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This sound we're going to record with a tape recorder.

- Brad? - Here we go.

- Brad? - Yes.

Do you want me to lay out again

after that instrumental break,

and then come back in with the fours

t oward the end of the, uh-- like, before "C"?

We'll have you wail on that baby, for the instrument...

Here we go! This'll be what?

Okay, take two.

- Alvin! - Okay!

It's 5:00 in Los Angeles!

The Wrecking Crew was the focal point of the music.

They were the ones with all the spirit,

and all the know-how,

especially for rock and roll music.

In the hardcore producing area,

everybody knew what went on there.

I mean, everybody knew that the best musicians

played on all the sessions,

but we as the general public didn't know.

I had no idea that certain people

didn't play their own records until The Monkees came along.

They played so well, and they played so well together.

I think they were so into that. They all respected each other,

and they all would sit and hang--

You know, talk in between takes and hang.

I mean, it was like-- it was a social event

for these guys too.

What was nice about that unit

was that they played together a lot.

And so they were an established groove machine.

They knew each other.

So you could really count on what they had to offer.

We played on everybody's.

The Lazy-Crazy-Hazy Days of Summer album

with Nat King Cole, it was the same guys doing that

that was doing The Beach Boys.

The musicians were really the unsung heroes

of all those hit records.

When I listen to the records,

it is so apparent that these guys

were just really so good.

And you can see why everybody used 'em, you know?

Because they were so tight.

They were the stone cold rock and roll professionals,

and there may never, ever be

a group of rock and roll musicians

of that caliber again.

The chances are, you didn't know his name.

But it's likely you sang and hummed along with his music.

Famed studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco has died.

I'm Kurt Loder with an MTV news brief.

Tommy Tedesco was arguably

the king of Los Angeles session guitarists.

You've probably never heard his name

or heard him speak, but listen.

He is someone you've heard before.

He was featured in the theme to Bonanza ...

in Batman.

The chores!

The stores!

Tedesco died of cancer Monday

at his home in Northridge, California,

at the age of 67.

While his name may not be immediately familiar

to everyone, some aspect of his music almost certainly is.

Here's the irony.

You spend your whole life playing guitar,

creating guitar licks that people

all around the world recognize.

But nobody knows your name, until you're dead.

And then, even in the end,

they misspell your name and call you...

- " Tony Tedesco." - . .. instead of Tommy.

Tommy was not only a legendary guitarist.

He was my father.

And he was also a member of an elite group

of studio musicians.

So what follows is the story of my father

and his extended family, The Wrecking Crew.

Hondells, Marketts, Routers--

We'd cut the tracks and the records,

and then they'd form a group to be that group.

People were really not focused

on the long, drawn-out album recording sessions.

Four songs in three hours.

It's only a certain group of guys can do that.

A lot of the recording came out here.

That's when you had an influx of a lot of New York musicians.

That was in the mid-'60s,

when they started flowing out here.

Then it became a flood around that time.

This led to a surge of work

for the L.A. studio musicians.

Not all of 'em, but a small group,

who later became known as The Wrecking Crew.

It wasn't an organized band of musicians

that set out to take over rock and roll.

And I can't tell you exactly who was part of this

hit-making machine.

Even the musicians that were part of this scene

couldn't come to an agreement.

Twelve, 15 people.

Maybe what, 20 of us?

Thirty, maybe?

It was probably 20 musicians,

or maybe a few more,

counting the string players, of course.

They were doing all the sessions.

They were a product of the '40s, '50s, and '60s.

And they were great musicians

who came of age when rock and roll came of age.

And here they are at the height of their physical powers

with all of this talent.

And they're in the right place. And it's the right time,

and so they get to do this.

On the first day of shooting, I brought

four of L.A.'s greatest session players together.

Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson

and Hal Blaine, along with my father.

It was probably the first time that all four

had been in the same room in about 20 years.

Do you recognize me-- You've lost weight!

And all you have to do is just get sick.

Rolling.

- Rolling. - Okay, the question is--

This is not, uh--

You know, if all the guys that had been in the studios--

God bless 'em all-- For 20, 30 years,

they all wore the blue blazers, the neck ties,

and there was no talking, no smoking, and no nothing.

And we came in there with Levis and t-shirts,

smoking cigarettes, whatever we're--

Yeah. - And the older guys

were saying, "They're gonna wreck the business."

You know, "They are gonna wreck the music business."

We didn't have the respect that the older guys had.

Remember the older studio players,

Barney Kessels, and the Lloyd Elliots,

- all these people? - Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's how that whole wrecking crew thing came in.

Even though the term "The Wrecking Crew"

gained popularity with rock historians,

many of these musicians never heard the term

until years later.

I think Hal Blaine was the first one I heard it from.

- Yeah, it-- - He probably

came up with the name.

I think it kind of evolved really.

- There was-- - The first time I heard

the name, I think was at The Baked Potato,

where they had that get-together.

They used the expression "the wrecking crew."

Well, it was used before that.

It was used while we were recording.

And the definition of who was a member of The Wrecking Crew,

there really isn't any definition.

Between the engineers, producers

and musicians themselves,

each has their own take on how this all went down.

Together, they form a snapshot of a time

that will never be repeated.

Anybody could do five or six different things

on as many different instruments also.

There were a lot of producers at that time

that were not really musicians,

so these guys were able to decode--

He's talking about me, by the way, so--

No, I mean, there were some producers

that really just, you know,

didn't really know the musicians' language,

and these guys were able to just quickly interpret it.

The people we're talking about

played for so many people

in so many different styles.

That's a fascinating thing.

They could walk into, uh, a pop sound, and play it.

They could do rhythm and blues.

They could do soul music.

I guess they could have done classics if they'd had to,

but they had the magic touch.

We injected a lot of ourself into it,

because we were experts at doing it.

We were doing it all the time.

A guy would give us a lead sheet or something,

and we'd know what the song was.

We made up a lot of arrangements and so forth

on that set, ourselves on those things.

Here's the way that The Beat Goes On sounded

when we first heard it.

I said, "Uh-oh, we need to pull

a rabbit out of a hat for this one," you know?

It was our job to come up with riffs and stuff,

so about the third line I came up with was:

And Sonny loved it and he gave it to Bob West,

the bass player, to play it. And both of us are playing it

throughout the tune. And without a good bass line,

the tune doesn't pop, you know,

it doesn't snap, you know, like a big hit record.

I've always said, "They put notes on paper.

They put notes on paper,

but that's not music." You make the music.

What do you do with the notes?

- Right. - What you do with the charts?

- Absolutely. - What you do with the chords?

Other than that, they can call the union

- for a guitar player. - That's right, so--

So it's what you put into it,

because how many days are, in fact, we're all here.

And it's what you put into it that's not written.

Yeah, well, in fact, everybody can-- that's sitting here,

I remember doing different things

that weren't ever even thought about.

And then, all of a sudden, become part of the record,

and part of signature of the record.

We all used to produce our own parts. It's that simple.

- Oh, yeah, yeah. - To make it swing, yeah.

You know, the first thing that I ever did

that smacked of any kind of rock and roll

was some kind of date, which I don't even know

who the artist was. There wasn't a minor 7th chord

in the bushel, you know? It was all pretty vanilla.

That's when I knew something was different.

At the time, I was doing the Ozzie And Harriet TV show.

- Ah. - Then all of a sudden,

you know, I'm doing this show. And then, they--

One day, they come up with-- Well, Jimmie Haskell comes up...

- with Ricky Nelson. - And with Ricky Nelson, said...

- It's rock and roll. - "We're doing

this rock and roll stuff."

I don't know what they're talking about.

Just laid out a chord sheet, and says,

- "Play behind Ricky Nelson."

So pretty soon, you've ended up--

We were starting to get involved in this.

That's what took me to L.A. in-- In 196--

Summer of 1960, uh, to play in the Ricky Nelson band.

Working with those people like that

was a perfect showcase for what would happen later.

Which I had no idea that I would ever be

the "session" player.

I didn't even know what that meant.

We learned how to play rock and roll

right there on the job.

