Which Wrecking Crew? by Bill Kay

The name Wrecking Crew is so attractively aggressive and edgy that it has been snaffled by many creative groups over the years, from a hip-hop band to a film production company and loads of others in between.
It therefore comes as a surprise those who are not pop music historians that the term was first applied to a group of people who could pass for the claims department of an insurance company. They were dubbed the Wrecking Crew by their drummer, Hal Blaine.
But this was not a headline band, rather a loosely organised group of session musicians in the 1950s, 1960s and even as late as the 1980s who for long periods dominated the recording business in Los Angeles. According to a new documentary film about them, made by the son of one of the leading lights, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, the name alluding to the way they were seen by their more conventional contemporaries, who saw this bunch of upstarts as breaking up the then cosy session-musician trade on the west coast.
Their 'crime' was to be young and ambitious at the time rock 'n' roll was coming in, and actually contributing to the development of that style. It didn't hurt that they were extremely professional, and as they worked together more frequently and got to know one another's skills, they could produce inch-perfect backing - in a day, if necessary - to whole albums of the biggest singers and groups of the period, from Frank and Nancy Sinatra to Sonny and Cher, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Righteous Brothers, Sam Cooke and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - a list that pins the Wrecking Crew firmly to a well-defined and now long-gone era.
It was a time when the music was new and the record companies only concerned about the product, not how it was made. So it was not regarded as important that a band couldn't play their music, as long as someone could. The result was a succession of highly produced and technically excellent songs - typified by the Phil Spector Wall of Sound - that were the final take of umpteen versions, often with ideas, riffs and twirls introduced by the Wrecking Crew. Carol Kaye, another guitarist, seems to have been particularly good at adding little segments that lifted a record and helped it become a hit - but were very difficult to reproduce on stage.
I watched the documentary last night in the open air at the California Plaza in downtown LA, as part of a series of free events called the Grand Performances. The arena, really the piazza of an office complex, was packed with plenty of regulars - seats were first come, first served, and many brought their own folding chairs along with cool boxes and picnic baskets to produce a lively atmosphere.
However, once the sun went down at about 8 pm - much earlier than the more northerly Britain - the temperature dropped and there was a chilly breeze that felt more like London than LA. Luckily I had a jacket, but I was reminded of a very different event - a classical concert in the main courtyard of Hampton Court - when I was extremely envious of those who had had the foresight to bring blankets. It didn't get quite that bad, but it was too close for comfort.
The documentary, which has taken 12 years to make, was introduced by Danny Tedesco and was clearly conceived as a tribute to his late father. It was therefore uncritical and portrayed the Wrecking Crew as a group of fundamentally good people who happened to be in the right place at the right time - and earned good money but never collected the huge royalties of the singers and bands they backed.
We learned a little about the difficulties of combining the irregular hours of a session musician with having a family, a familiar problem to most journalists. And it struck me that the Wrecking Crew had the mindset of newspaper sub-editors - talented people working largely beneath the surface, not making the megabucks (though enough in some cases to afford yachts and Rolls-Royces) but equally not taking the risks of being a headline act. One of the few who rose from the ranks was the singer Glen Campbell, parallelling the career of the rare sub-editor who becomes a by-lined writer. The gallows humour was very familiar to anyone who has worked in newspapers.
The Wrecking Crew era ended because groups and bands took over, and increasingly provided their own backing music. What the public didn't know, with the exception of the Monkees, was that as well as the solo singers few groups played their own music on their records and often mimed to their records in concert. Some couldn't play a note.
I had come across this phenomenon in Britain. John Allason, a Scot who had played with a band called the Marmalade in the 1960s, told me that the more successful Trogs couldn't play. Instead of miming to their records, however, they mimed to a live version of their songs played and sung by the Marmalade behind the stage curtain!

