Documentary Review: The Origins of American Rock Music Put Under a Loving Microscope in “The Wrecking Crew!” (Denny Tedesco, 2014)
David Shasha
Documentary Review: The Origins of American Rock Music Put Under a Loving Microscope in “The Wrecking Crew!” (Denny Tedesco, 2014)
Back in 2002 we finally received a full-blown tribute to a very important group of musicians in the documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown”:
http://www.standingintheshadowsofmotown.com/
Among the studio musicians who once played for Motown are three figures, Tommy Tedesco, Earl Palmer, and Carol Kaye, who are prominently featured in Denny Tedesco’s excellent new documentary on the very complex world of Los Angeles session musicians called “The Wrecking Crew!”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funk_Brothers#Los_Angeles_musicians
Tedesco is the son of ace session guitarist Tommy Tedesco whose life and art are the inspiration for this trip back to the music world of the 1960s; a journey that is indeed much more complex than the Motown story, largely because the LA musicians did not record for one label or perfect a singular sound in just that way.
“The Wrecking Crew!” serves as an important companion piece to the documentary released by Brian Wilson at the time he finally issued his masterpiece “SMiLE” in its complete form back in 2004:
Along with the iconic Phil Spector, it was Brian Wilson who made legendary these studio musicians who have long remained anonymous to the general listening public. Their story is a fascinating one that brings back memories of a very complicated period in American music history; an era when Pop Standards and Jazz classicism were being transformed by the Rock and Roll revolution.
Tedesco’s brilliant documentary shows us just how a new generation of musicians created many of the most popular recordings of the era. From TV themes like Batman, Bonanza, Mission Impossible, Green Acres, and many others, to Hit records for Sonny and Cher, The Byrds, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Mamas and Papas, and others too numerous to mention, this group of musicians never had a specific, singular identity in the way that the Motown band called the Funk Brothers did. Their reach went far deeper into all sectors of the recording industry.
Here is a list of some of their handiwork:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrecking_Crew_(music)#Selected_recordings
When I was much younger, I can recall the 1970s mega-star John Denver introducing the members of his stage band on his 1975 concert album “An Evening with John Denver,” and the longest and most gushing tribute was for someone I had never heard of before: Hal Blaine.
When I finally started to learn something about music, I discovered that Blaine was part of the fabled Phil Spector “Wall of Sound” which he discusses in this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ov3ZcJ9UbU
Entering the magical and crazy world of Phil Spector first allowed me to connect that studio wizardry to both Glen Campbell, whose weekly TV show on CBS I had watched religiously in the 1960s, and to one of my most treasured heroes Brian Wilson; both of whom were deeply involved in The Wrecking Crew universe.
Tedesco has many different stories to tell in his excellent movie: there are the personal stories, sometimes heartbreaking, of the principals who were gathered together around a table where they freely reminisce and discuss their work and personal experiences. And there is a seemingly endless amount of detail presented on how the recording process functioned and what the music scene in LA was like in the 1960s.
It is truly hard to fathom just how much these musicians actually worked and how many records they played on. The number is truly mind-boggling.
And while there were masterpieces like Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” there were also mediocrities like Gary and the Playboys and Wayne Newton, and much later on the Captain and Tennille. To be fair, the musicians did not write the songs and were not part of the production team whose artistic vision would be stamped on the recordings.
No, these musicians were brought into the process in order to fulfill the artistic vision of the writers and producers who would ultimately be associated with the records in question.
The players would add their expert touches to classics like Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” as well as Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking.” Many of the signature moments on those records were played by members of The Wrecking Crew.
Beyond the macro element of the musical vision, there were the actual micro details that made the records sound the way we remember them. It is a very difficult process to explain; largely because of the way that Rock music would be transformed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
And here another memory of The Wrecking Crew era came back to mind as I was watching the movie: When I was young I was a devoted fan of The Monkees TV program and eventually came to learn about the controversy – initiated by the group itself – that involved who was playing on their records. Tedesco recounts the contentious episode through interviews with Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz. The Monkees were an invention made specifically for TV, and their music was overseen by industry professional Don Kirschner who picked the songs and set up the recording process.
As the 1960s moved to its intensely contentious end, musicians began to see themselves as elite purist auteurs who controlled their entire artistic process. The idea that seasoned professional musicians would be “subbing” for them on their records was seen by that point as a form of artistic heresy.
