Shamedown #5: The Wrecking Crew

Another Shamedown, and it’s the last day of May. Whoodathunk it, right? If anyone would like to know what this Shamedown business is all about, CinemaShame’s Announcement post can be found here. Past 2023 Shamedowns can be found here. Now, off we go…

Not to be confused with the 1968 film of the same name starring Dean Martin and the doomed Sharon Tate, The Wrecking Crew is an excellent 2008 documentary directed by Danny Tedesco, son of session guitarist Tommy Tedesco. While the name, Tommy Tedesco may not be familiar, his work absolutely will be, but we’ll get to that.

Session musicians are really the unsung heroes of the music industry. These folks are quick studies, they get the job done, the best ones can do any style, and they are an indispensable part of the recording process. Few studio players, however, are as notorious in the industry as the Wrecking Crew. These people worked out of Los Angeles and recorded with everyone from Elvis to the Beach Boys to Frank Sinatra to Glen Campbell.

The Wrecking Crew was never a formal group, and no one can even agree on the origins of the name or even the number of people in the group, but they were called The Wrecking Crew because they were all in demand. Some artists wouldn’t record unless these certain musicians were available, and that was touch and go. These musicians not only did studio work for these artists but toured with them as well.

Who were they? The film goes through each of them one by one, including footage of them playing their respective instruments, so there are a lot  of closeups of hands and instruments, and when they seem to be as close as possible, they get even closer. It’s like the “Rosebud” closeup from the beginning of Citizen Kane, only not all cryptic and no snow globes get smashed. Since there are too many stories to go into, we’ll just look at a few of the members.

Tommy Tedesco played guitar in the crew, and in addition to his numerous album credits, he racked up an impressive filmography with over two-hundred fifty films to his name; among them, the theme song from M*A*S*H*, as well as the first two Jaws movies, Dirty Dancing, and Paris When It Sizzles.

Another member is drummer Hal Blaine, who studied with Gene Krupa’s former teacher, Roy Knapp and started out playing in strip clubs. Blaine racked up numerous credits, playing with such prestigious names as the Mamas and the Papas (“California Dreaming”), Simon and Garfunkel (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”), and The Beach Boys (“Pet Sounds”).

Still another is Carol Kaye, whose bass guitar can be heard on the theme for the Mission: Impossible TV show, as well as the 1970s Wonder Woman TV show and Bullitt.  Carol’s mom was a piano teacher and Carol, appropriately enough, has authored bass instructional books. As a mother, she had to leave her kids with her parents every day. Her one regret was that she couldn’t spend more time with her children, but she knew they were well-taken care of.

One of the things that’s so cool about The Wrecking Crew is that a big chunk of it features the former members just sitting around and reminiscing, and it’s so much fun because they seem to pick up where they left off. Naturally, there are a lot of inside jokes and name dropping, but it’s not one-upmanship going on–these people moved in a unique time in the music industry, when California was considered the young upstart and New York was the elder statesman. If a musician wanted to be in on the new sounds, they went to Los Angeles.

Sessions were a few hours long and consisting of a few songs apiece, which often meant playing the equivalent of an album every day, and the Wrecking Crew often worked twelve-hour days. And they had to be their own bird-dogs as far as finding opportunities to play. When opportunities came, they took them. As one member said, waiting at home for the phone to ring was an exercise in futility.

While every member of the Wrecking Crew was extremely busy, they were never credited, partly because the groups they worked with didn’t want to look inauthentic, and also because music fans would have noticed the overlap and it would have looked to corporate. It’s kind of a shame, though, because the documentary notes many instances of the group creating sounds we know all too well, such as the distinctive guitar sounds in the opening theme of Bonanza! 

Unfortunately, the Wrecking Crew unofficially disbanded in the mid-eighties because they were suddenly competing not only with synthesized music, but with musicians who were younger than they were. Rock music was now an established and mostly respected genre, and they were no longer the young upstarts.

While studios still use session players there has never been another Wrecking Crew. Some of the members have passed on, both before and after the film came out. It’s to Danny Tedesco’s credit that he was able to capture their stories in such an engaging film that decades from now will still be educating people about a time that will never exist again in the same way. Anyone who watches the film will be hard-pressed not to smile at all the familiar sounds and meeting the people behind them.

And now it’s time for this month’s Pick My Movie Tag (drum roll, please)…

Ruth from Silver Screenings!

Ruth’s mission, should she choose to accept it, is to review a movie featuring a vacation gone awry (Since it’s almost summer and all). 🙂 Here are the rules, and as always, if anyone would like to join the tag they are completely welcome.

Coming up in June (click the image for more info):

All right, another post is on its way tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you then…

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The Wrecking Crew is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon. It is also free to stream for Prime customers and available on Tubi.

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