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Author
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Topic: The Wrecking Crew (2015)
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-15-2015 06:40 PM
A documentary: the lives, careers and recollections of Los Angeles session musicians that performed during the 1960s. At the IFC Cinema, New York City, in limited engagements nationwide and streaming on iTunes and Amazon.
*****
When the Monkees burst on the scene during the mid 1960s, they gained a certain notoriety when it was reported that they didn’t actually play their own instruments on any of their albums. But in point of fact, hardly any act in that era of California based pop music did. Very nearly every track on every album was played by the same group of twenty or thirty AFM session musicians that came to be called “The Wrecking Crew” in the same manner that Motown session players were called “The Funk Brothers”. Within a single week, they would be the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, or the Grass Roots, or the Union Gap or many other one-hit wonder bands, with only the group’s own vocalists singing. Apart from some piano from Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, one of the most influential records of the pop era and the inspiration for the Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper, featured not a single Beach Boy playing so much as a single note, it was all session guys. Other times, they played behind people like Frank Sinatra or the Righteous Brothers or one of the Phil Spector Wall-Of-Sound acts, or they would pick up TV work. For instance, the jangling guitar of the Bonanza theme was played by Wrecking Crew member Tommy Tedesco, the thudding bass line of the Mission: Impossible theme was played by Carol Kaye. Other members of the line-up usually included Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon or Earl Palmer on drums, Glen Campbell, Mike Deasy, Lyle Ritz and Al Casey on guitar, Larry Knechtel, Leon Russell or Don Randi on keys, and the great Plas Johnson on sax.
Tedeco’s son Danny has made a documentary about that era, featuring many of the musicians and producers. It was filmed many years ago (and was long delayed due to music clearance issues), and features members now deceased as well as an alive and healthy pre-stroke Dick Clark. The long filming to release delay reflects technically, almost the whole film is 16mm or 4:3 video sourced footage, but is very clean and watchable. Some of the stories these guys tell about how that era of music came together are fascinating, but they also speak of the resentment they got from band members who found out after arriving at the studio that they wouldn’t actually be playing on their own record (and who later learned that they didn’t have the chops to repeat the same instrumental licks when playing live). Recommended for all who enjoy that era of music.
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