RICK DERRINGER

August 5, 1947 - May 26, 2025 The guitarist died at 77 as this issue went to press. Next month we will present a full tribute with a rare interview he gave just last year. Dave Ling offers some highlights of his life and times.

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He was the talent of a generation, just 17 years old when his band The McCoys topped the US singles chart with Hang On Sloopy, their cover of a past hit for the R&B group The Vibrations, in the summer of 1965.

The first of seven hit singles, Hang On Sloopy was the start of it all for The McCoys anda launch pad for guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer Rick Derringer, a fiercely ambitious and prodigiously gifted entertainer who would go on to have a career that lasted for six decades.

Back in '65, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had taken the United States by the scruff of the neck as part of the so-called British Invasion and were giving it a damned good shake. Though less celebrated, from our side of the Atlantic at least, The McCoys were at the centre of it all.

"[As part of the band] I opened for the Rolling Stones on their very first American tour, and, of course, we received the same adulation as the Stones," Derringer told Guitar Player magazine last year. “People ask me: ‘Did you see what it was like to be a Beatle?’ Well, I already knew what it was like. I had the number-one record in the world while Yesterday by The Beatles was number two. Did I know what it was like to be The Beatles? I was The Beatles in some form. I grew up like that.”

Derringer was born Richard Dean Zehringer in Celina, Ohio, and grew up in nearby Fort Recovery. Having taken an interest in the record collection of his parents, he received his first electric guitar as a present for his ninth birthday. After he moved to New York in his late teens, The McCoys were formed in 1962 and lasted for four tumultuous years. Afterwards, Derringer teamed up with both Johnny and Edgar Winter. He was hugely involved in two Edgar Winter radio staples, being the producer of Free Ride and the colourful instrumental Frankenstein (which had Ronnie Montrose on guitar).