August 30, 2024 • 40 mins
Join @thebuzzknight for this episode with film maker Denny Tedesco. He is the son of Tommy Tedesco, who was part of the famous "Wrecking Crew" which Denny turned into a documentary. Denny also created a documentary on The Immediate Family, the talented group of LA session musicians.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
So what I learned now is my biggest regret was
I should have been talking to him every day going
over there, you know. And it's funny because we all
run into that now our parents are passing away, or
as you know, our friends are passing away, and you go,
you hold on. You just don't ask those questions. You
don't go over there and talk more. You're afraid. I
don't know what it is, but I could have gone
(00:23):
over there with a gussette player and ask them things,
because in the end, it's really now what it looks like.
It's the message, and that's where it's important. It's about
the message. So you're going to have black screen. If
he told me something really important, that would have been
just as good.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I'm buzz Night, your host of the Taking a Walk podcast,
the podcast that digs deep into the inside stories of
musicians and.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Their creative process.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
If you like our podcasts, share with your friends and
leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. And we're proud to be part of
the iHeart podcast Network. On this episode, we're going to
speak with filmmaker and history Denny to Desco. Denny is
responsible for some great music documentaries, The Wrecking Crew, telling
the story of some of the greatest session players of
(01:10):
all time, including Denny's father, Tommy Tedesco who was part
of the Wrecking Crew, Glenn Campbell who was part of
the Wrecking Crew, Leon Russell unbelievable musicians. Denny is also
the man behind The Immediate Family documentary about the great
La session guys Waddie Wachtel and Leland Skla, Russell Kunkle,
(01:31):
all the guys. The Immediate Family, another great documentary. Let's
talk to Denny Todsco now on Taking a Walk. Denny,
thanks for being on Taking a Walk podcast. So what's
the most important trait that you learned from your father
Tommy Tedesco.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I think the thing with dad. You know, Dad, I
never learned by the way, let's start with I am
not a musician. I never figured out the third chord.
I continue to try, so music was not something he
taught me. But what I saw him, the respect that
people had for him was because he was so kind
to so many people. You didn't matter if you were
(02:08):
the guard at the gate or you know, one of
the great stars. I mean, they had such respect for
him and it's because he was kind. You know. He
taught the students when he did the seminars, he would
tell him, if you get you could be in a
job and you could be one hundred and twenty percent right.
He said, don't blow up on the leader. If you're
(02:29):
going to blow up on the leader, that's fine, but
remember you're not coming back the next day. So you
have to make that decision about how to control your emotions,
you know, which is not easy. And I think I'd
learned that I'm not as good as he was about it.
You know, sometimes my emotions get to me. But I've
(02:49):
always felt like I've always been kind, you know. I
always try to be kind to people I work with
and nobody, you know, just folks. You meet people on
the road or every day and you just want to
I want to know people, and that's what I get,
you know. That's probably what I've learned the most.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
When did you first comprehend the magnitude of what your
father was up to with his musical career and with
the what the rest of the wrecking crew was up to?
And for those that may not have seen the documentary,
it's one of the great music documentary is one of
the great stories of all time. But when did you
(03:29):
first comprehend the magnitude?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It's funny, it's two different answers there. I didn't realize
dad's work was different. Dad just want to work like
every other dad. He had, you know, instead of a
saw or drill or hammer in the car, he had
a telecaster, an acoustic, a mandolin, a banjo, and an
amp or whatever he had in the car, and that
was what he did. He went to work. I never
(03:52):
saw dad work at I never saw Dad play guitar
at home, so I knew he was a guitar player.
But did it make sense when you're five years old,
eight years old, ten years old, whatever. It wasn't until
high school, just a little before high school that someone said, oh,
I saw your dad's name on the Partridge Family album,
and I realized he was on that. But it started, oh,
(04:14):
that's interesting, you know, people recognize that. And then it
was later in high school when he started doing his
own work for his own jazz album. Then I started
seeing him playing at home. He never played at home
because he didn't have to practice, you know what I mean.
