Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels are one of the foundational groups in American rock history. Songs like “Devil With A Blue Dress”, “Good Golly Miss Molly”, “Little Latin Lupe Lu”, and countless others are the bedrock of rock & roll. Mitch Ryder is back with a new record called With Love and recently took some time to talk about his new music and storied career.
Please press the PLAY icon below to listen to the MisplacedStraws Mitch Ryder interview –
On what drives him to keep writing and recording music – If I had the answer to that, I could retire. I just seems to me that there’s always something new that I haven’t touched, that I haven’t (explored), life experiences or, I’m talking about the things you use to write songs about, and I’m a big believer in writing songs about life experiences, especially when they’re your own. I’ve had a pretty full life. There’s so much to write about, and so I just keep marching in that direction So who knows how long it’ll last? Well, it’ll last until one day I pass.
On if the autobiographical nature of the record can be seen as a companion to his book – A big portion of it, for sure. But in the written book, the autobiography, there it goes a lot deeper into the unseemingly parts of our business. There’s no industry in America that’s guilt free of making mistakes and going back on their words or just doing all sorts of hypocrisy. Right now the country’s in search of a direction. It’s gonna be funny because for people that are just getting into their productive ages in their twenties, they’ve established themselves in their jobs and whatever they’re gonna do they think they’ve seen a lot, but they haven’t seen nothing. I mean, I have lived through decades of this. When I was born, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. I’ve been able to see a lot. If they think this is crazy, they just need to look at history.
On who joins him on the record – My favorite person to listen to on the record is Dave McMurray, who plays the sax, and Luis Resto on keys. You have to understand that these are all musicians that are at the top of the game in Detroit and in region, and they play nationally, and they do their own tours. I was so gifted for Don Was the producer to pick these people. They’re gentlemen and, and ladies that he works with on a regular basis because of their talent. But those two were the standouts for me. Then the guitar work on it is pretty cool too. I don’t know. I just love everybody there, everybody came and, and we sat together, and they all told me why they came. I was astounded that they would go ahead and declare if they came, because it was a session by Mitch Rider, and they normally wouldn’t do that for just anybody.
On what Bob Crewe brought to the Detroit Wheels – I think it was his decision to put me and the band in the studio, because his first recording was a recording of me without the Detroit Wheels. it was a good R&B single, but it didn’t go anywhere in the Hot 100. Two of the Rolling Stones happened to be in that session that most of the hits came from, and they suggested to Crewe that he might be better served if he put out the recording of “Jenny Take A Ride” with the band. Once he was talked into making that decision, then the hits started coming. So there was no magic chemistry other than to say that when he was in the studio, he brought a sense of energy. But us being, all of us still teenagers, we already had that sense of energy.
We took a very slow, sort of a cool, lazy rhythm song (“Devil In A Blue Dress”) by Shorty Long on the Soul label for Motown. He asked us, “Well, do you guys know any songs that never became hits, but they’re really cool songs?” And we said, “Yeah, we know a ton of them”. And we just started recording. So basically, there wasn’t a real tie in, in terms of the music. Then you put on top of that Bob’s personal agenda to make me a solo star and separate the group. That started from day one. As I explained, the first recording wasn’t even with the group. Prior to that I had released two records on my own that I had written and released in the Detroit area.
So, what I can thank Bob Crewe for is being in a position to get that music played so the public could hear it. Now don’t get me wrong, he was brilliant when it came to working with Four Seasons. There is no doubt about their track record. But in terms of harnessing that energy from those teenagers from Detroit, which was me in the Wheels. He really didn’t have a clue going in.
On how he defines the Detroit rock sound – Oh, Detroit Rock. Well, first of all, this is a working-class city. Not that that’s what built Detroit, it was the captains of industry that built Detroit. But the music that comes from working class kids. If you’re not wealthy and you’re not upper middle class. There’s only a couple routes out of Detroit if you don’t wanna work in a factory. This is true in many cities that are not coastal cities. You can either become a super athlete or you can become a performer. So those are your two avenues out to if you want to go see the rest of the country. But to describe that music, before I had met the Wheels, which were called the Rivieras when I met them, I had a solo career and that solo career was based wholly immersing myself in the urban culture of the city of Detroit.
