Alice Cooper Guitarist Dick Wagner Dies Aged 71

Alice Cooper guitarist Dick Wagner has died at the age of 71 of respiratory failure at Scottsdale Healthcare Shea Medical Center.

The guitarist, who also played on seminal recordings by Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel and Kiss, had been living in Fountain Hills, having moved to Arizona in 2004.

“It really is so sad,” says Wagner’s manager and business partner in a company called Desert Dreams Productions, Susan Michelson. ”

He survived so many things and we hoped he would do it again. He had asthma and he’d been complaining about his chest bothering him. But he went in to have a coronary procedure done that turned out to be more complex than they thought. He seemed fine for a couple of days and then his lungs just started to freak out.

Then, he got much better and then worse again. It kind of went up and down a couple times. And then, the last five days, he was declining. It’s still a complete shock because I’m used to him turning around.”

Born in Iowa, Wagner was raised in the Saginaw, Mich., area. His early band, the Frost, released three albums on the Vanguard label — 1969’s “Frost Music” and “Rock and Roll Music,” as well as the following year’s “Through the Eyes of Love.”

In 1973, he and fellow guitarist Steve Hunter were recruited by famed Alice Cooper producer Bob Ezrin for Lou Reed’s touring band. Wagner and Hunter were featured guitarists on Reed’s acclaimed “Berlin” (1973) and joined Reed on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal Tour, as captured on “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal.”

His first appearance on an Alice Cooper album was “School’s Out,” which featured a classic Wagner solo on “My Stars.” He also appeared on “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Muscle of Love” alongside Cooper’s original bandmates. Wagner stepped in as a songwriting partner on “Welcome to My Nightmare,” Cooper’s first release without the original lineup, earning a co-writing credit on such classics as the title track and “Only Women Bleed.”

Subsequent Cooper releases to feature Wagner included “Goes To Hell,” “The Alice Cooper Show,” “Lace and Whiskey,” “From the Inside” ” Zipper Catches Skin,” “DaDa” and “Hey Stoopid.” He also co-wrote a string of Top 20 ballads for Cooper — “I Never Cry”, “You And Me” and “How You Gonna See Me Now.”

In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Cooper wrote: “Even though we know it’s inevitable, we never expect to suddenly lose close friends and collaborators. Dick Wagner and I shared as many laughs as we did hit records. He was one of a kind. He is irreplaceable. His brand of playing and writing is not seen anymore, and there are very few people that I enjoyed working with as much as I enjoyed working with Dick Wagner.

“A lot of my radio success in my solo career had to do with my relationship with Dick Wagner. Not just on stage, but in the studio and writing. Some of my biggest singles were ballads what I wrote with Dick Wagner. Most of “Welcome To My Nightmare” was written with Dick. There was just a magic in the way we wrote together. He was always able to find exactly the right chord to match perfectly with what I was doing.

“I think that we always think our friends will be around as long as we are, so to hear of Dick’s passing comes as a sudden shock and an enormous loss for me, Rock N Roll and to his family.”

The guitarist’s association with Ezrin also led to Wagner playing on KISS’ “Destroyer” and “Revenge,” Peter Gabriel’s self-titled solo debut Hall & Oates’ “Along the Red Ledge” and Burton Cummings’ “Dream of a Child.”

Gene Simmons issued a statement, printed in Billboard, which read: “Dick Wagner was the consummate gentleman axeman. (He) will be missed,” while Paul Stanley was quoted as saying, “Dick was a stellar player and his work with Steve Hunter on Lou Reed’s “Rock & Roll Animal” is legendary. He also did great work with Alice Cooper and uncredited ghosting on “Destroyer” and albums by some of our contemporaries. A huge talent with a huge tone and huge heart. A great unsung hero.”

In 2012, Wagner’s published an autobiography, “Not Only Women Bleed, Vignettes from the Heart of a Rock Musician,” which spent two weeks at No. 1 on Amazon.com’s Hot New Releases in Biographies & Memoirs of Entertainers section.

Michelson says, “There’s a reason that Dick Wagner’s fans and friends call him ‘The Maestro of Rock.’ Dick’s guitar playing was both wild and fluid. His songwriting, guitar playing and musical arrangements were uniquely rockin’, majestic and orchestral. Listen back to his monumental arrangements on Lou Reed’s “Rock N Roll Animal” live album. He took Reed’s Velvet Underground songs and turned them into ravishing arena rock.”

The guitarist was still very active in music, playing lead guitar on “The Underture”, on Alice Cooper’s “Nightmare” sequel, “Welcome 2 My Nightmare.”

“He was so on top of his game,” Michelson says. “He played all these shows and book signing in Michigan in June, just played his ass off for cheering crowds, earning standing ovations. He would sing and play for two-and-a-half, three hours at a time.

“And then he would sign autographs for hours. He was just a hub of creativity and joy. Recording sessions. New sessions. He produced artists while we were in Detroit. He was extremely active and productive. He would write four, five, six new songs a month. Great songs. The same quality he’d always written, just monumental.

” And he was playing great guitar again. He had had a paralyzed arm for a couple of years but he was the comeback kid so many times.”

In addition to being an in-demand guitarist, Wagner was the kind of player people liked to have around.

“Dick has this huge heart,” Michelson says. “He loved everybody, no matter who they were. He was just a very loving, giving guy with a brilliant, incisive mind.”