The Wrecking Crew (25 page)

With a studio-concocted hit song on their hands called “Where Were You When I Needed You”—featuring Larry Knechtel (keyboards) and Joe Osborn (bass) from the Wrecking Crew, plus multi-talented engineer Bones Howe moonlighting on drums—Dunhill producers Steve Barri and Phil Sloan (who also played guitar and sang on it) were suddenly in a fix. In order to capitalize on the single's unexpected Top 30 success, they needed to put an actual band together as soon as possible. Tour offers were starting to come in and there was money to be made. For a while they thought they had the perfect solution in the Bedouins, a San Francisco blues rock outfit. But that group proved to have other ideas, mainly regarding the desire to record their own material, which was decidedly
not
part of Dunhill's plans. After four months, the Bedouins migrated back to the Bay Area, leaving Barri and Sloan band-less once again.

Listening to the 13th Floor record that day in the studio, Barri and Sloan realized that they had finally found their band. Staring them in the face were four good-looking local kids who could sing and had a definite pop vibe to their music. They also seemed to take direction well, an important selling point. Upon working out the business details with the 13th Floor's manager, Sloan and Barri then made sure everyone involved understood one more, nonnegotiable deal point. Coonce, Entner, Grill, and Bratton would
all
have to use a different name from now on.

They would be the Grass Roots.

*   *   *

After all the drama of Mike Nesmith's heavy-duty hotel room encounter with Don Kirshner and his corporate counsel, the guitarist's message apparently had hit its mark. A sympathetic Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who were also embroiled in their own issues with Kirshner, went to the head of Columbia Pictures and had the Screen Gems executive fired. Of course, it didn't hurt that Schneider's father
was
the head of Columbia Pictures. Regardless, the net result gave the Monkees their creative freedom, and under the leadership of Nesmith they intended to make the most of it. Beginning with album number three, to be called
Headquarters,
they were determined to play all their own instruments and finally become a real band for all to see and hear.

Spending several weeks locked away in RCA's Studio C during March of 1967, the Monkees feverishly worked to cut what would become fourteen songs. Dolenz, who had only recently learned to play the drums, held down the beat as best he could. Nesmith and Tork handled all the guitar and keyboard work. And Jones played percussion, with their producer, Chip Douglas, sitting in on bass. Their collective skills weren't nearly in the same league as that of the Wrecking Crew, but they were still the Monkees and this was their great moment of unification and redemption.

In spite of their best efforts, however,
Headquarters
fell flat. Though it did hit number one on the album charts for exactly one week (to then be knocked off by
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
), the LP failed to generate any hit singles, a devastating development. In 1967, the sales of relatively inexpensive 45s were still the lifeblood of most bands, especially for those making their living on the pop end of the scale like the Monkees. With their predominantly junior high–aged demographic, the continued inflow of their fans' allowance money was vital.

Dispirited by radio's indifference to the music they had worked so hard to create on
Headquarters,
the Monkees essentially devolved into four separate music-making entities for the rest of their recording career as a band. They each used the Wrecking Crew (and other musicians) to play on their own sessions on the group's final six studio albums. The Prefab Four had made their point; it was now time to get back to making some hits.

At the same time that the Monkees were learning the harsh realities of the record business, the Grass Roots were beginning their musical journey filled with optimism. With Sloan and Barri providing the tunes and the production expertise, along with instrumentation by the Wrecking Crew, the quartet immediately found success on the airwaves. Their first single, “Let's Live for Today,” made it all the way to the Top 10 during the summer of 1967, with its follow-up, “Things We Should Have Said,” hitting the Top 30 not long after. Suddenly the Grass Roots were getting hot.

But just as with Mike Nesmith before him, the almost instantaneous success felt less than satisfying to Creed Bratton. More than anything, he wanted to be an artist, to be allowed to grow and flourish by writing and playing on
all
the records, along with the rest of his band. But Barri and Sloan held a tight grip on the reins, only allowing the Grass Roots to contribute their instrumental skills on the occasional album track, certainly
never
on the songs the two producers knew would be released as singles. Those were reserved strictly for the Wrecking Crew.

