In 1965, a 17-year-old Rick Derringer led the McCoys to their biggest hit, “Hang On Sloopy,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
And while the band found success with it, the song wasn’t originally meant for them at all.
The record actually started out as an R&B hit for the Vibrations in 1964, written by Bert Berns and Wes Farrell under the title “My Girl Sloopy.” Berns, who founded Bang Records, also helped write and produce classics like “Piece of My Heart,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Twist and Shout.”
Bang Records’ first hit came from the Strangeloves, a group of three Brooklyn producers named Richard Gottehrer, Jerry Goldstein and Bob Feldman. They spent 1965 touring the U.S. behind “I Want Candy,” which reached No. 11.
They’d been playing “My Girl Sloopy” live for a while, but it was still too early to release it as their next single.
So, Berns had another idea. He asked the producers to find a group of young musicians who looked like the Beatles to record the song under a new title, “Hang On Sloopy.”
At the final stop of the tour, the Strangeloves were backed by Rick and the Raiders, a local band led by a teenage Derringer.
“Coincidentally, the day that we were going to play as their backup band in Dayton, Ohio, we went out and bought Beatle suits,” Derringer told Living Legends Music.
“We all had our little Beatle haircuts, we had our Beatle suits on. They hadn’t found the band that looked like the Beatles yet. And we went out there and they said, ‘One of the songs we’re gonna play is ‘My Girl Sloopy’ and we all went, ‘Whoa, we love that song.'”
It turned out to be the right place at the right time. “So we played the heck out of it, because we knew it and loved it. They brought us backstage and they said, ‘Would you like to come to New York tomorrow and record ‘Hang On Sloopy?'”
The next day, they hooked a U-Haul trailer to their car and followed the Strangeloves to New York City. They recorded “Hang On Sloopy” in the studio a week later.
According to Derringer, the engineers were so thrilled with the recording that they jumped up and down in the control room, yelling “Number one! Number one!”
It was also around this point that the band renamed themselves the McCoys, to avoid confusion with the group Paul Revere and the Raiders.
Under their new name, the McCoys released “Hang On Sloopy” as a single in July 1965. By October 2 of that year, it had climbed all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Derringer liked to joke that “Hang On Sloopy” kept the Beatles’ “Yesterday” stuck at No. 2. Paul McCartney‘s classic took over the top spot the following week and stayed there for a month, but Derringer preferred his version of events.
“We like to say ‘Hang On Sloopy’ was No. 1 while ‘Yesterday’ was No. 2.” he told WLOY Radio. “They don’t have to know which one was going which direction.”
Since its release, the song has become a garage rock staple, covered by everyone from the Yardbirds to Bruce Springsteen and the Smashing Pumpkins.
It was also named Ohio’s official rock song in 1985 and continues to be played at Browns and Cavaliers home games.
Related: 1977 Hit Ballad, With 21-Year-Old Singer, Remains a Classic 49 Years Later
