Just curious--does anyone remember Sonny & Cher singing "The Beat Goes On?"
I have a VERY good reason for asking.........
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret
by Kent Hartman
It covers the same material, but from a different perspective. It's fully indexed, and makes an excellent companion read to reference stuff while watching the film (and there's a LOT of stuff to reference).
I believe it was in the book, an established contemporary drummer gave us this nugget - "My top ten favorite drummers, growing up, turned out to be one dude (Earl Palmer).
and just about your post, I mentioned a book on the wrecking Crew with the same title. The book and the film are two different items entirely. If you really like the Wrecking Crew, and if you read this American Heritage article by Hartman, I guarantee it will blow your socks off and you'll run out and locate a copy of his book. FWIW, this AH piece was my introduction to the Wrecking Crew.
https://www.americanheritage.com/wrecking-crew
(Bummer, the article is four pages long and DU's copyright thingy only allows me to post four paragraphs)
The Wrecking Crew
Was Hal Blaine one of your favorite musicians back in the 1960s? How about Larry Knechtel? Carol Kaye? Oh yes they were.
Kent Hartman
February/March 2007
Volume 58 Issue 1
On a cool, overcast February night in Hollywood, near the slightly scruffy, down-on-its-luck intersection of Vine Street and Santa Monica Boulevard—the final stretch of Route 66—a group of highly talented musicians gathered in a weathered, non-descript former dentist’s office are about to make rock ’n’ roll history. No one present, from the bass player to the drummer to the guitarist, has any inkling that this particular studio session is likely to differ from any other. For the song being cut this night is by the Beach Boys, one of the biggest bands in pop music, and a band quite accustomed to churning out Top 10 AM radio favorites.
As Brian Wilson, the group’s producer and chief songwriter, calls out instructions from the control booth over the talk-back speaker—“let’s play a little tighter on that first break, okay, guys?”—the drummer clears his throat, counts off “one, two, three, four,” and suddenly a staccato burst of Hammond B2 organ notes, punctuated by the rhythmic thump of a Fender bass guitar and a cleverly syncopated snare drum, begins to fill Gold Star Recording Studios. The sound of the future number one hit “Good Vibrations” is clearly evident. Yep, this is the Beach Boys all right. Except it’s not. In fact, there’s not a Beach Boy in the room.
During the sixties and seventies, perhaps the most fertile period of popular music our nation has ever produced, recording stars such as the Monkees, Carpenters, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Jan & Dean, the Beach Boys, the Association, the Grass Roots, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, the Mamas and the Papas, and dozens more ruled the airwaves. However, most listeners are likely unaware that a good share of these legendary artists seldom, if ever , played any of the instruments on their own records.
That’s right. Virtually all the instruments were played by an uncredited close-knit group of Los Angeles studio musicians, often referred to today by insiders as the Wrecking Crew (a name coined by the drummer Hal Blaine after the fact to describe how he and other sidemen had revolutionized the recording industry). From “Last Train to Clarksville” to “Monday, Monday” to “Mrs. Robinson,” these same studio pros time and again provided most or all of the guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, horns, and more on hundreds of the best-known singles and albums of all time. Their collective story provides a surprising behind-the-scenes glimpse of the creation of the songs that became the soundtrack for one of the most socially volatile periods in American history.
(More, a lot more)
https://www.americanheritage.com/wrecking-crew
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12129983-the-wrecking-crew
