The Wrecking Crew (23 page)

Son of a gun, Ritz said to himself, smiling. Son of a gun if he didn't pull it off.

*   *   *

For three grueling months, Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, and the other musicians toiled on
Pet Sounds,
sometimes working in the studio from seven at night until early the next morning—often on just one song. And on more than one occasion, Blaine found the need to lie down on the floor in the middle of the night next to his drums, hoping to catch a little sleep before the next session began only a few hours later. Though the extra studio time was certainly a financial boon (overtime could add up fast), the extended absences from home too often took a toll on the Wrecking Crew's personal lives. Birthdays and anniversaries were forgotten, school plays were missed, and in several instances marriages sadly ended.

In creating
Pet Sounds,
Wilson wanted the music to be perfect and the boys (and one girl) in the band were right there with him. He was their leader, the guru, the youthful genius whose artistic inclinations were golden. They were a team now and he was the undisputed captain. So while the real Beach Boys continued to travel America and the rest of the world on what seemed to be a never-ending tour, Brian and the Wrecking Crew stayed home and made studio magic.

With them smoothly playing as a seamless unit after so many Beach Boys sessions together, it now seemed to Blaine as though they could almost read Wilson's mind. The producer also sought innovation at every turn. If this album was to be his crowning achievement, then
any
idea was fair game. A distinctive sound was simply a must. During one session, when the percussion on “God Only Knows” seemed to be lacking an indefinable “something,” Blaine suggested that maybe he should try playing his drumsticks on some taped-together plastic orange juice bottles instead. Wilson loved the result.

Another time, Wilson felt that the bass pedals underneath the Hammond B-3 organ just weren't providing the right sound. So he instructed the organ player, Larry Knechtel, to lie on the floor and instead play them with his hands during the song. An unorthodox move to say the least. But neither Knechtel nor Blaine nor any other member of the Wrecking Crew minded. Whatever worked was okay with them.

Released in early April of '66,
Pet Sounds
was an immediate home run with critics and the band's music biz compatriots alike. The
Los Angeles Times
raved about it. The Rolling Stones loved it. Paul McCartney—Wilson's main competitor—practically worshiped it, considering
Pet Sounds
to be the greatest pop album of all time.

But a funny thing happened once this future classic made its way to the nation's record stores: it landed with a resounding thud. A confounded public just didn't know what to make of all the melancholy and introspection. Was this really the Beach Boys? The same fun-loving band that used to sing about waxing down their surfboards and liking California girls the best?

Despite brilliant playing by the Wrecking Crew and equally brilliant songwriting that was in many ways ahead of its time—or perhaps exactly because of it—sales were lukewarm from the start and the vaunted album failed to even achieve Gold status. Certainly a first for the Beach Boys and simply an unthinkable proposition only six short months before.

Brian Wilson was crushed. Despite the critical acclaim surrounding
Pet Sounds,
he couldn't get over the public's failure to embrace his most important and personal musical creation.

“I've never seen him like this,” Knechtel said to Blaine one evening a few weeks later during a hastily arranged session for some overdub work on the soon-to-be-released stand-alone single “Good Vibrations.”

“Neither have I,” admitted the drummer.

Though he tried to put on a brave face, Wilson's ever-fragile spirit had been irretrievably broken. Though more sessions with the Wrecking Crew would occur later in the year and into the next in what would be a halfhearted attempt to create a new album—most notably the time he had them all don little red fire hats while playing the instruments on the “Fire” portion of a musical suite he called
The Elements
—the damage had been done. Wilson's own fire was essentially out.

*   *   *

As Hal Blaine pressed the buzzer at the gate in front of Brian Wilson's massive pale yellow Mission-style mansion along Bel Air's tony Bellagio Road, he knew something just wasn't right. He had been recording there on and off for several months—it was now the fall of 1967—and rumors were starting to swirl about Wilson's possible mental illness and drug use. But a call to do another recording date at Brian Wilson's home at least seemed like a positive sign. Maybe the kid was on the road to turning things around.

After entering through the front door and being escorted down a long hallway, Blaine found himself, as usual, in a former den with a very tall ceiling that had been converted into a makeshift recording studio. The fireplace opening had been covered with plywood and his drums were already set up in the corner, courtesy of his trusted drum tech and friend, Rick Faucher. Several mic stands were in position and a grand piano sat front and center.

For some reason, the control booth itself—the heartbeat of any studio—had been placed in a strangely detached location far above the main floor on what looked to be a balcony on the home's second level. The eerily foreboding structure featured an ominous series of small, slit-like windows that overlooked everything below, like some sort of fortified citadel straight out of medieval wars. Hardly the best environment for creating music, Blaine thought.

Several other Wrecking Crew regulars were there, too—guys like Jerry Cole, Larry Knechtel, Ray Pohlman, and others. Everyone had come prepared, as always, hoping to cut something special, just like in the old days. But despite their expectations, the three-hour date turned out to be nothing more than the usual oddball recording session up at Brian's house, where nothing ever seemed to come to fruition. And just like on so many previous visits, the musicians on hand never even personally interacted with Wilson. They took their instructions straight from the engineer over the talk-back mic.

On the way out that day, a few of the Wrecking Crew players suddenly caught a glimpse of—
could it be?
—Brian Wilson. Or at least somebody who vaguely looked like him. Gone was the affable, trim, energetic soul who had so skillfully guided their musical efforts at Gold Star and Western Recorders. In his place was an overweight man with unwashed, stringy hair, wearing an old bathrobe and slippers. As he silently passed along in the shadows, his gaze, if you could call it that, seemed to look right through them. The famed producer and recording star clearly had retreated within himself to a private world—a world where the Wrecking Crew were not invited.

The group of musicians stopped in surprise.