Hey, you know, if they want this...

I can do that.

You know, that's Latin-- That's Latin music.

That's nothing, you know.

You can do that all day long.

There were some purists, like there is

in every way of life, some people will not compromise.

Not that they couldn't. They wouldn't, most of the time,

permit themselves to, you know--

They felt that they were at a certain level.

And playing rock and roll

was perhaps a little bit beneath them.

And they didn't want to get into it,

whereas, our guys, we welcomed the rock and roll.

They didn't play that shit. they didn't know about it.

They didn't like it.

And I started out playing demos mainly,

you know, $10 a song, and I got to eat that day, and--

I had three kids to earn a living, and that's it.

And the money was important to pay the rent.

And so I did what all the rest of the guys did.

I got, uh, a fender guitar

and put the light gauge strings where you could

bend 'em from here to Christmas.

And listened to some of the people that were doing this,

and the rock groups, and I got so I could play that stuff

better than they could.

The very first call I had ever had at Disney,

we got there a quarter to 12:00, and all the blue blazers

were leaving. And we're all sitting there,

and he makes a little speech about, "Ladies and gentlemen,

we brought you in here because in this particular film,

we're gonna do a little-- Some of your--

- your rock and roll music." - "Your rock and roll music"?

"It is this"-- Yeah. "There's a little scene here..."

- It always happens to me. - "...and we're gonna show it

to you," And it was a quick, little scene,

so he says, "Now, we have all the music for you.

It's there in front of you.

And we're gonna do this to what we call a 'click track.'"

Like, we didn't know anything was going on.

"We're gonna run the click very slow

so that you can all learn, study, and memorize this music."

And then he said, "Mary Anne, play the click much slower."

Well, she accidentally hit it,

and the minute we heard eight clicks,

ding-ding-ding-ding-ding- ding-ding-ding, we're in.

And we play this thing front to back.

And when we finished, this guy said,

"How in the-- man, you did it perfect.

- I wish we'd have made that." - "Made it."

"How in the world could you do that?"

And Tommy said, "We practice a lot during the day."

It was perfect, 'cause they--

they thought you were a complete idiot.

I mean, it was unbelievable.

Most of the music and the money--

I was about to say-- It was a Freudian slip, but true--

came out of the Brill building in New York.

It was New York-based, New York writers,

New York singers, New York musicians.

The music business was in New York city,

period, at that time.

Rolling master "A."

Master "A," take one. Here we go, rolling.

Say, Chess Records back in Cincinnati.

But there were only maybe one guitar player,

one bass player, one piano player,

so it could almost get held up by those one or two guys.

Well, they could come to Los Angeles,

and they-- It wouldn't matter if they could call

a matter of 10 or 12 different guitar players,

all of them would be equally as good

to do what they wanted done,

plus we had more studios out here.

A lot of the musicians that were back east,

and in Nashville, a lot of 'em came out here

to seek their fame and fortune.

This was an untapped place for--

for new artists to record too.

Lee Hazlewood told me he went back to New York

to do a session, and he just kind of walked

over to the guitar player, and said,

"Hey, could you play me this little thing?"

And the guy said, "Write it out."

And the guy just refused

to experiment and try anything. Like, if it wasn't written out,

he wasn't gonna play it. You had young musicians

who were willing to contribute

and come up with ideas, you know,

and I think that was the difference.

I don't think it's any secret.

The '60s called all of the music to the west.

L.A. was the place to be.

If you wanted the best, they were right here, in Los Angeles.

It was a rougher, looser sound

than what was coming out of New York,

having a lot to do with, I guess, the musicians

that we were using, 'cause they were fresh to the sound.

Hal, you started the surf

and Earl started that double time, you know.

You know-- You know, we doubled it up and made it sweet.

Yeah, it was sort of like east coast/west coast jazz.

There was really a distinct difference.

And at-- for those years, the record producers

- chose the west coast. - Yeah,

and the hits started coming out of here.

This was where the youthful movies

were being made. Everybody wanted to be a surfer.

Whether you were white or black or lived

in the middle of the desert, you wanted to have a surfboard.

It was crazy. And along with it

came young music, and it was created here.

Beach beauties everywhere, and art lovers willing to look.

This is paradise for thousands of sun worshipers,

Californians by birth or adoption.

I remember the perfumed air, the night-blooming jasmine,

and all the kind of plants that grow

in Southern California, and how dreamy it all was.

It was the sound of The Beach Boys

kind of wafting through from house to house,

you know, almost the same record just repeating,

and the idea that, "Hey, this is real.

this is the culture here, is this beach thing."

- The Beach Boys!

Thank you very much.

Right now, we'd like to show you how The Beach Boys

go about making a record.

We start with Denny Wilson on the drums...

...followed by Al Jardine on rhythm guitar...

...helped out by Carl "lead guitar" Wilson...

...and filled out instrumentally by our leader,

Brian Wilson on the bass.

When we're ready to sing, we step up to the microphones,

and it comes out something like this.

I went to Gold Star,

and I met musicians' favorite, Phil Spector,

And I immediately had Steve Douglas start booking,

you know, the re-- They're called the regulars,

The Wrecking Crew. And he started booking them

for me in my studio in Western.

Session players were brought in by producers

for a variety of reason.

In fact, most of the mid-1960s, beach boys backing tracks

didn't feature any of The Beach Boys.

It was Brian Wilson's decision to push the music

to another level. And to do that,

he enlisted the best of L.A.

We were on the road 150 days a year.

Brian was getting a little bit more complex

in his arrangements. And it just got to be too difficult

to-- to coordinate our itineraries.

And that's when The Wrecking Crew stepped in.

When I heard that some of the guys sat in

for some of The Beach Boys, that surprised me.

But in truth, at that point,

The Beach Boys were Brian Wilson.

He created it all.

He was very self-assured, very much in control.

He brought in the charts that he wrote himself.

And most of the time, I mean, the music was entirely his.

I mean, there were very few times that we made up

- licks on his stuff. Yeah. - ...musically correct.

He had in his head what he wanted.

First album, it was--

Summer Days ,

The Beach Boy album.

Ray Pohlman was a great bass player, really good.

Steve Douglas was, like, so on-the-mark

as a saxophone player. He just blew my mind.

He played with such finesse, you know?

And he used to get real close to the microphone

to get the best benefit of his instrument.

They were all-- The Wrecking Crew-- They were just great.

Brian was a genius. I mean, he would just--

He was just good as I've ever seen, I believe,

about putting things together.

Western studio, and there was probably...

fifteen, 20 guys in that studio.

He'd start at the first guy...

and he'd sing 'em their part until they got it,

and second guy, he'd sing their part,

and the third guy, all the way around the room.

Then he'd go back to the first guy.

Well, the first guy had forgot his part

and he'd sing it again, sang a second--

He taught the whole thing by rote.

And all of a sudden, that whole band

could play that shit. I mean, Brian is--

When you want to talk about genius,

he's-- There's not any more like him that I know of.

I mean, he's unbelievable.

Pet Sounds was an incredibly important record,

and still stands there, like, "Okay, top this," you know?

George Martin told me Sgt. Pepper was an attempt--

It was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.

So it was an incredibly influential record

and I think it had an electromagnetic field.

And people were drawn here, and wanted to be a part of that,

and wanted to make records like that.

Good Vibrations, we must have done 25, 30 sessions.

It might take six months to do.

Some days, we worked five minutes.

- Some days, four hours. - Yeah.

- On the same song. - We just-- We experimented.

And they would ask me, "Well, what do you want?"

And I'd say, "well, I don't know," you know?

and we'd go home, and the next time we get together,

then we would fall together, and we'd do the thing.

Three months, two, three dates a week,

but Capitol Records was picking up the tab.

And we liked to work for him.

The word was, "Do you have the date

with Brian Wilson tomorrow?"

I'd say, "Yeah, I do." "Oh, good."

Well, Carol played on Good Vibrations

and California Girls, and she was, like,

the star of the show. I mean, she was

the greatest bass player in the world.

And she was way ahead of her time.

