Open Thread 08-03-21--The Wrecking Crew
I remember saying many times back in the 60s "Man, that band sure can play!" after hearing some hot rock and roll on the radio.
Then many decades later I find out that not all things are what they appear to be.
This story may surprise you, I know I was. It may shock you to find out who was really playing those instruments. You may even be a bit disappointed, but I think you'll find this very interesting to say the least.
The Wrecking Crew was a revolving group of studio musicians that played background on thousands of hit songs in the 60s and early 70s. They were the premier session musicians of their time which included future stars
Glen Campbell, Dr. John (Mac Rebennack) and Leon Russell, and for you music buffs; Larry Knechtel, Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, and Chuck Findley, to only name a few. They were all musicians musicians that filled the talent gap that so many acts lacked back then. The producers wanted the best sound they could muster and many of the acts of the time were lacking in that instrumental department.
They were dedicated to their music, playing long hours, making gobs of cash for the producers. They were masters at creating hooks that made so many of the hits back then shoot to no. 1 on the charts. The catchy bass lines, the melodies that burrow into your ear. These musicians were the back bone of 60s pop music.
They weren't well known, but man, these cats sure could play!
Around 2011 or so I was channel surfing and came upon a interesting program called The Wrecking Crew (Movie) on PBS. I was immediately pulled in and enjoyed the whole show. I was gobsmacked to learn the truth about the music of my youth. Those of you that know me from the Evening Blues when it was still at DKos may remember me crowing about it back then.
I found the movie on youtube. Here it is. It's an hour and forty one minutes long but if you're a lover of music I highly recommend that you watch it. You wont be disappointed. The whole Wrecking Crew story is told, from the genesis to the end, brought on by.....
The Wrecking Crew played on hits for the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Jan & Dean, The Monkees, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Mamas and Papas, Tijuana Brass, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Rivers and many, many more. The hit songs are too numerous to mention but the Wrecking Crew wikipedia page has all the info.
Just a few of the hits from over the years that The Wrecking Crew performed on:
Comments
Good morning folks...
I'm sitting in for CStMS today. She's been without internet for the last week so she asked me to scratch something together.
Hope all is well.
Here's another:
The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man
Good morning, JtC ~~
Good to see you this Tuesday morning. Ah, the songs of my youth. What memories they evoke.
Enjoy the day!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Good morning RA...
the music featured in today's OT was pretty much unavoidable for much of the 60s. I became more jaded in the late 60s'early 70s and listened to blues, bluegrass, southern rock and harder rock almost exclusively. Long hair and marijuana will do that to a person.
LOL ~
! I get that. I sang in a dance band in college, though, and these were the songs they danced to do they were in my repertoire. I did enjoy the film!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Good morning Johnny. Wonderful column and group of
musicians. Somewhere in the fine print I think I am listed as one of the hundreds of co-producers of that movie. It was a kickstarter project, and I stumbled across it because I was involved in some prior kickstarter thing. As a reward I got a 2 or 3 DVD set of outtakes from the movie, which I've never watched it its entirety but certainly shall now. Thanks tons.
Funny thing is that Denny Tedesco tried to make the movie available on You Tube once before, with a couple of hoops to jump through in order to watch it and You Tube pretty much shut it down. If you jumped through the hoops and tried to view it you got some unauthorized access bullshit. Maybe because the name "The Wrecking Crew" was, I later discovered, used for some late sixties spy farce starring some Hollywood types.
You didn't mention Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye. My memory isn't working yet this morning, but I believe this is Carol Kaye's Bass Line:
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Whoops, wrong song, but very likely her bass
on this too.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Carol Kaye is the
absolute best of the era, as was Hal Blaine- another very definite early influence of mine. What they didn't play was vastly more important than what they did: that should be a study for every musician. That self-editing is absolutely how chops become tasty chops. Anyway, it was fun to see a (completely inaccurate) portrayal of her show up in Mrs. Maisel.
The Wrecking Crew formed the foundation of many, many seminal albums, and were quite often called in when performers couldn't quite play their instruments well enough to make the producer's cut (or at all: looking at you, most of The Monkees!).
Here's another trivia contest winner for ya. Do you remember the short lived music/variety show from '65-66 on NBC called Hullabaloo? Their house band featured a lot of the Wrecking Crew at different times, but most prominently Glenn Campbell on guitar and Leon Russell on keys, always uncredited...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
The reason the Wrecking Crew fizzled out in the early 70s...