By the time of the Grass Roots' next big hit, the Top 5 “Midnight Confessions” (during which Carol Kaye played yet another memorable opening bass lick), Bratton, for better or worse, had begun to openly express his artistic frustrations. He didn't want the Grass Roots to become Dunhill's version of the Monkees. Riding one day in the back of a limousine in New York City with his bandmates, the lead guitarist could no longer keep his fragile emotions in check.

“Look, guys, I can see it,” the high-strung Bratton said, breaking into tears. “If we don't come up with our own songs and play our own instruments in the studio, we're not going to get any respect. We'll fall by the wayside.”

Despite the impassioned plea, his fellow group members remained unmoved. They had no interest in making any waves. To them, the money, women, and fame far outweighed the fact that most of their songs were provided by others and that the Wrecking Crew usually played the instruments. They
did
get to sing on all the records, didn't they? And on tour, there was nobody onstage but them.

“Let it go, Creed,” they said. “Things are fine.”

But Bratton couldn't let it go. It was a matter of principle. As the months passed, the guitarist became ever more petulant, whining and complaining incessantly, driving the rest of the band crazy. He also began to act out in wildly inappropriate ways, even by music business standards.

One afternoon on tour in San Francisco, Bratton and Rick Coonce, the band's twenty-two-year-old drummer, decided to wander over to Golden Gate Park to check out the action. Located next to the much-publicized counterculture neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury, the sprawling public recreation area offered every kind of adventure imaginable, legal and otherwise. The pair soon found themselves happily engrossed in playing African hand drums along with a bunch of free-spirited locals. During their heated jam, a small hippie-looking girl in tie-dyed clothing bopped her way over to Bratton, slid a tab of acid into his hand, and said, “For you, brother.”

Never one to turn down a new life experience, on the way back to their show at the Fillmore West on South Van Ness Avenue Bratton ingested the tiny piece of paper containing the LSD. Giving it no further thought, he then focused himself on the evening's gig. He loved playing live; it was the one place where he felt that he could truly express himself. There was precious little chance for that in the recording studio.

Shortly thereafter, with all four members now in position on the darkened stage, ready to play their growing string of hits, the promoter Bill Graham announced over the house sound system,
“Ladies and gentlemen, here they are, the Grass Roots!”
And at that exact moment, just as they were to launch into the first number, Creed Bratton's hands began to glow. Or, more accurately, the lead guitarist
thought
they were glowing.

Mesmerized by the strange phenomenon, Bratton then strummed a chord and watched as the chord itself came flying out of the monitor next to him. Only now it was somehow written on sheet music, complete with the individual notes. Then, like out of a cartoon, the note heads and stems all slid off the paper and tumbled to the floor, landing in a pile. As Bratton walked over to pick them up, thinking that he would somehow need the jumble in order to continue playing his guitar, he could hear his bandmates in the background all yelling in a strangely distorted, slow-motion kind of way,
“Plaaaay, Creeeed, plaaaay!”

By this time, Graham, the famously dictatorial impresario, was going berserk just offstage. “Play, goddammit,” he shouted angrily, his neck veins bulging. Trying to comply, Bratton picked up his guitar, but he could no longer figure out how it worked. Turning toward the audience, he then did the only other thing he could think to do in such a situation: he undid his belt and dropped his pants, giving the audience a clear view of all he had to offer. Bratton then unabashedly waved at everyone while initiating a rap on the true meaning of life. With the rest of the Grass Roots quickly mobilizing to hustle him out of sight, Bill Graham canceled the concert.

Not long after Bratton's drug-fueled, Johnson-baring onstage incident, the other three band members, along with their manager, held a meeting with him back in Los Angeles. And their message was neither unexpected nor lengthy.