She would play a tonic in a fifth

or a third instead of a fifth, you know.

She was one of the first bass players

to start playing that way.

But he definitely wrote out some neat lines on the bass,

like, for instance:

I'd never played that.

I'll just go into this...

Now, that's a jazz walking line.

You knew that this kid was into something really, really great.

The room had a spirit to it, with Hal being the leader,

you know, and all the guys

working together, and thumping and pumping.

He would get things like he wanted to hear them.

And when he got 'em that way, it was good.

When I heard G ood Vibrations the first time on the radio,

I just-- It just blew me away.

Now.

Very good.

I remember Carol though. I still have to remember,

'cause your favorite thing, no matter what day we went on

after that, "Would you like me to use my Beach Boy pick?"

And so she'd

impress the shit out of-- This one, and--

She picked it up on her way to the studio.

And they're looking at this pick,

- and they're looking at her. - You have to sell it,

- you know. - She was selling this shit

like I couldn't believe. One little pick made this girl

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I was very jealous of the guitar

when we were first dating and got engaged,

and he paid a lot more attention to the guitar, I felt.

So I gave him an ultimatum, "It's me or the guitar."

And he said, "Honey, the guitar doesn't have legs.

you do."

I got so upset with him, I took my ring

and I threw it at him.

Then I went looking for it.

And I was one of these late starters in life.

I wasn't one of these guys that you read about in the books.

You know, you read these articles

in Guitar Player magazine, the guy says,

"Well, when I was 12 years old,

I had the chops of a reindeer and all this stuff, you know."

When I was 12 years old, I was playing marbles myself,

I don't know, you know. And when I was 24,

I was at Douglas Aircraft, you know, moving boxes

- and trying to play guitar.

I was 24, I was still into this.

"Wow, I'm in seventh position."

And I finally learned one hip chord.

- Whoa.

So I'm not one of them guys you read about.

We went to the prom, and Ralph Marterie

was playing the dance. We found out

that their guitar player was leaving that night.

And he tried out, auditioned,

and he was hired right then and there.

It was on a Friday night, and the Saturday night,

he left for New York city.

Tell the truth. - Okay, you got to let go.

Marterie was going to get a guitar/singer,

so that he could only pay for one guy.

He decided he knew there was nothing there

in Niagara Falls for him.

He wanted to go to California to play.

While my father struggled to find work playing guitar,

he had to make ends meet working in a warehouse.

He always said it was the best job he ever had.

He hated it so much, it made him practice every day.

I was told by two guys before we left,

"He's never gonna make it."

So after seven months of struggling here,

daddy wanted to go back, and I said, "There's no way,"

because I wasn't giving in to those two guys.

And that's why dad said, "My stubborn Sicilian wife."

In fact, my wife was behind me 100%,

like, all the time I work. And she's-- It was "You tour."

She was working, she took the calls,

she didn't-- never complained.

I would come in at 11:00 or 10:00,

I'd see my kids whenever.

My wife accepted it, this was our living,

our whole family took it exactly that way.

Every once in a while, a musician's wife

would come and complain to her,

and she'd talk to them. She'd say,

"Well, look, that's his living."

Well, Carmie never talked to Barbara the Barbarian.

Whoa-ho-ho-ho.

My father would say, "There are only four reasons

to take a gig:

for the money, for the connections,

for the experience, or just for fun."

I got to tell you a story about your dad.

We were in Western studio three there,

and, uh, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean,

he counted the song, "Everybody ready? Yeah. Okay."

Tedesco started playing,

and Jan says, "Stop, wait." And he went over and looked,

and he said, "Tedesco, what are you doing?"

He-- Tommy--

The music was upside down,

and Tommy was reading it backwards.

Now, that's a true story,

but you talk about getting a laugh out of it.

Tommy was a cut-up.

Hold it, cut it.

There was an energy that Phillip would get.

I remember, Phillip would be so excited about every session.

There was just a vitality in the room that was--

would lift you off of your feet.

And also there'd be so many players

and the sound would be so huge.

I mean, it was definitely-- That wall of sound was really--

It was really there.

I never was in the studio

that there were any different guys.

it was the same guys always.

The "wall of sound" was the Gold Star echo chambers,

- mainly. - Well, it was wall-to-wall

- musicians first of all. - Yeah, that's true.

Most people'd use a four-piece rhythm section.

He had four guitars, or six, or seven.

There were four pianos always,

one upright bass, one fender bass.

I mean, it was only one drums, usually.

Fifteen people playing percussion instruments.

- In a very small room. - Yeah.

Not a small room, but an average room.

And a huge echo chamber that Gold Star

was famous for, that was the wall of sound.

Ceramic walls.

- One, two, three.

- Good. - The wall of sound

of Phil Spector's more like a lost feeling.

it's heavy on You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin',

and it was-- He used the echo so much,

and it was swimming all the time.

In spite of the baffles, we all leaked

into each other's mics, just enough to give it

the combination of leakage and echo, plus we were tired.

By the 30th take, you're tired, you know.

So it had a real relaxed feeling on his hits.

It's the most played song of all time.

Oh, I believe it, yeah.

Most played record of all time.

They were the whole sound that Phillip had.

Phillip was also really, really superstitious,

and he didn't-- He wanted those guys,

and he always wanted those guys, you know?

He felt only secure when he was playing with those guys.

Same musicians, same engineers, same studio,

same, probably, brand of tape.

Yeah, probably. - Um...

It was just a thing that he figured if he didn't

do it that way, it wouldn't be a hit.

- And he was probably right. - He was probably right.

And we're grateful for that.

G-minor seventh.

You know, Phillip was walking in a different universe

than everybody else. And so in his mind, it was all him,

you know, and the guys were just some sort of

an extension of what he couldn't do.

Phil would never record anything

for the first three hours.

I mean, he worked these guys

so that they weren't playing

individualistic. They were too tired.

And so they just melded into this--

this wall of sound.

Phil leaned on Howard very, very heavy

about how to play, and just kept on it, and on it, and on it.

And wasn't satisfied or something,

and made 'em kept playing over, and over, and over,

and over again for hours

until Howard's hands were just a mass of pain.

"No, no, no, no, this way." Howard says, "Look, man,

"if I can't play it, and you know what it is,

why don't you play it?"

Howard Robert's the only guy that I ever saw

walk out of a session,

where he just put everything down,

picked up his guitar and his amp,

and he walked out. He said, "I've had enough of this."

He was very demanding. I had no problem with Phil.

I guess it's because he knew that I always knew

that I wasn't the original drummer,

'cause if I'd have had a problem, I'd walked out.

Who was he gonna get?

He'd already, you know, had his argument with Al,

maybe Al wouldn't have came back.

So-- So, we got along fine.

They made fun of him all the time,

but they really liked him.

I think they really respected him.

They thought he was nuts, which, of course, he was,

but I think they always looked forward to it

because it was always gonna be something really cool.

It was like a total thing friendship too,

'cause they would come in and they would be talking about,

you know, "What'd you do on the golf course?"

or, you know, that someone had this car or so--

There was always a Mad magazine too,

being passed around that somebody brought, you know.

I was in awe of them because of Phil Spector, that--

It took me a couple times to get used to,

you know, being with the guys, you know.

Any memories of Be My Baby the first time you heard it?

Oh, I pulled my car over to the side of the road,

said, "What am I listening to here," you know?

I couldn't believe it.

I instantly wrote Don't Worry Baby

after I heard that. Yeah.

I was so inspired. I couldn't believe it.

By the time we got to River deep - Mountain High,

we all thought that was gonna be a giant of a hit.

It was another wall of sound hit,

but it flopped.

It was a big hit in the U.K., but in the USA,

it was his first downer.

And it was like, "Okay, that style is going then.

The wall of sound was over then."

One of the boys. One of the boys.

One of the guys, yeah.

If sexual harassment suits were in there, she'd be

- seven millionaires right now,

...after what we put her through.

She'd have all the lawyers working for-- Against us.

I don't think anyone ever really felt

that she was a woman-woman, and I don't mean that detrimentally.