Bill Kay salutes the Queen

Clothing is one of the constant themes of life in LA - how casual to be, how formal is formal, and just what is appropriate on any given occasion.
At Edgar Bullington Snr's funeral on May 30, there was a mixture ranging from dark suit and black tie to jeans and t-shirt. No one was being disrespectful, it was just that in this part of the world, in the early 21st century, there are no rules and if there were many people would claim their right to flout such rules. In one sense dress is dismissed as unimportant, but in another it is vitally important.
Two occasions in the last few days brought this home to me. On Thursday, June 12, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held a celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of James Stewart.
It was a memorable occasion, consisting of extended clips from a dozen Stewart films spanning his 50-year movie career. It was by no means a formal occasion, thus giving maximum opportunity for self-expression - dangerous in this neck of the woods. I was seriously overdressed, wearing a jacket and collared shirt. Par for the course (well, I am watching the US Open) was fairly smart casual, the sort of gear a lot fo guys would wear to play golf at a moderately posh club.
Then there was the tubby old chap with the white beard, fat gut and skinny legs - sort of Colonel Sanders's uncle on a night off. On his head the almost obligatory baseball cap topped with a pair of sunglasses. Striped shirt, khaki shorts, blue socks and trainers completed the outfit.
Then, on Saturday, there were the very different sartorial temptations offered by the Queen Elizabeth II Grand Celebration Birthday Ball, a black-tie event at the California Club, one of LA's most exclusive venues. It's where the old money meets the old power.
The invitation said that military mess dress and medals were acceptable. Some vets wore a suspiciously large display of hardware, the sort that suggested the wearer had had a valiant civil war and had maintained a ferociously gallant battlefield career in every conflict since.
But the real curiosities were those Americans who chose to wear Scottish dress. A member of the British Consulate staff told me he had asked one of them exactly what connection he had with Scotland. 'He told me his family had come over from Scotland in 1600, which is a fairly tenuous link, don't you think?'
Then there was the black gentleman in full tartan rig, giving rise to irrelevant and totally tasteless cracks about his supposed links with the Black Watch regiment.
But the Golden Haggis Award for unlikeliest Scottish heritage was the extremely tall diner with a black goatee beard. He had gone to the extent of wearing a tartan sash as well as a kilt. Sadly they were different tartans which, as each tartan is a sign of clan membership - and no self-respecting Scot belongs to more than the clan of his or her birth - was a bit of a giveaway. I'm sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I didn't get the chance to find out what it was.
The evening itself was a dinner-dance reminiscent of the sort I used to attend with my parents as the Ladies' Nights of British masonic lodges - reception, piper to summon us to dinner, speeches, dancing, raffle, 'carriages' - time to go home. It all seemed so reminiscent of the 1960s.
Oddly, the pre-dinner champagne was included in the $175-a-head price of the ticket, but if you wanted water you had to pay extra.
The dinner was fine unless, like Lynne and me, you were vegetarian. Our entree was a plate of the vegetables that were being served to the meat and fish eaters - no attempt at a specially concocted dish. We had a careleslly arranged plate of boiled courgette, carrot and squash which, for the price, I thought indicated a lack of professionalism and even enthusiasm on the part of the kitchen.
It can be tough to be master of ceremonies at a dinner-dance. But with just ten words - 'I'm not going to continue until you focus on me' - the Master of Ceremonies, Bob Edmonds, reduced the diners to stunned silence.
the hundred or so guests were not being particularly noisy, let alone rowdy, and Edmonds had hardly lost control of his audience. In my opinion MCs should issue threats only in the most dire circumstances, for it risks souring the mood of an otherwise highly successful evening.
Unfortunately Edmonds persistently misjudged the occasion, speaking for too long several times, repeating himself and making irritating errors of fact, such as declaring 'We are now going to enjoy dinner': I don't particularly like being told I'm going to enjoy something, I'll make my own mind up about that, thanks.
He harped on about the 'significance' of the evening and how we were having a 'wonderful' dinner with 'wonderful' service, repeated so often that people were praying under their breath for him to hand the microphone to someone else. It became embarrassing.
The evening had begun with the Loyal Toast, but Edmonds left such a delay before the actual toast that several people were left standing for some minutes after taking the trouble to get up straight away. They were not the last to be caught unawares by wayward advice from the podium. At least one of the speakers was not called to the platform when he expected to be.
As we left the piper was recalled to the floor to give us a medley featuring such classics as 'Daisy, Daisy, I'm half-crazy.' By that time, so was I.