman and, while he's justifiably immensely proud of his achievements, he isn't one to toot his horn, at least not too loud. Besides, one need write a book to cover even the interesting things Wagner's done in his life so far. 

The Detroit guitarist came to public prominence in the Bossmen and would have a string of local hits. Before that though, there were the Eldorados. "I formed a band serendipitously," Wagner says. "I was driving one day and saw a kid with a guitar, and I picked him up. We got some gigs and started developing a following. It was nothing really special. I was getting proficient on the guitar though. I went to a band called the Eldorados. They blew me away. That's when I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I tried to get better, and after a while I joined the Eldorados. That was a big advancement for me. We were the hottest band in the Detroit club scene back then, in the early '60s. I got into a physical fight with somebody in that band, so that ended. I joined a band called the Playboys out of Saginaw, but the band was renamed the Bossmen. We started building from there. We played a lot of club dates. We did eight singles, all local number one thanks to local radio. The stations all supported the band. You can't do that today, which is unfortunate. It's a much more difficult path now for young musicians. You have the Internet to make up for it, but it's still difficult. The radio stations gave bands a sense of being part of the local community. The Bossmen used to draw 2,000 to 3,000 people to every gig. It's all changed so much."

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