Back in April, Regine and I attended several films at the Nashville Film Festival. We especially enjoyed a documentary called “The Wrecking Crew”. It is about a group of about 20 studio musicians in Los Angeles in the 1960s. They played on so many different records that it is almost impossible to count. They played for solo artists who didn’t have a band (i.e. Nancy Sinatra), groups that needed a little added help in the studio (i.e. The Beach Boys), groups that didn’t exist until AFTER a hit song was recorded (i.e. the Marketts, Routers, and T-Bones) and groups that were fabricated and couldn’t play their own instruments (i.e. The Monkees).
Regine came away feeling that she had been duped as a child. I knew this was going on. I just didn’t know it was the same group of musicians in every instance. Musicians like Tommy Tedesco, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson and Don Randi.
The film was a labor of love by Denny Tedesco (Tommy’s son) and took him several years to complete. The movie was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I really enjoyed seeing Carol Kaye, bass guitarist extraordinaire, play some of the riffs that we all grew up with. One of the difficult things about producing the movie was getting clearance to use the over 100 songs in the film. Since the same thing would have to be done again for a DVD release, it is highly unlikely there will be one unless a distributor with a department dedicated to that task decides to get involved. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
You can check out information about the film, see where it’s playing and sign up for notifications at The Wrecking Crew Film website.
