Edgar Winter Group – ‘Frankenstein’
- Writers: Edgar Winter
- Producers: Rick Derringer
- Recorded: Late 1972
- Released: 1973
- Players:
Edgar Winter — guitar
Ronnie Montrose — guitar
Chuck Ruff — drums
Dan Hartman — bass - Album: They Only Come Out At Night (Epic, 1972)
- Also On:
The Edgar Winter Collection (Rhino, 1986)
Edgar Winter & Rick Derringer Live In Japan (Capitol, 1990)
Not A Kid Anymore (Intersound, 1994)
The Best Of Edgar Winter (Epic/Legacy, 2002)
Live At The Galaxy (Classic Pictures, 2003) - The instrumental hit “Frankenstein” was actually first released as the b-side to another single, “Hangin’ Around.”
- Edgar Winter had worked up a piece of untitled music for his live shows that just kept getting longer and longer over the years, and originally he had no intention of recording it. The band was jamming on it in the studio one day with the tape machines recording, as usually happened, when they decided to see if they could make something from it.
- The title came as a joke from one of his bandmates when he saw that the tapes were spread out all around the room: “Back in those days, the only way to edit anything was by physically cutting the master tape and putting it back together with splicing tape. Chuck (Ruff), the drummer, said, ‘Wow, man! It’s like Frankenstein!’, drawing the analogy of an arm here, and a leg here, and pasting the thing back together. And I said, ‘Wow! That’s it!’ It has that lumbering, monster sound, so the monster was born.”
- An edited version of “Frankenstein” became a hit. It shot to Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and went platinum worldwide.
- The album They Only Come Out At Night peaked at Number Three on the Billboard 200 chart and has sold well over two million copies.
FAST FORWARD:
- The Edgar Winter Group broke up in 1976, after recording three albums.
- Guitarist Ronnie Montrose went on to form his own band Montrose, which featured Sammy Hagar on vocals.
- Bassist Dan Hartman‘s solo career included the 1984 hit “I Can Dream About You.” He died from a brain tumor in 1994.
- “Frankenstein” has been used as the theme music for a Buick commercial that stars golfer Tiger Woods.
- Winter has said he has two “Frankenstein”-themed projects in the works — a musical about an evil Dr. Frankenstein, which he hopes to stage in an off-Broadway theater, and a book called Frankenstein.
- Winter and Derringer continue their own solo careers as recording and touring artists, often working together.