Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters mentioned in this story. They all belong to Tom Hanks and the rest of the writing team that created That Thing You Do, the 1996 film about a garage band that makes it big (temporarily) in the early 1960s. It’s one of my favourite movies and one of those films that you can just rewatch over and over again. A while back, I got to wondering…what happened to the characters after the events of the movie are over. Much like American Graffiti and Animal House, there is a brief “Where are they now?” section at the end of the film, but I wanted to flesh things out a little more. I decided to write it as a magazine article published about 25 years after the events of the film and written by the son of the two super-fans of the band.
Wonder What Happened to the Wonders? Well, Wonder No More
Originally published in the Special “One Hit Wonders” issue of Arrangements Magazine, September 1, 1989
By Sean Tomkins Jr., Staff Writer
I can say with all honesty that if it wasn’t for “That Thing You Do” by the Wonders, I might not exist. It’s a story I’ve heard a million times and I (literally) heard this song at least once a day every day growing up until I went off to college a few years ago.
Some kids’ parents, those a half-dozen years younger or so than me, had tales of traveling hundreds of miles and sitting in the mud for three days to watch Jimi Hendrix close out Woodstock. Me, I had to settle for how my folks traveled to a pizza parlour by the airport in Erie, Pennsylvania, to hear four local guys play the same song over and over again in the spring of 1964.
“We simultaneously became the first super-fans of the Wonders. I was telling my parents I was studying at a friend’s house but instead I was sneaking away to Villapiano’s (the pizzeria where the Wonders began playing and where they were discovered). I kept seeing this tall, skinny boy who was as into the Wonders as I was. He pulled me onto the dance floor one night. I wasn’t too sure about it at first but his enthusiasm for the band matched mine and we started dating, and then we got married and along came you,” my mom, Chrissy, recalls. (The last part is the official story. She neglects to recall I almost came along BEFORE they got married.)
My Dad, Sean Sr., remembers it a bit differently. “I was the original Wonders super-fan. I saw them at the Mercyhurst College Talent Show. I was there to cheer on Phi Kappa Epsilon’s Legends of Brass, because a couple of the guys on my floor in the dorm were in the band. But when I saw the Wonders, or the Oneders, as they were called back then, I was just like ‘These guys are wicked!’ and just wanted to listen to That Thing You Do over and over again. I was at Villapiano’s every night when I saw they had put out a record, I bought three copies.”
Oh yes, the famous 45 of “That Thing You Do.” Of the three, my dad says he lost one when my mother, his future wife, screamed in his ear at the end of one Villapiano’s performance by the Wonders. “That’s when I knew there was someone else out there who might love the Wonders almost as much as I did,” my dad says. The second 45 was the one they played so many times they literally wore it out. The third was placed in a shadow box with a photo of the couple, taken shortly after they started dating.
Oh, Mom and Dad, to quote the song that brought you together, “you don’t mean to be cruel. You never even knew about the heartache I’ve been going through.” I suppose even the Woodstock-era kids got tired of listening to how Jimi played the Star-Spangled Banner when they heard it for the five thousandth time. But when the staff at Arrangements Magazine was told we were putting together a special issue about one-hit wonders, I already knew which band I wanted to track down.
“The Wonders were never supposed to be a one-hit wonder. I was working on songs every spare moment I had. But the Powers-That-Be at Play-Tone (the label that eventually released “That Thing You Do” to a national audience) kept detouring us, sending us off to promote the same song that was already a hit. We were off filming some beach movie (1964’s “Weekend at Party Pier,” the third installment of the Rick and Anita series) when we should have been in the studio recording an album,” says James Mattingly II, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the Wonders and co-writer of That Thing You Do, from his office in Los Angeles. By the time the band did enter a recording studio, half of the Wonders were missing, and Mattingly quit in frustration.
