2025’s With Love is, by best count, the 40th album for Motor City rocker Mitch Ryder. That might seem unfathomable to his casual American fans, but there were 29 albums in his discography that were released solely in and around Germany, many of them live.
Now 80 years old, Ryder made his first recordings at age 16 as Billy Lee and the Rivieras. He cut his first long-player at 21—1966’s Take a Ride on Bob Crewe’s New Voice Records. By then, Ryder—whose real name is William Levise Jr., and who picked the nom du disque Mitch Ryder out of the New York phone book—had scored a handful of national hits as Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels: “Sock it to Me, Baby,” “Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Jenny Take a Ride!” They all cracked the top 10. However, Ryder points out that, “Crewe had always envisioned me as a single artist from the day from the day he saw the band.
Watch Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels perform “C.C. Rider” in 1966
“We were doing every song that we knew for Crewe,” he reflects, in our April ’25 in-person interview, “when two of the Rolling Stones came in to hear the session. It was Keith [Richards] and Brian [Jones], and they listened to all the songs that we were recording. They were there about two hours, and then they went and told Crewe, ‘If you put out “Jenny Take a Ride,” you’ll have a hit record.’ Well, that’s what he did and that’s what he got. It was short-lived because two of the hits didn’t even have all of the Detroit Wheels on them. And then two guys got drafted after that that session, so we were bringing in different Wheels, people calling themselves Wheels.”
The Crewe years culminated with a solo single, sans Wheels, a cover the Gilbert Bécaud/Pierre Delanoë-penned song “What Now My Love.” It was a modest hit, but did little to build the Mitch Ryder brand.
Only a year or two later came rock’s album era, and in 1971, Ryder, born February 26, 1945, was fronting the band Detroit with drummer John Badanjek (who came over from the Detroit Wheels), guitarists Brett Tuggle and Steve Hunter, and organist Harry Phillips. The band’s sole, self-titled album nicked the Billboard 200 at #172. But the single, a hard-riffing version of Lou Reed’s “Rock ’n’ Roll,” received some airplay, giving Ryder some credibility as changing with the times. (Reed, apparently enamored with Ryder’s rendition of the Velvet Underground track, hired Hunter and fellow Michigan guitarist Dick Wagner to co-write the famous guitar intro for his version for the live Rock ’n’ Roll Animal album.)
Listen to Detroit’s cover of Lou Reed’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll”
There were a few subsequent albums aimed at American fans: The Detroit/Memphis Experiment, featuring Booker T. & the MG’s and produced by that group’s guitarist, Steve Cropper, was recorded in Memphis in 1969 at the suggestion of then-manager Barry Kramer (publisher of Detroit-based Creem magazine). The album received positive reviews but didn’t produce a hit.
Detroit/Memphis was followed by a trio of albums that American fans may remember before Ryder retreated to Germany. Following a nearly decade-long break from recording from 1969 to 1979, Ryder rebounded with a pair of albums that revealed his state of mind as a has-been pop star: How I Spent My Vacation and Naked But Not Dead. These were followed, in turn, by a major label album, Never Kick a Sleeping Dog, produced by John Mellencamp and released on PolyGram Records’ Riva imprint. But then came more than a score of albums, several of them live, released in Germany and not systematically imported, distributed nor promoted in the U.S. Ryder took some solace in stepping away from his native continent: “The American public is kind of like a McDonald’s thing,” he says. “It’s a fast food, serve it up…and then what’s next?”
Related: “Devil With a Blue Dress On,” the ultimate party song
On five albums, Ryder enlisted Don Was—co-founder of the band Was (Not Was), producer of hit records by artists like Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and these days president of Blue Note Records—as producer. Was, who is eight years Ryder’s junior, always has bigger fish to fry, but a large part of Was’ brand has been devoting equal time to passion projects and bread-and-butter projects. He’s always been there for his Motor City heroes, and Ryder is one of them.
Mitch Ryder today (Wikipedia photo)
Ryder calls his newly released Was-produced album With Love a “housewarming present for my American fans. Of the studio albums I have recorded,” he’s quick to add, “this one is in the top two.”
