The Wrecking Crew (33 page)

“I want this to be on piano,” he said. “It's going to be just you and Artie most of the way through.”

Knechtel nodded.

“I also have this phrase,” Simon continued, nimbly running down the song's basic chord changes on his Guild acoustic guitar. “But it needs an introduction.”

With his creative juices now beginning to flow, the twenty-nine-year-old Knechtel mentally flashed on several possibilities. Piano (and organ) riffs were his specialty. Producers all over town knew that. After growing up in nearby Bell, California, and playing several years right out of high school for Duane Eddy, Knechtel had gotten his studio start with the Wrecking Crew (courtesy of Steve Douglas) back in 1963 on Phil Spector's
A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records
album. Since then, Knechtel had amassed years of studio experience in coming through time and again with exquisite, uncanny appropriateness.

John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, who held Knechtel's abilities in awe, even had a pet nickname for the keyboardist, calling him Third Hand. And Bones Howe routinely encouraged Knechtel to cut loose with whatever came to mind, just like on his memorable, off-the-cuff, one-take Hohner pianet solo during the bridge section on “Never My Love” by the Association. Howe had also employed Knechtel's superior electric bass–playing skills on Elvis Presley's so-called comeback special broadcast on NBC in December 1968 (along with Blaine, Tedesco, Deasy, and several others), a prestigious gig. Through it all, no matter the request, if there was one thing the reserved blond-haired, multi-instrumental Knechtel could do maybe better than anybody inside (or out) of the Wrecking Crew, it was improvise. And that's one big reason why both Simon and Garfunkel loved working with him.

Back in the studio at Columbia, Paul Simon still wasn't quite through with Knechtel, however. Simon had one last dangling, absolutely crucial caveat about “Bridge Over Troubled Water” to impart to the gifted piano player sitting before him. “I want it to be gospel,” Simon said, pausing. “Not white gospel,
black
gospel.”

Well, now, that was something else again. Larry Knechtel, the king of the keys, rarely was asked to play gospel of any kind, let alone the real deal. He had been ready to go with a variation or two of what was usually asked of him on a rock-and-roll date, generally a bunch of seventh chords. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Simon was dead-on. With Garfunkel's angelic high tenor voice slotted as the song's signature element, there needed to be some kind of almost religious-like instrumental lead-in that would set just the right emotional tone for the delicate, heartfelt lyrics to follow.

Knechtel subsequently spent the next hour playing various chording and melody ideas for Simon until the singer/songwriter heard exactly the kind of piano prelude he wanted. They then decided to do the whole thing in E-flat, the only key in which the complex piece Knechtel had crafted would lie the right way. “Okay, Larry, I think that's it,” Simon finally said, rising. Time to roll some tape.

Garfunkel, in the meantime, had taken position behind an ultrasensitive (and -expensive) German-made Neumann M49 mic inside an isolation (ISO) booth at the opposite end of the hundred-plus-foot-long, high-ceilinged room. With headphones firmly in place, Knechtel and Garfunkel then proceeded to run down everything together, intently listening to each other as they went. Hour after hour the two worked on melding their parts, with Garfunkel altering his phrasing as he saw fit on a not-quite-finished set of lyrics by Simon, searching for just the right gossamery nuance and inflection. The vocal and piano arrangements needed to subtly build in tandem toward a powerful climax, to cap off the song's overriding message of selflessness with a soaring, orchestral-like crescendo of practically biblical proportions. That was the plan the duo formulated early on, with Garfunkel telling Simon, “Let's do the Phil Spector production idea that we loved when we heard the Righteous Brothers' recording of ‘Old Man River.'”

After a grueling marathon of seventy-two takes spread over several days, with the perfectionist Garfunkel at one point breaking into tears in front of Knechtel, the superstar recording duo, along with Roy Halee, their indispensable voice of reason, finally had the ideal marriage of gospel-style piano and inspirational vocals. Secular though it may have been lyrically, the overwhelming spiritual quality of the arrangement rivaled anything put to vinyl by such celebrated church-reared practitioners as the Swan Silvertones or the Dixie Hummingbirds. Not bad for a couple of white twentysomethings from Queens and their equally Caucasian pianist. Now the song needed just the right addition of some Wall of Sound–like production elements to really put it over the top. And Hal Blaine had yet another of his ideas.