Mattingly was bitter about the turn of events (“Yeah, I was a bit of a dick!”) but reconciled with Play-Tone in 1966 to record with a new band, Jimmy and the Heardsman. The new project, which Mattingly says, “righted a lot of wrongs that I’d gone through with the Wonders,” and netted the band three gold records, including their number one smash “She Knows It.”
“I got restless,” Mattingly admits. While he was happy to finally be recording the songs that he had been working on for so many years, watching the recording process made Mattingly want to be more involved. In 1974, after the release of the Heardsman’s fifth album, “Your Heart Is All I Have,” Mattingly went from being the singer/songwriter for the band to the producer for their Greatest Hits Album. He would go on to produce Maybelline Martin, Danny Tartington, the Cold 45s, the 33 and a Thirds, and the late Scott Pell’s solo album.
Working with Scott Pell was very ironic for Mattingly. “Wolfman,” as Pell was known, filled in for the Wonders’ original bass player, T.B. Player, during the band’s ill-fated appearance on The Hollywood Television Showcase in 1964. What’s even more ironic, the session drummer on the album was the Wonders’ own Guy “Shades” Patterson.
When asked if it was uncomfortable working with his former bandmates, Mattingly shrugs and says, “Not really, but then again, I also produced Diane Dane’s ‘Farewell to Love’ album.” Dane and Mattingly had been married for nearly six years but divorced two years before recording the album began.
“Imagine sitting in a recording studio listening to your ex-wife record songs about how she’s been so wronged by the men in her life that she’s given up on love,” Mattingly says.
As for working with Pell and Patterson, “I had seen a lot of Jimmy Mattingly’s come through the door at Play-Tone by that point. It caused me to look in the mirror…a lot! There was a period in the late 1970s where every time I met up with a former bandmate, or studio musician or old friends from back in Erie, I was having to make these rather lengthy apologies for just being such a jerk.”
Pell’s solo album “Who? Me?” featured Pell covering many of the Play-Tone songs he had worked on during his fifteen-year career as a session musician, as well as several original, blues-based tunes he collaborated with other musicians on.
“Scott hadn’t really wanted to tour because most of the bands he would have put together would have been his studio musician friends and he knew they’d be hesitant to leave the studio in the lurch should they be needed,” Amos White, President of Play-Tone (and ironically the Wonders’ former manager) remembers. Instead, Play-Tone organized “listening parties” at clubs and record stores around the United States where local music fans could come and listen to the album, meet Pell and then purchase their own copy.
Tragically, it was enroute to such a listening party in Corpus Christi, Texas on July 15, 1979, that Scott Pell was killed when the plane he was traveling in lost power and crashed, just a half-dozen miles from the local airport.
“Scott Pell was one of those dependable guys that you could always count on. You need someone to fill in on a track tomorrow afternoon, call Scott Pell and he’ll be there. You need a bass player to show up and perform at a moment’s notice, Scott Pell was your guy. At the same time, I think he had some creative juices that had flowed during his time as a session musician. I think he saw bands and singers who were less talented than he was and thought ‘I could write a better song than this’ and decided to go for it. I think if he had lived, he would have had a splendid career in his own right,” says White.
White, who retired from Play-Tone in 1986, was the stereotypical “from the mailroom to the boardroom” success story at Play-Tone. After coming home from the war in the Pacific in 1945, White (or USMC PFC White as he was known) decided to stage a series of talent shows in his hometown of Lebanon, Illinois.
“I had watched the USO bands before we shipped out to Okinawa and just saw how happy the boys were. I thought ‘If I survive this thing, I want to bring music to people.’ The talent shows were a way to find some local bands which I had hoped I could then start booking for shows in the area,” White recalls.
While the initial talent shows failed to yield much in the way of talent (“a bunch of my Marine buddies called themselves the Jugband Jarheads and signed up as a joke”), one of them did attract the attention of Sol Siler, who was headed to Los Angeles to start a recording company.
Siler watched the show and while he passed on signing any of the acts, he did enlist White to be the first talent scout for the company that became Play-Tone Records. For White, this was the opportunity to bring music to people he had been looking for. The fact that Siler was a former Marine Corps pilot helped endear his new boss to White.