It wasn't like he'd sit there for hours practicing. I
never saw him play. So now he's doing his jazz
(04:37):
album in nineteen seventy six, seventy seven and eight, whatever,
and he's working on arrangements, working on things, and now
he's on the radio under his own name. So that
kind of got me going. But it wasn't until I
started doing the Wrecking Crew documentary that it realized the
impact that he and his friends had on American music
in the sixties. And even today I still learned things
(05:01):
I didn't realize he was on this or on that,
And it blows my mind the impact these musicians had.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Were you ever in the car with him listening to
the radio and where you heard music he had played
on come on?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
No, no, because that was the other thing. Dad didn't
realize unless it was like maybe, I mean again, I
don't remember. First of all, Dad never listened to music
when I don't remember Dad ever listening to music in
the car, which is really interesting because I remember Mom
driving with music on and radio, but Dad never because
(05:34):
that was work. Dad always listened to baseball or football,
whatever it was going on at the time, And you
never saw him come home and turn on music at
home because don't realize he's been gone twelve fourteen hours
a day playing music, all kinds of music. So I
think he needed it, always needed that break from in
his head. I'm sure he did. I mean, he must
(05:56):
have been listening to something, you know, jazz albums and
stuff he wanted to listen to do. But he also
the other thing is Dad didn't know what he was
playing on. Sometimes you realize. The great example is Jimmy
Webb gave him a little charm of a recki Evan Rey, sorry,
a little Grammy charm when Up Up and Away won
(06:16):
a Grammy and he says, what's this for it? He goes,
this is for the Up, Up and Away song that
we did with the Fifth Dimension last year. And my
dad didn't even know he was on it. Now here's
what's odd. If you listen Up, Up and Away, you
know it's Tim because he's got the his acoustic you know,
latin run through it, so you know that's him and
(06:39):
the other. But the thing is you realize Dad goes
to work, this guy sit down to throwing a piece
of paper. Usually was just the rhythm tracks, it was
just tracking dates. The artists aren't even there, so they're
doing that. Maybe an hour, here's another one, another one.
So they've done three or four songs in three hours.
(07:00):
Move on. They're not recording hits, they're recording songs. They
don't become hits. A hit becomes after you hear it.
Many times, that's when you start recognizing something, unless there's
something specific about the date. Maybe, but he had no
idea what he was working on. Most of the time.
Strangers in the Night was different because you know, that's Sinatra,
(07:21):
that was a different date. You know that you kind
of remember things. But most of the time, you know,
you realize he's been given twelve pieces of music a day,
five days a week, at sixty something pieces, and if
it's movies, well then it's just cues being being being,
you know. So, I don't think he knew a lot
of stuff he thought he was on he wasn't on,
(07:43):
And likewise, things he didn't know he was on he
was on. So and it happened with all of them.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
How as well, what's so crazy is how and you
talk about this in the documentary, just how it's unclear
completely how many people were actually you know, truly members
of the wrecking crew or how long they were and
the way it sort of was different places in different
times because it was moving parts, and that surprised you
(08:13):
as you further delved into.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
No, not at all, because here's the thing. The record
crew of the name. Let's clear it up for everybody
out there. The name is called the Reking Crew because
how was writing a book in nineteen ninety and he
was telling the publisher this is what the publisher told me.
He said, how I would always tell the story, which
is true.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
How Blaine. Sorry for those Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
The drummer Hal Blaine was always telling the story these
older guys, because don't forget my dad is even though
he's thirty in nineteen sixty, these guys are playing rock
and roll and demos and stuff like that in nineteen sixty,
which the older musicians in town, the established movie guys,
they're not going to take these dates. They're not going
(08:56):
to take these recordings because they could risk a lot
of money on a movie date, which could be a week,
and they're not going to do a demo for twenty
five bucks. Well, if these guys Dad and Hal Blaine
and Don Randy and Leon Russell and all these other
folks in Glenn Campbell, they're going to take it because
they're not. They're still starting out at this point and
(09:16):
they established this thing. So how comes up with the
idea that this name? Later in the nineties he says,
the older guy said, they're going to wreck the business
playing this rock and roll. So publisher said, that's a
great name for the book, and the books goes off.
So if there's any controversy of that is that it's like,
was it there? Was it not? None of the people
(09:38):
I interviewed remember the name, and so it was like,
it's not about how many were in it, it's about
there were fourteen, maybe fifteen people in the studio sometimes
that were always in the studio, and they were always
the same people. You could have Earl Palmer on drums,
You could have Al Blaine on drums. You always had
maybe two three to four guitar players. You had u
(10:00):
from the young woman and bass players. You had different
bass players because you had a stand up bass which
could be maybe Chuck Bergoffer or Lyle Rix, and then
you would bass guitar but in a more of a
troubled kind of thing, and that was maybe Bill Pittman
or Raye Pullman, and then you had a bass player.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So what happened was in the studio. You know, you
had a contractor who was the producer, says, hey, get
this is the arrangements. We need these guys. And they
would call the contractor. We call people, so if so
and so wasn't available, they get so and so so.
There was no set crew, there was no set band.