- No, we were musicians. - Yeah.

Everything was music-- music, really.

- Yeah. - Worse than that

would have been... shutting her out

and not sharing the camaraderie.

Impossible theme song)

And this is the only one I had to really palm mute

to get the treble out.

So you can hear that. Yeah.

Anyway, that's what I did, yeah.

And it's Earl Palmer on drums on that one.

I heard music as a kid

because my mother was a professional piano player.

She'd play in the back of the silent movie houses.

And my dad was a trombone player.

He played Dixieland bands, things like that.

So I heard music all the time.

If they didn't fight, they played music,

so you know-- you knew where it was coming from.

My mom and I were living in this housing project.

But my mom saved up her pennies

and there was a steel guitar salesman that came around.

And about three or four lessons for ten bucks,

so she opted for that. And I was about 13 then.

About that time, I started playing gigs on guitar.

And little Latin things.

So it was a lot of great experience, you know...

...that kind of stuff, heavy-duty jazz.

And it was fun, and I was playing

a lot in the black clubs.

And very accepted too, by the way.

I had made a name for myself.

There were a lot of women around that played jazz

and were in pop bands of their own,

so it wasn't that unusual.

But most women back in those days, in the '50s,

would play until they got married.

it was more important to have a "Mrs." in front of your name

than it was to have a career.

Then the chance came to do studio work

in late 1957 for Sam Cooke.

And I'd never heard of Sam Cooke,

but they were short a guitar player.

As soon as I did my first date with Sam Cooke,

I got more money in three hours' work than I did

in a whole week's work of my day job.

Except they've got more than two dates a week.

They wanted our particular group of people

to cut the hit records, because we got good at it.

Ray Pohlman had a great sound.

He was the very first electric bass player

playing hits from about '57 on.

I'd say that he did maybe 85% of the hit records.

But Ray Pohlman got to be the musical conductor

for the Shindig show about the same time

I accidentally got on bass, so there was a big hole there.

People ask me all the time about being a woman

in a man's world.

I felt equal with the rest of the guys,

and they felt it too.

Sometimes they got a little testy.

They'd say, "Oh, you play good for a girl, Carol."

"Yeah, you play good for a guy too."

I love musicians and the humor

and the way that they play. And they all knew that.

And I think it was like a sister--

having a sister there.

I had my two kids and my mom to support by that time.

We would do three, four dates a day,

and I'd manage to get home to have dinner with the kids.

That's the only thing I regret, is that I didn't

spend more time with the kids.

But they were very well taken care of,

and they had good lives, you know.

Most of-- most of the time, they were fine.

You know, after looking at my father's work logs,

I came to realize he wasn't around

as much as I thought he was.

But when he was home, his focus was on his family.

He was one of the few studio guys

who found a balance between working crazy hours

and maintaining a pretty decent home life.

The truth is, I don't know how he did it.

Time was money, and you wouldn't last long

in any studio if you couldn't keep up.

The studio musicians in this town

were really looked up to and respected.

We were treated like...

"Our life depends on you guys."

Well, they were real session players.

They were guys that were going from gig to gig,

you know, playing on all the good music.

Gosh, there were so many things went on

and we were so busy.

I mean, we would go from one to the other to the other.

We used to call going from session to session

"dovetailing."

Jesus, when you leave the house

at 7:00 in the morning,

and you're at Universal at 9:00 till noon.

Now you're at Capitol Records at 1:00,

you just got time to get there,

and then you got a jingle at 4:00,

and then we were on a date with somebody at 8:00,

and then The Beach Boys at midnight,

and you do that five days a week...

Jeez, man, you get burned out.

At one time, we did an album

in a day, for Liberty Records.

Five, six weeks in a row, we'd do an album a day--

six tunes in the morning and six tunes in the evening.

When all the guys realized

that we were doing most of the dates, said,

"We'll get scale, or you'll get somebody else."

And, course, they didn't,

'cause that was the tightest rhythm section

I believe I've ever played with.

I would not go in a studio

if I didn't have Tommy Tedesco, Hal Blaine,

people of that nature.

I just wouldn't go into a studio until they weren't busy.

But they were busy all the time.

No matter which producer I worked with,

whether it was Lee Hazlewood or Snuff Garrett,

they all used the same musicians.

They were all just the best.

If they couldn't get the guys, they didn't book the date.

They'd wait until the guys were available.

Which was wonderful.

Of course, their wives never saw them.

I don't know how those guys could've worked any more,

unless they didn't sleep at all.

If you want to be successful in this business,

you never say no until you're too busy to say yes.

And I learned that by watching guys

who talked themselves out of careers

by saying, "No, it's not good enough.

I'm gonna wait till such-and-such and so-and-so."

Because if you wait at home for the phone to ring, it won't.

If you're a freelance musician,

you can't turn nothing down,

because there's somebody standing right behind you

who is salivating to do this work.

One day, I get a call from Ernie Freeman.

It was, like, 8:00 in the morning.

"Hi, Tom, I need a guitar player here at United.

How long will it take you to get there?"

I said, "20 minutes," which, you know,

is a lie. It's gonna take an hour.

But once I made my commitment, they've got

- to wait for me, right? - That's right.

When I go up there, I did my date, and he loved it.

And then he tells me, "You won't believe

what Bill Pitman said.

"I called bill and asked him,

'Can you come down? I'm stuck.

How long will it be?' And Bill says,

'Well, I'm having breakfast. I should be finished

in about 45 minutes, and I'll be there in an hour.'"

And if anybody ever figured Bill Pitman out,

that was a Bill Pitman-- straight life, not thinking.

And I'm the opposite, like, "What will work right now?"

Now it's time for another take

of what probably will be another smash hit

in the wondrous world of Sonny and Cher.

Sonny himself writes most of the songs

he and Cher record.

Musicians often work with the couple,

and they're excellent sight readers.

Today, they're recording several songs

that will be part of an album called

The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher,

the second album they've made together.

Now they're ready to record.

The engineer is set...

and they call, "Take one."

Were you ever intimidated by the guys?

No, I was too stupid to know.

Well, I was kind of shy of everybody.

First of all, they were a lot older than me too.

I mean, the first time-- session I went to,

I was 16 years old, and I didn't--

I'd never been inside a recording studio.

You know, I just didn't want to step

any place I wasn't supposed to step,

which I thought was everywhere.

And they all knew each other, they were really relaxed.

I mean, everybody was nice to me.

I really don't think I knew for a long time

just how great they were.

And then later, when I would meet other players

who would ask me, you know, did I--

Was I ever on a session with any of these guys?

There was a lot of honesty in those records

and that's why a lot of 'em were hits.

When I thought of the music, I thought I was a 13-year-old

trying to learn how to play music.

Every time I'd play. You know,

there was all them hits that was on--

The Marketts, Routers, all them solos. And then,

- I brought myself back. - Tongue in cheek.

I said, "How would a kid play this,

that's so stupid, that doesn't know what he's doing,

and play that?" I did that shit,

didn't know what I was doing, bending notes,

didn't care, didn't-- Awful, out of tune.

- Yeah. - What is this tune?

- Beatles? Cockroaches? - Some young group.

- I had no idea. - Cockroaches.

I didn't know them kind of names then.

Well, my personal feeling about the music

was that it was all wonderful

and I was making millions of dollars...

period.

I didn't give a damn if Tommy liked it or not.

I didn't make it for him.

Like the artist.

Cher said she didn't like it.

Well, I didn't make it for her anyway.

I made it for people to buy,

not for Cher to listen to.

She never listened to Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves

or any other record I made with her... again.

It was Diamond Ring.

We cut that record, and I said,

"Oh, my God. I hate this shit."

Two weeks later, it was number ten or something.

So I have to give it to Snuff in terms of

a certain kind of pop awareness.

He had it, but it was not exactly my cup of tea.

The music that we cut in the '60s,

nobody thought that was gonna last, like, past ten years.

In fact, Bill Pitman says--

We were doing a chugga-chugga-chugga date,

he says, "Can you see the kids

dancing with their wives 20 years from now,

saying, 'Darling, they're playing our song'?"