White began staging talent shows in larger cities in Illinois and eventually the Midwest, sending the winners and top acts to Siler in Los Angeles. Eventually, he stopped booking shows and started attending them instead. “I realized that it was easier to sit in the audience and just approach the winning bands after the show. There was still a lot of legwork involved but at least I wasn’t worrying about the financial end of the shows,” White says now with a laugh.
Throughout the 1950s, as big band, jazz and blues gave way to rock and roll, Play-Tone was able to roll with the changes and became successful. Times were good for the label and for the two men who had been there since the beginning.
“I was being a good soldier, doing what I was told to do, and assuming that I was being appreciated. The money was good, I was listening to a lot of great music and helping a lot of young musicians work towards stardom,” White remembers.
But at the 1960s began, so too did White’s disillusionment with Siler. Siler was becoming richer and richer but treating Play-Tone like it was just a launching point for being able to hobnob with the rich and famous of the L.A. entertainment scene.
At the same time, White couldn’t help but notice that most of the label’s biggest acts, Freddy Fredrickson, The Chantrellines, Diane Dane, the Wonders, the Corsairs, and the Vicksburgs, were ones he had scouted.
When Siler gave White a dressing down over the demise of the Wonders, the latter handed in his resignation. White’s initial plan was to start his own label but almost immediately, Siler changed his tune and begged White to reconsider.
“I did, of course … but I made him sweat a little. It seemed with every phone call the offer got a little bit better,” says White. Siler made White his right-hand man, Vice-President of Talent Acquisition, with an office on the top floor of the Play-Tone offices.
“I loved it. I still got to see some of the best young acts in the country, without having to travel a thousand miles a week to see three teenagers play Louie Louie – badly, I might add – in a high school gym,” says White.
In 1975, Siler suffered a heart attack and decided he’d had enough of the day-to-day operations at Play-Tone. It hadn’t helped matters that he was becoming disenchanted with the music industry. “When I started Play-tone, I could put on one of our bands’ albums at a dinner party and it was mood music. Now, it’s just *$#*% noise, people yelling, all this weird feedback and ‘heavy metal thunder’ they call it. It sounds like someone puking through an amplifier. Utter garbage. They say rock is dead and it sounds like they recorded its murder and put it out as a single,” Siler famously said in his farewell address to the Play-Tone employees.
White was named President of Play-Tone Records and took over at a very precarious time. Siler had refused to even consider punk or disco acts, preferring to simply release “Greatest Hits” albums for acts from the label’s “glory days” of the late 50s and early 60s. At the same time, he had alienated a lot of people in the industry, especially artists and the media, meaning what few records Play-Tone was releasing were getting no buzz from the press.
“Play-Tone was, quite frankly, almost broke. In the early 1970s, no one was into the nostalgia. They wanted to hear Led Zeppelin and the Bee Gees and Donna Summer, not Freddy Fredrickson or, I dare say, the Wonders,” says White.
White, by his own admission, would never listen to the Sex Pistols or the Clash, but knew the kids – the target audience for most popular music – would. “I may not get a lot of what the kids are listening to, but adults never do. I remember watching the Wonders on The Hollywood Television Showcase in 1964 and there were young women in the audience crying over the band, but the parents were just sitting there with these bemused looks on their faces. Parents are never – or maybe in rare instances – going to get popular music and Play-Tone isn’t supposed to be the Amos White playlist. It’s for the kids and if they enjoy it, then they’ll buy the records.”
As the 70s closed and the 80s began, Play-Tone’s resurgence began as well, with White signing bands that would appeal to the youth of the day. Punk bands like the Spittoons, Raw Meat, and the Screechers entered Play-Tone Studios alongside disco acts like Donna Teller, Jilted Lovers, and Marvin and the Marvelous. And as rock and pop began a resurgence in the early 80s, Play-Tone signed Keyboard Lightning, Double J and Jenn Hates Everything.