You know, you had your usuals obviously. You know, Lou
(10:37):
Adler had his group of you know, Joe Sarahs, you know,
has his people and these are all producers and Snuff Garrett,
you know, had his folks. So they would just go
in and knock it out. Now here's where it's really
crazy is in those days, in the early sixties, there's
only one track. There's only it's mono. So Glen Campbell,
who was one of the great guitar players in the
(10:58):
studios at the time, he said, I was playing with
Michael Jordan. Everybody in the room was a Michael Jordan though.
He said, you can't make a mistake. You have three
hours to go in and go out, because you know what,
we all have a gig at one o'clock. We can't
be messing around. We got nine to twelve. We don't
mess around, because we got to be at the next recording.
So if anybody's making a mistake, you're going to start
(11:21):
all over. You don't have the computers to punch in
at bar thirty two and pick up from there. So
if you start making a mistake multiple times, everybody's looking
at you, you're not coming back. And that's how it
was moving so fast. So that's why in the Wrecking Crew,
I have one hundred and ten songs, and I had
the leisure of that putting at least another fifty to
(11:43):
sixty songs in there. You know, if I really started
to dig in deep unds other stuff. It was a factory.
And I don't mean that in a negative way. You
could take it as a negative way, but that's the
way the business was. The labels realized if we put
out we can make money. If it gets on AM radio,
it helps each other. They now were nailing it, so
(12:06):
we need product, and these were the guys to do it.
They were the ones that could knock it out fast.
There was no messing around, And people said, well, well
did the bands play. Yeah, the bands could play, but
they weren't that good. Sometimes in the studio you don't
know a great example. And Roger mcgwinn said, with the
Birds now Terry Meltzer is producing it now. David Crosby
(12:26):
interviewed him later. He's very upset with that whole idea
of the wrecking crew going in. But Terry Meltzer said, hey,
we had a number one head. We got in in
three hours. Terry was the only one that they led,
not Terry Meltzer. I'm so sorry. Roger mcgwinn said, I
was the only one that was allowed in the Birds
to play on it. I sang and played twelve stern.
(12:49):
But they had Hal Blaine, Bill Pittman, Leon and Joe
Osborne and they knocked out tambourine Man and the A
side and the B side. They did that in three hours.
He said. When we did Turn Turn Turn, it was
seventy seven. Takes both number one hits. It's just a
different way of getting there. So Terry Meltcher as a producer,
(13:09):
his goal is to get in and get out. If
you don't have a single hit, if you don't start
having hits right off at those times, that's it. Move
on another group. So your goal is to get on
the charts and that's how it worked.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Had you ever, prior to do in the documentary, run
into any members of the Wrecking Crew in your life?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
No, the only ones. It's funny because Dad kept it
pretty separate his life. Was said, we didn't hang out
with musician families, which is so interesting. Dad was a gambler.
So the folks, if they were musicians that gambled, Yeah,
we hung out. I meaning I saw my card games
at home. If there were Italian there was Italian nights.
(13:49):
I saw Hell once in a while. But I didn't
meet Don Randy till many years later. I didn't meet
Carol or any of them until years later, until I
started making the film. But the only one I really
saw with Snuff Garrett, because he was a major gambler
and he and Dad were you know, you know, friends,
and they just came in card games. And I remember
Dad or Snuff would come and he had he was rich.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's how I remember he was rich because he had
a Rolls Royce and he had a driver to drive him.
And you know when you had a little kid that
was look at that and I'd say good night. I'd
go and kiss my dad good night. When they're den
where they were playing cards in a smoke filled room.
You can imagine it's probably still he could scrape off
(14:33):
the DNA of the smoke. You go there, say good night,
kiss him good night, and go to bed. The next morning,
I go to school, I go couldn't go back into
the same room, good morning, goodbye, and going to school,
kiss them again, and the smoke is still there. They're
still gambling twelve hours later. I mean they were addicts.
These guys serious and they i'd been serious and they
(14:56):
snuff would tell me later, he goes, oh, we'd be going.
We have a lot of o'clock date. No, we could
do Come on, one more hand, one more hand, we
could do it. We could do it. Yeah. They would
just go right to the last minute before they have
to leave for work.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Who influenced your interviews style?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Well, the first the thing I did with the round
tables on both films. I loved Broadway. Danny Rose, the
film with Woody Allen where he plays this just a
weird manager of weird acts. And what I remember in
the film was a bunch of managers or agents sitting
in a deli talking about this guy Danny Rose, and
(15:34):
I realized that was what I remembered at those card
games or dinners with those guys, you know, when people
were hanging out the banter. I loved being a voyeur
because I'm just a you know, little kid listening in
and I thought that was the greatest thing. So when
I put the roundtable together, I put them all in
(15:55):
at the card table literally in the studio, and let
throw out a question, let them go, and that let
into other things. So that's how it worked, and then
I did it was at the time I was working
on these other shows off a TV land. There were
this guy named Robert Small was the producer and director.
