Published in the winter 2011 issue of MyLIFE magazine
PHOTOS BY TC:DM
“Hal Blaine may well be the most prolific drummer in rock and roll history.” – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography.
What do the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, the Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel and the Supremes all have in common? The same drummer played on many of their hits!
Hal Blaine and the session guys he dubbed “The Wrecking Crew” played on so many records we know and love. To this day, though, most people are unaware that they did so.
In the late ’60s and ’70s, Blaine was the top studio drummer in the world, playing on more than 5,000 songs and 150 Top 10 singles—41 of which went to No. 1. Eight of those No. 1 hits won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year. Blaine holds a little-known Grammy record for playing on seven consecutive Grammy Records of the Year.
Listen to any ’60s station for an hour and the odds are Hal Blaine played on at least three quarters of the songs you just heard. Bruce Gary, drummer for The Knack, said jokingly, “One of my biggest disappointments in life was finding out that a dozen of my favorite drummers were all Hal Blaine.”
The list of artists Blaine played with is staggering, a who’s who of the music scene of the ’60s and ’70s: Tommy Sands, Elvis Presley, Peter and Gordon, the Ronettes, Barry McGuire, Petula Clark, the Mamas and the Papas, Jan and Dean, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Simon and Garfunkel, Connie Francis, Sam Cooke, Dean Martin, Roy Orbison, Johnny Rivers, John Lennon, Sonny and Cher, Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell, John Denver, the Grass Roots, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Tommy Roe, Andy Williams, Steely Dan, the Captain and Tennille, America, the Monkees, the 5th Dimension, the Everly Brothers, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Gary Puckett, Barbara Streisand—and on and on and on.
All of the top producers, including the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Phil Spector and Herb Alpert, would call on Blaine and only Blaine when they were recording. If Hal wasn’t available, they waited for him.
Blaine with master session musician an renowened jazz and bebop guitarist Tommy Tedesco.
Much of Blaine’s work as a session player was with the odd, legendary Spector and his famous “Wall of Sound,” including the Ronettes’ 1963 hit “Be My Baby.” Explained legendary E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg, “If Hal Blaine had played drums only on the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” his name would still be uttered with reverence and respect for the power of his big beat.” Rolling Stone magazine listed the song at No. 22 on the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
In March 2000, Hal Blaine was one of the first five sidemen inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
MyLIFE recently interviewed Blaine at his home in Palm Desert, Calif.
MyLIFE: When did you start playing the drums?
Blaine: My dad used to take me to work at the State Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, and I would watch every band, every singer, every dance act—absolutely everything. Being a show-off, I got hooked on drums. You know, drummers get all the toys to play and hit. That’s how it works. My older sister Marcia bought me my first little set of drums. I was about 11 or 12. We lived on the second floor and I used to set them up on the front porch. After school, with the kids coming home from school, I’d be up there banging my drums, getting the attention. Later I started playing in the drum and bugle corps at St. Anthony Church in Hartford. I used to call it St. Agony. I was a young Jewish kid in a Catholic band! Eventually we moved to California, and I was in high school, and I got in some little bands.
MyLIFE: How did the name “the Wrecking Crew” come about?
Blaine: I coined the phrase. I believe it was after a Disney session. All the guys in the suits would say, “Oh no, these kids in their blue jeans and T-shirts are going to wreck the business.” That’s how it came about. We became the Wrecking Crew. It got so that producers would call my secretary and say, “We need that Wrecking Crew for so and so,” and she’d just book the dates. I mean, we were booked three months, four months in advance.
MyLIFE: Tell me about your relationship with Dean Martin. You played on most of his major hits, including Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.
Blaine: Dean was the nicest guy. He was never the same after his son Dino died in a plane crash right near here. I have a cassette of an interview he did after recording one of his albums. He talks about the band, using me on the drums and says, “If Hal plays the drums any harder, we’re going to give him the golden truss award.” There was nothing like a Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra session. They rolled in a bar for Dean’s sessions and he let all the studio people, the secretaries, everybody sit in. It was a real event, a giant party, and Dean played to the audience. I remember recording Houston with Dean, and I suggested we use ashtrays to simulate the sound of an anvil. Producers respected me and gave me carte blanche. Listen to Houston and you’ll hear me playing the ashtrays, which I did on the Beach Boys Barbara Ann as well. It was just a matter of percussion sounds, coming up with different sounds. I played my snow tire chains on [Simon and Garfunkel’s] “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
MyLIFE: The producers trusted-relied on you?
Blaine: I had confidence. … I don’t know, perhaps it was my creativity. I wanted to know what the song was about, and wherever it led me, that’s where I would come up with a certain sound that they wanted ….
MyLIFE: Tell us about Frank Sinatra.
Blaine: Frank was amazing. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and those kind of people sang live. With the Beach Boys, we did live instrumental tracks, but they would go in and do their voices later. With Frank, we’d come in on a Friday night at around 6:00 and rehearse. There’d be great anticipation. Frank would come in with his entourage at around 9:30 and we’d get right into it. He would just walk in, say “Hi guys,” come around and say hello to everybody, walk into the booth [and say] “Let’s make a record.” And boom! He was ready to go. I was flattered because he’d always come up to me and say “How ya doing, Hallie?” It really made me feel good. We did Strangers in the Night, which was Record of the Year in 1966. But Strangers in the Night was his only gold single. He had many hit records, many gold records, but never a No. 1 on the charts. And obviously, he was thrilled, as were we.
MyLIFE: Tell us about your work with Phil Spector.