“I remember coming back to the Play-Tone studio in the early 70s to do some promo work for ‘That Thing You Do’ for the Play-Tone Greatest Hits album and the place was depressing. You could just tell people did not want to be there,” remembers Guy “Shades” Patterson, the Wonders’ drummer. “But the difference between that and the atmosphere I found when I returned for Mr. White’s retirement was night and day. There was a real energy there. Everybody from the musicians to the administration staff were certainly sad to see him go but was really excited about where the label was at and where it was going. I think that speaks to just how much of a positive effect Mr. White had on the day-to-day operations.”
Patterson, it could be argued, was the main reason the band went from being the Oneders, a garage band in Erie, Pennsylvania, to the Wonders, who were, for one shining moment, about to become the next Beatles. It was Patterson who took the ballad of “That Thing You Do” and made it into a rock and roll dance tune that hundreds of thousands of American teenagers fell in love with.
When the dust cleared on the demise of the Wonders, Patterson was the last man standing, the only one who hadn’t disappeared on White and Play-Tone. It was that dedication to the band as well as his talent as a drummer that allowed Patterson to remain with the label as a session musician. It has been said that if you listen to a Play-Tone song released from 1964-1969, odds are the drummer you’re hearing is “Shades” Patterson.
“As much as I missed playing in a band in front of people, it was great to be able to come into the studio every day and get to work. I guess you could say I was able to get into a rhythm,” Paterson jokes.
Patterson also explains that working with a wide range of artists and musical genres allowed him to grow as a musician. “Music went through this wild transition from bubble-gum pop to rock and roll to psychedelia. At the same time, I worked with Del Paxton and learned more about jazz and blues, so it was like going to music school and getting paid to do it. And I said that to Faye one day and, well…”
Ah yes, Faye Dolan-Patterson, the woman who was always just behind the curtain for the Wonders’ rise to momentary fame. While the backstage romantic politics for the Wonders may not have rivaled Fleetwood Mac, there was some behind-the-scenes relationship storylines that played themselves out.
When the story of the Wonders began, Dolan was Mattingly’s girlfriend of several years. As “That Thing You Do” rose up the charts, Mattingly became more and more distant to Dolan, falling in love with his fame and career rather than his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Dolan and Patterson began to connect, hanging out backstage and during off-times during their tour. “He became my best friend, my confidant and we both had huge crushes on each other,” she says now.
Patterson was single by the time the band got to California and Mattingly and Dolan split up at the exact moment the Wonders became no more. Dolan was set to return to Erie until she and Patterson expressed their feelings for each other.
Dolan remembers sitting in the hotel coffee shop thinking she was saying goodbye to Patterson. “It was so hard because the words I wanted to say were right there on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say them. And I looked at him and I knew he just wanted to say the same things but couldn’t. Then I got up to go to the bus stop and I just assumed that the moment had passed,” she recalls.
But Patterson caught up to her before she caught the bus, and they said the things they had wanted to say all along. A year later, they were married. They would raise four children, Ella, Nina, Louis, and Dell, while living in Venice, California.
As the 60s ended, so too did the Pattersons’ time in California. While Patterson was happy working for Play-Tone and loved playing music with the artists and groups that came into the studios, he admits he was looking for the next chapter. An off-hand remark by Patterson gave his wife an idea that would change their lives.
“It’s ironic because I said ‘wonderful’ to just having to learn one song in my audition for the Wonders and that’s how Faye got the idea for the name of the band. Five years later, I’m telling her how much I love learning about different styles of music as a session drummer and likened it to going to music school, and she says ‘There’s your next chapter! We open a music school!’ And she said it just like that. She had such confidence in the idea and our ability to pull it off, that I never, for one second, doubted that it wasn’t going to happen,” Patterson recalls.