(16:16):
Watching the guys interview people, you know, I started learning
about it. You let them answer the question, let it
go longer. Sometimes I will. I've learned to not jump
in at the end of an interview. You know it's
at the end. Don't go okay, thank you, that's it.
I try to let it go in long pauses because
what happens is they're still thinking and something might come out.
(16:40):
A great example was the last question I had with
Don Henley in for Immediate Family. He was talking about,
you know, Don Henley as a solo artist. Danny Kachmar
of the Media Family or the band. He was his
producer and he's the one that encouraged him to do
a solo act. And they don't get along. They really,
(17:00):
you know, they haven't talked in years, probably, But Don
Henley was so kind to do this interview. And I
let that interview go long. I mean not long. That
last question. I let it go and I just sat
there and he out of nowhere, he goes. You know,
I got to say, he said, you know, I give
Danny all the credit in the world for me becoming
(17:21):
a solo artist, because if it wasn't for Danny, I
want to be here. That's huge for someone that they
don't care for each other. And that's only because the
pause and the uncomfortableness and maybe silence. Sometimes they'll give
you more than you expect. You don't know. It's a
long shot, but no, I've learned a lot. Let it
(17:42):
breathe right, Yeah, I still continue. I mean, there's interviews
that are great and there's interviews that are bad. Sometimes
it's my fault. Sometimes there's no control I have over it.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
So for the Wreck and Crew, easiest interview or interviews
and Jimmy Webb I love Jimmy and most difficult interview.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, so Jimmy Webb amazing, absolutely amazing. You know, I'm
shooting at this time. That time, I was shooting tape,
and I remember saying to an hour tape, giving it
to the editor to say, here, you got sixty minutes
of gold. You could put a number, any number of
sixty minutes, to say thirty two, and that whatever you
(18:23):
said was could be in it. That's how good it was.
I mean, he was so poetic, so articulate. Everything about
it was good and great. Most difficult. I always laugh
about this because it was Brian Wilson, the opposite, both
of them pop music's greatest writers. But you know, we
(18:43):
know there was you know, Brian went through a lot
of hell in his life, so it was a lot
of damage. And I remember shooting film at the time,
and when you're shooting film, you have eleven minutes a role,
so you have to also be conscious when you're shooting film,
don't shoot anymore film, But you don't start your interview
right off the bat, you don't. I would not roll
(19:06):
film until I warmed the guy up or the person up,
because I don't want to waste any good stuff or
I don't want to waste any bad stuff. For the
first five minutes, I want to throw, you know, get
him warmed up and hang and then I would touch
my camera person and to start rolling without them knowing.
So I had eleven minutes of roll. I had five
(19:28):
rolls fifty five minutes, and I thought, okay, I got
three pages of questions. I'll put them, make sure I
got the best questions up front, just in case, you know,
something happens. And at the end of the interview I
had all three pages of questions answered and I only
had one role shot, which means it's a horrible interview.
Eleven minutes of Oh my god, what did I just do?
(19:51):
And it was because you couldn't get past the one
word answers yes, no, no, And it was just that
he wouldn't articulate anything. He wouldn't, you know, no matter
how I presented it, it didn't go anywhere. R It's
very you know, that's is Brian. And at the end
he walked out. I was so depressed and I said, wow,
I said it out loud. I just waited eight years
(20:13):
for that, and my dpe she goes eight years eleven minutes.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's like, oh, man, wow, now I know you waited
a long time when you were in the process of
the wrecking crew to do the interview with your with
your dad, and at that point your dad's health had deteriorated.
That must have been a terrible lesson to learn, right,
(20:40):
meaning waiting.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, well, that was the lesson I looked because I started, Yeah,
well exactly, and I started, that's very great question because
I started when I was shooting film again. I shot
sixteen the first days. You know, that was me being
a director with a oh I want to look like this,
you know, my youth kind of got to me and
I wanted to shoot the film, which gives you, like
I said, it's hard. You got ac assistant cameraman prepping
(21:05):
the camera, you got this, this, this, there's more to
it than just getting a video camera shooting, and so
shut the round table on film and Dad's Did you
know Dad was diagnosed and they gave him eleven minutes
or eleven minutes, I'm sorry, eleven months. So by the
time I got to Dad about you know, he'd lasted
(21:26):
a year and a half. By the time I got
to him about a year later. With the film crew
and stuff. He had become very weak, so that energy
you see in the film is gone, and that was
not something I wanted to be. I didn't want him
to be remembered by and the questions. It was hard.
