"The Wrecking Crew"

[Chris D]

I'm watching this fascinating documentary now on AXS TV. It's a story of "The Wrecking Crew", a group of studio musicians that did all sorts of work, starting in the 60's. Never a band themselves, they played the instruments and did the studio recordings for all sorts of bands, way too numerous to list. I knew that sometimes you have stand-ins, and studio specialists that will assist groups while making recordings, but over and over, these guys were brought in to be ALL the musicians, creating and playing music for groups that would then add their own vocals and put out records under their own name.

"The Mamas and Papas" just made up the structure of "California Dreaming" with these guys in the studio, without ever writing the music itself, and these musicians made it up as they went and then recorded it. Did you know at first, the Monkees didn't even play their own instruments? It was the Wrecking Crew that recorded the entire albums, then when the Monkees actually arrived in the studio, all the producers wanted was for Mickey Dolenz to record his vocals, and they were done. The Wrecking Crew hardly ever got credit on the albums, much less for doing most of the work.

Very interesting. Also available from Netflix.

[Alaric]

I'll have to look that up. The only Wrecking Crew I was familiar with was the Harley-Davidson factory race team from the 1920s. I guess nobody saw the irony in calling a team of motorcyclists The Wrecking Crew. Usually a nom de guerre to be avoided by motorcyclists. LMAO

Back to the OP. As a fan of The Monkees , I do recall Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork saying they were quite unhappy with that situation as they were both already professional musicians. That was what eventually led them to leave the group and they pursued their own music careers.