The Wrecking Crew (32 page)

In contrast, by the end of the Sixties Glen Campbell's public profile had zoomed into the stratosphere. Following his chart success with “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and by virtue of several well-received TV guest spots on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,
Campbell had been asked to host
The Summer Brothers Smothers Show
in 1968, the replacement for their much-publicized variety series during its three-month hiatus. When he scored surprisingly high among audiences during his summertime stint, CBS soon gave the telegenic and politically conservative Campbell—to the network, a welcome relief from the vexing Smothers Brothers—a musical variety show of his own.

Hitting the air in mid-season during January of 1969,
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
was an immediate smash. Opening every show with a trademark high-pitched, “Hi, I'm Glen Campbell,” he and his good buddy the banjo-playing Johnny Hartford would then launch into a quick version of the Hartford-penned “Gentle on My Mind.” The weekly musical guests were top-notch, too, including many people Campbell used to play guitar for during his time with the Wrecking Crew, including Ricky Nelson, Nancy Sinatra, and the Righteous Brothers.

With the cash flowing along with the acclaim, Campbell also started construction on a mammoth 16,500-square-foot house on a hill at the top of Laurel Canyon. With a sweeping view of the San Fernando Valley and enough room to fit his boyhood home inside many times over, it was more than he ever imagined possible. Maybe too much. But it made his wife and their three kids happy, so he went along with it. Besides, he was rarely around, anyway. Always a whirlwind of activity, if the in-demand Campbell wasn't recording a new album or taping his weekly show, he was on the road performing scores of weekend concert dates around the country. Though by no means a trained actor, he also somehow found time to co-star in the motion picture
True Grit
with John Wayne, playing a hard-nosed Texas Ranger by the name of LaBoeuf. Despite all his newfound wealth, having grown up poor, Campbell just hated to say no to an offer, even to acting. He had seen careers start to slide in the entertainment world just as fast as they had begun. Campbell hoped it wouldn't happen to him.

*   *   *

Growing up during the Forties as the only child of a young single mother, Gary Coleman never did know who his father was. Despite his repeatedly asking her questions over the years, his mom always told him the same thing: “Your dad went out for a pack of cigarettes one day and just never came back.” Whatever the actual truth might have been, the Pennsylvania-born Coleman always knew that he was unlike most of the kids in his neighborhood. Not in a bad way, just different. Others had the luxury of fathers to talk with, to brag about, to emulate. Coleman, never knowing what having an old man was actually like, instead made up an imaginary mental picture of what he
wanted
his dad to be. He then modeled himself accordingly.

Like many children of his era, Coleman also took piano lessons for a time, dutifully practicing each day after school on an old upright. An indifferent student, however, he much preferred to go outside and horse around with his friends than to sit on a wooden bench endlessly learning scales. By the age of eight, he had retired from the piano for good.

In 1949, at the age of thirteen, after having moved to Alhambra, California, (about eight miles northeast of downtown LA) with his mother to live rent-free with her parents, Coleman made a life-changing discovery. One afternoon, while poking around in the cellar of the old home, he found a series of large black hard-shell travel cases all lined up against a wall. Peering closer, he could just make out the name of his mother's brother, Carson Meade Davis, stenciled on the sides. Flipping one of them open, Coleman saw a strange series of metal bars. And then it occurred to him: this must be his uncle's vibraphone set. Struck with a yarn-covered, rubber-tipped pair of mallets and somewhat similar to the smaller wooden bar-style percussion instruments like the xylophone and the glockenspiel, the vibes were the undisputed granddaddy of them all.

Coleman had heard the stories, too. Davis, now working a regular day job up in San Francisco, had once been a Big Band musician, playing the hotel circuit throughout the country during the Thirties and Forties. Starting as a pianist, he had switched to the vibes somewhere along the way. And word was, he had been pretty good.