Band members learned how to play their own instruments well enough to please the producers.
I look back on so much of the "rock" stuff I liked
from the fifties on and how much of was done by these people and how about half of them had jazz backgrounds. It's wild.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning el...
wow, that had to have been awesome working om that project. What is involved in a "kickstarter" program? I bet those outtakes are great!
I was totally surprised that the movie was on youtube as well. A simple search brought it right up. There are ads throughout the movie, that may have some bearing on it's present inclusion.
If there was one aspect of the Crew's music that epitomized their success it would be the rhythm section, the bass and drums. Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye where just awesome in that respect. Yes, I was remiss in not mentioning them specifically.
Thanks mi amigo.
I didn't "work on it" in any way. The whole
Kickstarter thing comes down to telling yourself, hey that sounds like a cool thing and cutting a check. You are really just a money man, but a small one, It was a form of crowd sourced funding.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Some of the outtakes wound up in the finished
product, just in a more polished or otherwise better form, but a couple of really great ones are missing. One was about a session with somebody who kept asking for different guitars in terms of timbre and such, fender, hollow body, etc., etc., and Tedesco would say "got it" and bend down and fake rummaging around and then sit up and play it on his usual acoustic to the guy's complete satisfaction. The other was Cher talking about Leon Russell. He came late to a Phil Specter session all hung over, having held up the whole session for an hour so so and Phil started giving him a total dressing down about how about being on time and how about being professional and on and on and Leon finally stood up and said "and how about Fuck You Phil" and walked out.
Thanks for posting it, I finally got to see the whole thing.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Man...
I sure would like to view those outtake DVDs.
Now, we can start the *real* controversy,
which is: on just how many of the Beatles tracks did George Martin scrap Ringo's work and use Bernard Purdie's drumming to replace him? That is a good way to start a serious brawl among Beatlephiles and other musos.
If you ever get a chance to read it, Howard Massey's book "Behind the Glass" is a treasure: interviews with George Martin, Brian Wilson, Phil Ramone, Glyn Johns, and on and on... It is well worth the price for the interested student. It gave me the inspiration for my best-ever recording of a specific electric guitar sound we needed for a really angst-ridden track (a Fender Strat into a Fender Champ practice amp set to "stun", driving an Auratone speaker inside a clothes dryer, and then mic the dryer from outside...). No, it wasn't tumbling at the time, but the thought did cross my mind. It would have fit the tune perfectly, but the speaker wires would have disconnected.
On edit: that book was copyrighted 2000, so the inspiration for the angst session must have come much earlier, since we recorded that in 1986. Maybe an interview in Tape Op magazine. Details are sketchy: I slept since then...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
In my humble opinion...
the less Ringo the netter.
Behind the Glass sounds great, I'll look it up. Thanks.
Heh, I doubt even Hendrix thought of that one! What were you going for, a muffled cat screech? The tumbler would have rocked it, bigly!
It wasn't really muffled,
as such: we left the dryer door open a little. Overall, the band at the time sounded like what you would have ended up with if early Primus mated with late Gang Of Four: think "Jerry was a Racecar Driver" and "He'd Send In The Army" mashed together, with a soupçon of of Rubber Rodeo or Wall Of Voodoo for that spaghetti-western feel.
The song was entitled "Where Have All The Real Punks Gone?", and the lyrics went a little something like this:
It's a period piece. Guess you kinda hadda be there- but if you were into fringe clubbing in Boston in the early 80s, you might have heard this played live...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Drop by any time
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Thanks for the movie link...
I look forward to watching and learning the the wreaking crew background. May try the PBS link too.
Been a busy morning... Trade Day, car repair pick up, grocery shopping, road grading, and implement swap from box scrape to bushog. Will mow later. Always something, but doing is better than not for the most part. It is nice to see what you've done anyway.
Had been scheduled to play a dance in a couple of weeks but it was canceled. Still gathering with the old band tomorrow just to play rather than rehearse...much preferred in my book. My little local crowd has been getting together too. For years it was every Friday night, but these days it is afternoon sessions. The joys of aging.
Well, thanks for the OT, music, and history lesson!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good afternoon LO...
and you're welcome.
It's a good thing that you're busy, idle hands and all that.
I hope to get together with you soon to partake in some Old Timey goodness, after things settle down a bit.
Please do watch the movie, I think you'll love it.
I did and I did
Thanks again...lots of fun.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
“Asphalt Princess” hijack—false flag, fossil-fuel vessel edition?