While listening to the playback in the booth after Garfunkel and Knechtel had finished their magnificent collaboration, Blaine, for some reason, kept picturing a troubled man shuffling along a dirt road as part of a chain gang. Just as he had done so many times before in the studio with Jimmy Bowen, Brian Wilson, and even Phil Spector himself, Blaine approached Simon and said, “If you'll allow me, I'd like to try something here. It may seem odd, but I think it just might work.”

Of course, contributing something unusual to a Simon & Garfunkel session was hardly a first for Blaine. Some months before, during the recording of “The Boxer” (the first track cut for the
Bridge Over Troubled Water
album), the duo had decided that they wanted to add an exploding sound as an emphatic point of emphasis between the song's repeated vocal choruses of “lie-la-lie.” Needing an enclosure that could provide the maximum possible echo, Simon had asked Blaine to fly to New York, where Halee then recorded the drummer whacking a snare while sitting at the bottom of an elevator shaft at Columbia's 52nd Street studios.

This time around, with Simon's blessing, Blaine stepped out to his car and brought in a set of snow chains from his trunk. Spending the next few hours on his knees in an old microphone storage room, Blaine alternately slammed the heavy-duty galvanized steel links onto the cement floor while being remotely recorded. Drag on one, smack on two, drag on three, smack on four. The brilliant maneuver ended up being incorporated as a dramatic percussion element from the song's third verse all the way through its epic conclusion.

But as the recording of the album's namesake title tune wound down, there were still a few finishing touches left to add. And that's when Gary Coleman got to make his mark.

After Coleman and Blaine rolled the big rack of vibes down the hall into Studio A, Paul Simon stepped out into the studio and introduced himself to the young percussionist, adding a quick, “Thanks very much for coming.” Simon then showed Coleman where he wanted the vibraphone's notes to be inserted within the arrangement, and the recording swiftly began. With Blaine overdubbing a set of tom-toms right next to him, Coleman was in and out within thirty minutes, on his way to his next gig. It always seemed like there was a next gig, too, leaving the hardworking musician little time to reflect on anything as momentous as playing for Simon & Garfunkel. But at least he
had
gotten to be a part of what would become one of the biggest songs of all time.

As for Larry Knechtel, his indelible piano arrangement on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” ended up winning him a Grammy, making the keyboardist the only Wrecking Crew player to ever take home one of the statuettes for his instrumental prowess as a hired gun. Perhaps more important, at least in terms of income, with “Bridge” enjoying a six-week run at number one on the Hot 100 during the early part of 1970, Knechtel, along with Blaine and Osborn, suddenly became
the
hottest rhythm section in rock and roll. The three essentially entered the new decade as a super-hit-making Wrecking Crew inside of the Wrecking Crew. Producers, arrangers, and others started referring to the talented troika as the Hollywood Golden Trio. And even if the public had never heard of them, with most record labels still avoiding the placement of any credits on album jackets that would refer to the Wrecking Crew's contributions, everybody on the recording side of the ledger knew
exactly
who Hal, Joe, and Larry were. In particular, that included a young brother and sister combo from Downey, California, who quietly sat on the verge of becoming, like Simon & Garfunkel before them, one of the biggest-selling music acts in the world.

18

(They Long to Be) Close to You

Please, just get back inside and close the door.

—G
ARY
C
OLEMAN

By early 1970, Herb Alpert, another in the long line of ambitious, music-obsessed onetime Fairfax High School grads like Steve Barri, P. F. Sloan, and Phil Spector, was sitting on an empire. A veritable Renaissance man, the trumpeter, singer, songwriter, producer, arranger, hit maker, and frequent Wrecking Crew employer also owned a thriving record label called A&M (for Alpert and Jerry Moss, his partner). Located within a series of unique Tudor-style bungalows on the old Charlie Chaplin Studios lot along North La Brea Avenue on the border of West Hollywood, the eight-year-old company had enjoyed success throughout the Sixties with acts like Alpert's own Tijuana Brass (“The Lonely Bull”), Sérgio Mendes & Brazil '66 (“The Look of Love”), and Chris Montez (“The More I See You”).

