I’ve been watching a lot of movies lo these last few months. After working my way through the entire MCU (again), I started opening myself up to other films, especially movies I hadn’t seen before. Some of them have been absolute clunkers, but others have been delightful surprises. And even the bad ones usually have something positive to offer, even if it’s just a couple ironic guffaws.
One of my favorite genres lately has been music documentaries. The HBO doc about Woodstock ’99, for instance, was an enlightening look at a spectacular shitshow of a music festival. The natural culmination of commercialism, nostalgia, and the god-awful rise of angsty-angry rap rock, Woodstock ’99 would have been a miracle if disaster hadn’t struck, and even after the catastrophe that was the Fyre Festival, the last Woodstock concert could still easily be considered one of the worst experiences in event history.
But the documentaries that really capture my attention are the ones that look at a specific musician or group. HBO’s Music Box series (which includes the Woodstock doc) is an excellent watch. I enjoyed Jagged, which examined Alanis Morissette’s rise in the music industry, and I’m champing at the bit to watch Jason Isbell: Running with Eyes Closed. The most surprising music doc? This is GWAR. I kid you not. Funny, moving, inspiring, and genuinely interesting. I cannot recommend it enough.
This past Friday, my wife and I finally sat down to watch The Wrecking Crew, a documentary about the group of studio musicians that performed on a huge number of recordings in the 1960s and ‘70s—often without listener’s knowledge. A staggering number of bands used the Wrecking Crew to lay down their musical tracks quickly and efficiently, often creating new instrumentation and orchestration along the way.
The Wrecking Crew was never an “official” band. Rather, it was a loose group of twenty or so musicians who were so good with their instruments, and so instinctually musical and thoroughly practiced, that they could lay down recordings far faster than the bands themselves. For most of the artists, rock and pop weren’t their preferred artistic styles. They were jazz musicians, soul artists, or R&B performers, but they performed on these records because it paid, and it paid well.
Who did the Wrecking Crew record for? Well, The Monkees is an obvious answer. The Monkees were a group of actors playing musicians, and the Wrecking Crew provided the actual music, which the group would later learn well enough to copy their arrangements on the road. But the Wrecking Crew also recorded as backing bands for artists like Sam Cooke and Jan and Dean. They recorded songs for Nancy Sinatra and Sonny & Cher. And they played the lion’s share of songs on albums by groups like The Mamas and the Papas and The Beach Boys. I mean, Pet Sounds is the apex of the Beach Boys discography, and except for Brian Wilson, most of the album was the Wrecking Crew, not the Beach Boys plural.
The movie inspires a lot of interesting philosophical questions, although delving into them was beyond the scope of the director—who was the son of Tommy Tedesco, Wrecking Crew guitarist. Is it dishonest to not have those artists listed in the credits? Or to represent a record as reflecting one band’s work when it was really recorded by another? More than one member of the Wrecking Crew referenced Milli Vanilli, noting that what they did as musicians wasn’t all that different from the misdirection Milli Vanilli practiced—except they weren’t fronting the band.
As I watched the movie, I found my thoughts constantly drifting back to my dad. Way back in the day, my dad was a jazz drummer, and he wanted nothing more than to be a professional musician. From an early age, dad loved to play the skins. When he graduated high school, he moved on to Bucks County Community College, working with a professor named Jerry Nowak, who published more than 800 compositions with Hal Leonard. But the siren song of the road proved too attractive (and I think math too bothersome), and dad left school to start playing as much as possible.
There are so many questions I wish I’d asked my dad before his stroke and his eventual passing. I know so little about his time on the road, partially because I think the memory was so painful for him. He only managed one extended tour, as part of a jazz combo, making their way along the East Coast. In a story old as time, the manager left the tour halfway through, taking the band’s money with him. The tour broke down, and the band limped back to Ohio, where they stopped playing and got jobs.
By the time I came around, dad had long been gone from the music scene. But he still loved to play, and the church gave him that opportunity. I was able to hear him play many times over the years, and while I’m no music expert, I could tell dad had serious chops. Even with little to no practice thanks to the limited space in our townhouse (and my mom’s limited patience for the noise), dad could play just about anything. Just tell him what you were going for, and he could bang it out. Jazz, pop, rock, soul, whatever. And it would slap.