“Hi, Brian, how are you doing?” one of them said.

Wilson made no response.

“Hey, Brian, we've missed you, man,” offered another.

Still no response.

As they watched the onetime leader of America's most popular band shuffle his way down the hall into the half darkness, an ineffable sadness filled the air. Not just at the heartbreaking sight before them but also at the realization that the time they had spent as part of something so rare, so world changing, was finally, officially over. Forever.

And so it came to pass that after almost five years of Brian Wilson and the Wrecking Crew together in the studio night and day as a virtual musical family in creation of an almost unprecedented string of twenty-two Top 40 hits, he didn't even seem to know who the members of the Wrecking Crew were anymore.

12

Let's Live for Today

Never have so many played so little for so much.

—B
ARNEY
K
ESSEL

In late 1965, two young music-loving producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, had a brainstorm. What if they took the basic concept of the Beatles' movie
A Hard Day's Night
—the fictional story of four zany, cute-looking twentysomething male musicians running amuck in a comically skewed world—and turned it into a weekly TV series specifically targeting teenage girls? With tapping into the burgeoning youth market a known priority for ABC, CBS, and NBC and with animal-oriented band names currently in vogue, the enterprising duo immediately began making a series of pitches around Hollywood for a program they wanted to call
The Monkees
.

After finagling a one-episode pilot deal with Columbia Pictures' TV subsidiary, Screen Gems—a major supplier of shows to all three networks—Rafelson and Schneider, now going by the corporate name of Raybert Productions, set about the task of coming up with four suitable musicians, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Though they first considered using a novice band they had befriended called the Lovin' Spoonful (“Do You Believe in Magic,” “Daydream,” and “Summer in the City” would be among their eventual hits), the producers ultimately chose to go the casting-call route in order to find their perfect set of joyful anarchists.

Accordingly, in early 1966 Raybert put a small, pithy advertisement in
Daily Variety
and in
The Hollywood Reporter
that read: “Madness!! Auditions: Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in a new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17–21. Want spirited Ben Frank's-types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.”

With swarms of young male hopefuls easily several hundred strong descending upon their offices, the producers ended up with plenty of warm bodies from which to choose, including future well-known musicians Stephen Stills, Van Dyke Parks, and Gary Lewis. After hour upon hour of freewheeling auditions stretching over an exhausting two-month period, Rafelson and Schneider finally settled on their ideal fabricated foursome: Micky Dolenz, a former child actor and natural mimic, best known for playing the lead role in the Fifties TV series
Circus Boy
; Davy Jones, a diminutive British-born song-and-dance veteran whose most recent work had him on the Broadway stage in
Oliver!
as the Artful Dodger; Michael Nesmith, a laconic Texas-born guitarist and singer with minimal performing experience; and Peter Tork, a sometime-musician now washing dishes for a living in a Santa Monica restaurant.

Given that
The Monkees
was a show about a band, the first order of business, along with filming the pilot, was to record some music. Choosing to employ the services of a number of established songwriters, with Neil Diamond, David Gates, and Carole King among them, music publisher and Screen Gems music division president Don Kirshner—who had assumed the role of music supervisor on the show as well—also saw the need to bring in studio musicians to help cut the made-for-TV group's records. In his view, the four actors were in no way ready to assume the duties of actually playing their own instruments.

Once the decision was made to go with the in-house Screen Gems songwriting team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart as the program's primary music producers, for a while everything went along smoothly. The pilot sold to NBC, who then made a commitment for a full season to begin in the fall of 1966. Recording also began on what would become over two albums' worth of initial material, with Dolenz and Jones supplying most of the lead vocals.

After a huge promotional push from Colgems, the band's newly created record label (a partnership between Screen Gems and RCA), and with the instant exposure provided by their recently launched Monday night show, the Monkees' first 45, “Last Train to Clarksville,” shot to number one on the charts in October of 1966. Their first LP,
The Monkees,
did the same, with their mostly adolescent (and younger) fans blissfully unaware that the musicians playing on the vinyl discs really weren't their heroes at all. Instead, the instrumentation consisted of a mixture of the Wrecking Crew (often including Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, and Hal Blaine) and the Candy Store Prophets (Boyce and Hart's personal band).

From children's lunch boxes to teen magazines to miniature toy Monkeemobiles, the phenomenon known as Monkeemania was suddenly at full throttle. Yet despite the quartet's virtually instantaneous rise to fame and fortune—with a level of adulation matched in intensity only by the fans of the Beatles themselves—the behind-the-scenes action was already beginning to head sideways. Just a few months into their first season on the air, Mike Nesmith, generally the quietest of the four, had become exceedingly vocal about his unhappiness. He wanted the Monkees to be allowed to play and sing as a band on their own records, particularly on the songs he continued to write. Nesmith had little interest in continuing as part of what he considered to be a colossal charade. The public was being duped and he wanted no part of it.

Arriving for a meeting one afternoon in January of 1967 at Don Kirshner's bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Monkees gamely participated in a made-for-the-press ceremony where they were each given a gold record and a check for $250,000, their share of the record royalties that had accumulated so far. After posing for endless photos and good-naturedly mugging their way through the rest of the event, the four then stayed behind with Kirshner and a few Screen Gems staffers to go over some business.

As Kirshner, who was always looking ahead in terms of generating more revenue, presented the boys with several new songs that were being considered for their next single release (including “Sugar, Sugar,” the future number-one hit by the Archies), he made the fatal mistake of saying, “The tracks have already been cut. We just need to add your voices.”

That was all Mike Nesmith needed to hear. It was finally time to make a stand. He was sick to death of singing on other people's songs played by still other musicians while Screen Gems happily slapped the band's name on the little red and white Colgems record labels.