Hal Blaine (1929-2019)

March 12, 2019

Hal Blaine (1929-2019)

Hal Blaine, a prolific Los Angeles session drummer most closely associated with the Wrecking Crew, a tightly knit group of musicians in the 1960s and '70s who gave thousands of recordings by inexperienced pop-rock groups and stars a professional studio sound, died on March 11. He was 90.

Hal played on 40 #1 hit singles, 150 top-10 hits and performed on more than 35,000 recorded tracks. He was the drummer on the Grammy's "Record of the Year" for six years straight, from 1966 to 1971. These six songs were Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's A Taste of Honey, Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night, the 5th Dimension's Up, Up and Away, Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson, the 5th Dimension's Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, and Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Hal was best known for his powerful drumming style and syncopated hooks that helped turn pop-rock songs into smash hits. When I drove down to Palm Desert, Calif., to interview Hal at home for The Wall Street Journal in the winter of 2011, I remember being struck by his expansive wall of fame covered in awards and photos. Here's the opening paragraph of my piece:

Hal Blaine put his hand on my shoulder. "This is going to break your heart, but much of the music you heard in the '60s and early '70s wasn't recorded by the people you saw on the album covers," he said. "It was done by me and the musicians you see on these walls."

In the 1960s, the Los Angeles record industry found itself in a quandary. As pop-rock's appeal skyrocketed among millions of record-buying baby boomers, many wildly popular groups found they weren't good enough musicians to deliver the nuanced perfectionism needed in recording studios. At the dawn of the decade, producers watched studio expenses surge as bands tried over and over to record a master take. Even on takes where there wasn't a mistake, the takes seemed lackluster and lacking in confidence and punch.

In 1961, Phil Spector figured out that by using the same group of top-flight musicians on each recording session, he could record hit after hit with artsits such as the Righteous Brothers, the Ronettes, the Crystals and many other singers. This group of studio musicians became known as the Wrecking Crew. As Hal told me that afternoon in Palm Desert, the name originated when an older, buttoned-down Hollywood studio musician saw the younger musicians with long hair and T-shirts, and quipped, "These young studio guys are going to wreck the business." [Photo above of Tommy Tedesco, left, and Hal Blaine]

Unlike their older counterparts, Hal and the Wrecking Crew had a feel for rock 'n' roll. Massively confident as musicians, they recorded on virtually all of the Beach Boys songs, starting with Little Deuce Coup. They also are on the records of nearly every pop-rock group you can think of. In a single day, Blaine would record on several pop-rock sessions and drive across town to record behind "adult" pop artists such as Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Like all of the Wrecking Crew musicians, Hal would be tasked with turning notes on a page into a catchy arrangement. "What should we do here?" was a common question from a session producer to the Wrecking Crew musicians seated in the studio.

Like many people who knew Hal, I'm going to miss those flood of emails from him each day—some funny and some in questionable taste but all weirdly funny. What I quickly found after visiting him in 2011 is that when you wrote a piece on a member of the Wrecking Crew, you were part of the family.