“Nothing song”: the track Carol Kaye admits wouldn’t have been a hit without her
If there’s anyone who can validly lay claim to the title of being the unsung hero of the music industry, it’s session instrumentalist Carol Kaye. Her steady bass guitar has beat to over 10,000 songs in the pop and rock canons since the 1960s. Hence, it’s fair to assume that she knows the makings of a hit like the back of her hand, having worked with every major production powerhouse from Phil Spector to Quincy Jones and The Wrecking Crew.
In that sense, as much as the artists who front seismic tracks can boast all they like about their supposed self-made success, Kaye can sit back smugly, knowing it was she who was truly responsible for many of them without having to deal with anywhere near the hassle of mainstream fame that comes with it.
Working most prolifically with a range of artists from The Beach Boys and The Supremes to Neil Young, you can be sure she’s polished many duds into stars—but there was one particular song where she had to work that magic more than most.
Of course, Sonny & Cher were known throughout the 1960s for producing a slew of massive songs in their own right, but, believe it or not, their 1967 hit ‘The Beat Goes On’ was not initially one of them. It took Kaye swooping in to save the day and transform the tune into a success, a fact she was keen to stress when discussing the song’s key to her legacy.
She previously told Songfacts, when asked what tunes were particularly instrumental to her skills, “Well, ‘The Beat Goes On’ is a biggie. I mean, it was a nothing song, and then the bass line kind of made that.” Recorded at The Wrecking Crew’s sonic home of the Gold Star Studios in Hollywood, it was clearly the electric synergy of the place and the musicians in its midst that gave the track a new lease of life, ultimately transforming it from “nothing” into something of a top ten smash.
But for Kaye, infusing mediocre tunes with her sonic sorcery was just part of the day job, as she added: “But you’d have to say all of them. There’s only a certain song, like ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ [by the Righteous Brothers], that was guaranteed to be a hit because it was a great song. But about 95% of that stuff would not have been a hit without us, that’s true.”
It may be a brag, but it is one she is more than entitled to, given she has lived a life watching others all too quickly take credit for the musical mastery that she helped shape. If we actually stopped to look at the backstage battalions of musicians, songwriters, producers, and many more who truly sustain the lifeblood of the industry, we would soon realise that the balance of power is more than tipping the scales in terms of star command. Kaye has, of course, always known this, but, in some ways, it’s in the nature of a session musician that she may rather sit quietly with her truth than flashily take the crown.
