{"id":43951,"date":"2014-11-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/dick-wagner\/"},"modified":"2014-11-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-29T00:00:00","slug":"dick-wagner","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/dick-wagner\/","title":{"rendered":"Dick Wagner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dick Wagner (1942-2014) was a guitarist you may not have heard of, but if you had any interest in rock music during the last three decades of the 20th<\/sup> century, you have probably heard of him. <\/p>\n

He was a session guitarist deluxe who had a long association with Alice Cooper. He also played with some of rock\u2019s leading lights, including Peter Gabriel, Burton Cummings, Lou Reed, and KISS, for whom he played the acoustic guitar part on their hit single \u201cBeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagner\u2019s career began during the late 1960s as the guitarist for the Michigan-based power rock group Frost, who have been inducted into the state\u2019s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. After a short stop in the New York-based power trio Ursa Major, he settled in to his role as a session guitarist. <\/p>\n

In 1978, he tried to grab the brass ring, but his self-titled debut album underwent one of the more unusual commercial failures in rock \u2018n\u2019 roll history. Because he released the album under his full name, Richard Wagner, music stores all across the country mistook him for the famous classical composer of the same name, and consigned it to their classical section, where it sat, until now. Real Gone Music has just reissued the album under the title Dick Wagner <\/i>so as not to cause the same confusion.<\/p>\n

Wagner is an in-your-face rock \u2018n\u2019 roll guitarist with excellent technique and exquisite tone. When he keeps it fairly simple and lets the emphasis remain on his guitar, he comes off well and one can only lament that he never received solo commercial success. At times, however, he tries to be a little too creative and his music becomes a bit cluttered. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome Things Go On Forever\u201d ebbs and flows but leaves room for Wagner\u2019s solo excursions. \u201cDon\u2019t Stop The Music\u201d may sound a bit dated, but it is a melodic guitar-based anthem that would have fit Top 40 radio at the time of its release. \u201cGo Down Together\u201d contains what may be his best pure solo, while \u201cSmall Town Boy\u201d moves in a creative direction with some Caribbean influences. <\/p>\n

\u201cMotor City Showdown\u201d extends out to over six minutes and contains strings, and somewhat out-of-place lyrics, which move the focus away from what he does best.<\/p>\n

Dick (or Richard) Wagner may have deserved better, but his legacy will remain as a successful and prolific sideman whose contributions will be heard and appreciated for decades. <\/p>\n

His debut album is a good listen as it presents his strengths and weaknesses, but through it all, this release reveals a master guitarist at work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":32199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9534],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-43951","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dick-wagner","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43951"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43951"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}