The Wrecking Crew (22 page)

As a midwestern transplant from extremely modest origins, Russell had begun developing a real name around town in the early Sixties by virtue of his stellar work on a string of high-profile session dates, including many with Phil Spector. Banging the keys on million-sellers like “This Diamond Ring” (for producer Snuff Garrett) and “You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling” (for Spector), Russell had also started earning the first real money he'd ever known. And he didn't mind exhibiting a little bit of conspicuous car consumption—Oklahoma-style—in the process. Given that the eccentric keyboard virtuoso also had long, prematurely graying hair sticking out from underneath a large cowboy hat often perched on his head, he didn't necessarily look the part of the owner of an expensive new luxury automobile.

At least not to the motorcycle cop who had followed Russell back to Gold Star.

As the drama unfolded, it naturally caught the attention of some of the Wrecking Crew, who were just returning from various dining destinations. Several stood transfixed. Was this a drug bust?

Within seconds, the answer became clear. As Russell limped inside the building as quickly as he could on his game leg (he had been born with a malformation of the bones in his head, causing slight paralysis on one side), he then made a beeline straight for his music stand in Studio A. There, much to his relief, sat his wallet, right where he'd prayed it would be. In his haste to take a quick lunchtime spin in his fancy new ride, Russell had forgotten to bring along his driver's license. Not good, especially when the police in the area were known to have a special fondness for randomly pulling over what they referred to as “longhairs.”

This was 1965 and hair, drugs, and protests were just starting to become a concern to local law enforcement officials. And, as it turned out, for good reason. In less than a year the Sunset Strip youth scene would explode into a series of full-scale riots by throngs of teens refusing to obey curfew laws following a late-night run-in with police at what became known as ground zero: a tiny, triangular nightclub called Pandora's Box located at the intersection of Crescent Heights and Sunset. These events ultimately achieved musical immortality in Buffalo Springfield's hit song “For What It's Worth,” which, naturally, was mixed just down the street at Gold Star.

In the meantime, the cop had followed Leon into the studio.

“Okay, Mr. Russell, since you have no previous record, I'm only going to issue you a warning this time,” the by-the-book cop finally said after carefully examining Leon's documentation. “But you need to obey the law. Driving without a license is a misdemeanor in California. If convicted, the penalty can include incarceration.”

A shaken Russell could only nod, silently imagining what horrors the county jail's inmate population might have had in store for a scrawny little piano player like him. But as the young patrolman started to leave, something made him stop. As he turned back toward the rest of the musicians—now gathered in the studio alongside their instruments—his eyes narrowed in obvious disapproval.

“Why the hell don't you people get real jobs?” he suddenly said, shaking his head in disgust. “None of you can be making more than twenty bucks a day.”

And, with that, one of LA's finest walked out, shutting the studio door firmly behind him.

At first, no one made a sound. And then, on cue, the whole studio burst into a roar of laughter, from Wilson and the engineers right on down to every last one of the Wrecking Crew players in attendance that day. The joke was on the cop.

These musicians without any “real” jobs were, in many cases, making over four hundred dollars a day, which just happened to be about the same as Lyndon Baines Johnson, the President of the United States, was currently earning. And it was also undoubtedly far more than the going rate for a recent graduate of the Los Angeles Police Academy.

*   *   *

Just as Brian Wilson could sometimes be unintentionally disrespectful, as during the intense “Help Me, Rhonda” session, he could also be intentionally generous and kind to his musical charges. And it often came when it was least expected.

Billy Strange, one of Wilson's favorite guitarists and the composer of “Limbo Rock,” got a call one Sunday afternoon from the maestro himself, who had somehow tracked him down at his ex-wife's house in the Hollywood Hills.

“Billy, it's Brian Wilson. Sorry for the intrusion, but you gotta come down to Western Three right now. I need you to listen to this song I'm cutting to see if there is something you can do on it.”

