Gear Timeline
Steven Tyler of Aerosmith named them the Dynamic Duo. Steve Hunter — the right channel of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, the “Sweet Jane” intro, The Deacon — was one half. Dick Wagner was the other. “We had a thing when we played together like none other I’ve ever experienced,” Hunter wrote on Facebook the day after Wagner died in July 2014. “We hardly ever had to work anything out. We just did it and it was always right. It was truly a phenomenon.” The Dynamic Duo played together on Lou Reed’s Berlin, on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal live recording, on the Welcome to My Nightmare album and tour — and their specific guitar partnership, with Hunter panned right and Wagner panned left in the stereo mix and the two voices in their own specific conversation, is one of the most celebrated guitar tandems in 1970s rock. But Wagner was more than half of a duo. Alice Cooper’s own assessment: “He’s a gifted writer, and I wrote most of the post-Alice Cooper hits with him.” More than fifty songs co-written with Cooper. “Only Women Bleed.” “Welcome to My Nightmare.” “Department of Youth.” “I Never Cry.” “You and Me.” “How You Gonna See Me Now.” The lead guitarist who was also the primary songwriting partner — not just the instrument of the songs but the co-author of them. The 1959 Gibson Les Paul TV Special with the P-90 pickup in the bridge through the early-70s 100-watt Hiwatt Hundred with the Echoplex and the MXR Phase 100: this was the gear that played “Only Women Bleed”‘s 12-string guitar part and the guitar solos on “Steven” and the slide on “Cold Ethyl.” The Hiwatt had a certain kind of edge that was different from a Marshall. Wagner knew the difference. He chose the Hiwatt specifically for what it offered that the Marshall didn’t. This is the Dick Wagner gear story: the guitarist who understood exactly what each piece of equipment could do that the standard choice couldn’t, and who used that understanding to co-write and play the most commercially successful Alice Cooper catalog in the band’s history.
Richard Dale Wagner was born in Saginaw, Michigan, and died on July 30, 2014, at the age of seventy-one, in Phoenix, Arizona, following health complications from the heart attack he suffered in 2007 — a cardiac event that left him in a coma for two weeks and caused paralysis in his left arm. After two years of rehabilitation, he recovered sufficient function to release a new album (Full Meltdown, 2009) and perform onstage again in 2011, demonstrating the specific personal resilience that his memoir — Not Only Women Bleed: Vignettes from the Heart of a Rock Musician (2012, honored with five international book awards) — documented alongside the professional story. He first played with Mitch Ryder’s Detroit, the same band through which Steve Hunter entered the professional orbit that would bring both of them to Bob Ezrin’s attention and then to Lou Reed’s Berlin and the Alice Cooper productions that followed. The Bob Ezrin connection is the foundational professional relationship of both guitarists’ careers: Ezrin brought Wagner and Hunter together first on Reed’s Berlin, then on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal tour, and then organized the Alice Cooper Welcome to My Nightmare engagement that made both guitarists’ most commercially significant work possible.
The Welcome to My Nightmare album (1975) is Wagner’s primary creative legacy: the Alice Cooper solo debut that produced “Only Women Bleed” (a number one Adult Contemporary hit), “Welcome to My Nightmare,” and “Department of Youth,” with Wagner co-writing six of the album’s eleven tracks. The album was the first to fully realize the theatrical rock concept that Alice Cooper had developed across the band albums — the Welcome to My Nightmare tour was described as “the biggest and highest grossing rock tour of its time” — and Wagner’s dual role as lead guitarist and primary songwriting partner is what made the album’s specific combination of rock guitar and melodic pop songwriting possible. The “Only Women Bleed” 12-string guitar part, the guitar solos on “Steven,” the slide guitar on “Cold Ethyl,” the guitar synth on “The Awakening”: all Wagner, in his own account of his specific contributions to the album. The Dynamic Duo’s specific partnership meant that what Hunter didn’t play, Wagner did, and the two together covered the complete guitar vocabulary of the Welcome to My Nightmare production.