I remember coming home from a session one day,

and it was just one of those three-chord sessions.

And when you're sitting there playing rhythm guitar,

there's not much you can do.

You just do it, get your money and go home.

And I remember coming home, and I was not in a good mood.

I said to my wife, "I could do this when I was 14 years old."

And she said, "Yeah, but not nearly as well."

I didn't care for rock and roll that much.

I was basically a jazz drummer.

But I realized that I'm making my living off of it.

If I'm gonna continue to do that,

I got to play that like that's my favorite music.

That's not professionalism to me.

It's not beneath you if it's supporting you.

If it's beneath you, don't play it.

I actually enjoyed it,

because when I heard the records on the radio,

I realized, really, what an incredible sound

that group of people had.

We're going up to Capitol Records

- right up here. - Oh, right.

God, the streets are so friggin' torn up,

it's unbelievable.

This is where we used to do all of,

you know, Glen Campbell's records

and Ray Anthony and everybody, man.

Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole.

We did everyone down in the bowels.

Pretty amazing.

As soon as we got in those studios

and we found out that this made a lot of bucks,

it was like, "Hey, man, we don't have to go on the road.

We can stay home with our kids," you know.

Unfortunately, I didn't.

I went through six wives.

Yeah, but that was 'cause of your personality...

...not your playing.

No, I had two major marriages, and they both fell apart

because I was in the studio too much.

I think it's a very hard balance.

Yeah, it was tough.

When I got out of the army, I took my G.I. bill,

went to Chicago, went to a percussion institute.

I was going to school from about 8:00 in the morning

to 4:00 in the afternoon. And then I was playing strip clubs

from about 8:00 at night to 4:00 in the morning,

which was pretty wild.

But it was great sight reading training.

You got all these new women coming and dancing,

throwing this music at you,

and you got to, you know, read it immediately.

It was great training to relax you and to play,

because to this day, I could sit down,

you can throw any kind of music in front of me,

and I will-- You know, it might be

the hardest thing in the world, but I'll be completely relaxed.

Nobody will know that inside, I'm saying,

"Holy cow, this is really something."

So there was a lot of great basic training going on

while I was there, which really was preparing me

for the studios.

I wound up at "the" nightclub in Hollywood,

where all the movie stars hung out.

There was a manager, called me over one evening,

and he said, "Look, I've got a kid

who's gonna be signed by Capital Records pretty quick,

and we need a drummer."

This kid's name was Tommy Sands, a wonderful young man,

became a major teenage idol, and we went on the road.

But it was during that time that I was with Tommy

that I got to work with people like The Diamonds,

who were really hot in those days. The Platters.

These were shows that I was playing.

Great experience. And now I was learning rock and roll,

which was still a dirty word to most of the musicians.

When I got back to L.A.,

there was a man by the name of H.B. Barnum.

And H.B. started using me, Carol Kaye on bass,

and Glen Campbell on guitar.

There were a bunch of us that were sort of demo musicians,

but we played rock and roll.

Usually, every guy that sat down in one of those sessions

in that group was a great musician:

studied, practiced, taught well, loved what they were doing.

Everybody wanted us.

Do you remember when my dad was doing the Jobim album?

Oh, yeah.

And all of the "A" team was in.

And at the end of that session, we were doing S omethin' Stupid.

And the "A" team left, and our little "B" team came in,

The Wrecking Crew came in and sat down,

and we cut a number on record.

And what most people don't realize,

that was our dad's first number one record.

And we just marched on in there

and made our little hit.

- Daddy. - Sorry.

I've got to sing a little louder then.

- You have to sing-- - You too, you sing

I did Somethin' Stupid with Frank and Nancy Sinatra.

And that little lick that I played on the intro,

I had already played that on another record of the song

by the guy that wrote it, Carson Parks.

And Frank heard it and wanted that very lick on the intro.

Billy Strange was the arranger

and the guitars were me and Glen Campbell.

And Billy had just written, like, El Paso style guitar

for the intro. So Glenn, of course,

played something real nice, but it wasn't

what was on the original record. And Frank said,

"No, that's not it, that's not it. Let's try it--"

So Glenn tried something else

and Frank wasn't real happy with it

'cause it didn't sound like we'd heard.

So finally, after a while, I said, "Glenn,

I don't want to be pushy or anything,

but that's me on the original record.

I know exactly what he wants."

He said, "Well, then you play it."

Then, we switched parts real fast and I played it.

Do you want to hear the guitars

just to make sure everything's cool?

One real fast start, then we'll go.

All right, letter "A."

- That did it, all right. - Pretty sound.

Yeah, that's the whole trick of the record.

Chuck Berghofer, who was the star,

you know, that bass line became infam-- As a matter of fact,

it's probably-- Simple as it sounds, it's probably

one of the hardest things a bass player ever has to do.

- Nobody can do it. - They never do it correctly,

you know, or they make an attempt at it.

The engineer came out and said,

"Gee, I love the sound of your bass."

He says, "I'm gonna give your name to my friend."

And it turned out to be Jim Bowen.

And I wound up doing some dates for Jim Bowen.

About the third date, I did was B oots Are Made For Walking.

And that put me on the map.

I went from doing two dates in my life

to doing three a day.

Yeah, if I wasn't available that day,

I'd probably be selling insurance somewhere.

That "chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk," that rhythm chunky sound

that was so-- Lee used to call it "dumb."

He wanted that dumb sound.

It really made-- made the records,

and it's very hard to capture, especially live.

Lee didn't want me to do the song.

I kept saying, "I want to do that boots thing,

that one about the boots." And he said, "No,

it's not a girl's song. I said,

"Well, it's certainly not a guy's song."

He used to sing it live in his performances.

And I said, "It's wrong for a man to sing it.

It's harsh and abusive,

but it's perfect for a little girl to sing."

The feeling of a live session was unlike anything else

because you'd hear it back instantly, and there it was.

And it was either magic or it wasn't magic.

And I never will forget, when I drove to Las Vegas,

on the marquee, it says, "Nancy Sinatra

With Hal Blaine On Drums." This big marquee

all over the thing, at Caesars Palace.

Now, he's making like $2,500 a week.

Now, Irv Cottler's work with Frank, the father,

- he's making $750 a week.

- And I-- - Who said life was fair?

Oh, my God in hell-- And then, all of a sudden,

here's this "Hal Blaine." And I just laughed.

"Hal Blaine" all over the Caesar's marquee.

- It was great. - What a gig.

You got to get it when you can.

I didn't realize it until later,

but New Orleans was a great town for a musician to grow up in.

My brother and I were 12 and 13,

and we already had gigs on the Mardi Gras floats.

Not gigs, one gig.

My mother was a singer and a pianist.

And the city was raging with soldiers, sailors, and marines

coming through there to get shipped out to World War II.

And the clubs in the French Quarter,

they were making a lot of money

and they were hiring a lot of bands.

My mother had a job in the afternoon

playing and singing a matinee,

and my father had a night gig.

And I think it was the first time in their life

that they were fully employed as musicians.

I went to a black Catholic high school,

and all the public schools were segregated.

I couldn't wait to get away.

My brother and I soon established a band,

you know. He played piano.

He mostly played blues and boogie and--

We wanted to play be-bop, but really,

nobody wanted to hear it.

People always tell me how great I was and, you know,

"That boy's really going places," and--

of course I believed that.

In 1954, my brother and I moved down to Los Angeles

and proceeded to starve around town for about two years,

made all the jam sessions.

That's what you do when you're new in town.

And that sooner or later gets you work

because the band leaders come to the jam sessions

looking for horn players or rhythm players.

And that's where they found 'em, at the jam sessions.

The rock and roll thing was getting really big,

and they needed the kind of horn I play.

So it was really being in the right place

at the right time.

Particularly when I got on the Merv Griffin Show,

which started at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Well, that's the time my kids came home from school.

And it ended at 8:30 at night, and I'd get home maybe 9:30.

Well, that's the time my kids would go to bed .

Many days, I didn't see my kids.