So what I learned there is my biggest regret was
(21:47):
I should have been talking to him every day, going
over there, you know. And it's funny because we all
run into that now our parents are passing away, or
is you know, our friends are passing away, and you go,
you hold on. You just don't ask the questions. You
don't go over there and talk more. You're afraid. I
don't know what it is, but I could have gone
over there with a cassette player and ask him things,
(22:07):
because in the end, it's really now what it looks like.
It's the message and that's where it's important. It is
about the message. So you could have black screen. If
he told me something really important, that would have been
just as good.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
We'll be right back with the Taken a Walk Podcast.
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast. I do
have to ask you about Jim Gordon, the great drummer
who was part of the wrecking crew, who was incredible
as a musician and had quite the career, you know,
co writing credits on Layla and just an endless you
(22:41):
know string, but also a tragic and dying in prison
after the terrible tragedy with his mother. Any thoughts or
things you uncovered about Jim Gordon.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No. I mean, it's interesting because there were three drummers
at the time. There was how Earl comes first, he's
a little older than how By a couple of years
Earl establishes a lot Earl Palmer, then How's there Hal Blaine,
and then Jim Gordon. Everybody had their favorite. A lot
of people had Jim as their favorite boy. He was
an amazing drummer, an amazing drummer and percussionist, so a
(23:19):
lot of times he was always just playing percussion on
the sessions. It was very sad because I wanted to
I even tried to get a hold of we got
a hold of the prison, thinking well, maybe he's well
enough to speak, because I was always thinking, you know,
maybe he's the one that knows everything, Maybe he knows
what they did not to go into the tragedy at
(23:41):
the time. This is again way long time ago, nineteen
ninety nine or whatever, but people just saw him decay.
It sounded like it sounded like it went slowly and
then all of a sudden towards the end, it was
just you know, he was sick. And it's interesting because
I have a Facebook page of the Wrecking Crew and
(24:02):
it's done really well. It's one hundred and seventy five
thousand people of fans of the music and the people
or the musicians. If you put something on there about
Phil Spector, like his anniversary of his birth or something,
you know, just not something, it doesn't matter what it is,
you will have people going crazy. How dare you? You know,
(24:23):
da da da da? You about to be talking about
the music? Nothing to do with him. We don't glorify him,
but people have a reaction to it. When Jim Gordon
died a couple of years ago, the reaction was different,
and I think it is, you know, a horrible crime
of killing his mother, but there was a sickness involved.
(24:44):
He was, you know, psychotic or schizophrenic, and there was
I think people understood there was that sickness, and I
think it was a very interesting thing and seeing how
people reacted to him dying, so.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
It is this is something I know, you know, Joel
Selvin and Joel has been on the podcast, and Joel says,
how you know, the music business allows or tolerates drug
addicts and alcoholics and devians, but mental illness comes along
and they sort of turned their back on somebody. And
(25:21):
he said that the music industry sort of turned its
back on Jim Gordon.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I think one of the only people who.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Stayed in some touch with him, he said, was there's
maybe two people, but one was Jackson Brown.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Oh, I didn't know that. I know Jackson did because
I know Hal tried to stay in touch with him,
and how got a note back written in scribble He
wanted to come up and visit and said, no, how
don't you you know? But that's great that Jackson did.
Here's the thing the problem with our business in film
and TV, and I think it's gotten a lot better
with the me too movements and these other movements. You
(25:57):
can't get away with what you got away with sometimes last,
you know, in those past, especially in when the studio
players in those days, in the early days, they weren't
so much in the sixties, there wasn't so much drug use.
Maybe some pot and stuff, but they were mostly probably
guys that were drinking. But she still we had to perform.
There was a like I said earlier with Glenn Campbell
(26:18):
said you had to be there, you had to nail
it because we don't have time to mess around. There
were those three hour sessions. Later when there was the
sessions went for days. Earl Palmer said, he goes in
the sixties we had recording dates. In the seventies, he
were recording projects. They could go weeks. And that was
the change, you know, so people tolerated more bullshit, you
(26:42):
know from people. I'm hoping that changes. And I think
here's the other thing is no one knew about maybe
like a great example, the great percussion player Julius Wecter.
They didn't know what was wrong with Julius. Julius had
to recks. He just would go off, you know, and
whatever you did. No one knew what was wrong with Delist.
(27:02):
There was no diagnosis probably at the time or no
one understood it. And I think that was the same
thing with probably Jim. They it just got he's off,
what the hell?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
That's I think that's what happens in those days. Hopefully
it's better now.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I hope.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
So, so what drove you to do the Immediate Family documentary.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Nothing drove me to do that. It came to me
because that was you know, for those who't know, the
Wrecking Group I started in ninety six didn't come out
till twenty fifteen, so it was nineteen years when eight
came around. I finally got into festivals. I finally made
the thing, got into festivals, and was basically going in debt.
