The Wrecking Crew (44 page)

Phil Spector and Sonny Bono shakin' it with the Wrecking Crew at Gold Star during the recording of the legendary holiday album
A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records,
1963.
Courtesy of Ray Avery/Getty Images

Drumming great Earl Palmer in a pensive moment in the studio, mid-Sixties.
Courtesy of Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The brain trust: from left to right, Larry Levine, Phil Spector, Nino Tempo, and Bertha Spector (Phil's omnipresent mother) in the control booth at Gold Star watching the Wrecking Crew play, circa 1963.
Courtesy of Ray Avery/Getty Images

And then there were three: from left to right, Don Randi, Leon Russell, and Al DeLory play the keyboards on one of Spector's Wall of Sound dates at Gold Star, circa 1963.
Courtesy of Ray Avery/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

From left to right: Edgar Willis, Don Peake, and Jeff Brown of the Ray Charles Orchestra, 1964, just before the fateful trip to Alabama.
Courtesy of Shirley Brown/Michael Lydon

Larry Knechtel at the Hammond organ, with Al Casey (left) and Barney Kessel (right) on guitar behind him. Unknown player on string bass in back, circa 1964.
Courtesy of Lonnie Knechtel

Bones Howe (bottom) and Jan Berry (middle) mix a Jan and Dean session in the booth as the Wrecking Crew plays out in the studio, 1963. The assistant engineer, Henry Lewy, is at the top.
Courtesy of Bones Howe

CBS Columbia Square at 6121 Sunset Boulevard, where the Wrecking Crew cut “Mr. Tambourine Man” for the Byrds, “Woman, Woman” for Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for Simon & Garfunkel, among many other classic hits. The studios were located in the back of the courtyard behind the trees. In 2009, the Los Angeles City Council designated the now-empty modernist-style building as a historic-cultural monument.
Courtesy of Gary Minnaert

Looking west on Sunset Boulevard in 1965 toward Vine Street. Wallichs Music City is in the foreground on the corner (the place that Brian Wilson talked into opening up on a Sunday in order to get Billy Strange the 12-string electric guitar he played on “Sloop John B”). Just behind Wallichs is RCA Records's West Coast office and studios, where the Wrecking Crew recorded many times over for the Monkees, Harry Nilsson, and others—even Lorne Greene from
Bonanza
!
Author's Collection

Behind closed doors: the entrance to the world-famous Gold Star on Santa Monica Boulevard, as it looked in the Seventies.
Courtesy of Dave Gold/Stan Ross/Kent Crowley

Ray Pohlman (circa 1970), the original number-one call rock-and-roll electric bassist among the Wrecking Crew, abruptly left for a couple of years in the mid-Sixties to become the musical director for ABC's teen-themed concert series
Shindig!
The well-liked Pohlman was also a fine guitarist and backup singer.
Courtesy of Guy Pohlman

Producer Lou Adler sits in the control booth inside Western 3 during a Mamas & the Papas recording session in 1966. Adler's uncanny ear for what radio stations would go for, along with Papa John Phillips's songwriting, the group's exquisite singing, and the Wrecking Crew's spot-on playing, made their combined efforts an unbeatable creative and commercial force
. Courtesy of Lou Adler