Classics Directory

City Slang: Wheels On Fire

In October 2007, I wrote a feature for Classic Rock magazine in the UK about Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels , and what the members had done following the breakup of that band. Now that I live here in Detroit, I thought it would be cool to brush the thing off. Enjoy.

At one point in the mid 60’s, Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels were one of the biggest selling acts in the States, and then they all but disappeared. Classic Rock journeyed to Detroit and delved into what became of one of America’s lost talents…

Few could argue that the Detroit of the late sixties and early seventies was a musically vibrant city, with diversity in abundance. Motown was booming, and the likes of Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, The Stooges, MC5, Ten Nugent’s Amboy Dukes and Grand Funk Railroad were all receiving national acclaim, albeit in varying degrees. Riding high on the crest of this wave were Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels. Ryder was born in 1945 in Hamtramck, a suburb of Detroit known for its high population of Polish immigrants, as William Levise Jr. At school he discovered a love for black rhythm and blues music and, keen to explore that side of his vocal range, he joined a band called Tempest . Soon after that, he joined the Peps , a quartet made up of mostly black singers, but his career was interrupted when he left Detroit for Los Angeles for a short time. On his return, he formed a band called Billy Lee and the Rivieras . The group comprised of bassist Earl Elliot , lead guitarist Jim McCarty , drummer Johnny ‘Bee’ Badanjek and rhythm guitarist Joe Kubert , who had played with Levise in Tempest. At the request of producer Bob Crewe , the group changed their name to the Detroit Wheels. Levise chose the name Mitch Ryder by randomly flicking through a phone directory, and he’s used it ever since. Ryder: “I cut a record on a gospel label in Detroit when I was 16 and I started frequenting a club called the Village downtown. Basically, it was black urban musicians that performed there and I was one of the few exceptions. I got involved singing with a black group there and I became a regular at the Village. Every once in a while they’d have auditions for new house bands coming through, I think essentially because the owners didn’t want to pay an established band. They would say that they were auditioning for a house band and the auditions you’d have to do for free. One weekend these three guys came through – Earl Elliot, Jimmy McCarty and Johnny Badanjek. Their mission was to back up all of the artists on the show, me being one of them. We did the performance and we talked – I was doing a solo thing then. We talked about getting together at some point in the future but we let it go. Then that Winter I went down with a good friend of mine from high school, Joe Kubert who later became rhythm player, and we were listening to the madness that surrounded the Beatles going on in America. We said to ourselves, ‘this is a piece of shit, we can do that’. We drove to Detroit and started to put a band together, and I remembered the guys that I’d met at The Village. We called them and arranged some rehearsal, pulled Joey in on rhythm and did some rehearsals together. That’s how it began.

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