It was on a family vacation to British Columbia a few months later that the next piece of the puzzle fell into place. “We were passing through Seattle and Louis said he wanted to see the Space Needle. As we were touring around, we noticed this island across the water called Bainbridge Island. We took the ferry across and just fell in love with it. All six of us and I just said ‘This is it! This is the place!” Dolan-Patterson says.
In 1969, Guy Patterson and Faye Dolan-Patterson opened the Puget Conservatory of Music. “We just dove in and started dreaming what we wanted the school to look like and then got to work on turning all these ideas into reality,” Patterson says. He admits there were some long days in the beginning but he says it never seemed like work.
“Guy and I were working together and the kids pitched in and they had fun. It was one big family project that turned out to be something really special,” Dolan-Patterson says.
Over the course of nearly two decades, over 250 students have graduated from the Conservatory, including Rachel Greenspan whose 1986 album “Carry Me Away and Back Again” was nominated for three Grammy Awards in the Jazz category.
Even now, Patterson does the bulk of the work in designing the curriculum, and still teaches such courses as Jazz Composition, but he has since brought on about a dozen former musicians to fill out the faculty list. Dolan-Patterson has the title of “Director of Student Affairs” which, she explains, “basically means I’m the guidance counselor.”
Patterson says she doesn’t give herself enough credit. “Faye has always known just what buttons to push to bring out the best in people. There are kids who start doubting themselves and she just sits them down, tells them what they need to hear and the next thing you know they’re inspired to write their opus or their Stairway to Heaven,” Patterson says.
While some may wonder what makes the Pacific Northwest the right place to open a musical conservatory, Dolan-Patterson has no such doubts.
“I think Washington and the Seattle area is this great untapped market for musical talent. I’m seeing a lot of our students and even just bands in the area who aren’t afraid to start looking at different ways to express themselves musically. They’re not looking towards fitting themselves into the same labels that the music industry has created. Over the next few years, I think the world is going to start hearing from this little corner of the world,” says Dolan-Patterson.
If the years have been kind to the Pattersons, some might say the same could not be said for Lenny Haise, the lead guitarist for the Wonders. After the band’s lone television appearance, Haise headed to Las Vegas with Michelle, who he had met while touring the Play-Tone studios. By morning, the two were married. Haise thought this was the “happily ever after” he had been seeking.
“We were miserable. We were great at flirting, but horrible at relationships,” Haise says now. It didn’t help that once he left the Wonders, he was basically an unemployed musician living in Las Vegas.
Three months after the two had left the altar, Michelle had left Haise, taking the family car and most of what little savings the pair had.
“I woke up one morning and she was gone. That was in 1964. Twenty-five years later and I haven’t seen her since,” Haise says.
After his parents wired him some money, Haise was set to head back to Erie when the bus he was on broke down in Laughlin, Nevada, about 90 miles south of Las Vegas. Taking it as a sign (“Although a sign of what, I don’t know.” says Haise), he rented the cheapest room at the Golden Eagle Hotel and Casino, a fancy name for a no-tell motel with a couple of slot machines, a liquor license, and a seemingly nonstop poker game in the lobby. When he could no longer afford to rent a room, owner Charlie Tucker took pity on the young man and told him he could stay on by cleaning the other rooms, restocking the vending and ice machines, and playing bartender on Friday and Saturday nights.
For over ten years, the arrangement worked well, even if Haise was never going to do much more than barely make ends meet. Meanwhile, he met and married Joanne (nee Hanks), a young student who was living in the Golden Eagle while she studied Architecture at the University of Las Vegas.
In 1976, Tucker passed away of liver cancer. Haise was shocked to learn that his former boss had willed him the Golden Eagle and his entire life savings.
“Before anyone expects me to be driving a Rolls Royce and traveling by private jet to my summer house, his life savings amounted to a couple of hundred bucks,” Haise says. “I did learn one thing, however. My business acumen was almost nil.”
By the end of the 1970s, Haise and the Golden Eagle were almost bankrupt, and he was divorced for the second time. “Thankfully Joanne at least had the decency to just take her own things and go,” Haise says.
