Just got back from seeing the Wrecking Crew movie here in NYC. One word of advice if youre a 60s music fan....Go See This Movie!!! It was better than I even dreamed it would be....a joy all the way through. My highest recommendation.
My only two complaints: 1) it could easily be an hour longer 2) man, it would've been nice to have gotten a recent interview with Phil Spector. Both of these would've been terribly complicated and unbelievably difficult and expensive to do, so I get it. As-is, the movie is still excellent.
It sure was. Denny did an excellent job putting the movie together. His Dad passed away only a few months after he started filming so he had to deal with that as well. A terriffic film, and one that every 60s music buff needs to see.
The Wrecking Crew will be screened in Royal Oak, Michigan, at the Main Art Theater, one night only, August 21, 2o13 @ 7:00 pm. Denny Tedesco will appear and do a Q&A afterwards. I will definitely be there! http://royaloak.patch.com/groups/ar...crew-comes-to-royal-oak-for-a-one-night-event
The film was put on Netflix this month. Do yourself a favor and watch it! Once of the most fascinating looks at music and recording in the 60's. Makes me wish I could have grown up in another time
Funny, I just watched this last night. I turned it off about an hour into it to sleep, but I think it would have been OK as a shorter movie. The interviews were nice, but mostly covered the same topics and anecdotes.
Thank you for the tip. To the listeners, my receiver decodes the Netflix Dolby Digital Plus lossy audio very nicely, so this should be an awesome sounding history lesson.
Stayed up late (until 2 AM) to watch this on Netflix last night. I liked it a lot. As some others said, it went over the same territory some times, but overall I enjoyed it and have to really respect those studio musicians.
I wondered about this film for years after Carol Kaye objected so strongly to parts of it before it was released. Having watched it this weekend, though, I think she's upset about nothing. It's really a loving look by Denny Tedesco at what his father did every day when he went to work, and as such it works very well. It's not a definitive history of The Wrecking Crew, The Regulars, or whatever they called themselves--it's about a period of time in Tommy Tedesco's life when he was working with a bunch of the best pop musicians who ever played. It doesn't get into who was in or out of the group, and in fact goes out of the way to explain that the personnel changed depending on the session requirements and changed over time. No one interviewed could say just how many musicians there were playing those sessions. There's no suggestion that this was a "club". I bought the Blu-ray because I wanted the extras, but however you watch it, please do. Next up on my list are the other Magnolia Productions documentaries, about Big Star and Muscle Shoals. They'll go on my shelf next to the last music bio-doc I bought, the wonderful The Byrd Who Flew Alone, about Gene Clark. Thank god someone's still making and distributing films like this in the era of Marvel superhero madness.
I only had vague knowledge of the Wrecking Crew as a bunch of studio cats that were on a massive number of records in the 60's, but having watched the movie, I was blown away. The parts I really enjoyed were the recent clips of the players demo'ing there more famous parts. Carol Kaye showing her bass part for Good Vibrations was very cool. It was kind of heartbreaking to hear Hal Blaine talking out how his divorce cleaned him out.
Plus her showing how she came up with the bass part on "The Beat Goes On". I also liked seeing Plas Johnson (my all time favorite tenor sax player) playing the piccolo part for "Rockin' Robin". Not only did I not know he played that on the original record, I didn't know he even played the piccolo.
It was bizarre to hear Hal Blaine talk about becoming a security guard when the gigs dried up. It's hard to believe a guy with the talent he had he couldn't get a job as a drummer in somebody's band at the time. There must be a lot more to that story...
It would have been cool to have a little more Nancy, like the story Lee told about how they nailed Some Velvet Morning. Also, if you're not going to go into detail about Frank, why mention him at all? I didn't know they played on the Boxer......
Did Hal Blaine already have drums already set up in the studio ready to go? It usually takes quite a bit of time to get drum sounds for a record and with these producers time is money.
see also http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/wrecking-crew-film.144047/ and several other threads on this topic
Loved the movie, if you liked it, you might enjoy the 'Muscle Shoals' movie, also on Netflix. I thought Carol Kaye was kinda sexy in those glasses she wore back then,
I picked up the Wrecking Crew DVD the other day and have been digging into the extensive bonus material. One fairly significant error that I noticed---on the inside of the DVD gatefold, they listed song and writing credits for the bonus material. "Sloop John B" is indicated as being written by Brian Wilson! I'm surprised nobody caught that before it was manufactured.
It may be set up so that he gets the songwriting royalties Roger McGuinn admitted (in a '70s interview) to doing this with PD material
I think that song is too well known and popular for whomever owns the publishing rights to simply give it to Brian Wilson, not exactly a starving, obscure songwriter.
So who gets them? And how is his obscurity or lack thereof relevant? If the credit reads "Traditional, arranged B. Wilson" should he get them? IIRC The Animals' "House Of The Rising Sun" was credited to "Traditional, arranged by Alan Price", with guitarist Hilton Valentine's name being left off because there was "not enough room on the label". Needles to say Mr. Valentine would become less than pleased with this situation.