The first group I sang with was a black group from Detroit called The Peps. So, I centered my studies, my direction, my motivations all came from that culture. The guys on the other hand that were in the group, they were more into rock and roll. When we put those two together, it was a new sound, and nobody had heard that before. But as far as all the compliments go from other artists and people saying that, well, Mitch opened the door for them. I don’t know about that, but if they say it, I’m honored that they’re saying it, and I appreciate them saying it. But I was just doing what came natural to me. I had no reason to believe I was going to influence anybody. I just wanted to have fun and sing and do music that made me feel good. That’s exactly what happened until the What Now My Love album, which caused the the breakup between me and Bob Crewe.
On what led to the split with Bob Crewe – You have to understand the generational system here. He was from a different generation and his idea of being a success in America was to take a seven-month booking in in Las Vegas. That certainly wasn’t what my picture of what fame was gonna look like, so that kind of explains that. Plus, he was from day one bent on making me a singular star and dismissing the group in spite of the warning from the Rolling Stones.
On what his impact on music and culture means to him – It justifies my motivation to keep moving forward and to try something new. If you’ve got that kind of a track record, you don’t want to stop. I don’t wanna stop unless something stops me. At my age that would probably be a health issue, but that has not occurred yet. I can still sing and in fact, I’m writing for the next album as we speak. I’m not doing it right now at this table, but I’m working on it. We’re going to be doing that and we’re gonna be doing another long tour in Europe coming up. In the meantime, we’re taking bookings in America here.
We’re pushing as best we can, given the fact that we don’t have a major label behind us. We’ve got a rather impressive German label. They’re not huge, but they do have the savvy, and they do understand how it works in America. We’re doing our best efforts to get exposure, but unless you’re part of the big machine that’s quite difficult to kick open those doors to get that recording in a position where people can hear it in good rotation on in good platforms and leave an impression. There’s not a darn thing wrong with that record. I love it. It’s a great record. So, that’s all we’re trying to do now is open doors that weren’t open to us before, basically.
I’ll be honest about it, I don’t feel old, but that’s the reason that they’re trying to (not play the record). If we weren’t independent contractors and we weren’t self-employed, we could sue them for age discrimination. But you can’t, you can’t do that in the music industry. For a while, they even had categories in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for legendary artists to present their work. They stopped that category and so it just feels like old is not appreciated, but I maintain that no matter how old you are, if you’re still producing, you’re still hiring people to enter the workforce, you’re still generating income, you’re still moving that machine called money that keeps this country running, then I think you should be taken notice of and given an equal chance to be heard.
On if he wonders why he’s not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – Well, no, because I understand why I’m not there, so I don’t. There was a time before the building was even constructed. I met the person that the New York people had hired to be the curator for the museum, and he told me about his plan for the museum. They didn’t like it in New York because it wasn’t where they wanted to go. What they’re trying to do in simple terms is build a moneymaking business, but all you have to go down and get the foot traffic count, see how successful that is for the tax paying citizens of Ohio, and then watch the extravaganzas that they put on tv, and you understand that it’s a building a business that’s trying to grow and grow to the point where the original mission has become lost somewhere. We’re including all kinds of genres from all different places in the musical spectrum in America are now being called “rock and roll”. Because of that, I don’t really have an aspiration to be a part of that. I’m happy for my fellow musicians who are comfortable there. That’s not for me. It’s nothing I’m looking to achieve.
On if he will be touring America for With Love – We have bookings. We have bookings and we just got two more offers. They’re normal gigs that you would find not on a tour, not like a well-known household name act, but the kind of gigs that guys that are in my generation, my age group, my peers, these are the kind of gigs we pick up, like casinos. We’re doing outdoor fairs for cities and stuff like that. Some of them are soft tickets, some of them are hard tickets. But it’s not as rewarding as going to Europe and doing a tour at the moment. We’re trying to make it rewarding in America. We’re trying our best to make it rewarding in America.
But right now, the tours I do in Europe, up until this last one, I never, and we’re talking about 48 years of every year going to Europe, except for the Covid year, and we never had to do the American hits. It was all based upon the catalog that I introduced to them by appearing on one show that was viewed by 130 million people in Europe. It occurred once a year. It was called the Rock Palast. Because of that performance and the way I conducted myself, which I’m now ashamed of, but the way I conducted myself personally was not very admirable. But the show was killer. We were on that show with Southside Johnny and Nils Lofgren, and we managed to steal the thunder. So, I felt that that was the starting point of a separate but an alternate career. It coincides with my American career. Then, in the American career, you could see as you aged, how fewer and fewer promoters wanted to work with you because they didn’t believe because the age of your songs, that you could still draw crowds. But as you alluded to early in the interview, those songs are still relevant. So that’s where we find ourselves at the moment concentrating on doing Europe, but trying our best to get America as well.
