The Wrecking Crew (21 page)

But in less than twelve hours following the unequaled exhilaration of playing for the one-and-only Frank Sinatra, Hal Blaine's fast-moving world would come skidding to a stop. One of the biggest stars in rock and roll—and Blaine's close friend—would tragically find himself lying near death.

11

Good Vibrations

Brian, I don't even own an electric twelve-string guitar.

—B
ILLY
S
TRANGE

During the early afternoon on April 12, 1966, still in a state of euphoria following the big “Strangers in the Night” recording session from the night before with Frank Sinatra, Hal Blaine received a message in the recording studio that instantly turned his world upside down. His good friend, the singer Jan Berry, was dead.

Quickly moving into action, Blaine made a series of frantic phone calls to find out what had happened. He just couldn't believe it. The two had talked only days before, going over some details about the upcoming TV series they would soon all be starring in called
On the Road with Jan and Dean
. ABC had picked up the pilot for a full season and Blaine was to play the duo's comedic sidekick, a slightly dim-witted character by the name of Clobber. With the highly intelligent and energetic Berry also attending medical school while simultaneously balancing his demanding recording and acting careers, Blaine often acted as his study partner, too, quizzing him on subjects like anatomy and physiology.

Finally reaching Lou Adler, Blaine found out to his relief that the report of Berry's death had been slightly exaggerated. Yes, there had been a car accident. A bad one. But Berry was still alive. Barely. Traveling at almost eighty miles an hour down a residential side street, the singer had slammed his fiberglass Corvette Stingray into the back of a parked truck, ironically just blocks from the stretch of Sunset Boulevard that Jan and Dean had immortalized only a couple of years before in their hit song “Dead Man's Curve.” Berry was now in critical condition at UCLA Medical Center with severe head injuries, undergoing brain surgery.

As the weeks passed following the crash, Jan Berry remained in a perpetual vegetative state. Many people, including Blaine, didn't think Berry would make it. Then, one day, word came that he had opened his eyes. He was emerging from the coma. From then on, with hope at hand, Blaine, along with those like Lou Adler and Don Peake—who had become one of the most important guitarists in the Wrecking Crew following his harrowing ordeal in Alabama with Ray Charles two years before—all began to make regular visits to their friend Berry's bedside. Blaine, in particular, made it a point to stop by every weekend. Though Berry had a blank stare and was still unresponsive in terms of speaking or moving his limbs, his doctors felt it important for visitors to carry on one-way conversations with him anyway. The doctors were sure that he could hear.

One Sunday, as Blaine finished running down the usual music-related events of his busy week, he bent down close to Berry and said, like always, “Well, see you next time, pal.” Only this time, unexpectedly, Berry feebly reached up with one of his arms and pulled Blaine near. It was Berry's first physical movement since the accident. Blaine, with heart pounding, raced into the hallway to get Berry's family. “Jan just moved,” he said, and they all burst into tears.

But the limits of Jan Berry's recovery would soon become evident. After several months of intensive physical therapy, he did learn to walk again, albeit with a severe limp. He also regained some, but not all, of his memory. Perhaps the biggest issue was his voice. Berry only partially regained the ability to speak and, for all practical purposes, could no longer sing.

With his career quite obviously over, Jan Berry had now joined Phil Spector on the rock-and-roll sidelines. Two of the most important hit-making forces in Sixties music—and regular Wrecking Crew employers—were gone from the scene. And within little more than a year, yet another titan would be joining their ranks: Brian Wilson.

*   *   *

By the early Sixties, the perpetually busy Carol Kaye found herself at a personal and professional crossroads.

On the home front, after some careful contemplation Kaye made the decision to convert to Judaism. Raised a Baptist, she had married a prominent Jewish businessman named David Firestone in 1961 and had become fascinated with his family's religious and cultural traditions. She dutifully learned to cook kreplach soup and tzimmes, celebrated Hanukah instead of Christmas, and became skilled at making a Seder meal. Kaye eventually had a bat mitzvah ceremony, too, and was given the biblical name of Ruth.