Ironically, it was Haise’s background in music, and the Wonders in particular, that saved the hotel.
“In late 1979, I had this guest who recognized me and asked me if I still played. I had fiddled around on the guitar more as a hobby, something to do to relax. This guy tells me ‘Man, I’d love to hear you play ‘That Thing You Do,’ and that got me to thinking,” Haise recalls.
Within a year, Haise had built a stage in a rarely used corner of the parking lot and began hosting mini-concerts on Friday and Saturday nights. At first it was just Haise and a few friends playing old standards and some Wonders hits. But the concerts soon attracted the attention of some local and area artists who were looking for a place to perform. Last year, Haise estimates the concerts were drawing over 2,000 fans a weekend.
“The ticket sales are great, but I think we make more from people buying beers,” he explains.
Haise admits he still gets a thrill by playing “That Thing You Do” in front of a live crowd. However, that doesn’t mean that every Wonders-inspired idea has worked out for him. In 1985, he began working with a t-shirt creator in Las Vegas to turn a few old candid photos of the band into what he thought would be a great way to cash in on fans’ nostalgia for the Wonders.
The t-shirt creator took most of the income that the project brought in during the first couple of months to cover his costs. “I figured, okay, after a few months, we’ll start making a profit and it will work out,” Haise said.
Instead, Haise received a “Cease-and-Desist” letter from Play-Tone. “Apparently, Play-Tone figures they’re the only ones who can make money off the Wonders,” he says.
He shrugs it off and adds “Running the hotel is pretty much a 365-day-a-year gig but, you know, if Guy or Jimmy are looking for a comeback tour, I’m sure I could find someone to cover my shift.”
But with the passing of Scott Pell, a Wonders reunion may not be entirely complete. T.B. “Tobias” Player, being the original bass player for the Wonders was a great chapter in his life, but far from being the most important one.
“Due to the circumstances, the Wonders always felt very temporary to me. While Guy and Jimmy and Lenny were looking forward with the Wonders, I already had other things set for the future. I was already considering joining the Marines even before ‘That Thing You Do’ played on the radio for the first time. By the time we went to Pittsburgh and got signed by Play-Tone, I had already enlisted. We were just going in two different directions,” Player says.
This is not to say that Player doesn’t look back at his time with the band with fond memories.
“I appreciated it for what it was. Being on stage with the Wonders, playing in front of thousands of people, travelling all over the U.S., that was something I’ll never forget. We would come off stage and, this was the pre-psychedelic era, of course, but we had this buzz, this high from performing,” Player explains.
Player served two tours of duty in Vietnam and says, with all respect to the Wonders, he’d rather be remembered as a Marine than as a bass player.
“Once I signed up to be a Marine, I just felt different, more confident in myself. I had more pride in myself because I felt I was doing something with my life. Serving my country. I know there’s long been a backlash against Vietnam vets but my pride in my service has never faltered.”
After returning from his second tour and being wounded at the Siege of Khe Sanh, Player was looking for something different.
“I’d gone from having to rush to waiting cars to ‘escape’ adoring fans to being pinned down by enemy mortar fire,” Player recalls. “When I was contemplating what my next move was, after coming home, I remember thinking ‘I want to do something productive, something constructive, but ultimately something a little less exciting.’”
Player left the Marines with some tangible skills. During his time at Khe Sanh, he often volunteered to construct defensive emplacements and various buildings around the base. He found he enjoyed working with his hands and had learned some carpentry skills. After returning to the U.S., he went to work for his uncle who was a contractor.
“I worked for my uncle Louie in Chambersburg (Pennsylvania) for most of the remainder of the 1960s and into the 70s. In 1972 or so, he decided to move the business to Fort Lauderdale due to some health issues and move into semi-retirement. I went with him, ended up taking over the day-to-day operations and eventually bought him out,” Player says.