The heart attack in 2007 — and the two weeks in a coma, and the paralyzed left arm, and the two years of rehabilitation — is the biographical chapter that would have ended most guitar careers. Wagner returned. “After two years of rehab, he released a new album, Full Meltdown, in 2009.” The specific determination required to recover from a cardiac event that left him in a coma and paralyzed his left arm and then return to professional guitar playing is the biographical statement of someone who understood that the guitar was not optional. He performed onstage in 2011. He wrote the memoir in 2012. He died in 2014. The career ended with the heart, not with the paralysis.
Background: Saginaw to the Dynamic Duo, and the 50-Song Alice Cooper Partnership
The Saginaw, Michigan origin — the specific Great Lakes industrial city that was also a significant center of Motown-adjacent soul and R&B music — is the geographic context that placed Wagner in the specific Midwest music tradition from which Mitch Ryder also emerged. The Mitch Ryder connection that brought both Wagner and Hunter into the professional network that led to Bob Ezrin is the specific biographical entry point: both guitarists from the Midwest, both working in the Detroit-adjacent rock scene, both brought into the Ezrin/Reed/Cooper orbit through the specific professional connection of the Detroit rock context. The Dynamic Duo was, in significant measure, a Michigan phenomenon before it became a New York recording studio phenomenon.
The Alice Cooper connection — more than fifty songs co-written, musical director for the peak commercial years, lead guitarist on the records that produced Alice’s biggest commercial singles — is the most specifically creative legacy of Wagner’s career, beyond the pure guitar playing of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal live recordings. The distinction is important: Hunter was primarily a guitarist whose guitar playing was his creative contribution; Wagner was a guitarist whose songwriting was an equally significant creative contribution. Alice Cooper’s assessment — “I wrote most of the post-Alice Cooper hits with him” — is the peer testimony of someone who knows what the collaborator contributed to the creative enterprise that produced the most commercially successful years of his career. The guitar playing and the song writing were not separate activities for Wagner; they were the same creative intelligence applied to different aspects of the same production.
The Frost — the Michigan band that Wagner formed in the late 1960s and that produced three albums before disbanding — is the specific pre-Ezrin professional context that developed his songwriting and his guitar approach. Wagner and the Frost were a Michigan hard rock band working in the specific post-Cream, post-Hendrix rock tradition that made the Detroit and Michigan area a significant rock center in the late 1960s. In 2008, Wagner and his Frost bandmates were inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends, whose website also contains a detailed history of his works — the institutional acknowledgment of the Michigan rock tradition’s specific place in the American rock heritage that preceded the national breakthrough.
The post-Alice Cooper work with KISS, Cheap Trick, Meat Loaf, Peter Gabriel, Air Supply, and others confirms the session quality that the Vintage Guitar retrospective identifies: “When your recording session needed some monster guitar solos, you called Wagner and Hunter first. Period. Just ask KISS.” The specific range of artists who engaged Wagner for session work — from the theatrical rock of KISS to the stadium rock of Cheap Trick to the pop-rock of Air Supply — documents the same session versatility that the Hunter parallel entry documents: the ability to provide the exactly right guitar contribution for the exactly right musical context across completely different styles.
The Rig: Dick Wagner’s Guitars, Amps, and Effects
Guitars
Dick Wagner’s primary guitar for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal live recordings was a 1959 Gibson Les Paul TV Special with just a P-90 pickup in the back. “My guitar was a ’59 Les Paul TV Special with just a P-90 pickup in the back.” The Les Paul TV Special — the two-pickup variant of the Les Paul Special in TV Yellow finish — is a specific instrument in the Gibson Les Paul family that sits between the single-pickup Junior and the dual-humbucker Standard: the TV Special uses two P-90 single-coil pickups in the full-size single-coil format rather than the Junior’s single pickup or the Standard’s twin humbuckers. Wagner’s specific use of “just a P-90 pickup in the back” confirms that he was using only the bridge P-90 — the warmer, fuller P-90 in the bridge position rather than the neck — for the specific tonal character he needed for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal recording. The TV Yellow finish of the Special connects to the same TV Yellow tradition of the Les Paul family that made Johnny Thunders’ Junior immediately identifiable and that was shared across multiple players who chose the budget-conscious, tonally direct P-90-equipped Gibsons over the more expensive and more humbucking Les Paul Standard.
