‘The Wrestling Album’ at 30: The Inside Story of a Record That Started a Revolution

In the November 9, 1985 issue of Billboard magazine, alongside reviews of Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog, Robert Palmer’s Riptide and ZZ Top’s Afterburner, you’ll find a quick appraisal of The Wrestling Album, a 35-word critique that concludes thusly: “As singers, they’re pretty good wrestlers.”

Thirty years later, that’s still a pretty apt assessment. By almost any critical measure, The Wrestling Album is bad, though that’s largely beside the point – it’s a collection of songs being sung by professional wrestlers, after all. The bigger sin would be if this record were boring; if it somehow failed to capture the comic-book energy of a WWF where Hulkamaniacs and good-natured Hillbillies battled cheatin’ cowboys and masked marauders from “parts unknown,” or capitalize on the sheer WTF-ness that sprung from putting “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in a studio with the guy who wrote “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo.”

So, in terms of sheer entertainment, The Wrestling Album was a five-star success. And while it wasn’t a huge hit (it only made it to number 84 on the Billboard Top 200, and none of its three singles cracked the Top 100), it sold well enough to spawn a sequel – 1987’s Piledriver­ – and gave us cult classics like Hillbilly Jim’s “Don’t Go Messin’ With a Country Boy,” Junkyard Dog’s “Grab Them Cakes” and, of course, “Real American,” an honest-to-goodness patriotic anthem that was subsequently co-opted by the WWF’s biggest star, Hulk Hogan.

But perhaps most importantly, The Wrestling Album represents the moment when the business began to change. After taking over the WWF from his father, Vince McMahon embarked on a quest to drag pro wrestling out of the VFW halls and onto MTV, pairing stars of the day like Cyndi Lauper with Hulk Hogan and ushering in “The Rock ‘n’ Wrestling” Era. Within three years, the Hulkster made the cover of Sports Illustrated, 93,000 fans packed the Pontiac Silverdome for WrestleMania III and wrestling became “sports entertainment.” It’s never gone back, either.

To mark the 30th anniversary of an album that really, truly changed it all, Rolling Stone spoke with three men who helped shape it: Grammy-winning producer Rick Derringer, musician-turned-manager Jimmy Hart and former wrestler Hillbilly Jim. Here’s what they remember about an album that started as a joke – but became something else entirely. Even if it’s still pretty funny after all these years.

Jimmy Hart, wrestling manager/musician: I had done the music thing with the Gentrys. We had some hits, you know, but by this point, I had been managing Jerry Lawler for about six years, when one day I had the magic phone call from Hillbilly Jim, who told me “Look, I’m going to tell you something: Vince McMahon is having a show called WrestleMania – Howard Finkel saw your tapes from down in Memphis, they’ve been trying to reach you.” Because, every time I’d get a call from a 203 area code, I’d think it was one of the wrestlers playing a rib on me, so I never called it back. Anyway, Hillbilly said “Let me call the office to see if they still want you.” Twenty-five minutes later, Vince McMahon calls, then next day I was on a plane going to New York and the rest was history.

When I was up there for the first WrestleMania, I met Dave Wolff, Cyndi Lauper’s manager. And he said, “Look, after this, we’re thinking of cutting a wrestling album, and I know your background with the Gentrys. A good friend of mine is going to produce it – Rick Derringer. Would you be interested?” I had known Rick from a few little tours we’d done together; the Gentrys and his group, the McCoys, would do package tours. So obviously I said yes.