This album was released by Germany’s blues-dominated Ruf Records, best known for albums by young artists like Sue Foley, Joanna Connor, Ana Popovic and Samantha Fish. The label has received two Grammy nominations and countless blues music awards for its output, so they’re not total strangers to the American market.
“This album came about because I was getting ready to record another recording for the label I’d been on,” Ryder explains, “but we discovered that they’d been falsifying records and cheating and stuff that’s probably gonna take us into court over there eventually. So I left them. I was looking for a label and called a promoter friend of ours from Nuremberg asking, ‘Do you know any labels that might take me?’ and he suggested Ruf Records. So I contacted [owner] Thomas Ruf and we went ahead and proceeded. I had the songs prepared and then I went into the studio in Detroit with Don and all the great musicians that he brought in.”
With Love is musically eclectic, and that’s exactly its point. “One Monkey,” which has a tango feel propelled by Luis Resto’s keyboards, is about drug addiction, something long in Ryder’s past. “Fly” features voicing not unlike early Zappa, and traces Ryder’s complicated career. He explains, “There are three sections to it. The first section deals with the early part of my career. The second deals with the years in which we were having hit records in America. And the third section is a thank you to my fans for remaining loyal.”
Watch the video for “Wrong Hands,” from the new With Love album
“Oh What a Night” is another standout, with sax by Dave McMurray and some muted cowbell. And “Too Damned Slow” features more saxophone, a bit like Jerry Harden’s work on Iggy Pop’s Kill City. “The Artist” features lyrics borrowed from a poem by Mitch’s wife, Megan.
“My wife writes poetry and one day I was reading her book of poems,” Ryder says. “It wasn’t like I didn’t have anything else to do, but I was searching for material. I was a little bit short on the number they needed, so I was looking and I found that poem. I went to my wife and said, ‘Can I enhance this and change it a little bit and use it and I’ll share the writer’s credits with you?’ She said yes, and so it became a song about how art interplays and connects with an artist. Once you’re declared an artist, that’s a heavy burden because you have to, in the minds of the public, do something just as great as your original breakthrough.”
While realistic about its commercial prospects as an album by an octogenarian rocker, Ryder hopes this will be the album that reconnects him with his American fans. “I wish it didn’t have to be that,” he says, sighing, “and on top of that, it’s on a German label [that] only has so much support in America. Yet we’ve done tons and tons of interviews and many of them with American writers. Forbes did a spread on me too, which was great.”
He adds: “It’s been difficult trying to bust back into the American market. Nobody was eager to sign me. And as each year passed, I got older and older and in terms of work, it’s difficult. I think maybe this year I have three dates in America, which is a shame.
“The ‘legend market’—all those guys who are still walking and breathing from my generation—if they’re not dead yet, they’re in the same condition I’m in,” Ryder says. “They’re disabled in one form or another. And the ones who are healthy don’t have anything new coming out, or they’re not even thinking about working on product. I specifically wanted to do something new and that’s why I took on the challenge of recording these songs. The plan now is to tour Europe this spring and then take a rest and record another album in Europe next year.”
In addition, Ryder appeared in three videos (“Let’s Have a Party,” “Something Happened” and “Just Getting Started”) by L.A. singer-songwriter Trevor McShane. McShane is the alter ego of Ryder’s attorney, Neville Johnson. Johnson and his wife, Cindy, operate indie book publisher Cool Titles, which published Ryder’s memoir, Devils & Blue Dresses. In that volume, he is candid about his frustrations with Crewe, and reveals many personal sides of himself, including his bisexuality.
In conclusion, Ryder takes a moment to extol Don Was for his devotion to the project. “It was really fulfilling because I believe Don really cares about my career,” he says, “and I think he did an extra push on this one. He worked closely with the sound guy and they did a really excellent job of mixing.”
Ryder pauses for a moment and considers his mortality amidst his advancing age. “If something very bad happened to me, the new album would suffice as a worthy swan song, if you will,” he says. “Of course I hope it isn’t. But, I do feel that it’s that worthy an album.”
[Ryder’s new album and many of his collections, are available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here. His book, Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend, is available here.]
Watch the video for “Lilli May,” from Ryder’s new With Love album
Watch: One more classic, the 1966 smash “Devil With a Blue Dress On”
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