Having released a debut album several months back by a wholesome-looking twenty-three-year-old piano player and his nineteen-year-old kid sister who played the drums, Alpert had been looking for some quality follow-up material to cut for their next LP. Remembering a love song that his friends Burt Bacharach and Hal David had written a number of years before called “They Long to Be Close to You,” which had been recorded by Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, and even Bacharach himself—all to little success—Alpert thought he would see about using the tune for his current duo. He felt it could be a hit if done the right way.

“I'm going to give you this lead sheet,” Alpert had said one day to Richard Carpenter, the older brother of Karen, the duo's lead singer. “I want you to do your own arrangement of the song.” And so Carpenter did.

On March 24, 1970, at a little before eleven at night, Joe Osborn and Hal Blaine arrived at A&M's funky-looking studio complex, ready to work once more for the Carpenters. Osborn had known the pair since April of 1966 when a trumpet player brought them along one night to play for him in Osborn's well-equipped garage studio at his North Hollywood home. Though the horn guy never came back, the two kids began regularly recording song demos of their own with Osborn. Working together over about a two-year period, they cut a number of what they thought were promising records, but nothing seemed to catch the right ear at the right label at the right time. Finally, through a friend of a friend of a friend of Richard's, one of their demos made it into the hands of Herb Alpert, who liked it enough to sign the duo to a contract.

As the Carpenters began their recording career at A&M in 1969, they made sure to employ the Louisiana-born-and-raised Osborn as their bass player; it was the least they could do to repay his kindness. Plus, there was simply no better choice. As Roy Halee, Simon & Garfunkel's engineer and co-producer, liked to say, “You never have to stop the tape because of a mistake by Joe Osborn. There just aren't any.” Alpert, in turn, recommended Osborn's Wrecking Crew chum Hal Blaine to become the Carpenters' in-studio drummer (Karen mainly sat behind the kit on tour only). Blaine, of course, had played many times for Alpert over the years on the huge-selling Tijuana Brass records. The record mogul felt that the combination of Blaine and Osborn was especially strong at making a song really
groove
.

As they all began running down the Bacharach/David tune, along with Louie Shelton on guitar, Blaine, with his acute ingrained sense of meter, noticed that Richard Carpenter's piano playing had been going faster and faster as the song had progressed. A stickler for proper, steady tempo, having worked for so long on so many hit records, Blaine felt compelled to speak up. He was the band's quarterback, after all. It was his job to make sure that everything stayed tight.

Ironically, a handful of years earlier Blaine had observed a similar scenario with a very green Shelton during that guitarist's first time in the studio with the Wrecking Crew. Blaine had told him, “I really like your guitar work, Louie, and I think you're going to do great in this town. But you're playing slightly ahead of the beat. Remember, when we're recording, the drummer is god. Don't get to the backbeat before I do. Just lock in with me.”

Shelton, who would go on to play the famous opening guitar riff on “Last Train (to Clarksville)” by the Monkees, among many other notable musical accomplishments (including eventually producing all of Seals & Crofts's hit records), took Blaine's words to heart. He felt it was a great lesson, something that had never dawned on him. Not trained in the disciplined ways of the studios, Shelton hadn't been conscious of what he should be listening to during a take. He just went for it, like so many other guitarists who were accustomed to playing mostly live shows. Once Blaine, the dean of rock-and-roll session men, set Shelton straight, it helped the quiet, self-effacing Arkansas-born guitarist (and good friend of Glen Campbell's) to become what was known in the business as a “pocket player.” And Shelton was forever grateful for the advice, particularly since it also helped him become a highly sought-after Wrecking Crew regular.

Now Hal Blaine just had to find a way to impart the same kind of wisdom to Richard Carpenter, who was not only a fellow musician but also the drummer's employer. Diplomacy would be the better part of valor.

“Hold it, Richard,” Blaine said, calling a brief halt to the action. “Do you want the song to go this fast?”