Fascinated with what he had unearthed, Coleman lugged each piece up two flights of stairs to his bedroom and assembled the whole thing, playing along as best he could with the radio and some old records. For the introverted teen, it was a transformative experience. The instrument took him to a place that provided a sense of accomplishment and pleasure he had never experienced. A welcoming destination that was a million emotional miles away from his often-lonely, fatherless existence. Instinctively, Gary Coleman knew that he would be playing the vibes for the rest of his life.

*   *   *

By the mid-Sixties, after having graduated from college and entered the working world, Gary Coleman found himself surrounded by a wife, three kids, a mortgage, and a job as a public school music teacher that was going nowhere. To supplement his meager salary, to maybe someday save enough money to actually get his family out of the cockroach-infested dump of a duplex they lived in right next to the freeway—where the noxious pollution actually ate the curtains right off the rods—Coleman also moonlighted when he could on his uncle's vibes at various jazz clubs. But with the combined pay still low, Coleman was open to
anything
that might help change his circumstances.

Walking down the street one day in Alhambra in 1965, deep in thought as always, the angular, rangy Coleman looked up just in time to see the familiar face of a blond-haired woman coming toward him. It was Carol Kaye.

“Hi, Carol,” he said, surprised to see his old friend again. They had played together years earlier at least a handful of times around town.

“Hey, Gary, good to see you,” she replied, giving him a warm hug.

“How've you been?” Coleman asked. “Are you still playing casuals?”

“No, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm now just working in the recording studios. In fact, I worked a date this morning.”

When she happened to mention in passing the amount she had earned, Coleman did a double take.

“That's really something, Carol,” he marveled. “You made as much before noon today as I make all week teaching school
and
playing in the clubs!”

Always generous in helping other musicians, Kaye then made an offer to the struggling Coleman that he couldn't refuse.

“I'm having a get-together next week at my house. Some friends from the business. Why don't you come by? I'll introduce you to some people.”

*   *   *

Sometimes in the music business, one well-timed party or one fleeting connection can make a career on the spot. And so it was for Gary Coleman. At the big soiree over at Carol Kaye's North Hollywood home, the bassist made a point of introducing Coleman to her gathered guests as “the greatest vibist west of the Mississippi.” Though an accolade that at first embarrassed him—if I'm so great, aren't they going to wonder why they've never heard of me?—he couldn't help but enjoy the praise. It meant a lot coming from someone as important as Kaye.

More important, however, by virtue of a few choice introductions made by his friend, Coleman's downwardly mobile life suddenly did an almost 180-degree turn. The twenty-nine-year-old unexpectedly found himself by the next week on his first professional session, playing for the prominent producer David Axelrod at Capitol Records. Taking the miraculous opportunity as the sign that he long had been looking for, Coleman immediately retired from teaching, taking his four-thousand-dollar early-retirement payout to buy a bunch of pro-quality instruments. He knew that those who did the hiring in the studios expected a percussionist to come equipped with all the tools of the trade, not just a paltry set of vibes. These necessary items included chimes, bells, tympanis, xylophones, marimbas, congas, bongos, castanets, maracas, vibraslaps, rain sticks, and shakers of all kinds.

Buoyed by Kaye's continued encouragement and words of wisdom—she had told him after the Axelrod date, “You're going to make it, Gary, but you've also got to make yourself available”—Coleman soon started playing on anywhere from twelve to twenty sessions a week, taking anything that came his way. He also decided early on that, to make his work really stand out, he needed to become a
part
of what he was doing. It was no good to just show up and shake some things around. Anybody could do that. Coleman wanted to make sure that what he played was right for rock and roll, a genre that was new to him. So he made up his mind that if a producer or arranger wanted him to do something as pedestrian as merely striking a tambourine on the two and the four beats throughout an entire three-hour session, then he was going give it everything he had. And his efforts paid off. By the late Sixties, Coleman had become an accepted part of the Wrecking Crew, a first-call percussionist playing on songs for dozens of major artists like the Monkees and the 5th Dimension—even on the Beach Boys'
Pet Sounds.