As I watched members of the Wrecking Crew talking about their careers, about how they got where they were going, and how much they enjoyed the work and the pride they took in their tremendous if tacit impact on the music industry, I couldn’t help thinking about dad, and how much he would have enjoyed that life.
It’s amazing how many factors have to line up in a person’s life to achieve that kind of success. Did dad miss out on music as a career because he was in the wrong place? Was he born at the wrong time for a jazz drummer? Did getting married at 22 keep him from taking the risks that might have been required to really pursue music as a profession?
I wonder what would have happened if life had transpired differently for dad. What if, instead of remaining in Bucks County or moving to Ohio, dad had instead moved to a bigger city? What if he’d moved to New York or Philadelphia or Los Angeles or even Nashville? As gregarious as my dad was, it’s hard not to see him hooking up with musicians wherever he went, and being in a city with a dense population of highly talented musicians would have been like candy to him.
Say dad moved to LA, where the Wrecking Crew did their recording. He might have joined some jam sessions and started to make connections throughout town. It’s not hard to see him sitting in on gigs, joining a combo, and jumping into whatever recording sessions he was offered. Even if he didn’t hit the top of the profession, it would have been much less of a stretch for him to make a living playing the drums. It’s a numbers game: yes, there are more people competing for work, but the number and quality of the jobs are so much better it ultimately works in the artist’s favor.
I also wonder if dad would have taken the option if it had been presented to him. My gut says he would have—if someone had given him a little push. But if I’m being honest, I think there was also a kernel of fear that lived within him. Making a move that drastic, especially with a young wife in tow, is terrifying. How are you going to pay for the move? How do you move that far away from friends and family? And what happens if things don’t work out?
I think dad had that kernel of fear because I’ve lived with my own hard candy center of anxiety. Before my wife got into med school in New York, I never would have imagined I could have moved to the city. It felt too risky, too big, and Columbus was too comfortable. Heck, even packing up and heading to the middle of Missouri was a huge leap for me.
Looking back, I know my dad struggled with life after music. Sure, he had a family, graduated college, and had a career, but none of it captured the feeling of performing. He did the best he could, tried as hard as his psyche would let him, but things didn’t work out, and he had to find another way to make his way through life. The number of aspiring musicians (or artists in general) who have had similar experiences must dwarf the number who succeed. But that doesn’t make it any easier to live with the disappointment, the resentment that you weren’t one of the few who made it, and I think the majority of dad’s life after music was chasing the dragon of happiness.
I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life not wanting to feel like dad did about his life. Perhaps it’s unfair, but I never felt comfortable with the mix of desperation and disappointment that seemed to lurk under dad’s surface. Especially in the years after I left for college, dad would often talk to me about trying to avoid the things that make you unhappy, and being sure that the work you were doing was something you loved, or at least didn’t mind. And I get it. The promises he had been given—that music could be a career, that college would be a golden ticket, and that your job would take care of you when you needed it—always seemed to be disproven in the cruelest way.
I guess, in a roundabout way, that’s what I came away with from The Wrecking Crew. Living your life according to a negative philosophy, making choices to avoid negative outcomes rather than pursuing positive ones, is no way to live, son. But doing so often means making sacrifices, and quite frankly I’m not comfortable with what some of those sacrifices would be.
Despite all the troubles and tribulations over the past year, despite whatever artistic and professional frustrations I may feel, life is actually pretty damn great. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to make things better, to find ways to improve how satisfied I am with my life. Like with a house or a car, there are always things you’d like to fix, projects you’d like to undertake that could make something you love even better. That’s the way to keep life from getting stale.
Yeah, I heard it too. That sounds kinda close to how dad went about his life. While he liked to warn me against making mistakes, maybe what he should have focused on is explaining why he worked so hard to find the good things, why he tried to change what he could to improve his life and the lives of those around him. It was there, of course, and we all saw it. But maybe if he’d talked more about the good things, it would have been easier for him to see it, too.
I dunno. Maybe I’m reading too much into a fun movie about how the music of the ’60s and ’70s was made. I’m pretty sure most musicians would be horrified to think people were looking to them for lessons in how to behave in this life. I’ll just leave it with this: no one has a perfect life, and the people who think they do probably aren’t looking close enough. Some lives are better than others, for sure. But as long as we’re working to be better, in some way, then that might just be enough to keep on going.
MetaFrizzics 