I'm a better grandfather than I was a father.

That's great.

Oh, amazing.

I remember taking this picture.

I took it through a record, through a 45.

These were all yours. Hey, that's nice.

Yeah.

The first band I had was just an experiment.

We opened the show for Dave Brubeck,

and people went crazy for the-- our, you know, half hour set,

however long we played. And I remember coming offstage,

and Paul Desmond was-- was standing off to the side.

And as I passed him, he was scratching his head,

and said, "I don't know what I just heard,

but I think I like it."

That was the first cue I had

that maybe we were on to something.

A jazz musician loved it... or liked it.

The first date I ever did for Herb Alpert,

Shorty Rogers called me up and says,

"Bill, would you do me a favor?"

He says, "There's a guy, he's a friend of mine."

He says, "He's a trumpet player and he doesn't have any money.

Would you do it as a favor for me?"

I said, "Sure, I'll do it."

Herb gave us each 15 bucks. It was a scab date.

- Oh, well, most of 'em were... - Right, yeah.

When we first started way back then, you know.

- Right. It was $15. - Two for a quarter.

- Yeah, two for 25.

And that was The Lonely Bull.

That was the first huge hit that Herb Alpert ever had.

It was huge!

He became a millionaire on that one record.

And you know what he did? He went to the union,

said what he did, paid the union fine,

and then had checks sent to all the musicians for scale,

that-- that they were supposed to have gotten and didn't.

A signature moment in A Taste of Honey

is when the bass drum is knocking four to the floor.

We didn't have a way to get back to the time

without, you know, a count off. And Hal, you know, said,

"Let me just hit the drum, the bass drum.

Everyone will know when to come in."

Larry Levine thought-- The engineer,

that we should keep that, and it was, you know,

one of the things that people remember about the record.

And it became kind of a trademark of the T.J.B.S.

It was all because

these professional musicians couldn't come in together.

I met Julius in high school.

We started playing a song and he took a solo,

and I thought, "Wow, man,

this guy sounds like Lionel Hampton."

He wrote Spanish Flea,

although his first title was "Spanish Fly,"

and I said, "I-- I don't know, I'm not sure--

I'm not so sure that title's gonna work.

You know, when The T.J.B. became famous

and he had to create a group to go on the road,

none of the studio musicians would do it

because they were too busy.

We did 13 albums, and this was something

that bothered me my whole life, my whole career.

We'd come back to town, and I would call

guys like Lou and Hal. And the guys on the road...

Yeah, were really upset.

They were a little offended that they were not used,

but you know, recording musicians had

a certain sound that was important to get.

No matter what shape your stomach's in,

when it gets out of shape, take Alka-Seltzer.

I saw a commercial, and I thought it was a smash.

I called Dave Pell, who was my supervisor,

and I said, "What instrumental groups do we have here?"

And he said, "Well, we have a name called The T-Bones."

And I say, "All right." So I got Tommy Tedesco

and the boys, in the studio we went,

and we did No Matter What Shape."

And that was the number-one instrumental of the year.

The T-Bones!

)

What is their name, "Willy Vanelli"

- or what the hell the shit is? - Milli--

- They had nothing over us.... - Right.

...right? We did that all the time.

I wanted The Marketts to be like a working group.

And, you know, if the public knew it wasn't so,

it would be like a "Mini Vanilli" or whatever.

I think it's a little different when you're a

horn player and you're asked to play the introduction

- and play the first chorus... - I can understand that.

...and play the first solo, and then play the fade on the end.

And the damn thing comes on and it doesn't have your name on it.

Surfer's Stomp-- Plas Johnson was the lead saxophonist,

and I said, "Plas, how about calling it The Plas Johnson?"

And he's says, "no," he says,

"I don't want to be associated with that type of music."

I mean, he was a much better player than that,

but it became a hit and so we call it The Marketts.

And then I start getting calls.

So, the song writer, who co-wrote S urfer's Stomp with me

called Mike Gordon, he got a group together,

went on the road.

Worse than not getting the money,

is to have-- to played on a hit record which sold

a million copies, and not even have your name on them.

And they go dig some white kids up out of high school

and put them on the road and call them the name.

And it was quite easy for the producers

and the companies to hire us to read this music.

And play these things down, in three hours

and get out of that studio in three hours

than to have them come and spend three weeks doing it.

We would either augment or totally replace a group.

We do a new group, say The Association, for instance.

None of them played on the record.

We replaced the entire group.

Well, these are the guys that played on Windy

and Never My Love and Everything That Touches You.

And all the things that were in those two albums

that I did with them, those are all those studio musicians.

It's Al, Joe, Larry, Tommy and-- and those guys.

I wanted to put their names on the back of the album

when it was finished and they wouldn't let me

because they said, "Well, we don't want those kids out there

that buy our records to know that we didn't

play on the record."

I went out and took Brian's place with The Beach Boys.

And I can understand that probably why Brian had studio

guys come in, because they would fight like cats and dogs, man.

Rather than Brian to go through the hassle to get the tracks,

he would hire the rhythm section to come in and do the tracks.

One of the guys-- At first they were a little jealous,

you know what I mean? But I explained to them, I said,

"You know, I want to get the best I can get for the group."

And they go, "Well, I can understand your point, Brian,"

you know. So we went ahead and did it,

and sure enough, the guys liked it.

I mean, that's one of the most asked questions,

"Well, didn't Dennis get mad, wasn't he mad

because you were doing The Beach Boys records?"

Dennis did not have the studio chops that we have, you know.

The proof of the pudding is that Dennis

called me to do his album when Dennis did his solo album.

I played the drums on that.

A lot of times the guys would be sitting around the studio,

we didn't know they were the guys in the band.

The guitar players that were in these various groups,

when they realized guys like Tommy Tedesco

was gonna be playing, they wanted to sit around and watch.

And the drummers would want to sit around

and watch myself or Al.

They were there, like, more or less they were learning.

You know, it would be something that I'd like to see too

if it had been the other way around.

Terry Melcher wanted to use session musicians

for Mr. Tambourine Man.

I'd been a studio musician in New York,

prior to being in The Byrds, so...

they let me play on it.

So my feeling was, "Great. I get to play

with this great band, The Wrecking Crew."

Of course, the other guys, David Crosby,

Michael Clark and Chris Hellman, were livid.

They hated the idea because

they didn't get to play on their own record.

We got a number one hit with it, right off the bat.

But we knocked out two tracks in one three-hour session.

To compare that with what happened when the rest

of the band got to play, it took us 77 takes

to get the band track for Turn, Turn, Turn,

which was also a number one.

People assume that just because my dad made his living

playing guitar, I can also play.

For me, and some of the other kids of studio musicians,

we didn't take it up as a profession.

What my father did teach us was common sense.

I got called many years ago.

I show up on this date and now there's 70 musicians

sitting there. And I'm looking

and I say, "70 musicians? Wow. Where do I sit?"

And they said, "Over there. There's the guitar."

You know, I sit there and I look at a part.

The only problem is starting at bar 95, you know,

and all the rest, rest.

Now the guy starts, right.

And you know what this is to me at the time.

This is in a nightclub, you know, you see a chick,

"Hey, there she is. Hey, hey--"

When he did this and there was no music, I said,

"Oh-oh, they're at bar 95, I knew it."

"Guitar. Where's the guitar?" "Over here."

"We're at 95, I didn't hear you."

"Oh, okay," you know.

- One, two, three, four,

"Okay, forget it. Let's go from 96.

And they have somebody come in the next day to do it."

Elvis Presley came back there a few years

and I started getting hot in records, and Elvis

started using me when he'd come to the coast for movies.

So nobody told Elvis who to use.

To that day I never knew if they knew I was the same guy, though.

But I wasn't about to tell them, "Remember me?

About three years--" Oh, no, no, no.

You see, the one thing I have, common sense.

I studied common sense more than I did guitar.

In the '60s, The Wrecking Crew played

on thousands of recordings,

but you would never have known it.

Producers made a big mistake when they didn't put

the credits on the back of the albums

of all the people that have played on the albums.

