When the world uncovered the true percussive genius of pop: “My 12 favourite drummers are Hal Blaine”
A young drummer will tend to emulate the distinctive personality traits of their favourite time-keepers: be it the controlled grooves of Ringo Starr, the manic energy of Keith Moon, the raw power of John Bonham, or the ridiculous precision of Neil Peart.
However, one word you don’t tend to hear as often when it comes to a drummer’s superpowers is ‘versatility’. It could be argued, though, that no skill is more vital to the actual job, for in most bands, the drummer isn’t writing the songs, but they will ultimately have to become the heartbeat of each tune, nonetheless.
In a straightforward punk band, you might be able to get away with bashing away with minimal deviations, but in most groups, you’re going to need to be flexible, quick to adapt, and deeply in sync with the intent and vibes of your bandmates, knowing when to put the pedal to the metal and when to back off.
With this in mind, there are maybe few jobs in music more potentially challenging than that of the session drummer, the percussionist who doesn’t have the advantage of always knowing their fellow artists inside and out. In that category, no man is held in higher reverence than the late Hal Blaine, the longtime Los Angeles session drummer and proud member of The Wrecking Crew, the mighty ensemble of ‘sidemen’ largely unknown in its own time, but has since established its place in history thanks to renewed attention from rock historians, documentarians, and a new generation of musicians.
Along with playing with everyone from Elvis and Sinatra to the Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel, Hal Blaine was also a defining part of Phil Spector’s classic ‘Wall of Sound’ in the 1960s girl group era, and remained the preferred time-keeping gun-for-hire in LA for many years. This prolific CV explains why, when the Knack’s drummer Bruce Gary learned about Blaine in the 1980s, he famously realised that “my 12 favourite drummers are Hal Blaine”.
Blaine grew up in the 1940s admiring all the big band jazz drummers like Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, but he was also motivated from an early age to take their jobs. “I just knew that one day the drummer would get sick or fall off stage,” Blaine wrote in his memoir Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew, “and I’d jump up and save the show”.
Ultimately, Blaine lived out his dream. “I replaced over 175 drummers for groups,” he told the Press Democrat newspaper in 1992, “because I had the technique and experience to do it and do it quick”.
Even after his heyday with The Wrecking Crew was over, Blaine played on numerous movie soundtracks, including Back to the Future, Gremlins, and Dirty Dancing, such that, by the time of his death in 2019 at the age of 90, it was estimated that he had taken part in 35,000 recording sessions, and that he could be heard on at least 150 top ten US hit singles and 40 number ones.
“I came along at a time when there weren’t many drummers,” he said in 1992, “Now there are thousands. And it’s almost all electronic now. The human factor has fallen out”.
