Wicked Game: Michael Goldberg

On SF Punk Star Jimmy Wilsey

Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey is a new book by veteran music journalist Michael Goldberg about Jimmy Wilsey, the brilliant but troubled guitarist who was the “heart and soul” of one of San Francisco’s greatest punk bands, the Avengers, and who wrote and played the haunting intro and other guitar parts for the Chris Isaak hit “Wicked Game.” As even Isaak has acknowledged, Wilsey was key to that song becoming a top 10 hit that has been streamed over 350 million times.

Goldberg will be reading excerpts from his book, will answer questions about Jimmy Wilsey and what was involved in telling his story, and will sign copies of the book, which will be available at the Beat Museum.

As former Creem magazine writer/editor Robert Duncan wrote: “Here’s the story of an unsung genius that, in many ways, is the story of every working musician, a cautionary tale of crappy apartments and cool guitars, of untold temptations, abject surrender and the pawnshop at the beginning and end of the arc. It’s a story of youth, beauty and inspiration on the razor’s edge, of love and compulsion, solidarity and betrayal, of a quiet man who played loud. Of a dark song and darker fate. And of San Francisco in the era of the Mabuhay Gardens, $150 rent and Persian Brown. Michael Goldberg’s book about his friend Jimmy Wilsey will give you chills. Not since Ben Fong-Torres’s biography of Gram Parsons (one of Wilsey’s musical forebearers) has there been a more heartrending portrait of a rock star.”

Jimmy’s story is tragic. At one point he had a movie star girlfriend, was appearing on The Tonight Show, and touring the world with “Wicked Game” a hit in 10 countries, but he became a heroin addict and died homeless three years ago.

In addition to working at Rolling Stone for a decade as a Senior Writer and starting Addicted To Noise, the first online rock magazine, Goldberg wrote for New York Rocker, NME, Creem, Guitar Player, The San Francisco Chronicle, Musician, Downbeat, the Berkeley Barb, Esquire, New Times, In These Times, Trouser Press and elsewhere.

Goldberg is donating 25 percent of his royalties to Jimmy’s teenage son Waylon. The publisher is also donating a percentage to Waylon.

“Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey” is based on new and extensive interviews—with over 60 of Jimmy’s friends, family, musicians he played with and other acquaintances—conducted during the past three and a half years. Additionally, Goldberg had four hours of interviews he did with Jimmy himself in 1987 and 1991, access to a three hour interview Jimmy did in 2018, and over ten hours of interviews he did with Chris Isaak from 1982 into 1995.

The 414 page book contains over 150 photos and other images—photographers (some of SF’s best rock photographers) include the great avant-garde artist Bruce Conner, Blondie co-founder Chris Stein, Ruby Ray, Chester Simpson, Sue Brisk, Hugh Brown, Marcus Leatherdale, Michael Zagaris, James Stark and others. Flyers are by Avengers singer-songwriter Penelope Houston and Wilsey and others.

Join Michael Goldberg at the Beat Museum for an unforgettable evening.