Though the marriage would fail by 1964, Kaye retained her affection for the Jewish faith, even as she unsuccessfully attempted to return to Christianity. She especially related to the Judaic commandments to pursue justice and to welcome the stranger. The overall tone of acceptance gave her a feeling of home, like she belonged. It also, she felt, provided her with a more tolerant heart, helping her to become a better musician.

On the professional side of things, it surprised the guitarist Kaye one day when a producer at Capitol Records suddenly asked her if she minded sitting in on the Fender electric bass instead. The regular bass player had failed to show for a scheduled recording date and they were in a bind. With her well-known background as an expert guitar player, it made sense for them to utilize her services. It wasn't really much of a stretch for someone of her caliber to pick up the instrument, with the strings on a bass (E, A, D, and G) being the same as the bottom four on a guitar, only an octave lower.

What intrigued Kaye, however, was how much she enjoyed doing it. Not just her role in providing some much-needed rhythmic muscle but also the
feel
of the bass. It just felt right in her hands. And, as a practical matter, she realized that if she made the switch a permanent career choice, she would no longer have to drag three or more different kinds of guitars into the studios several times a day in order to suit each producer's fancy. One simple Fender Precision Bass (colloquially known as a P-Bass) would do the trick nicely. After giving it some thought, she was sold.

With rock and roll now exploding all around her in the studios, Kaye picked the right instrument at the right time. Every song being recorded, whether by a three-piece combo or a full-on Spector-style “rockestra,” needed at least one electric bass player to hold down the bottom end, to anchor the all-important harmonic framework. In addition, with the usual first-call rock-and-roll Wrecking Crew bassist, Ray Pohlman, finding himself occupied as the new musical director on the TV series
Shindig!
there suddenly existed a pressing need for someone to step in and pick up many of his high-profile accounts.

There were also a whole lot more guitar players floating around town than there were bass specialists. With visions of one day becoming breakout stars, it seemed like everybody wanted to be a guitarist, a front man. That's where all the glory was—along with plenty of competition to match. The electric bass, however, wasn't seen as being very sexy. To the uninitiated, it was considered to be a workmanlike, supporting instrument that merely helped keep the beat. But in the inventive, capable hands of someone who knew how to lay down a major groove while throwing in a walking bass line for good measure—like the savvy jazz veteran Kaye—the electric bass often made all the difference in bringing a song to life.

By early 1965, Brian Wilson, like many of his fellow rock-and-roll producers, had been primarily using Pohlman on electric bass in the studio for several years. But that all changed once Wilson learned that Kaye was now available for gigs as a bass player, too. She had already played guitar for him on many of the Beach Boys' records, and he liked having her as a part of his creative team.

For the Wrecking Crew in general, playing for the always-quirky Wilson proved to be fun, vexing, perplexing, and breathtaking, often all at the same time. There was nobody like him. On any given day the Beach Boys' charismatic young leader could be alternately charming and distant, confident yet insecure, or thoughtful but self-absorbed. And always—
always
—brilliant.

One afternoon, as Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, and several other musicians sat in the main tracking room of Western's Studio 3 laying down the instrumental parts for what would soon become “Help Me, Rhonda”—a future number-one hit for the Beach Boys—Brian Wilson stood in the window of the control booth, holding a telephone receiver up to one of the monitors.

Normally this wouldn't have been a problem. Producers often talked on the phone, nothing unusual about that. They also commonly asked sidemen to do several run-throughs of a new tune in order to gain familiarity with the basic structure before the real recording began. Only this time, instead of having the musicians do two or three quick passes, Wilson kept the Wrecking Crew blowing their chops on the same take for what seemed like ten minutes.

Several of the players in the room that day didn't appear to notice or mind, so lost were they in their work. A few, however, did notice and did mind, particularly Carol Kaye. She began to silently seethe as she watched the fingertips on her left hand start to bleed from their repeated, unrelenting use on the extra-high, heavy-gauge strings of her bass. The hard-won calluses—like her mood—were at their breaking point.

