Just ran across this, from Wednesday’s WSJ…
What drew me was the drawing with it. Who’s that supposed to be, I thought? Lou Reed? Leonard Cohen? But neither of those names fit with the headline, “Who Else Made More Hit Songs?”
The answer to the question, by the way, is “Nobody.” The Beatles had 20 No. 1 hits. Hal Blaine had 39.
Yes, Hal Blaine, of the Wrecking Crew, a group of 30 or so L.A.-area studio musicians — including Glen Campbell and Leon Russell (the Master of Space and Time) — whom the studios called when they didn’t want to waste money, and wanted to get it right on the first take. As the story says,
Many baby boomers still remember the outrage that followed a magazine’s revelation in 1967 that the Monkees didn’t play on all of their recordings. It turns out that neither did the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, the Byrds, the Association, Jan & Dean and dozens of other rock groups of the era. That honor belongs to Mr. Blaine and the Wrecking Crew…
If rock is about a beat, and a beat is about the drums, then the 82-year-old Mr. Blaine is arguably one of America’s greatest living rock musicians. Wednesday marks 50 years since he recorded his first No. 1 hit—Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Mr. Blaine went on to appear on 38 additional chart-toppers, including the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Mamas & the Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and the Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You.”
Now, I’m not particularly surprised to hear that studio professionals backed the Mamas & the Papas or Jan & Dean. You sort of assume that. And of course, you know that’s not just Paul Simon’s acoustic guitar you’re hearing on “Mrs. Robinson.”
But other things Mr. Blaine played on were more startling. For instance… the beat behind Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”
Take, for instance, “Be My Baby.” Go listen to it. Yeah, it’s all about the drums. And Hal Blaine was playing those drums. He claims that sound was an accident:
“The beat I used on the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ was actually a mistake,” Mr. Blaine said. “I was supposed to play more of a boom-chicky-boom beat, but my stick got stuck and it came out boom, boom-boom chick. I just made sure to make the same mistake every few bars.”
To come up with the right hit-making drum beat for each recording, Mr. Blaine insisted on hearing a group sing through a song first, often backed by just a piano. “A song is a story, and I wanted to hear how the lyrics were phrased and where the drama was,” he said. “Then I’d add a beat and sound that snapped.”
“Be My Baby.” Maybe the best pop song ever, the one that Martin Scorcese chose to lead off “Mean Streets,” which Gene Sculatti so rightly praised, in the awesome Catalog of Cool (one of my favorite books ever, regrettably out of print) as the “Best use of rock ‘n’ roll in a motion picture…”
It was all huge secret in those days, one no one had a motive to give away:
An unspoken pact kept Mr. Blaine and the Wrecking Crew a secret hit-making machine. “Teens wanted to believe that their idols on the TV and stage were the ones playing on the records, record companies didn’t want to spoil the party, and we wanted to keep earning,” Mr. Blaine said. “No one said a word.”
Some may be scandalized by this. Not me. I sort of like knowing that, as semi-talented one-hit wonders came and went, there was a cadre of professionals coming to work every day and getting the job done. I like the fact that, while the kids fronting them made the big bucks, this pros earned a living. And they really worked for it:
At his busiest, Mr. Blaine played on as many as seven studio sessions a day, moving effortlessly from the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” to Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” The story of the ’60s-rock studio scene has been documented in “The Wrecking Crew,” a newly completed film that is awaiting funding for song licensing. Its director is Denny Tedesco, son of Tommy Tedesco, the group’s late guitarist. “All that music was just notes on a page until these musicians gave them punch and excitement,” Denny Tedesco said.
Mr. Blaine played on about 5,000 songs, some of them being your favorite oldies. The stars were cool with it. Dennis Wilson didn’t mind that it was really Mr. Blaine playing “Little Deuce Coupe” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” As Mr. Blaine explained it:
I liked learning this. You may have already known about it, but I thought that it you didn’t, you’d enjoy learning it, too.
By the way, there’s a film called “The Wrecking Crew” that’s finished but not yet commercially released. Because they haven’t come up with the money to pay the royalties on all those songs…
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If you haven’t seen “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” go rent it. Right. Now.
De gustibus….
Lots of people including me think Yesterday is a mighty fine pop song.
My personal favorite is Cast Your Fate to the Wind, by Vince Guaraldi, but that was before your time, I guess.
Let’s hear it for the unheralded session musicians indeed. I echo Burl’s comment about that movie. Also in this category would be some of those session players from Muscle Shoals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muscle_Shoals_Rhythm_Section