(27:45):
I did go. I went bankrupt in the end, but
I had to pay off a half a million dollars
from two thousand and when I came out in eight,
I couldn't get a release because I couldn't pay for
the music. Yet I was in festivals, but that's different.
So I had to basically for the next seven years
pay off all those songs, one hundred and ten songs.
(28:07):
And it wasn't about the music industry holding me hostage.
It was about economics. People would look at these films
say they're not going to make any money, they're music docs.
Well I had to prove them wrong. So I came
out with every which way to raise money from a
bake sale on. I mean, I did everything, and I
had people dedicating songs, you know, at the end of
(28:29):
the movie you see people dedicated song you know, be
my baby, or you know if Brian willgood vibrations, whatever.
So you give me a thousand dollars to get your
name on the end. So it took a long time
to get there. So I was shelf shocked. And the
last thing I wanted to do was I want bankrupt.
I didn't want to do a music dog for sure.
Well my wife was not going to let me put
(28:50):
any money into a project. And then this came along
in twentynineighteen when producers came with an idea from Lisa Roy,
who was a fabulous publicist and she worked in the industry.
She ran she ran publicity for Media Family, and she said,
what about this to the guys, and they came to me,
so what do you think of this idea? And I said,
now I got that one. I totally understood that because
(29:12):
you've given me four I knew all the guys, knew
of all the guys, and not know all the guys.
Even he knew steps tell the guy that was the
young one, but I knew why he walked out. I
knew who he was. I knew who Russ Kunko was.
I knew Dainty Coach, I knew Leland Skillar, I knew
everybody who they were, and I thought, okay, I got that.
And the spin on that was they got a band
(29:35):
called Immediate Family. Okay, now I got control over it
because there's a hook to it, just like a song,
you need a hook, just you know, like the record
grew the name, there's a hook. I got it. And
so the difference between the media family and my dad's
group of musicians. These guys did the records and then
(29:56):
go on the road to support the records, that's a
big difference.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I love that one particular shot in the documentary.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I think they're in New York City.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I believe all kind of walking along and the joy
of them all being together just radiates at that moment.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, it does. It's so funny because there's point it's
all real stuff. You know me obviously he set it
up to you. Let's just walk around them. I need
to get b roll. Blah blah blah. There's a point
where Leland is taking a picture of some tourists because
they came up to him. Excuse me, do you mind
taking a picture of us? You know, and you see
Leland like holding up their camera or their iPhone and
(30:37):
taking a picture and smiling, joking with them. That's all real.
There's that point at the end of the movie where
I see them walking towards us and Leland says, hold on.
He stops and he turns totally left. He goes, there's
me and he turns off camera, walks off camera, and
he walks to the New York one of the windows,
(30:57):
the shop windows, and Santa Claus in the window and
cracks me up because it's real.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah, we had wadi On and Russ Kunkle as well.
So what was interesting about russ Is? And he said
this right out of the gate, because I was asking
him for some of those specific memories of certain sessions
and he said, he said, I got to stop you
right here for a second. He goes, because obviously I
remember the specialness.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Of the event.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I remember what a joy it was being, you know,
in the session with Joni Mitchell as an example for Blue.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
He said, but that's a long time ago to remember the.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Deep specifics, and that's a lot of years that have passed.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And I thought that was hysterical.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
But let me ask you as a great interviewer and
someone a great read of.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
The person you're interviewing.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
How do you get more out of somebody who says that.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
That's a really good question. It's a really good question.
I don't know if I've learned that yet. I mean,
it's funny how it's just things happen by accident all
the time. And the hardest part was when I get
when it did immediate family. Don't forget the first one,
Like I said, took nineteen years from beginning to end,
and I was still interviewing people for the DVD a
week before I had to turn that footage in in
(32:14):
twenty fifteen. So when I did media family, when the band,
when I said to the band, hey, this is my pitch,
Da da da, next day they said yes. And they
also said and Carol King could be interviewed in three weeks.
Oh my god, I only have three weeks to think
about this. I don't know if I bullshited my way
through the first this first thing with these guys. You know,
(32:35):
I pitched them an idea. I don't know if I
really know this story because I'm you know, I'm sixty three,
so I'm a kid. I'm still a teenager when all
this music's going down, I know of it, and I
you know some of it. To be honest, I never
listened to it. I was into other music. So I
went back and listened to everything, but I Carol King
in three weeks. I'm panicked. So now I started, I
(32:59):
start that I do that interview and do as much
information or much research as I can. I read a book,
and I read other books and went on, Well, there's
nothing worse than later you hear something from the next
interview about the Carroll. Well, you know, I mean, now
you can't go back to Carroll ask that, do you
know what I mean? So you gotta you have to
start playing off of each other onto the next one.