“I also used a ’60 Strat at the end of Rock And Roll,” Wagner confirmed in the Vintage Guitar interview — the specific Fender Stratocaster used for the final section of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal “Rock and Roll” medley. The 1960 Fender Stratocaster’s three single-coil pickups and the specific Fender-American tonal character provided a different voice from the Les Paul TV Special’s P-90 warmth, adding the specific single-coil clarity and bell-like quality of the Stratocaster to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal guitar palette. The use of different guitars for different sections of the same live medley is the session guitarist’s professional approach to serving the specific musical requirements of each passage.
Wagner played 12-string guitar on “Only Women Bleed” — the ballad he co-wrote with Alice Cooper that became a number one Adult Contemporary hit and one of the most immediately identifiable guitar textures of the Welcome to My Nightmare album. The 12-string’s doubled strings produce the specific shimmer and harmonic complexity that distinguishes the “Only Women Bleed” guitar sound from the harder rock passages of the album. The 12-string voice on a song co-written by the guitarist who plays it is the complete Wagner contribution: the songwriter who conceived the song’s emotional territory and the guitarist who chose the specific instrument appropriate to that territory simultaneously.
“I also played a guitar synth on ‘The Awakening,'” Wagner confirmed — the guitar synthesizer application that parallels Carlos Alomar’s synthesizer-guitar approach in the Berlin Trilogy and documents the specific technological exploration of the mid-1970s professional guitarist. The guitar synth on “The Awakening” provides the ambient, atmospheric, non-standard-guitar texture that Alice Cooper’s theatrical concept required for the dream-sequence passage of the album.
Wagner’s contributions to the subsequent Alice Cooper albums — Goes to Hell, Lace and Whiskey, From the Inside, Zipper Catches Skin, Da Da, Hey Stoopid — included slide guitar, lead solos, rhythm guitar, and acoustic guitar across the breadth of Alice Cooper’s stylistic range. The slide guitar on “Cold Ethyl” (Welcome to My Nightmare) is specifically documented; slide playing suggests an open-tuned guitar (likely Open E or Open G) for the conventional blues-slide approach, or a standard-tuned guitar played with a slide for the specific pitching that the “Cold Ethyl” passage required.
Amps
Dick Wagner’s primary amplification for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal recordings was an early-1970s 100-watt Hiwatt Hundred amplifier. “I was using a early-’70s, 100-watt Hiwatt Hundred amps. They had a certain kind of edge to them that was different from a Marshall.” The Hiwatt Hundred’s specific character — the high-powered, British EL34-powered amplifier from the Hiwatt company that was most closely associated with Pete Townshend of the Who — is distinct from the Marshall’s EL34 character: the Hiwatt’s specific power transformer and output stage design produces a different quality of amplification at high volumes. The Hiwatt is generally described as cleaner and more powerful at high volumes than the Marshall, with the specific headroom that allows the guitar signal’s full dynamic range to be amplified without the Marshall’s characteristic early output stage saturation. “They had a certain kind of edge to them that was different from a Marshall” — Wagner’s specific description of the tonal quality that made him choose the Hiwatt over the industry-standard Marshall. The edge was different. He wanted different. The 1959 Les Paul TV Special’s P-90 through the early-70s Hiwatt Hundred is the specific primary signal chain of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal left channel.
Effects
Wagner used an Echoplex for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal and Alice Cooper sessions — the magnetic tape loop echo unit that was the industry-standard tape delay of the 1960s and 1970s professional guitar context. The Echoplex’s specific character is the warm, naturally degrading echo of the tape medium: each repeat slightly warmer and darker than the previous, with the specific “haunt” of the gradually disappearing echo trail that distinguishes tape echo from digital delay’s identical repetition. The Echoplex as a live performance effect — carrying it through the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal Academy of Music performance — requires the specific reliability of a professional-quality tape echo that can sustain performance conditions without mechanical failure. The Echoplex’s preamp stage (used independently as a signal enhancer by some guitarists, as Steve Hunter mentioned for his own rig) also provides a specific buffering and warming quality that Hunter also valued.
Wagner used the MXR Phase 100 in his Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal signal chain — the same ten-position phase pedal that McGeoch used for his stand-mounted signature technique and that Mick Jones used on “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” Wagner’s Phase 100 application is the more conventional on/off use rather than the McGeoch real-time manipulation — using the Phase 100 to add the specific phase modulation character to specific passages of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal performance. The Phase 100’s ten-position speed switch provides the range from very slow, atmospheric phase sweep to faster, more aggressive modulation, and Wagner’s documented use alongside the Echoplex produces the specific layered modulation + echo character of his Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal contributions.