And yet many groups in the 1960s Golden Age of Pop used The Wrecking Crew to excellent effect, but these great musicians were never given written credit on album covers and liner notes.
In the movie we hear the words “Milli Vanilli” a number of times; a code term for records produced without the actual “stars” who appear on album covers and liner notes being involved in the recording process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli#Media_backlash
So too did we once have in the 1960s professional studio musicians performing in the place of the actual band members whose faces adorned their album covers.
In this process it is critical to understand the central role played by three men whose importance to this music culture is profound: Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, and Jimmy Webb.
Spector’s role in Rock history is assured, in spite of his criminal record. The classic singles he produced on his Philles label remain central to the Rock music tradition.
There was the extraordinary one-two punch of The Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” and The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”; both released mere months apart in 1963, which set the music industry on fire. The latter song is praised in the movie by Brian Wilson, who when asked his reaction on first hearing the song said: “I was in my car and when it came on the radio and I had to pull over to the side of the road until it was over!”
And then we got the Righteous Brothers’ indescribable epics “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling’” (1964) and “Unchained Melody” (1965) which sought to climb the proverbial ladder all the way to heaven. The two men hit notes that many of us never knew existed!
Spector’s most spectacular epic was Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High,” a commercial failure when it was initially released. The recording was to that point in music history one of the most expensive and complicated singles ever made, and sought nothing less than to move the earth’s core, so fierce is its cacophony of sound(s). It remains his last great production.
Spector vigorously supplanted the Doo-Wop and standard Teen Pop sound with new levels of artistic brilliance marked by a sophisticated production style dubbed “The Wall of Sound” because of the phalanx of instruments – often multiples of the same instruments – that were used to create a uniquely orchestral sound that was innovatively deployed to suit the emerging Rock sensibility.
His influence has been unparalleled. Many producers sought to imitate his sound and chase the dominant commercial success that he enjoyed in that era.
It was Brian Wilson who most successfully built on the Spector sound, and took the joyously exuberant, but still somewhat facile Surf music of his Beach Boys and, along with many of Spector’s former musicians, soon reached extraordinary new heights in Pop music.
When The Beach Boys released their landmark “Pet Sounds” in 1965 the music world had heard for probably the first time a complete album of songs that fully transcended the Hit Single formula and aspired to something more akin to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and other long-form compositions that sought both duration and musical complexity.
Like Spector, Brian Wilson continued to use the basic three-minute format but invested it with an aesthetic grandeur that demanded the expertise of the many members of The Wrecking Crew who were able to elevate the Pop songs to a rarefied level. These were compact and concentrated symphonies whose every note was informed by a cornucopia of complexity.
Building on the sophistication that can first be heard in the stunning opening to “California Girls” released just a year earlier, with the fully realized “Pet Sounds” Wilson now scaled the highest registers of musical erudition and artistic creativity while working on a much bigger canvas.
I have written about “SMiLE” before, so suffice it to say here that it remains one of the most complex and invigorating song-cycles in Rock history. The project seeks nothing less than to recount American history in startling new conceptual terms, while at the same time reproducing many diverse musical styles and traditions in a way that reflect the dense narrative strategies of lyricist Van Dyke Parks.
Wilson inspired his younger rivals The Beatles to move into the album song-cycle format where they produced masterpieces like “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver”; culminating – and ultimately overreaching – with their “Sgt. Pepper” album in 1967.
The music world was changing dramatically, and it was the infusion of professional musicians such as The Wrecking Crew that allowed the revolutionary artistic sensibilities of these visionary producers and writers to find their full flowering.
Glen Campbell, once a proud member of The Wrecking Crew, and a temporary member of The Beach Boys touring band in the wake of Brian Wilson’s “retirement” from the stage, eventually emerged as a solo artist whose best material came from a young songwriter named Jimmy Webb.
I have already discussed the Webb legacy at length in the following concert review:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bW3hVnSJVwV3WpBJ8IXQBwZ5JKfG7JwpR2hgn5GL-OY/edit
Campbell aimed to bring this top-flight musicianship into full public view as he achieved success both on the Billboard charts as well as in TV and movies. His partnership with Webb was akin to Burt Bacharach’s with Dionne Warwick, and brought a new intelligence and sophistication to American music in the Rock era.
