As you well know, the British Invasion reached US airwaves in very early 1964. By the time the Monkees' television comedy series was broadcast in September 1966, the Brits were well established stars on both sides of the pond, and the Monkees, a band formed in LA after four hundred-plus applicants auditioned, were trying to catch the same wave of popularity. Their television show was an undisguised, fairly successful attempt to capture the same type of madcap zaniness which the Beatles had brought to the big screen in 1964 with A Hard Days' Night. The Monkees' first two single records, Last Train To Clarksville and I'm A Believer, both hit # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart concurrently with their show in the last half of '66. Was this America's answer to England? It didn't quite work out that way.
Even the Monkees' most ardent fans eventually realized that, except for Davy Jones' lead singing, the music the band was putting out was not a result of the foursome's musicianship. They were ad-libbers and, at least to a degree, lip synchers. Holy Milli Vanilli! The Monkees might be called a "faux band"; comedic actors, sure, but not a real band whose members played their own instruments like their British competition. It's hard to blame the fans for being fooled; they were in good company, as revealed by Dick Clark's above-referenced quote. After all, no one knew the music scene like Clark, who for thirty-three years produced and hosted the longest running music performance television shows of all time, American Bandstand.
All of this begs the question: If not the Monkees themselves, who, then, was playing on the Monkees' records? The answer is the title of the film reviewed in this post: The Wrecking Crew. The Wrecking Crew was a dynamic group of approximately twenty LA session musicians who supplied the music to a number of Top 40 hits, yet rarely getting credit on the liner notes or record labels.
Even if the listening public had correctly pegged the Monkees early on for being a "make believe" band, who would have ever guessed that bands such as the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Gary Lewis & The Playboys and the Association, all mega stars on Top 40 radio, were outsourcing their work to the Wrecking Crew? The Beach Boys (along with the Four Seasons) were the biggest American pop band of the sixties. Their lineup was comprised of the three Wilson brothers (Brian, Carl and Dennis), a cousin (Mike Love) and a close friend (Al Jardine). But for all intents and purposes, Brian Wilson was the Beach Boys, and he was the quintessential perfectionist. He knew the exact sound he desired for the music he wrote, and the best way to achieve it in the studio was to use not the guys in his band but, instead, the greatest musicians in the business, i.e., the Wrecking Crew. Likewise, Columbia Records, the Byrds' label, insisted that the Wrecking Crew be used for that group's first album, Mr. Tambourine Man, not only to take advantage of the Crew's superior musicianship, but also to expedite the production of the product in terms of requiring less time in the expensive recording studio. As for The Playboys, their leader, Gary Lewis, pretty much throws his fellow band members under the bus while comparing their inferior talent to that of the Crew. (Not surprisingly, Lewis does not mention his own merits as the drummer in the band.) The film portrays the Association as a bunch of choir boys wearing silly costumes, without a lick of talent as musicians.
The second of Dick Clark's illuminating quotes (paraphrased) was, "The record labels and producers were afraid to let the public know that most of the American songs they were listening to and buying featured the exact same musicians" (referring, of course, to the Wrecking Crew). In effect, there was a conspiracy to keep the fans in the dark regarding the true source of what they heard on the radio. The Righteous Brothers, Sonny & Cher, the Fifth Dimension, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, the Ronettes, Simon & Garfunkle, Captain & Tenille, Ike & Tina Turner, and Dean Martin, just to name a few, all had top ten hits, and all of those hits were backed -- if not totally arranged -- by the Wrecking Crew. None of those artists was billed as a "band," per se, so perhaps it is not that surprising that they took advantage of the consummate talent of the Wrecking Crew.
A standard operating procedure orchestrated by the prominent record labels would be for a songwriter and a producer to hire the Wrecking Crew for a recording session, release a few select songs, and then wait to see how they fared on the charts. If a particular song turned out to be a hit, a band would be put together for a promotional tour. The fans attending the concerts would not have a clue that the musicians they saw on stage were not the same ones they heard on the record.
Filmmaker Denny Tedesco is the son of the Crew's star guitarist, the late Tommy Tedesco. Much of the documentary consists of footage of interviews and round table discussions among many of the mainstays of the group, including drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, bassist extraordinaire Carol Kaye, saxophonist Plas Johnson, keyboard player Leon Russell (yes, that Leon Russel), guitarists Glen Campbell (yes, that Glen Campbell) and Tedesco. We also get to hear from Dick Clark, Brian Wilson, prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb, and master record producer Lew Adler, among others.
I do have a couple of nits. There is a small degree of repetition, hammering home points that have already been made. I also wish there was more concert footage, especially of the Ronettes and other acts that made Phil Spector's "wall of sound" famous. Nevertheless, you will not see a movie with a better soundtrack. If you are a senior, an oldies station listener, or simply a person who enjoys viewing a ground-breaking documentary, you have to put this film on your Must See List.
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