Not only did they deserve it, but I think it was misleading.

Maybe one of the reasons they left the names off was

the same musicians played on so many people's records

it would have been an embarrassment if anybody

had ever listed them.

I was used to it 'cause when a guy hired me

with his last $25 and he had a bomb,

I never gave him his money back, you know.

So I really treated it as a business

and I understand how you feel too. But I just felt,

"Just give me my money and I get lost."

Snuffy always let myself and The Playboys

lay down all the basic tracks.

And then Snuff said, "Now we're gonna sweeten it,

do some overdubs and stuff, and I'm gonna bring in

the people that I want to use ."

And I had no experience in this, and Snuffy had.

So I said, "Well, great.

If you think that's the way to do it, let's do it."

The drummer came in, but Snuffy let him, you know,

play some kind of percussion like a tambourine

so it could say, "Gary Lewis and The Playboys."

But it was really studio guys that made the track.

And I remember my guitar player and our keyboard player,

after hearing the session musicians coming in

and putting down the parts, you know, they were saying,

"Oh, my God, I never could have done anything like that."

I'll never forget working with Gary Lewis and The Playboys

- doing all that record. - Oh, yeah.

And I'll never forget I had one real, real hot lick

on this one record-- Spanish stuff all over the place.

And finally, his guitar player come up to me, he says,

"You drove me crazy with that thing.

First of all, I can't play it, so I don't play it.

And then, everybody comes up to me, complimenting me

on what I did on the thing."

I said, "Well, just take the compliments and forget it."

So, while my guitar players played a much simplified

version of it, because nobody could play that.

That was inside stuff.

I think that the public at large was oblivious to the fact

that there was a secret star maker machinery,

that a very important component of that were these teams,

like hitmen, studio hitmen.

Nobody cared.

All they wanted was the product.

They just wanted the name and the sales.

Who created it? Psh.

That was incidental.

Tell him your story, Hal, about The Monkees.

Because the newspapers came in to talk to them

and we were in the next studio cutting their stuff.

And then they were pretending that they were doing it

there in the studios.

- Well, you just told it. - Tell him the story.

Well, you told the story. Did you get it?

I'd never considered myself a musician.

I-- You know, 'cause to me a musician is someone

who does session work, who shows up and reads charts.

And I always approached The Monkees as an actor,

playing the part of a drummer in this imaginary group,

that lived in this imaginary beach house

and had these imaginary adventures.

To me, that always-- always been what it's about.

Peter does tell the story of going into some

of the early sessions. And he walked in with his guitar

and his bass, and they said, "What are you doing here?"

"Well, we've already done the track. Micky's gonna sing."

"So, what--? You invited me for a recording session."

He said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, what are you doing?"

He said, "We have the record, we just need to put a vocal on it."

They said, "Just go home. Relax."

One, two, three, four.

- Mikey, you like it? - You like it?

That's terrible. That's the worst thing--

I had no idea who these guys were in these early sessions.

It was my first session.

And I was introduced to them, "These are the musicians."

I was the vocalist.

I remember Hal Blaine giving me some pointers

in the sessions, and Earl Palmer would give me some pointers.

But I didn't have to play at that point.

They said, "You're gonna start drum lessons on Monday."

And I did. And I had about a year.

So, by the time I had to actually play on stage, live,

I wasn't that bad.

I mean, I only had to play our songs, obviously,

and they were pretty simple pop tunes.

Hal and Earl do this stuff with one hand in their sleep.

The fans, they didn't know or care, and I was like,

"What's the deal? This is a television show

you know. What is the big deal?"

But you know, back then, and even to this day,

a lot of people take their rock and roll very seriously

and, you know-- And it's, you know,

rock and roll is no laughing matter.

You're not supposed to have fun, you know.

It has to be very serious.

It makes sense now to me.

If I were doing the project,

I would do it exactly the same way.

Uh, but, uh, at the time, it didn't make any sense to me.

I didn't understand.

- Were you upset? - Yeah, I was upset.

I thought that-- I mean, I was very naive.

I regard how upset I was as a function of my naiveté.

I always thought I was gonna be in a recording session,

and play the guitar, and do the things,

and sing the background vocals, and all the rest of that.

I had no idea that they had just gone

and made the tracks without us.

I don't think there was any backlash to the discovery

that The Monkees didn't play their own instruments initially,

because everybody knew it was common practice.

I saw them in everybody's session.

I remember in RCA Victor going to The Mamas and Papas,

who were next door, and there was Hal Blaine.

And then, he'd come over and do one of our sessions.

And then off to do somebody else, I guess.

I knew they played on virtually all The Beach Boys records.

You know, we got a lot of shit for it,

but I think finally, you know, some of those guys

are coming clean.

Barry McGuire had found this song called California Dreamin'

that he wanted to record.

And these four, kind of scruffy looking,

two guys and two girls came to the studio

because Barry wanted them to sing

background parts on his record.

And he said to Lou, "They're a great sounding vocal group.

You should hear them sing."

John Phillips wrote this song, California Dreamin'.

So while the band was on a ten, Lou and I went down the hall

to studio two, with the four of them.

And John had a guitar and they sang California Dreamin'.

Lou said, "What do you think?"

And I said, "If you don't take them, I will," you know.

After hearing their vocals-- their background vocals,

I thought it should be their record.

When I started to do The Mamas and The Papas,

I put Joe Osborn in that group with Hal Blaine.

And that's when Hal, and Larry and myself worked together

as a group for the first time.

I wasn't really busy. At that point,

I wasn't busy as a studio player.

And Hal helped get me into that area.

Those kinds of combinations of what Joe brought to Hal Blaine,

and what Hal Blaine brought to Joe Osborn was great.

In the case of The mamas and Papas,

John Phillips would run the song down on rhythm guitar.

At the same time, Hal would be taking notes,

Glen Campbell might be taking notes.

And then we say, "Okay, let's run it down."

They had parts in mind so that you could then edit,

"Yeah, that's good, let's keep it.

That's not, can you try something else?"

But they had a lot to do with the arrangements.

Members of The Mamas and The Papas teach the song

to the musicians.

There is no arrangement or score.

The musicians decide what they should play

against the vocals. A rhythm gets going.

Producers presented the musicians with a road map.

It was just chord symbols. And that was about as far

as it went. Now, these musicians

took that information and, you know, added a little flavor

to it that was unexpected. A lot of times it was,

you know, much more than you had hoped for.

People come over and say, "Did you this?

Would you work with this group?" I said, "I don't remember."

"Well, I saw your name on the album."

"Then I did." You know, that's--

- Right. - 'Cause you work so much,

you have no idea.

The studio player of 1999, they would--

If they're not playing all the time,

they would need to do what we never needed to do,

was practice.

All the time you're practicing, while being paid.

It's funny. Earl and I were talking one time.

It's like, you couldn't judge anybody by how much

they were working 'cause everybody was working

all the time.

You had to just go by how much work you turned down.

Most of us were so fortunate to have been in

at the original beginnings of rock and roll.

Fuck, I say it, I made more money playing rock and roll

than I ever made playing jazz.

There was one point in the mid '60s that

I was making more money than the president of the United States.

I remember I used to kid Carol. I'd say,

"Do you realize, Carol, if I got a divorce and you--

We could get married and what a year we'd have of money.

Between all your money and my money,

- we'd be killing everybody."

Including each other.

This is where we did Sinatra,

Dean Martin,

Sammy Davis Jr.

We did everybody in there.

It's just an amazing place.

In my particular case,

I bought an incredible mansion in Hollywood.

I had a magnificent yacht.

I had a gorgeous Rolls Royce.

But, out of nowhere, I had a wife who all of a sudden

declared, "I want a divorce."

"What? What are you talking about?

I just went for a sandwich and--"

It's, like, impossible to believe.

And in order for her to get paid off,

you sell everything you own.

I had 170-something gold records.

I had to sell them all.

The house was sold for a third of what it was worth.

I had to let the yacht go. The yacht was repossessed.

I never had anything repossessed in my life.

It's just a shame to get wiped out that seriously.