It also didn't help matters during the three-hour date that Brian Wilson's father had dropped in. Murry Wilson, a pugnacious, iron-fisted, old-school taskmaster with a glass eye and a sharp tongue, had pretensions of being the group's real producer. Though he had no such official title, it never stopped him from trying to assert his authority anyway. And nobody could get under Brian Wilson's skin more quickly or effectively than his old man. The elder Wilson was, in Hal Blaine's view, a real pain in the ass. The members of the Wrecking Crew had all seen plenty of arguments between father and son before, and, unfortunately, today was no different.

“Do you want me to leave, Brian?” Murry Wilson asked at one point, his anger rising.

“No, I just want you to let him sing it,” Brian said with exasperation, referring to fellow band member Al Jardine, who was diligently working on a rough (scratch) lead vocal while the rest of the Beach Boys practiced their multi-part harmonies alongside him (the song's final vocals, as per their custom, would be cut separately on a subsequent non–Wrecking Crew recording date).

After several more takes, the heated verbal sparring between the two Wilsons finally boiled over, driving everything to an unceremonious halt. Within full earshot of the Wrecking Crew and a number of visitors sitting in the control booth, Brian Wilson could simply take no more, bellowing, “Oh shit. He's driving me nuts!”

Shortly thereafter, with a suitably martyred Murry Wilson still jawing away as he headed for the studio door with his wife (“The kid got a big success and he thinks he owns the business”), the session thankfully, mercifully wound to a conclusion. With the engineer, Chuck Britz, telling everyone, “That's it for today,” the musicians breathed a collective sigh of relief and rapidly began packing their gear in order to make it to the next gig, a process they called “dovetailing.”

Hal Blaine, for one, took all the drama and strangeness of the day with his usual equanimity. The pay, for him at double scale because of the great demand for his services, was too good to even think about relinquishing. Plus, he and Brian were close; in some ways, Blaine was like a second father to the sensitive young recording star, sometimes offering advice, always willing to listen.

With the studio beginning to empty, Blaine grabbed his leather stick bag (a gift from Aussie drumming legend Billy Hyde), along with his ever-present stash of crossword puzzles, and made for the exit. Time to play for the next client.

But Carol Kaye was still angry. As she carefully placed her Fender electric bass inside its satin-lined case and snapped the locks shut, she decided she just couldn't let this one go. No, this was a matter of respect. They were all pros and Wilson needed to treat them like it. Leaving the musicians to grind out their parts to the point of physical pain was not cool.

As she passed by the control booth window on her way out, Kaye did the unthinkable. While looking directly at the young producer, she gave him the finger.

A shocked Wilson could do nothing but stare. Surely no hired-hand musician had ever had the temerity to flip off the great and powerful Brian Wilson, at least with any expectation in mind of being asked back the next day.

But to Wilson's credit, that's exactly what happened. Kaye's bird-flipping message had apparently hit home, for no mention was ever made of the incident and the session players were never again subjected to any sort of disrespect in the studio on a Beach Boys date.

Score one for the Wrecking Crew, courtesy of the only female in the bunch.

*   *   *

By the mid-Sixties, the Wrecking Crew had become an indispensable part of one Beach Boys hit after another on songs like “California Girls,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun.” And because these sessions were always painstaking affairs in terms of Brian Wilson's creative yet agonizing producing style, the musicians—union members all—tended to rack up some hefty hourly wages along the way. Good old Local 47 made sure of that.

But despite the handsome pay that came with being a highly sought-after professional studio player, to many in the outside world being a musician—even one as skilled as those in the Wrecking Crew—was looked upon as the equivalent of being some kind of a carnival worker. Or less. The looks and comments said it all.

One sunny afternoon, as the Wrecking Crew broke for lunch from yet another Beach Boys session, Leon Russell, one of the piano players that day, took the opportunity to nose his brand-new Cadillac sedan out of the studio's back parking lot. He apparently had somewhere important to go during their short break from working on yet another Wilson-penned hit-to-be.