WICKED GAME

A biography offers a no-holds-barred look at a rock celebrity whose drug addiction led to homelessness and death.

James Calvin Wilsey may not be a household name, but he’s certainly well known in some circles. As a guitarist for Chris Isaak, he created a riff that not only helped make the song “Wicked Game” a hit, but also has gone down in history as one of the best rock song openings of all time. Yet Wilsey was a complicated man, and behind the scenes, he was dealing with a drug addiction that would ultimately lead him away from music and into a downward spiral. Music journalist Goldberg captures it all in this book, a gritty look at the guitarist’s success and ultimate downfall. Meticulously reported via hours of interviews with childhood friends, family members, fellow musicians, and the rocker himself, the volume paints a vivid portrait of all sides of Wilsey, a tormented soul who was revered by other performers. Though the author acknowledges a friendship with Wilsey, who died of organ failure at the age of 61 in 2018, Goldberg pulls no punches in his searing biography. And the author knows his subject matter. Consider his description of Silvertone, Isaak’s group that included Wilsey, as “a band that combined ’50s rockabilly with ’60s pop and ’80s punk nihilism—Elvis fronting the Beatles, only with the anxiety of Joy Division.” The book is filled with nuggets like that that show Goldberg’s knowledge of music history and Wilsey’s place in it. The author follows Wilsey from his Midwest childhood, when he became serious about both music and drugs in high school, to his move to San Francisco and his work with Isaak and beyond. There are intriguing characters, such as Winter Rosebudd Mullender, whom Wilsey married and had a child with before he returned to his heroin addiction. There are numerous works about musicians whose lives were lost to drugs, but this one resonates thanks to Goldberg’s thorough reporting. Wilsey becomes much more than the protagonist of a cautionary tale in these pages. He was a likable person and a brilliant musician tormented by drug demons, all of which the author manages to put into context while telling the story of a guitarist many readers probably have never heard of.

A wonderfully crafted and thoroughly researched look at a doomed musician.