For those of you who don't know, the Wrecking Crew was the group of studio musicians who played on hundreds of hit songs, television shows and movies in the 60s and 70s including hits by The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, The Byrds, The Monkees and tons more. They acquired the name "Wrecking Crew" from the rather straight-laced studio musicians that came before them that thought the group of studio musician upstarts were going to "wreck the business."
The documentary was the brainchild of Denny Tedesco, who's father was the ad hoc ringleader of the Crew, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, one of the most recorded session players in history.
I saw an early cut a number of years ago, but this final cut just blew me away. If you're a lover of music and have heard these songs a lot (who hasn't), this is something that you'll want to see, and you'll definitely want the DVD/Blu-ray disc, which has an additional 6 hours of interviews that didn't make the movie.
There were 2 great things about last night besides the movie. One was the fact that the showing was held at United Studios on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, which was where so many of those hits were actually recorded way back when, and the Q&A session afterwards with Denny, Don Randi (one of the many keyboard players from the Crew) and Dave Pell, who at 90 years old is still sharp as a tack and told some great stories of the days when he played with the greats and ran several record labels. You just don't hear stories like that anymore.
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| Don Randi, Dave Pell, Denny Tedesco at United Recording |
1 comment:
This should be mandatory viewing for every music lover, especially this current generation, to realize what true high-quality music actually consists of and means; the best pro-musicians who expertly play their instruments.
It's the real thing, and becoming a lost art-form.
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