“Creed, we'd like you to leave the group,” they said bluntly, offering an immediate buyout of his interest in the Grass Roots.

“Okay,” Bratton replied with a sigh. “Whatever you guys want.”

There would be no fighting, no protracted haggling. There were no hard feelings, either. Yes, the guitarist had made some errors in judgment. And for that he was sorry. But mostly Bratton was simply burned out from the constant stress of wanting so badly what the rest of the band did not. They obviously did not place the same value on artistic freedom that he did. But that was okay; to each his own.

With the vision that he had seen so clearly that evening in Greece now coming around full circle, Bratton decided that he would return to his own unique musical roots, to become a globe-trotting balladeer once more. The Grass Roots were more than welcome to continue with
their
vision, singing on material secretly played by the Wrecking Crew. And so the band did. They quickly added a new member and then enjoyed a run of eight more Top 40 hits over the next two and a half years, all with the public none the wiser. Just the way Dunhill wanted it.

13

Up, Up and Away

Sounds more like an album cut than a single to me.

—B
ILLY
D
AVIS,
J
R.

When shy, bespectacled songwriting prodigy Jimmy Webb first made his way out west with his family to lush, palm tree–lined Southern California from the arid, hardscrabble lands of his youth along the edge of the Great Plains, he simply couldn't believe what his eyes, ears, and nose were suddenly telling his brain. It was paradise times ten for the seventeen-year-old music hopeful.

From where he had grown up as the son of a strict Baptist minister in various Oklahoma and West Texas prairie towns, the frequent dust, desolation, and despair were stark reminders of all that might have been. In his new home of San Bernardino, the air on a typically translucent Inland Empire evening could be simply intoxicating, almost like perfume, with night-blossoming jasmine everywhere. And with songs such as “Don't Worry Baby” by the Beach Boys seemingly wafting in the breeze from house to house through open windows, the whole experience was, for Webb, like being in some kind of warm, languid, impossibly optimistic dream.

In 1964, American innocence was embodied in the Beach Boys. With John F. Kennedy's assassination still resonant and the Vietnam War growing in intensity, songs about cars, girls, and surfing provided a welcome escape to simpler, happier times. And it was for that very reason—the overwhelming desire to also create music for a living—that Jimmy Webb was where he wanted to be,
needed
to be: a mere two-hour drive from Hollywood.

During those magical moments, when all seemed so right with the world, as Webb allowed his mind to drift along with the soothing sounds of one of the biggest bands in the world he was, instead, unknowingly listening to something even he could never have imagined: a highly paid group of hired musicians sitting in for the Beach Boys who would soon help
him
—a skinny kid from the sticks with absolutely no music industry connections—generate an astounding eight Grammy Awards all in one night.

*   *   *

In the late summer of 1965, in a poor inner-city neighborhood of Los Angeles known as Watts—only twenty geographic miles yet worlds away from the insular music industry enclaves of Hollywood and Beverly Hills—a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer out on routine duty arrested a driver for possible drunk driving. Though it was seemingly an ordinary traffic stop, on this occasion the officer was white, the motorist was black, and it was a steamy August afternoon at a time when racial tensions across America were already reaching a boiling point, especially in this predominantly African-American area.

With one thing quickly leading to another, as various locals gathered in rising anger, the worst-case scenario became a frightening reality for all: an ugly full-scale riot broke out. The residents of Watts had simply had enough. Fires, looting, and gunfire burst forth onto mile after mile of neighboring streets, shutting down a large portion of the city.

After nearly a week of violence, thirty-four people lay dead. And over a thousand more were injured, many severely. Hundreds of buildings were damaged or destroyed. Thriving business districts, their stores mostly white owned, were burned to the ground. Eventually, the National Guard cordoned off a vast region of South Los Angeles, further underscoring the social, economic, and geographic divide among the races. Many wondered whether the biggest city in California—or, for that matter, whether the country itself—would ever be the same.