The drummer Brian Wilson crowned as the greatest in the world: “I can’t put it into words”
Although they are rarely showered in the same spotlight as lead singers or self-aggrandising guitarists, any half-decent musician will tell you that a good drummer is the backbone of every great rock and roll band. Even The Beach Boys, whose rhythm section was propped up by Dennis Wilson for many decades, often employed session drummers to give them that extra push over the cliff into musical excellence.
Session musicians have long since been the unsung heroes of the music industry, playing uncredited in the background of some of the most iconic songs of all time.
Even a band that was already awash with instrumental talent, like The Rolling Stones or The Who, would often employ a few extra hands to beef out their recordings – in doing so, providing some early career highlights for the likes of Jimmy Page. For The Beach Boys, though, those session players came out of necessity.
It is no secret now, nor has it ever been, that The Beach Boys were always a fairly fractured bunch; if they weren’t battling against their father-come-manager, Murry Wilson, then they were at each other’s throats pretty consistently. Before long, this spurred Brian Wilson to retire from touring with the band entirely, shutting himself away in a studio and letting his creative juices flow freely.
On one hand, this novel practice led to the creation of one of the greatest albums of all time, Pet Sounds, and allowed Wilson to exercise the extent of his songwriting genius. It did, however, bring up a multitude of issues, too. Namely, the rest of the band, upon returning from their exhaustive tours, struggled to perform the complex, experimental rhythms that Wilson had extracted from his mind.
Thus, session musicians were recruited to fill in the gaps, and drummer Hal Blaine soon became a favourite of Wilson’s, filling in for Dennis Wilson wherever needed. Boasting a career that spanned the spectrum from the psychedelic stylings of The Byrds to the country sounds of John Denver, Blaine performed on a litany of utterly iconic tracks over the years, including a multitude of Beach Boys tracks, from ‘I Get Around’ to ‘God Only Knows’.
In fact, Blaine’s drumming work was essential in realising Wilson’s vision of Pet Sounds as a whole, with the band’s original drummer unable to perform on every track due either to touring commitments of a lack of skill when it came to translating Wilson’s writing. Inevitably, then, Brian Wilson quickly became a lifelong appreciator of Hal Blaine.
So much so that, in the wake of the drummer’s passing back in 2019, the Beach Boys songwriter shared a heartfelt tribute via Facebook, in which he declared, “Hal Blaine was such a great musician and friend that I can’t put it into words.”
Adding, “Hal taught me a lot, and he had so much to do with our success – he was the greatest drummer ever. We also laughed an awful lot.”
Citing any singular player as the greatest drummer of all time is bound to be contentious, but Blaine probably has more of a claim to that elusive title than most, if only for the fact that he helped to revolutionise the entire musical landscape with his Pet Sounds-era performances with The Beach Boys.