But while he may have left his days in the music business behind, a friend from those days showed up in his life. In 1979, a New Year’s Eve nostalgia show played in Fort Lauderdale. Among the acts was the Chantrellines. The Chantrellines and the Wonders briefly shared the bill on Play-Tone’s 1964 touring schedule. Even more briefly, Player and Chantrallines singer Darlene Dillinger were romantically involved.
The two reunited after the show in Fort Lauderdale and began dating. The two were married in 1982 and live in Orlando, Florida.
“I had never really stopped thinking about her, even when I went to Vietnam. We had left the tour so abruptly there was never a chance to say goodbye or get an address from her. I figured she would move on and meet someone else, and I’d never see her again. As it turns out, this ‘temporary’ gig of being in a band gave me a chance to meet my forever. Funny how life turns out,” Player says.
While he may spend more time using a hammer and nails, Player still has a Fender bass tucked away in the corner of his home office, much like Haise, continues to play from time to time. He insists, however, that “I’m not planning a comeback. It’s more of a hobby, something I can do with my hands when I’m bored or need to unwind at the end of the day.”
When one writes about the Beatles, they must include Pete Best, the drummer who was fired from the band (and replaced by Ringo Starr) just before the band became the worldwide sensations they became. Chad Ribisi, ironically also a drummer, wasn’t fired but he does refer to himself as “The Wonders’ Pete Best.” He suffered an injury to his arm just prior to the Wonders’ appearance at the Mercyhurst College Talent Show.
“The whole phenomenon of the Wonders took off from there. They won the contest, they got the gig, they cut a record, they went on tour. All of that happened because Guy started playing That Thing You Do as an up-tempo number,” Ribisi recalls. In remembering the talent show, he shrugs his shoulders and says, “If I’m sitting behind that drum kit that night, I’m probably playing the song just the way Jimmy wants it, and we probably don’t even win the contest.”
Many in Ribisi’s position might have become bitter while pondering the “What Ifs,” but the original drummer for the Wonders believes his life turned out better because of the broken arm.
Shortly after the accident, Ribisi took a job at, ironically enough, Guy Patterson’s family’s appliance store. It was there he met Guy’s sister, Rebecca. The two have been married since 1971 and have three children. Ribisi became manager of Patterson’s Appliances in 1976 when Ronald Patterson, Guy and Rebecca’s father, retired.
“I was at the Pattersons’ house when the Wonders played on TV. We were all really excited to see the band on TV. It never even occurred to me to be jealous or to think ‘That could have been me.” I was genuinely happy for the band, and I think even then, I knew that Guy was the one who got them to that point,” Ribisi says.
He admits his life would have been different if he had been the drummer for the Wonders when they became almost overnight sensations, but perhaps not for the better.
“I don’t know what I would be doing with my life if I had stayed with the band. I mean, they were huge but only for a very brief period, and that was 25 years ago. I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had. I never would have met Rebecca. I wouldn’t have three great kids and I wouldn’t have had the life here in Erie that I had. For all I know I might have floundered out in California, gotten into the whole drug scene, trying, and failing to recapture all that fame they had,” Ribisi explains.
He admits that running an appliance store and raising a family might not be as glamourous as being a rock star, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
As for the other Wonders, “I see Guy and Faye about once or twice a year at family functions and we catch up. That’s pretty much the extent of it. Not too many reasons for them to come back to Erie. I still do get the odd autograph request. I’m kind of a bit of trivia. Who was the original drummer for the Wonders?”
While each member of the band, and the people surrounding them as they began their brief meteoric rise to becoming “one-hit Wonders” has a different story to tell about the years since, each of them still reflects on the influence the song still has on their lives. I’m living proof (literally) of just how influential what might seem like an insignificant little pop song can be on the lives of so many. I guess the post-Wonders story of Guy Patterson, James Mattingly II, Faye Dolan-Patterson, and the rest just proves that you never know what the true impact might be of “That Thing You Do.”
johnmilner.ca 