The slide guitar on “Cold Ethyl” from Welcome to My Nightmare is Wagner’s documented specific technique application — the glass or metal tube played against the strings at the frets to produce the specific pitch-sliding, Hawaiian-influenced tonal character of slide guitar. The “Cold Ethyl” slide appears in the theatrical, horror-adjacent context of the Alice Cooper concept album as the specific tonal character appropriate to the song’s macabre humor, the slide’s wailing, pitching quality suited to the theatrical excess of the Alice Cooper aesthetic.
The Dick Wagner biography describes his approach as “majestic, soulful, melodic and wildman guitar solos” — the specific combination of the grand and the unhinged that the theatrical rock of Alice Cooper required. The “majestic, soulful, melodic” quality is the songwriting intelligence applied to the lead guitar: every solo is a statement, every solo serves the song’s emotional content, every solo reflects the co-writer’s specific understanding of what the song needs. The “wildman” quality is the specific rock energy that distinguishes the theatrical rock context from the more restrained melodic approach: the Cooper theatrical context required guitar solos that could be simultaneously musically coherent and theatrically extreme. Wagner achieved this through the P-90 TV Special through the Hiwatt Hundred with the Echoplex and Phase 100.
The specific Alice Cooper theatrical rock context — the Welcome to My Nightmare concept album’s specific combination of horror imagery, theatrical staging, and melodic rock songwriting — required a co-writer who understood both the theatrical requirements and the commercial requirements simultaneously. Wagner’s specific contribution to this balance is the songs that are emotionally direct enough to be radio hits while being theatrically conceived enough to serve the Welcome to My Nightmare concept. “Only Women Bleed” is about domestic violence — a specific, real, non-theatrical emotional subject — embedded in an album framed as a horror-tinged dream narrative. The 12-string guitar part that Wagner plays on “Only Women Bleed” is the most acoustically warm, most emotionally direct sound on the album; it exists in the same theatrical framework as the guitar synth on “The Awakening” and the slide on “Cold Ethyl,” but it serves a completely different emotional requirement. The songwriter who chose the 12-string for that specific song understood what the song needed from the guitar better than anyone else could have, because he had written the song.
The Hiwatt Hundred’s specific “edge different from a Marshall” is the most practically revealing piece of gear information in Wagner’s documented rig history: the deliberate choice of the non-standard amplifier, specifically identified as different from the industry standard, made for a specific tonal reason that the standard choice couldn’t provide. The Hiwatt’s specific high-headroom, high-powered character — the amplifier most associated with Pete Townshend’s maximum-volume approach to live performance — applied to the P-90-equipped Les Paul TV Special in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal live recording context produced the specific left-channel guitar voice that Hunter identified as “the phenomenon.” Two guitarists, two amplifiers, two tonal philosophies — Hiwatt on the left, whatever Hunter was using on the right — in the specific conversation that Steve Hunter described as something that never had to be worked out because it was always right. The thing they had. The edge different from a Marshall. The 1959 Les Paul TV Special with just the P-90 in the back. The majestic, soulful, melodic, wildman left channel of one of the most celebrated live rock albums of the 1970s. Richard Dale Wagner. Saginaw. The Dynamic Duo. Always right. The Echoplex adds warmth and the Phase 100 adds modulation and the Hiwatt Hundred has the edge that is different from a Marshall. Fifty songs co-written. Five international book awards for the memoir. Both channels of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal: Hunter on the right, Wagner on the left. The phenomenon. The thing they had like none other.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy
Dick Wagner plays guitar as a musician whose creative identity combines the lead guitarist’s tonal and melodic thinking with the songwriter’s structural and emotional intelligence. The “majestic, soulful, melodic and wildman” description captures all four elements that the Alice Cooper theatrical context required: the majestic quality of solos that fill the theatrical stage; the soulful quality of the melodic lines that the P-90 TV Special’s warm, expressive voice produces; the melodic organization that the co-writer’s ear applied to the lead guitar vocabulary; and the wildman energy that the theatrical rock performance context demanded. The Hiwatt Hundred’s specific “edge different from a Marshall” was the specific amplifier choice of someone who knew the Marshall sound completely and who understood that the specific Alice Cooper theatrical rock required something with a different quality of edge.
