How many number one hits did The Wrecking Crew play on?
It’s one thing to have an idea for a song, but another thing entirely to actually be able to record it – Tool had this problem when they first started recording their debut album.
Sylvia Massy was producing the record, and after seeing Tool perform live, she knew what the band were capable of; however, it was one thing performing that kind of sound on stage, it was another thing completely managing to lay it down in a studio. Massy ended up having to implement some innovative techniques to get the right sound down.
“After several attempts at one of those ten-second screams without a good take, and with his voice obviously wearing thin, I finally asked him to go outside and run around the block five times,” she said, “This would make him furious, but after doing it, he nailed those screams. He was pissed, and you could hear it in his voice.”
While it worked out when making Undertow, not every recording session is beneficial enough to have a band like Tool and a mind like Massy. There were a lot of instances in the 1960s and ‘70s, when recording techniques were still being perfected and understanding how to play in a studio wasn’t common knowledge, that a lot of producers and engineers relied on the talent of session musicians rather than a lot of actual bands.
You’d be surprised how many of the musicians you like also worked as session musicians, for instance, two of Led Zeppelin’s biggest attributes, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page, both were session artists before they started the band. “Page got out earlier and joined the Yardbirds,” recalled Jones, “I thought he was completely crazy. I couldn’t spend all the money.”
Despite such big names being involved in the world of session musicianship, there is no session band bigger than The Wrecking Crew. They were a group of artists who initially started working with Phil Spector and helped him develop his wall of sound technique, and who eventually got a name for themselves as being the go-to group of musicians for anyone who needed their song to have a bit of magic injected into it.
Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Leon Russell, Earl Palmer and Glen Campbell were all responsible for bringing to life some of the biggest hits ever committed to music. They didn’t just play music, they did so with a bounce and an energy that you can’t teach, something which is built into an artist rather than picked up along the way, and the number of hits that can be attributed to the session musicians really is a milestone, something that other bands could only dream of.
So, how many number one hits did The Wrecking Crew play on?
In total, the band contributed to over 40 hit singles. Putting a specific number on it is difficult, given that different songs had different band members and it wasn’t always the same group, but as a collective, they certainly played on at least 40 number ones. They released music for The Monkees, The Beach Boys, The Ronettes and even helped bring folk rock to life when they played on The Byrds ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.
While The Byrds were all capable musicians, a lot of the band members didn’t give the song the swing that it needed to get over the line, and as such, The Wrecking Crew were brought in. This is just one example out of many, if you didn’t have the Wrecking Crew, you wouldn’t have a lot of the best songs ever made.