Blaine: Phil was always an odd guy. He used me on virtually everything he did. He’d have five guitars, five of everything, but I was the only drummer. Ironically, I was away in London when he recorded the Righteous Brothers’ classic You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, and Earl [Palmer] ended up drumming on that, one of the great songs of all time. Phil was a black belt in karate, and at one point when we started at A&M he was real upset with the air conditioning, and he knocked it off the wall with a drop kick. I understand Phil is putting together a new band, The Prison Wall of Sound.
Blaine (left), Brian Wilson (center), and Ray Pohlman (right).
MyLIFE: How did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction come about?
Blaine: They created a new area for sidemen, and I believe Jon Landau, Phil Spector and several others recommended me. It really changed my life.
MyLIFE: Tell me about your work on the Ronettes’ Be My Baby.
Blaine: It was a great song, a great introduction that became my signature. My intro became a standard rock and roll lick. In all honesty, I think it was written differently and I might have missed when we were rolling. I guess it was a great miss! If you make a mistake and repeat it every four bars, it’s no longer a mistake. That mistake became the song’s hook, and you can hear the same work on Strangers in the Night, except at a slower pace.
MyLIFE: The other great hook you are famous for is the intro to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass classic, Taste of Honey.
Blaine: Funny how that happened. The band was having trouble coming in at the same time, so I came up with that intro to make it easier for all of us. Before I came up with that, it was a train wreck. We couldn’t come in together. There was no intention to keep it in. Later on, the producer heard it and had the foresight to leave it in. It not only became the song’s hook, but also became synonymous with the Tijuana Brass and A&M Records.
MyLIFE: What was it like working with Brian Wilson during the Beach Boys years?
Blaine: Brian was brilliant. He’d provide the chords, and we’d build on that. He was obsessed with making something special. I remember he and Mike Love would argue all the time. Mike was trying to be Mick Jagger when he was onstage. I played the drums on all their big hits. Brian would always use us. Listen to I Get Around and Help Me, Rhonda. That’s Glen Campbell doing those guitar solos, not any of the Beach Boys. Of course, through the years, I was Brian’s drummer and went through the whole thing with him. The drugs, the divorce and everything the poor guy went through. And then all of a sudden, he finally started to come out of it, thank goodness.
MyLIFE: What kind of drum sets were you playing?
Blaine: I started out with Ludwig, then I had some Rogers, then I went with Pearl. In the early 1960s, I designed a set that completely changed the drum world. We went from a little four-piece set of drums to one I built with an octave of tom-toms so that I could make those long filling rolls rather than just one or two or three tom-toms.
MyLIFE: Guys like you and Tommy Tedesco had so much versatility, real chops.
Blaine: Tommy was a great talent, a great friend and a real comedian. In the morning, we’d play on some rock and roll record. Then we’d be doing Barbra Streisand records, some of the most beautiful music in the world, and then three hours later, I’d be in playing a Latin session with the same people. I mean, it just went on and on and on. It’s amazing to me, and I guess amazing to a lot of people, that we could do that. It was wild, but we were guys who, at that time, had that experience.
MyLIFE: You guys seemed to have so much fun.
Blaine: We had a blast. One of the things I used to tell the guys when I was contracting was, “If you smile, you stay around a while. If you pout, you’re out!” because a lot of guys would walk in, look at their music and say they hated the music. Well, the microphones are on, and if producers hear that, they’ll come to me and say, “I don’t want that guy around here! I want guys who want to play on my records.”
MyLIFE: I always enjoyed watching Buddy Rich on The Tonight Show. Great drummer. Funny guy. You guys were tight?
Blaine: Buddy was a good friend of mine. He was one of the toughest guys in the world, an ex-Marine. He wouldn’t stand for mistakes. That’s all there was to it, if you wanted to be in his band. One of my greatest compliments was when Buddy hired me to do his daughter Kathy’s album, and one of the guys, Milt Holland, one of the percussionists—he kind of grew up with Buddy, and they were very tight—Milt asked Buddy, “How come you’re not playing on your daughter’s album?” Buddy replied, “I wanted the best!”
MyLIFE: Buddy used to say he never practiced.
Blaine: I guess that’s true. Once you start playing, you don’t practice. People asked me for years, when do you practice? I don’t practice. I’m too busy playing to practice!
MyLIFE: Tell us about Richard Harris and MacArthur Park.
Blaine: Richard Harris was a wonderful guy. I got a call from Jimmy Webb. I was Jimmy Webb’s drummer for the 5th Dimension and Johnny Rivers and all those people that he was working with. So Jimmy called me from London—he was now the fair-haired boy—and he called and said, “Look, I’ve met this actor over here, we’re gonna do an album with him and I want you to come over.” And I said, “OK, great, but make sure I know way ahead of time so that I can block out that time,” because in those days I used to be booked at least three or four months in advance, solid. Anyway, in about two weeks’ time, the phone rang one day, and I answered the phone, and it was in the middle of the night, and it was Richard Harris calling. He introduced himself over the phone, and he said, “We’ve got you booked on TWA flight so and so tomorrow.” And I said, “Oh, my God!” You know, I thought I was gonna get a real advance. Anyway, I called my secretary, and she got me out of work for 10 days, and I jumped on a plane and I went. Anyway, to make a long story short, I sat around in the apartment waiting for Richard. This was about 6:00, 7:00 in the morning, and finally Richard came out bellowing for the maid and we sat down to a very nice breakfast. And Richard said, “Hal, do you know any good musicians like yourself?” And I said, “Well, jeez, Richard, I do, but I’m sure they’re working. I thought we were going straight to the studio.” And he said, “Well, that’s the other question. Do you know any good studios over here?” So, it turned out that we spent 10 days there just partying. Then we came back to Hollywood and did MacArthur Park.