I had been working with John Denver,

almost 5 grand a week for almost ten years,

and all of a sudden, that job ended.

Terrible, terrible thing to have to go through.

I mean, it's-- You certainly,

in the realm of suicide,

you certainly think about it.

I was working in Scottsdale, Arizona,

and I was a security guard,

plain and simple.

Here I went from... all this money

and this magnificent estate and everything else involved,

and all of a sudden I was reduced to

living in a clothes closet.

Came out of about 23 rooms in Hollywood.

And it was like the end of the world.

This was Gold Star.

So this is it. This is what's left.

And it was an amazing time,

and it was such a historical place.

They had a lot of first-time big hit people

come here and make their records.

Across the street, we recorded The Captain & Tennille

doing Love Will Keep Us Together.

Boy, they had a number one,

it was record of the year that year.

It was my last record of the year.

In L.A., I'd heard that things were picking up again...

you know '82, '83, something like that.

And then I was also getting a few calls,

and all of a sudden, I was working again.

One of the great highlights was when I was inducted

into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So in the year 2000,

me and Earl Palmer were both inducted.

You know, Earl was just-- I can't thank him enough.

Earl recommending me in the beginning,

it made a name for myself. It really was that simple.

You know, I've always said...

if you love your work, it's not work,

you know? We loved our work, man.

That's how we could work day and night,

'cause we loved it.

I'll never forget a session

we were all doing with Don Costa.

And I start playing rhythm and he stopped and he said,

"Glen, you got the lead there."

And, boy, I said...

I said, "Mr. Costa, I can't read notes."

He said, "Well, you know the melody, don't you?"

And I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, just--

That's the melody." I said, "Oh, okay, great."

He would ask Tedesco, "How does that figure go

- or this figure go," you know? - Right, exactly.

And then he would sit there and work it out.

And we'd make the records and it was always perfect.

Yeah. Well, he had a certain thing that he offered

that they wanted.

Wonderful ear and a wonderful facility on the instrument.

Glen came up with great ideas,

and his solos were just super.

And then all of a sudden, he's a singing star.

Well, he always could sing. We used to kid him about,

"Oh, he's standing up and singing now,

he's gonna be a big star." But he became a big star.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm Glen Campbell.

I'd mixed, actually, the first record.

That record that he made for Capitol--

I mixed that record.

And it was like a really surprise to see him come in

and say, "I'm singing on this record, I'm gonna..."

you know...

And the record was a hit

and his vocal career was launched.

And when he got out and became a singing star,

guess who he called to back him up?

- That's right, yeah. - We were all there for him.

I remember Tedesco playing on...

I forget what it was.

He said, "You still talking to us peons?"

I said, "Well, some of 'em."

But it was great having the guys do the sessions.

I knew who all the good players were.

Playing Wichita Lineman, it had a chord to it.

I don't think it had any part written.

you know. She says, "How about this for a kickoff

on Wichita Lineman?" She came up with that.

Glen Campbell was a heck of a guitar player,

and I had this Dano bass guitar

that had special pickups and bridge and strings on it

and it got a really great gutty sound.

And he picked it up and did the solo on it.

It was great.

I heard W ichita Lineman at a drugstore one time

and it just brought tears to my eyes,

'cause that tune meant a lot to me.

I did all that early Glen Campbell stuff,

all of it... up to Southern Nights,

when he changed producers and I didn't do anymore.

Glen by this time was trying-- recording-- using his own band.

I'm sitting in Martoni's one night there in Hollywood,

and Steve Turner, his drummer, walked in.

And he said, "You're not gonna believe what just happened."

"What?" And he said, "I'm just coming

from a session with Glen, and we're trying to get this kid

to play some decent rhythm guitar."

Glen says, "Well, give me that big, full Al Casey sound."

I said, "Does he know that I'm available tonight?"

you know. But I understand

he was trying to use his own band.

But when stuff like that starts happening,

that's-- that's a signal.

I think a lot of us felt this just might go on forever.

And that was the first great shock

for many of us who had setbacks in our careers

and realized that, "Hey, this is an up-down...

up-down thing."

Sports figures seem to have a ten-year period

when it all happens for them.

So what you get is you get the ramp up,

you get ten great years, and you get the ramp down.

And the trick is to make the ramp down

last as long as you possibly can.

Who would hire me at my age then,

to be in a rock group?

They weren't doing that anymore,

because now the rock guys were doing their stuff.

And writing, which they always did,

but they were able to perform it.

As Dylan said, "The times, they are a-changing."

it just changed.

New game. new way of doing it.

I don't think it was a conscious decision

that, you know, these musicians play a certain way

and now we better get more contemporary.

In my case, it had to do with the artist

or who the artist brought with them.

In the case of Carole King,

she brought a rhythm section with her.

She brought James Taylor on guitar.

I think the bands learned to play.

It was more important for the public to know

that the bands were really playing the music.

You had these groups that came up

in the late '60s and into the '70s...

The Buffalo Springfield that became Crosby, Stills & Nash.

And these were all self-contained groups that,

for the most part, never used studio musicians.

And those things became huge.

And that's where album artists became really big.

Well, it had a huge effect and...

you know, the singer/songwriter acts

became very important to people.

They started wanting bands that played their own stuff.

It really had an effect on the session musicians.

I'd kinda left by then.

We all went into it

knowing it could stop any second.

It was never meant to last.

I was just like this magical bubble

that just kind of...

blossomed for a second...

hung there in the air...

Hal plays on seven records of the year in a row.

Seven in a row...

and then the bubble... poof. Pops.

It's new people. it's a new regime.

We came in at a certain time, when we were all new.

All the new people are coming in now,

when they are new-- Young, vibrant,

playing today's sounds. It's that simple.

As the record dates with The Wrecking Crew diminished,

my father was one of the more fortunate musicians.

His versatility, combined with his ability

to read music in seconds, led to thousands of recordings

in film and television.

He worked with some of the greatest composers

in American music:

John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith,

Henry Mancini, Bill Conti,

James Horner, Burt Bacharach,

Lalo Schifrin, just to name a few.

In the '70s, my father started playing

for his own enjoyment.

It was the first time I remember seeing him at home

with the guitar.

He got into doing seminars

and that's what he really enjoyed.

He was flying around the country.

And he arranged his seminars on weekends

so that he could be home during the week...

in case there was any calls.

Let me give you what I call

"the creative studio guitar player".

About a year ago,

I got the call to do a John Denver special.

It was John Denver in Mexico,

and they wanted some-- He was on a fishing vessel

and they wanted some Mexican music, so I gave them this:

Got a call to do Charlie's Angels.

They were in Puerto Rico. They wanted Puerto Rican music,

Starsky & Hutch was in a big revolt

in Bolivia in one show.

They wanted Bolivian music.

In 1975, my father, in jest, wrote a song called

Requiem For a Studio Guitar Player.

Always looking to carry a joke a little further,

my dad dressed up as a 280-pound ballerina

and went on The Gong Show.

You should think about what he's saying

in the lyrics to his song.

Don't dwell on the costume too much...

because it tells a lot about the way the business

in this town works.

And for being a person with a sense of humor,

I think Tommy's had to put up with

a lot of really stupid things.

It was not until I tracked these musicians down

to tell their story

that I fully understood Frank Zappa's words.

In 1992, my father had a stroke

that pretty much ended his career as a guitarist.

Two months before my father passed away,

he said to me, "You know, the stroke came

at the right time in my life."

I knew exactly what he meant.

The phone had stopped ringing,

and his day as the Los Angeles session king

had come to an end.

Now he had an excuse as to why the phone didn't ring.

It was something he had no control over.

If I learned anything from my father,

it was to give more than you take.

He loved his family and friends

and would always help the younger guitar players,

knowing it was only a matter of time

that they soon would take his place,

just like he took someone else's seat 40 years earlier.

mellow guitar chords)

Right on!

Mariachi music)

This is the moment we've been waiting for.

With 30 points, the winner today is...

Hot dog!

...Tommy Tedesco!

What do you call a trombone player

with a beeper?

An optimist.