Steve Hunter’s description — “We had a thing when we played together like none other I’ve ever experienced… We hardly ever had to work anything out. We just did it and it was always right. It was truly a phenomenon” — is the most specific available description of the Dynamic Duo’s specific creative dynamic: two guitarists whose musical instincts were so complementary that the specific conversation between them required no prior arrangement. This is the phenomenon of the perfect musical partnership: two players who serve the same musical context with complementary voices so naturally aligned that the combination produces something neither could have produced alone. Hunter on the right. Wagner on the left. The thing they had, like none other.
The 50-song songwriting partnership with Alice Cooper is the guitar player’s most underacknowledged creative contribution — the songs “Only Women Bleed,” “Welcome to My Nightmare,” “You and Me,” “I Never Cry” are among the most commercially successful songs in Alice Cooper’s catalog, and they are co-written by the lead guitarist whose P-90 TV Special also plays the solos on the recordings. This is the rarest combination in rock: the guitarist who writes the songs and then plays the guitar parts that make the songs sound like what they were written to be. The Hiwatt Hundred makes the edge different. The Echoplex and Phase 100 add the warmth and modulation. The P-90 TV Special makes it sound like the songs.
How to Sound Like Dick Wagner
The Dick Wagner Alice Cooper tone requires: a Gibson Les Paul TV Special or equivalent P-90-equipped Gibson (the bridge P-90 as primary); a Hiwatt Hundred or equivalent high-powered British tube amplifier with the specific “edge different from a Marshall” that high-headroom British EL34 amplification provides; an Echoplex or equivalent tape echo; an MXR Phase 100 for phase modulation; and the “majestic, soulful, melodic and wildman” lead guitar approach that co-writes the songs and then plays the solos that serve them.
| Control | Setting (0–10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hiwatt Hundred (100-Watt — Primary) | Volume: 7; Treble: 7; Mid: 6; Bass: 5; Presence: 7 | “A certain kind of edge different from a Marshall.” The Hiwatt’s specific high-headroom EL34 amplification at high volume produces the specific clean-but-edgy character that the P-90 TV Special drives into the specific Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal left-channel tone. Higher presence setting than a typical Marshall approach — the Hiwatt’s specific presence circuit produces a different frequency emphasis from the Marshall’s comparable control. |
| Gibson Les Paul TV Special — Bridge P-90 | Volume: 10; Tone: 7; Bridge P-90 only | “My guitar was a ’59 Les Paul TV Special with just a P-90 pickup in the back.” The bridge P-90 only — the specific warm, direct, single-coil-character pickup that drives the Hiwatt with the specific output and frequency character of the P-90. The TV Yellow finish and the P-90 in the bridge through the Hiwatt Hundred: this is the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal left channel. |
| Echoplex (Tape Echo — Primary Delay) | Echo: 2 repeats; Intensity: 4; Delay: 300–400ms | The warm, naturally degrading tape echo that adds spatial depth and the specific “haunt” of the gradually darkening repeat. Two repeats at moderate intensity — enough for the specific atmospheric depth of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal guitar passages without overwhelming the melodic content. The Echoplex’s natural tape character provides organic warmth that digital delay doesn’t replicate exactly. |
| MXR Phase 100 (Phase — Modulation) | Speed: 3–4 (moderate); Intensity: 5 | Moderate phase sweep — the Phase 100’s 10-position speed switch at positions 3–4 provides the smooth, moderately paced sweep that adds movement and width to the sustained lead guitar notes. Not the extreme, fast phase of some applications; the atmospheric, widening phase that suits the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal theatrical context. |
| 12-String Guitar (“Only Women Bleed” Approach) | Finger-picking; arpeggio patterns; shimmer and ring | For the “Only Women Bleed” acoustic/electric texture: 12-string guitar, picked in arpeggio patterns that emphasize the shimmer and harmonic complexity of the doubled strings. The co-writer’s approach: the 12-string was chosen because the song required its specific warmth and harmonic depth, and Wagner chose it because he understood what the song needed from the specific guitar voice. |
| Songwriter’s Lead Guitar Philosophy | Write the song; then play the solos the song requires | The Wagner approach: the lead guitar serves the song, and the guitarist who co-wrote the song has the most complete understanding of what the solo needs to contribute. The “majestic, soulful, melodic and wildman” combination is in service of the theatrical production — every element chosen for what the specific song in the specific theatrical context requires. The Hiwatt’s edge. The P-90’s warmth. The Echoplex’s depth. The Phase 100’s modulation. All in service of the songs. |
Influence & Legacy
Dick Wagner’s influence on rock guitar is the influence of the session guitarist who was also a primary creative partner — whose guitar tone defined the sound of Alice Cooper’s most commercially successful decade and whose songwriting contributed the specific melodic and emotional intelligence that made those recordings more than theatrical rock shows. “Only Women Bleed” is a co-written ballad whose emotional directness — about a woman in an abusive marriage — required the specific compositional intelligence of someone who understood both the theatrical context and the emotional reality simultaneously. The 12-string guitar part that Wagner played on the recording is in service of the song he co-wrote; the solo on “Steven” is in service of the concept album’s narrative arc that he helped construct.