(33:21):
You know, I like the I don't remember if it
was James Taylor that told me about the plane crash.
So that led to, oh, I can ask everybody else
from that point on about the plane crash, and then
you start building the story. But you can't go back.
I mean, you can go back with the guys themselves
because you're trying to do multiple interviews with them. But
(33:41):
you know, you got one shot at Carol King or
James or Jackson or Linda. You know, and especially because
we did after Carroll, I didn't read it quickly into
Jackson James, Phil Collins into Ronstead Blue Ad. I mean
(34:02):
I had about seven or eight people by December, and
we made this nice sizzle reel, took it to Sundance,
hoping for the best, as we all filmmakers do. Hoping
for the best. Nothing happened, but all of a sudden,
March came and boom the world closes, COVID hits. Now
I have a bunch of interviews with all these stars who,
(34:25):
thank God, be God, because we would never have gotten
those people in those years with COVID. No one wanted
to do that, obviously for obvious reasons. But I also
have a film with a bunch of stars and nothing
about the people that we're talking about. I didn't have
any of the guys in the film, and there everybody
is all there's eventies. So I'm thinking, what, Oh my god,
(34:46):
we got to get this stuff in the can and
slowly and safely, And we started going back out there
slowly and got the guys in the can.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
It's a great documentary. It's fantastic, as is the wrecking crew.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I'm happy it's about those guys. It's about the musicians.
The greatest thing about that film for me was there
were no gatekeepers. There was no one saying, who do
you want to interview? Oh, well hold on and you
don't here for months, you know, you know, the manager
blows you off or the assist someone blows you off.
(35:20):
There was no blowing off here. I didn't call anybody.
Someone would call and said, yes, Carol can be interviewed,
Linda could be interviewed. Jackson's good for the next Wednesday.
Da da da. It was like instantaneous because the difference
between these guys and my dad. Dad wasn't friends with
Brian Wilson or hanging out with anybody. He went from
(35:41):
three hours, three hours, three hours, he went to work.
They all respected each other, they all got along, but
they didn't hang out. They didn't go on the road
with them for a year and really become friends. They
didn't have dinners together, you know. And that's the difference.
And don't forget Dad's thirty in nineteen sixty. You know,
the Beach boys they're all teenagers, you know. I mean,
(36:03):
there's a relationship that's different. And when these guys are
on the road with Linda. That's their sister. That's her brothers.
You know, they're all the same age. They're all coming together.
Carol and Danny Knu, James and look, James and Danny.
James and Danny went back to when they were teenagers
(36:23):
in the Cape. You know, they were thirteen and fifteen.
I think that's when they first met and that's how
that whole relationship goes from that point on.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
So, Danny, in closing, you mentioned earlier it took I
think you said nineteen years for the Wrecking Crew to
from start to finish. If somebody's listening to this, whether
it be a musician, whether it be a producer, filmmaker,
artist of any type who's trying to get something over
the finish line and it's taken forever, what advice from
(36:53):
someone who has lived it do you give them?
Speaker 2 (36:56):
I think listen, if you truly believe, and you're being
honest with yourself. Here's the thing. If the film had
been Wreckingku in the festivals, if it hadn't won a
dozen awards, if it hadn't the the reviews were not amazing,
if it all hadn't happened, I would have given up
and walked away. That would have been the sensible thing
(37:18):
to do, but I was so in debt and I
knew the film was The film was fine. There was
never an audience that didn't like the film. I mean
that was the truth. And I always thought, but I
have to pay off this debt. The only way to
pay off the debt was to figure out how to
make that half a million dollars, and no one was
giving us the money. So I had to figure out
(37:39):
it different ways, and I came up with ways. If
you truly believe in something, you just got to keep going.
If the door closes, okay, go through a window, go
a different way. I learned something on a project once.
It was it was a real estate project that we
were doing as the guy was basically, you know, we
were doing an infomercial forma and he would tell guy learning,
(38:01):
He goes, listen, you're gonna make twenty phone calls before
you get a yes. That's really important because you're gonna
get turned down constantly. If you don't have that thing
to get turned down as an actor, as a musician,
don't do it. Give up.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
The great line I think I heard Matt Damon said
when people said you know, hey, I'm thinking about becoming
an actor. What do you think? And he said, don't
do it, Absolutely not. Don't do it. He said, for
one reason. If they listen to him and don't do it,
they shouldn't have been an actor. If they really want
to be an actor, they should ignore him and you
just do it. And that's the way it is. I mean,
(38:38):
you know, my father said to you know, when he
was doing those seminaris to the kids, you never stopped playing.
