You know the Wrecking Crew, even if you don’t think you do. The loosely affiliated assembly of musicians, which included the session drummer extraordinaire Hal Blaine (who coined the name), the bassist and guitarist Carol Kaye (one of the few female session players of her era), the guitarist Tommy Tedesco, and dozens of other musicians (at various times, Earl Palmer, Barney Kessel, Plas Johnson, Al Casey, Glen Campbell, James Burton, Leon Russell, Larry Knechtel, and Jack Nitzsche), dominated American popular music in the nineteen-sixties, first as the group of choice for Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound, and then as the physical embodiment of the lavish sonic dreams of Brian Wilson.
Rarely credited on record, the Wrecking Crew nevertheless played for, with, and in the service of nearly every prominent American pop performer of the decade, to the point that it’s probably easier to make a list of the acts it didn’t support. If you’ve heard the Crystals (“He’s a Rebel”), Jan and Dean (“Surf City”), Paul Revere and the Raiders (“Kicks”), Simon and Garfunkel (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”), the Association (“Windy”), the Mamas and the Papas (“California Dreamin’ ”), Frank Sinatra (“Strangers in the Night”), the Monkees (“Last Train to Clarksville”), Herb Alpert (“A Taste of Honey”), Nancy Sinatra (“These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ”), or Sonny and Cher (“Bang Bang”)—not to mention the “Batman” theme, the “Mission: Impossible” theme, the “Hawaii Five-O” theme, or the “Born Free” theme—then you’ve heard the Wrecking Crew. When producers called musicians, these were the musicians who got called first.
Now, the Crew is the subject of a documentary, “We Got Good At It.” Well, “now” is perhaps a bit misleading. The film, which is spearheaded by Tommy Tedesco’s son Denny, has been in pre-production since the mid-nineties, when the elder Tedesco was diagnosed with cancer. At that point, Denny realized that he had limited time to commit his father’s stories to tape and film. Tommy Tedesco died in 1997, but Denny kept moving forward with the project, speaking to as many Wrecking Crew members as possible and making a special effort to get in contact with musicians who were sick. Tedesco was also determined to include as many of the songs the group played on as possible, especially because so many of them were huge hits. The final cut of his movie included more than a hundred and thirty excerpts of songs, which made for a more nuanced and comprehensive film. It also made for a more expensive film, due to the requirements of music licensing. And while the documentary was able to show on the festival circuit in 2008 and has been featured on National Public Radio, those are not-for-profit environments. Commercial distribution remains prohibitively expensive. An initial estimate of $2.5 million was negotiated down over time, but completion costs still hover around two hundred thousand dollars.
Enter crowdsourcing. While many celebrity-driven projects have thrown the fundamental philosophy of online group fund-raising into question— Zach Braff’s recent film, “Wish I Was Here,” raised more than three million dollars and ruffled the feathers of those who wondered why Braff couldn’t have gone a more traditional route—the Wrecking Crew documentary seems like a perfect fit. On its Kickstarter page, Tedesco not only reiterates the group’s historical importance, but clearly outlines the difficulties he has encountered in financing the project. “It’s been a long road with many ups and downs,” he writes. “The money raised on Kickstarter will not only pay for the [American Federation of Musicians] costs, but also the last few song licenses, some stock footage licensing, an online edit…and the final mix.”
The film is currently only a little more than halfway toward its two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar goal, with a stated deadline of December 21st. But because the Internet has magical powers when it comes to content distribution, much of what Tedesco has created can already be viewed online. On the film’s official Web page, entering your e-mail address will give you access to dozens of outtakes from the film, including interviews with Leon Russell and Glen Campbell, and vignettes on everything from Phil Spector’s famed holiday album “A Christmas Gift For You” to Perry Botkin’s discovery of Harry Nilsson. This featurette, produced for the Nashville Film Festival, includes Tedesco’s summary of the film and content from it, including footage of his father.
Still, the final film does what none of these snippets can: it provides a rounded portrait of the musicians and their times, along with dozens of interviews. There are frank insights regarding the Crew’s attitude toward rock and roll (because all the musicians were highly trained, some saw it as a simplistic art form whose time would pass), the money involved (there was lots of it), each other (they are, for the most part, highly generous to their peers, happy to give credit for indelible riffs or hooks), and the almost unfathomable insanity of the schedule. As the guitarist Bill Pittman says, “You leave the house at seven o’clock in the morning, and you’re at Universal at nine till noon; now you’re at Capitol Records at one, you just got time to get there, then you got a jingle at four, then we’re on a date with somebody at eight, then the Beach Boys at midnight, and you do that five days a week…jeez, man, you get burned out.”
But they didn’t burn out, not really. They played on into the early seventies, elevating hits such as the 5th Dimension’s “One Less Bell To Answer,” the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You,” and Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves.” At that point, a handful of members (Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, and Dr. John) went on to solo fame; others joined groups (Jim Gordon became the drummer for Derek and the Dominos); and still others semi-retired or turned to teaching. The Wrecking Crew passed into a history that it largely created, imperfectly acknowledged but perfectly present in hundreds of American pop songs known to all.