The Dynamic Duo with Steve Hunter — the Steven Tyler-named guitar partnership that produced the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal and Welcome to My Nightmare guitar work — is the most specific legacy of Wagner’s guitar playing in its most celebrated collaborative form. Hunter’s description of “a phenomenon” — the thing they had where they never had to work anything out because it was always right — is the specific testimony of someone who experienced the best available version of musical partnership. Wagner’s half of that phenomenon: the left channel of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, the solos on “Steven,” the slide on “Cold Ethyl,” the 12-string on “Only Women Bleed,” the guitar synth on “The Awakening,” the more than fifty songs co-written with Alice Cooper. The Hiwatt with the edge different from a Marshall. The ’59 Les Paul TV Special with just the P-90 in the back. The Echoplex and the Phase 100. The “majestic, soulful, melodic and wildman” guitar solos that filled the biggest and highest-grossing rock tour of its time. For the Steve Hunter parallel — the right channel of the same Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal recording — see #81. The two entries together constitute the complete Dynamic Duo documentation. For the Alice Cooper theatrical rock context that brought both guitarists to their peak creative work, the Alice Cooper band albums that preceded the solo period are the musical foundation on which the Dynamic Duo’s Welcome to My Nightmare built. And the Bob Ezrin production connection that enabled the entire Hunter-Wagner-Cooper-Reed creative network runs through Carlos Alomar’s David Bowie work at #64 — a parallel producer-and-guitarist creative partnership at the same historical moment.
He was in a coma for two weeks. He woke up with a paralyzed left arm. Two years later he released a new album. The year after that he performed onstage. Three years after that he died. The memoir won five international book awards. Not only women bleed. Steven Tyler named them the Dynamic Duo. Steve Hunter said it was truly a phenomenon. Bob Ezrin called them the best tandem American guitar players in rock and roll. Richard Dale Wagner. Saginaw, Michigan. The 1959 Les Paul TV Special with just the P-90 in the back. The Hiwatt Hundred with the edge different from a Marshall. The Echoplex. The MXR Phase 100. The majestic, soulful, melodic, wildman solos. The fifty songs with Alice Cooper. The left channel of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. The right was Hunter. Both were right. Always right. The Echoplex adds warmth and the Phase 100 adds modulation and the Hiwatt Hundred has the edge that is different from a Marshall. Fifty songs co-written. Five international book awards for the memoir. Both channels of Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal: Hunter on the right, Wagner on the left. The phenomenon. The thing they had like none other.
Frequently Asked Questions: Dick Wagner Guitars & Gear
What guitar did Dick Wagner use on Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal?
Dick Wagner’s primary guitar for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal live recordings was a 1959 Gibson Les Paul TV Special with just a P-90 pickup in the bridge position. “My guitar was a ’59 Les Paul TV Special with just a P-90 pickup in the back. I also used a ’60 Strat at the end of Rock And Roll,” Wagner confirmed in the Vintage Guitar interview. The 1959 Les Paul TV Special’s single P-90 in the bridge and the TV Yellow finish connect to the same P-90-equipped Gibson tradition that made Johnny Thunders’ TV Yellow Junior iconic; Wagner’s choice of the bridge P-90 only is the automatic guitar philosophy applied to a two-pickup instrument — one pickup, the most direct available tonal voice.