“Gulf of
TonkinOman incident” in progress?https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/ship-hijacked-off-coast-of-united-a...
Ha ha — someone tweeted “Was the archduke on board?”
Did they find...
any Iranian passports yet, miraculously floating on the surface of the gulf? Or perhaps a discarded turban with Hassan Rouhani's name stitched on the inside?
Heh. The article mentions that 4 tankers reported
via their AIS trackers that they "were not in command ...blah, blah, blah". Strangely enough, somebody has been faking AIS signals for some time now, naturally the west wants to blame Russia, but is probably the perp and the incident referred to in your article is probably an example of them using it. Here's an article on the phantom ships and fleets generated by bogus AIS tracks:
https://www.wired.com/story/fake-warships-ais-signals-russia-crimea/
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Left-Green Berlin gov’t bans peaceful “Lateral Thinker” protests
and sends in the cops when people show up anyway. Repression of demonstrations with the usual Left-Right political polarities reversed.
https://kenfm.de/sommer-der-freiheit-wasserwerfer-und-pfefferspray-eskal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_COVID-19_policies_in_Germany
(Note how the Wikipedia article is slanted to portray the protesting segments of society in a negative light — making a mockery, as is the case regarding so many other political topics, of the website’s supposed “encyclopedic” principle of NPOV or neutral point-of-view.)
East Germans, of course, have seen this movie before. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Great sounds!
Great stuff JtC! The Wrecking Crew was the sound of our youth. I actually watched this a while back. It is great. They were awesome world-class musicians all. Leon and Glenn in a band together!?!? Even if it was just studio. There are some great Carol Kaye interviews on utube too, this little lady with a big ol' bass... The Beat Goes On was her bass line. I think it was Leon playing piano on Monster Mash LOL.
Then eastward at Muscle Shoals Studios, it was Booker T /MG's for the house band that was on everything just the like the Wrecking Crew at Warner out west. Which meant Donald Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper.
Hate to sound like an old man yelling at the clouds but geeezz it seems like they don't make music like they used to.
I read a piece not too long ago about an analysis of music composition. They showed how four song-writing duos write about 60% of the major hits the last 20 years and all fell in one of four basic patterns of composition. Add auto-tune, and it really does all sound alike.
Thanks for the topic! Great soundscape!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
If we don’t watch out, soon pop music will all be produced
by Big Tech corporate sociopaths, using AI, with a fake veneer of demographic diversity and fashion optics strictly for branding and marketing purposes.
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
And:
it appears organized shoplifting / organized looting on a large scale really is a thing nowadays, such that businesses have to react.
https://www.businessinsider.com/home-depot-fights-shoplifters-special-po...
@lotlizard Yeah, the 21st century
Yeah, the 21st century version of musack.
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Court rules AI can be an inventor—why not songwriter / composer?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/30/im-sorry-dave-im-afra...
Well, so far as a music/songwriter, AI sucks!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Right you are dysto...
on all counts.
Heh, I had already planned for my next OT to be on Muscle Shoals if I'm fingered to do so again. If I remember correctly there is a documentary out on that as well. Pretty sure I've seen it.
You know, about your last paragraph, I've long thought that that is exactly what happened to rock in the mid 70s, with the advent of disco. Rock became stale. A lack of form and the same lyrical structure over and over hurt the genre.
Thanks man.
right on JtC!
Yes you are right there is one, maybe a couple or few M.S. vids... It was ground zero east for soooo much music... I sure hope you get stuck with another one...
Duane! Thanks! I knew the wrecking crew because I read all the fine print as a kid, it was a thing to know who was on every cut we could find that out about... hard in those days but for album liner notes, Rolling Stone, etc.
Interesting when people ask me when it ended... of course it varies with who you were listening to or liked. I often say 65-75 was the golden explosion. After the first one with electric guitars from 55-65. Then that long hair and maryjane thang hit. I caught that myself.
Things really got different after about 75 and it was that damned disco virus. The Stones caught it and did Miss You. Though I like the long dance LP version released as a single (mine on hot pink vinyl - a Dutch pressing) with the long sax solo.
be well amigo!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
TIL (Today I learned) …
among many other tidbits of back-up musician history, that the Hollywood Argyles (who did the 1960 novelty song hit “Alley Oop”) were also a purely studio construction.
https://vancouversignaturesounds.com/hits/cholley-oop-by-hong-kong-white...