Rick Derringer and Grandma

The most gonzo Wikipedia journey of all time

I navigate the Wikipedia page for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” to scope out who sang those gnarly “Turn around, bright eyes,” backup vocals. The man singing sounds like a campy Halloween ghost from a long-lost cartoon. Perusing the credits on Ms. Tyler’s musical epic, I see: Guitars by Rick Derringer. Rick Fucking Derringer. The “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” man himself.

My heart nearly bursts with electric wah wah pedals, El Caminos and Dazed & Confused black light posters tacked up in hazy bedrooms. The soundtrack blasting from every Chevy Blazer with overflowing ashtrays and 3D Doritos spilled on the passenger seat floor. Rick Derringer, man. The air tastes like fruit punch and smells like the highway on the way to Wildwood, the truck driving recklessly. Before the world lost its color.

I start to scroll around the “Total Eclipse” Wiki kinda absently, my head still spinning from finding Derringer. Wait a minute, Max Weinberg played drums on this goddamn song?!?! Slow down, I tell myself. Do not follow the rabbit. I can only unpack so much at a time. Concentrate on Derringer. Everything will sort itself out cosmically. Be like water.

There is a formidable resource to mine here with this Rick Derringer Wiki. He is the splendorous mountain valley springtime in full bloom. He is the deus ex machina of the day. I will hike through his Wikipedia page like a most glorious interdimensional traveler, across terrain most enchanted.

I’m careening all over the page, reading at random, too excited to start at the beginning. Something catches my eye. In 1985, Rick Derringer wrote and performed “Real American,” the Hulk Hogan theme song. This is the year I was born. The theme was released on a compilation of wrestling themes and skits called “The Wrestling Album.” I real quick dial into the production credits and I see that “Real American” was co-composed and produced by Jim Steinman, the over-the-top theatrical songwriter of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Shit’s starting to get weird and cosmic and interconnected here, man.

I lean back from my laborious and everlasting phone gaze. It is an exhausting bear trap, a mental purgatory. I break free and blink up at the ceiling several times. My brain feels like an artillery range and my eyes are tired. I must soldier on.

Returning to the top of Rick Derringer’s sacred document of a Wikipedia page, I resolve to patiently read like a calm and comfortable man, the very picture of a scholar, on an overstuffed leather sitting couch in my library of antiquities. A lounging Methuselah with my smoking pipe coiled like the caterpillar’s, and maybe I wear a fucking fez on my head like a Turkish astronomer? I don’t know, the possibilities are endless, and I could wear a monocle or whatever but it’s not going to distract me from my focus. Nothing can expel me from the Derringer dimension until my I’ve completed my mission of finding the Elusive Grain Of Importance. It is always the mission, when I’m locked into something and the sky seems to start coming apart at the seams. Something grins from beyond the margins. The power of all creation sighs gently and the great curtain ripples.

Back at the top, reading “Early life and 1960s.” Son of bitch Derringer scored himself a fucking #1 hit song as a teenager, singing with the McCoys, laying down the seminal version of “Hang On Sloopy.” This is in 1965. The McCoys were a bunch of delinquents known as the Strangeloves before a last second name change. I like this.

I always thought the lyrics were “Hang On Snoopy,” because that is how my grandmother sang it to me. My grandmother loved Charlie Brown and crew, especially Snoopy. She loved that song, and the memory of her singing along with the radio, turned up loud floods through my mind like the architect of the universe abruptly turning the page. The sun is a laughing and ancient deity in the sky. We are on our way down the shore, my grandfather driving, laughing and shaking his head, smoking on a Marlboro, while my grandmother bops along in the passenger seat, smiling and singing to me. I am in the backseat. I am 5 years old and very happy. The world is a series of different and exciting places on a map in the glove compartment.

I miss my grandmother. Her laugh was a genuine and joyful sound, and I heard it often. We spent the younger years of my childhood doing insane projects together, like making a snowman and yeti diorama scene in a shoebox when I was 7 years old. She had a different laugh during quieter and more thoughtful moments, like during sunrise or sunset walks on the beach, collecting seashells and talking about the universe. It was a musical and gentle laugh. I loved her very much.

Ah, this feeling is like the changing of the seasons. The revelation of the Earth’s deepest secrets. My reverie is interrupted by tears on my face. I think comedic thoughts: Rick Derringer brought me to this place of reflection, to my sweetest, oldest memories. That is funny and totally crazy. “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” is such a theatrical and absurd haunted house of a song. It is the Wildwood boardwalk’s Dracula’s Castle in drag. That old school “scary ride” jawn burned down when I was like 8 years old.

More funny thoughts, to chase away the anguish of life and loss: Hulk Hogan was absolutely fucking defined by “Real American,” as he was getting heavy into his ultra-patriotic phase, battling awesomely xenophobic heel characters like Nikolai Koloff and the Iron Sheik.

Not even 1980’s professional wrestling will take me far enough away, mentally. My grandmother, the elegant yet hilarious Elaine, would be right down on the floor with me, playing with my wrestling action figures, giving them goofy tough guy voices. I would laugh hysterically, as only an enthralled 5- or 6-year-old can laugh. It is ok, I don’t need to run from the feeling. I let it dissolve into a peaceful pull from below the surface of the flowing waters.

This all feels very strange and hilarious, like a script written in invisible ink on the clouds, and as complete as anything can feel. Rick Derringer Wikipedia deep-diving resulted in the writing of this tribute I had been scared to write. Vulnerability was not on my table for a very long time. My mind had been so impulsive, and destructive. My life wasn’t open to the finding of a back road to “Hang on Sloopy,” so to speak. Sentimentality surely informs the fabric of my reality. I feel it tangibly. I taste it in fractals in the air. I look up at the forever-sky; I see and hear friends that have come and gone, and the family that has shaped my heart. Sounds and vibrations from moments in time.