“Brian, I'd love to,” Strange replied. “But it's Sunday and I've got my son this weekend. Besides, I don't have a guitar with me.”

A divorced father, Strange loved spending time with his son. His own dad—a little-known cowboy singer named George Strange—never was around all that much and Billy sure wasn't going to end up being that kind of parent. Plus, he only had weekend visiting privileges. His ex-wife had made sure of that.

“That's okay. Don't worry about it,” Wilson said brightly. “Bring your son with you. See you in a few.”

What the heck, Strange thought as he hung up the phone. Maybe Billy Jr. would actually get a kick out of visiting one of the places where his old man earned his living. So, with the winds of optimism firmly at their backs, father and son jumped into Billy Sr.'s car and headed down the hill for the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gordon Street, filled with a shared sense of adventure.

By this time, the thirty-five-year-old Strange had finally settled into his role as one of the best studio sidemen in the business. Someone not only able to play the hell out of any stringed instrument placed in front of him but also possessed of the ability to sight-read “fly shit”—industry vernacular for tiny, complex passages of written musical notation. Strange excelled, too, at crafting arrangements (his work on “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” by Nancy Sinatra helped push that song all the way to number one), and he was now producing as well. All valuable skills in the increasingly competitive pop music scene of the mid-Sixties.

As Billy Strange and his nine-year-old boy arrived at the studio and entered Western 3's cozy control room, Wilson greeted them both warmly and then got right down to business.

“Here, listen to this section, Billy. What I need is an electric twelve-string guitar solo right here.”

“Brian, I don't even own an electric twelve-string guitar.”

“Well, let's get one then.”

The next thing Billy Strange knew, the young producer was on the phone with Glenn Wallichs, the co-founder of Capitol Records (with famed songwriter Johnny Mercer) and also the owner of Wallichs Music City, Hollywood's best-known purveyor of musical instruments. Within minutes, two deliverymen showed up at the studio's back door carrying a brand-new Fender electric twelve-string guitar and a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier—both from a shop that was closed on Sundays.

An impressed Strange sat down, cradling the gleaming new guitar in his hands, and began tuning up, carefully adjusting the amp's tone controls in precise increments along the way. Satisfied that he'd achieved just the right sound, he then made one quick pass at playing the short eight-bar section Brian wanted to place right in the middle of what proved to be the future hit “Sloop John B.”

“That's it!” Wilson yelped with glee. “You nailed it, Billy.”

And so, just as quickly as it had begun, the world's shortest recording session had now ended. Almost.

As Strange and his son stood to leave, the Beach Boys' leader pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills and peeled off several of them, stashing them in Billy's front shirt pocket.

“Thanks, man, for the great riff and for coming down today. And don't forget your guitar and amp.”

Billy Strange stood bug-eyed. Brian Wilson—a world-famous producer under tremendous pressure to finish a new album on time and within budget—had just given him five hundred dollars in cash and a brand-new, expensive set of equipment worth well in excess of two thousand dollars. All for a few minutes of work.

This is some rate of pay, a grateful Strange thought to himself as he thanked Wilson for the unexpected largesse.

But, then, that was Brian Wilson—when you least expected it, he was generous to a fault. But, sadly, it was precisely this range of behavior—mostly good, other times questionable—that would soon conspire to spell the demise of his long-standing musical partnership with Strange and all the rest of the Wrecking Crew.

*   *   *

In December of 1965, the playing field within the realm of contemporary music suddenly experienced a seismic shift in terms of creativity and vision, tilting the advantage decidedly toward the British Isles. Because during that month and year the Beatles released their groundbreaking
Rubber Soul
album. Replete with a variety of cleverly crafted odes to love that took the notion of the popular song to a new level of lyrical sophistication and perspective, the LP was a smash, going straight to the top of the charts.