What amplifier did Dick Wagner use?
Wagner’s primary amplifier for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal recordings was an early-1970s 100-watt Hiwatt Hundred. “I was using a early-’70s, 100-watt Hiwatt Hundred amps. They had a certain kind of edge to them that was different from a Marshall.” The Hiwatt Hundred — the high-powered British EL34 amplifier associated primarily with Pete Townshend of the Who — has a different tonal character from the Marshall at high volumes: higher headroom, cleaner at lower gain settings, a different quality of edge at high volumes. Wagner’s specific choice of the Hiwatt over the industry-standard Marshall was a deliberate tonal decision based on the Hiwatt’s specific character.
What effects did Dick Wagner use?
Wagner used an Echoplex tape echo and an MXR Phase 100 in his Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal signal chain, as documented in the Vintage Guitar interview. The Echoplex provides the warm, naturally degrading tape echo character of the magnetic tape delay tradition. The MXR Phase 100 provides phase modulation with ten speed settings. Both effects are documented for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal period; subsequent Alice Cooper production credits include slide guitar technique on “Cold Ethyl” and guitar synthesizer on “The Awakening.”
What did Dick Wagner contribute to Welcome to My Nightmare?
Wagner co-wrote six of Welcome to My Nightmare’s eleven tracks, including “Only Women Bleed,” “Welcome to My Nightmare,” and “Department of Youth.” Guitar-wise, he played 12-string guitar on “Only Women Bleed,” guitar solos on “Steven,” slide guitar on “Cold Ethyl,” and guitar synthesizer on “The Awakening.” He was Alice Cooper’s musical director for the Welcome to My Nightmare tour, which was described as “the biggest and highest grossing rock tour of its time.” The album’s success — particularly the number one Adult Contemporary hit “Only Women Bleed” — established Wagner as both the lead guitarist and the primary songwriting partner of Alice Cooper’s most commercially successful solo period.
What was the “Dynamic Duo” and who named them?
The Dynamic Duo was the guitar partnership of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter — the two guitarists who played together on Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal live recordings (1974) and on Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare album and tour (1975). Steven Tyler of Aerosmith gave them the name. Alice Cooper later described them as “the best tandem American guitar players in rock and roll.” After Wagner’s death in 2014, Hunter wrote: “We had a thing when we played together like none other I’ve ever experienced. We hardly ever had to work anything out. We just did it and it was always right. It was truly a phenomenon.”
How many songs did Dick Wagner co-write with Alice Cooper?
Dick Wagner co-wrote more than fifty songs with Alice Cooper featured on Alice Cooper albums worldwide. These include some of Cooper’s most commercially successful singles: “Only Women Bleed,” “Welcome to My Nightmare,” “Department of Youth,” “I Never Cry,” “You and Me,” and “How You Gonna See Me Now,” among many others. Alice Cooper described Wagner as his primary post-group songwriting partner: “He’s a gifted writer, and I wrote most of the post-Alice Cooper hits with him.” The songwriting partnership extended across multiple albums including Welcome to My Nightmare, Goes to Hell, Lace and Whiskey, From the Inside (also co-written with Bernie Taupin), and the 2011 reunion Welcome 2 My Nightmare.
Who was Dick Wagner and what happened to him later in life?
Richard Dale Wagner was an American guitarist, songwriter, and producer from Saginaw, Michigan who first gained national recognition through his work with Bob Ezrin on Lou Reed’s Berlin (1973) and then Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal (1974) and the Alice Cooper Welcome to My Nightmare productions. He suffered a heart attack in 2007 that left him in a coma for two weeks and caused paralysis in his left arm. After two years of rehabilitation, he released the album Full Meltdown (2009) and performed onstage again in 2011. In 2012 he published his memoir Not Only Women Bleed: Vignettes from the Heart of a Rock Musician, which won five international book awards. He died on July 30, 2014, in Phoenix, Arizona, at age seventy-one, from health complications related to the 2007 heart attack.
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