Unlike Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, and most of the other established Wrecking Crew regulars, however, Gary Coleman also liked to get high, sometimes in the studio. It was not uncommon for him to smoke some pot or even snort a little cocaine during a session. Given that he was usually far in the back, at least partially obscured by his large equipment cases, it was not difficult for him to partake in his favorite substances while the producer busied himself in the booth. And in this regard, Coleman fit in nicely with a number of the performers themselves.

One evening, during early 1968, while inside the secret home recording studio that John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas had illegally built in the attic of their Bel Air home—a beautiful Tudor-style mansion that once belonged to the singer and actress Jeanette MacDonald—Gary Coleman joined in as a couple of joints were passed around. After everyone enjoyed getting sufficiently pie-eyed before finally settling down to business to cut “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (a love song first recorded by Ricky Nelson's father, Ozzie, in 1931), the lead singer on the tune, Mama Cass Elliot, suddenly couldn't remember the words. And neither could any of her now-fried group mates.

“I'm gonna have to call Wallichs!” she laughingly exclaimed, referring to the musical instrument, sheet music, and record store located in Hollywood on the corner of Sunset and Vine.

Coleman, for one, had never seen anything like it. It was certainly a first to watch a major singing star unable to perform in the studio. But then this
was
the Mamas & the Papas.

Elliot eventually got on the phone after someone dialed the number for her.

“Yes, this is Mama Cass,” she said, pen in hand. “Could you please read me the lyrics to ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me'?”

With the store clerk suitably stunned by the out-of-the-blue request from such a famous celebrity, Elliot, pro that she was, scribbled down the words, said, “Thank you very much,” and then proceeded to step up to the mic in the cozy, haze-filled room and belt out a number-twelve hit on the spot.

*   *   *

One day during the late summer of 1969, as Gary Coleman went through the usual time-consuming process of packing up his tymps, vibes, marimbas, and other gear after a session at Columbia Records in Hollywood, he heard someone calling his name. The busy musician had just finished working on an Andy Williams Christmas album, along with several other Wrecking Crewers and a large orchestra. As he turned around, he saw that it was Hal Blaine.

“Hey, Gary, could I get you to come overdub something next door in Studio A?” Blaine asked hopefully. “It won't take long, plus you'll get paid the full three-hour scale, of course.”

“Sure,” said Coleman, who never strayed far from Carol Kaye's original advice about making himself available. He also knew who was recording in the other studio. Everyone did. It was Simon & Garfunkel.

Having become one of the biggest acts in the world on the heels of songs like “I Am a Rock,” “Homeward Bound,” and “Scarborough Fair,” the two were now painstakingly piecing together their most important work to date, an album they planned to call
Bridge Over Troubled Water.
They also had become ardent admirers and employers of Blaine, Joe Osborn, and Larry Knechtel from the Wrecking Crew. The undeniable creative symbiosis between the drummer, bassist, and keyboardist had been in place since Lou Adler first hired them to play together on Johnny Rivers's “Mountain of Love” in 1964. More recently, the three had played drums, bass, and piano as a unit on the
Age of Aquarius
album for Bones Howe and the 5th Dimension, yet another gold record for all involved.

Simon & Garfunkel also had used the trio extensively on their previous LP
Bookends,
which contained the Grammy-winning number-one hit “Mrs. Robinson.” Originally starting with the working title of “Mrs. Roosevelt,” the song featured a bare-bones trio of just Simon, Blaine, and Knechtel (who came up with the signature opening riff) on all the instruments. But with Knechtel soon wearying of doing double duty for the demanding duo on both bass and keyboards, Blaine suggested that they bring in Osborn to help finish the album. And the fit was perfect. By 1969, with a comfortable and highly successful working relationship firmly in place, it only made sense for Simon & Garfunkel to bring the three sidemen back, this time along with the guitarist Fred Carter, Jr., of Nashville's fabled A-Team.

In composing the title song for
Bridge,
which Clive Davis, the head of Columbia Records, adamantly wanted as the first cut on side one of the album—the lead track—Paul Simon knew precisely what kind of feel he was looking for. And on the first day of recording, with Knechtel sitting behind the studio's nine-foot Steinway concert grand, Simon carefully laid out his vision.