No ordinary album in terms of content,
Rubber Soul
evidenced a maturity and conceptual cohesiveness that forever altered how vinyl albums were to be utilized. Since the Beatles first released “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in January of '64, American musicians had mostly been able to hold their own in the face of the so-called British Invasion in what was essentially a song-by-song Top 40 battle of 45 rpm records. Long-play 33
1
⁄
3
rpm albums had yet to be considered as anything more than vehicles for a hit single or two, plus the addition of several “filler” tracks to pad things out (“two hits and ten pieces of junk,” as Phil Spector liked to say). But the arrival of
Rubber Soul
changed all that. The days of “yeah, yeah, yeah” were clearly oh, oh, over.

With each song seemingly more brilliant than the one before it,
Rubber Soul
also offered an exquisite and unprecedented variety of instrumental surprises, such as the fuzzed-out bass line on “Think for Yourself” and the first use of a sitar on a major pop recording (“Norwegian Wood”). The Byrds' David Crosby (whose band the Beatles greatly admired) had enthusiastically introduced the complicated stringed instrument to a fascinated George Harrison, who subsequently worked night and day to try to master its intricacies. Ironically, just months earlier Crosby had been unceremoniously replaced on the much-simpler-to-play rhythm guitar by Wrecking Crew member Jerry Cole during the recording of the Byrds' “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

As with the Byrds, the Beatles also maintained a friendly rivalry with the Beach Boys, and the two bands kept close tabs on each other's chart successes. Label mates in the United States on Capitol Records, they would also occasionally visit each other when on tour. And Mike Love, the Beach Boys' lead singer, would even one day join the Beatles in visiting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India—a trip that helped inspire much of what would eventually become the Beatles'
White Album
.

But for now, their cordial game of one-upsmanship had just one name:
Rubber Soul.

With almost universally glowing reviews and substantial sales success on both sides of the Atlantic, this latest record by the Fab Four also naturally caught the ear of ambitious musicians everywhere, causing many—like Brian Wilson—to scramble in reevaluation of their own efforts. He wondered how the Beach Boys would even be able to compete.

It turned out the answer came in the form of a little album with the cute-sounding name of
Pet Sounds
.

Having recently completed the hastily conceived
Beach Boys Party!
album in late '65—an in-studio effort passed off as a “live” party recording in order to fulfill contractual obligations with Capitol—Wilson set out in earnest during January of the new year to begin work on what he hoped would become his magnum opus, something even the über-talented Beatles couldn't top.

Assembled with the other Wrecking Crew members this time around in Western's much larger Studio 2, Hal Blaine could immediately sense that something was different on this project. There was a seriousness of purpose in the air, almost as if all the previous Beach Boys dates on which he'd worked were merely preambles to something bigger and better to come. And he was right.

“Brian is sure focused today,” remarked guitarist Jerry Cole to both Blaine and stand-up bass player Lyle Ritz between takes during an early
Pet Sounds
session for what would soon become “Wouldn't It Be Nice,” one of the band's biggest all-time hits.

Ritz, a small, mild-mannered, balding man blessed with a pitch-perfect ear and impeccable technique, nodded his head in agreement. But he had also noticed something else that day. As he played the song's bass line in the key of D, the rest of the band seemed to be in another key altogether. Something's not right here, he thought.

“Hey, what key are you guys in?”

“Key of A—it's right there on the sheet music,” said Cole, pointing, while working to replace a broken string on his Fender Telecaster.

“Well, my sheet music is in D,” replied Ritz. “Go figure.”

As the bass player got up and walked around the room, glancing curiously at everyone else's music stands, he came to the startling realization that he was the only one in the studio playing in a different key. The only one, it appeared, who was
supposed
to be in a different key. That can't be done, thought Ritz.

But it could. And it was. For Wilson had outdone himself this time by writing a countermelody for the bass line that fit neatly within the song—all based on a completely different harmonic center or tonic. Something neither Ritz nor the Wrecking Crew had ever experienced during a rock-and-roll gig. That was something a jazzer might do. Maybe. But, then again, these were the
Pet Sounds
sessions and all creative bets were off. There would be nothing prosaic about this album.