Review: THE WRECKING CREW / Denny Tedesco (2008)
February 8th, 2010 by Scott Marks
Tommy Tedesco and Hal Blaine
The Wrecking Crew (2008)
Directed by Denny Tedesco
Starring: Tommy Tedesco, Hal Blaine, Don Randi, Carol Kaye, Al Casey, Earl Palmer, Plas Johnson, Joe Osborn, Herb Alpert, Glen Campbell, Dick Clark, Cher, Lou Adler, Brian Wilson, Nancy Sinatra,
Running Time: 98 min.
Rating: 
“What is their name?” asks Tommy Tedesco, legendary dean of the studio guitarists. “Willie Vanilli, or what the hell their shit is? They had nothing on us. We did that all the time.”
Never thought I’d live to see the day when someone would liken The Beach Boys to Milli Vanilli, but with the exception of Brian Wilson, not one band member played so much as a lick on the legendary “Pet Sounds” album. That honor went to an elite corps of studio musicians, led by the inimitable Mr. Tedesco that played on virtually every hit song over a period that extended from the late 50s through the early 70s.
The Wrecking Crew, as they came to be called, not only performed the charts, in many instances they produced and arranged the music as well. According to Tommy, composers “put notes on paper, but that’s not music.” It was up to these versatile veterans who came of age the same time rock did to make it pop. They devised riffs, bass lines and were ultimately as responsible for the sound of the music as the front men who got all the glory.
The documentary is a 14-year labor of love by Tommy’s son Denny Tedesco. More than just an attempt by a child to garner posthumous recognition for his old man, “The Wrecking Crew” is a remarkable chronicle of an illusory period in music history that the general public remains unaware of to this day. Even Dick Clark confessed, “I had no idea that certain people didn’t play their own records until The Monkees came along.”
“I never considered myself a musician,” Mickey Dolenz recalls. “I approached The Monkees as an actor playing the part of a drummer in this imaginary group.”
No one knows exactly how many members formed The Wrecking Crew as they came to be called. Percussionist Julius Wechter guessed that 20 to 30 of the approximately 40,000 musicians working in Los Angeles at the time were the real hit makers.
The Crew backed up The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Nat Cole, The Association, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Sonny and Cher, Jan and Dean, and Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound to name but a few. And it wasn’t just rock ‘n roll. On television you heard them each week performing many of your favorite themes from shows like “Bonanza,” “Batman,” “The Partridge Family,” “Green Acres” and “M*A*S*H.” And I must confess to feeling goose pimples watching Plas Johnson blow the famous riff from “The Pink Panther Theme”
Plas Johnson
The project began in 1996 when Denny reunited four of the Crew’s original members for a filmed round table. In addition to his dad there was bassist Carol Kaye, drummer Hal Blaine and saxophonist Plas Johnson. In the early 60s, the team was quite unlike anything the music business had ever seen. Instead of sporting staid blue blazers these guys had the audacity to show up for work in blue jeans. According to Hal Blaine, the older studio players feared they were going to wreck the business, hence the name.
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Tags: Al Casey, Andy Friedenberg, Brian Wilson, Carol Kaye, Cher, Cinema Society of San Diego, denny tedesco, Dick Clark, Don Randi, Earl Palmer, Frank Sinatra, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Glen Campbell, Hal Blaine, Herb Alpert, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Jan and Dean, Joe Osborn, Lou Adler, Mickey Dolenz, Nancy Sinatra, Nat Cole, pet sounds, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, Plas Johnson, rock and roll, Rockumentary, Sonny and Cher, The Association, the beach boys, the wrecking crew, the wrecking crew documentary, tommy tedescoFiled Under Reviews, Theatrical
Dig A Hole: Arnold Stang
December 22nd, 2009 by Scott Marks
Arnold Stang, beloved character actor, cartoon voice virtuoso and Hollywood’s foremost nerd has died of pneumonia in Newton, Massachusetts. There is some dispute over his age. According to Wikipedia, “Stang was born in New York City in 1918, but often claimed Chelsea, Massachusetts as his birthplace and 1925 as his birth date.” If we go by Wikipedia, Stang was 91 when he passed on December 20.
I knew the voice long before the face and his name was one of the first belonging to an actor that I committed to memory. Between Herman the Mouse, Top Cat, “Alakazam the Great,” Popeye’s pal Shorty, the Chunky candy bar commercials (”Chunky! What a chunk o’ chocolate!”) and his star turn as Rumpelstiltskin in “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm,” Stang was as much an adolescent cultural touchstone as Groucho, Mel Blanc, Jerry Lewis, Soupy Sales and Larry Fine.
Stang’s trademark character was a nerd on steroids, a pipsqueak who used his little man’s complex to enact a bully’s revenge against the universe. Even his name was unpleasant to the ear. Isn’t a “Stang” the sound a fork prong makes when you pluck it?
At the age of 9 he landed a role on radio’s “Horn and Hardart’s Children’s Hour” which led to another kid’s show ”Let’s Pretend.” Stang lent his Brooklynese twang to Hoiman’ the Mouse in Famous Studios’ “Herman and Katnip” series, and in 1961 he voiced Hanna-Barbera’s “Top Cat.” Don’t let the kid stuff fool you. Even in cartoons, Stang played a smart-alecky conniver; a nasally pest that wanted nothing more than to be a mosquito when he grew up. Beneath the ten pound spectacles, nine inch nose and foot-long chipmunk teeth beat the heart of a conniving little weasel.
After all the emasculation, no wonder Arnold Stang was so angry.
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Tags: Arnold Stang, arnold stang chunky, Arnold Stang dead, Arnold Stang dies, Arnold Stang obituary, arnoldstang, Bob Hope, chunky candy bar, Frank Sinatra, hanna barbera, henry morgan, herman and katnip, herman the mouse, Milton Berle, Otto Preminger, The Man With the Golden Arm, top catFiled Under Obituaries
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