Informing these brilliant artistic collaborations from Spector to Wilson to Campbell was the expert playing of The Wrecking Crew.
In the course of his documentary Tedesco shows us just how fertile and harried this world actually was. As in most cases of such intense creative ferment, those involved did not have much time to mull over their Art as they were frenziedly jumping from session to session; bringing their trademark skills to each song they performed.
“The Wrecking Crew!” looks at a lost era in Rock music history when the craft of music superseded glamour and image. A musician like Tommy Tedesco, shown in the movie giving tutorials in the 1980s to music students, created signature guitar pieces that we have heard thousands of times – just think of the theme to Bonanza, but was lost to history because his name never appeared on the album credits. The entertainment industry made use of these brilliant musicians, but forced them to remain in the background, without any formal acknowledgement.
While watching the movie, as I mentioned earlier, I did in fact recall John Denver gushing in his praise of Hal Blaine, something that I noted at the time, but did not fully understand until many years later.
As we saw in “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” these brilliant musicians were great artists in their own right, in spite of how the industry treated them and how they saw themselves.
In this sense I believe that the reinvention and intervention of Brian Wilson has been a critical part of the reclamation process. In the “SMiLE” documentary we see the importance of the session players and of The Wrecking Crew specifically. While working with his new band The Wondermints, who have been so critical to resurrecting his music, Wilson invited Wrecking Group stalwart Carol Kaye to the studio to watch the album actually get completed.
One of the key tracks in the Wilson pantheon is “Good Vibrations” which achieved great commercial success at the time, but was not followed by the full “SMiLE” project as he envisioned it. The verbal exchanges between Wilson and Kaye, the woman who played most of the original bass-lines on the aborted 1966 album, are truly precious. Their back and forth provides the foundation upon which we can better process what Tedesco has accomplished in his wonderful movie, which prominently features Wilson who waxes eloquently on The Wrecking Crew and its centrality in his own musical creativity and artistic development.
It is all about the freedom of these artists to express their personal stories and their memories of the music in a way that is not beholden to the industry publicity machine; the artists are able to communicate “shop talk” in a direct, unmediated way that eliminates the commercial pressures and the facile show-biz hype factory.
So many years later we are able to see these great artists, now given names and faces, who were equally responsible for making critically important contributions to our American culture as the well-known stars.
Denny Tedesco has given us a vital and moving tribute not only to his father, but has uncovered – or recovered – a musical era whose specifics have largely been invisible to us.
“The Wrecking Crew!” like “In the Shadows of Motown” gives the viewer a precious opportunity to not only savor this Golden Age of American Music, but to see how the product was actually made, what the contribution of these often nameless musicians really was, and why remembering their names is so vitally important.
Names, places, and information whiz by frantically over the course of the movie, so it is important for the viewer to calmly step back and see the larger picture of the era and why this music is so central to our artistic heritage.
When we properly understand the elevated place of an album like “Pet Sounds,” or the brilliant collaborations of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb, the acrid memories of the controversies over The Monkees and the often tedious demands of “authenticity” from the Hippie generation and Counterculture begin to justifiably fade away into oblivion.
What is “authenticity” anyway?
As we have seen in the case of Brian Wilson’s own reclamations of his artistic past, so too does the wondrous plethora of detail provided by Tedesco in “The Wrecking Crew!” give the devotee of this great music the opportunity to re-insert the names and faces of the previously unknown musicians to our consciousness.
These musicians were not some automatons who bowed to the will of a malignant corporate industry – as is so often the case today – but living and breathing human beings whose technical virtuosity was always vital, never sterile, and made their signature moments as artists on all of these memorable recordings.
Due to the success of Tedesco’s loving tribute to his late father we are now enriched in the cultural sense, as we can completely fill out the picture of great artistic productions like “Pet Sounds” and fully appreciate the many talented collaborators who gave so much of their own artistic genius to our culture.
For more information on the movie and to purchase copies of the DVD
I have been in contact with Denny Tedesco who is offering a 20% discount on all purchases from the Wrecking Crew website store:
http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com/
The DVD contains an additional six hours of bonus material featuring individuals who did not make it into the final cut of the movie.
To receive the 20% discount please use the code WRECKIE DVD when placing your order.
David Shasha