You didn't start this. You didn't pick up the instrument
to make money. You did it because you enjoyed what
you were doing. You liked it, and then you started,
Oh my gosh, you made you made a dollar. Oh
my gosh, you're making Oh you're making a living. He
(39:00):
never stopped playing his guitar, even after the stroke, Even
after a stroke in ninety two which ended his career
in the studios, he would still pick it up and
mess around playing it.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Never, he did it for fun. And that's what it is.
If he can't make a living and do it for fun.
You know, writers write every day, musicians play every day,
pages probably paint every day. That's how you do it.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Benny, thanks for being on Taking a Walk, taking a
Little Walk down Memory Lane and music history, The Wrecking Crew,
amazing documentary The Immediate Family as well. Do check him
out and thanks for your generosity.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Thank you, and hopefully I will see you soon because
I have a new one I'm doing is on Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I hope we will see you.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Growing up outside of New York City listening to him
on w NBC.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Looking forward to catch it up again.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Thanks buzz, Thanks Denny.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Really great, I mean, a great interview.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Thank you. That means the world from you. Thank you
very much.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast with Denny Tedesco, The Wrecking Crew and Immediate Family,
his great documentaries. Share this in other episodes of Taking
a Walk with your Friends and find Taking a Walk
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
So what I learned now is my biggest regret was
I should have been talking to him every day going
over there, you know. And it's funny because we all
run into that now our parents are passing away, or
as you know, our friends are passing away, and you go,
you hold on. You just don't ask those questions. You
don't go over there and talk more. You're afraid. I
don't know what it is, but I could have gone
(00:23):
over there with a gussette player and ask them things,
because in the end, it's really now what it looks like.
It's the message, and that's where it's important. It's about
the message. So you're going to have black screen. If
he told me something really important, that would have been
just as good.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I'm buzz Night, your host of the Taking a Walk podcast,
the podcast that digs deep into the inside stories of
musicians and.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Their creative process.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
If you like our podcasts, share with your friends and
leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. And we're proud to be part of
the iHeart podcast Network. On this episode, we're going to
speak with filmmaker and history Denny to Desco. Denny is
responsible for some great music documentaries, The Wrecking Crew, telling
the story of some of the greatest session players of
(01:10):
all time, including Denny's father, Tommy Tedesco who was part
of the Wrecking Crew, Glenn Campbell who was part of
the Wrecking Crew, Leon Russell unbelievable musicians. Denny is also
the man behind The Immediate Family documentary about the great
La session guys Waddie Wachtel and Leland Skla, Russell Kunkle,
(01:31):
all the guys. The Immediate Family, another great documentary. Let's
talk to Denny Todsco now on Taking a Walk. Denny,
thanks for being on Taking a Walk podcast. So what's
the most important trait that you learned from your father
Tommy Tedesco.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I think the thing with dad. You know, Dad, I
never learned by the way, let's start with I am
not a musician. I never figured out the third chord.
I continue to try, so music was not something he
taught me. But what I saw him, the respect that
people had for him was because he was so kind
to so many people. You didn't matter if you were
(02:08):
the guard at the gate or you know, one of
the great stars. I mean, they had such respect for
him and it's because he was kind. You know. He
taught the students when he did the seminars, he would
tell him, if you get you could be in a
job and you could be one hundred and twenty percent right.
He said, don't blow up on the leader. If you're
(02:29):
going to blow up on the leader, that's fine, but
remember you're not coming back the next day. So you
have to make that decision about how to control your emotions,
you know, which is not easy. And I think I'd
learned that I'm not as good as he was about it.
You know, sometimes my emotions get to me. But I've
(02:49):
always felt like I've always been kind, you know. I
always try to be kind to people I work with
and nobody, you know, just folks. You meet people on
the road or every day and you just want to
I want to know people, and that's what I get,
you know. That's probably what I've learned the most.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
When did you first comprehend the magnitude of what your
father was up to with his musical career and with
the what the rest of the wrecking crew was up to?
And for those that may not have seen the documentary,
it's one of the great music documentary is one of
the great stories of all time. But when did you
(03:29):
first comprehend the magnitude?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It's funny, it's two different answers there. I didn't realize
dad's work was different. Dad just want to work like
every other dad. He had, you know, instead of a
saw or drill or hammer in the car, he had
a telecaster, an acoustic, a mandolin, a banjo, and an
amp or whatever he had in the car, and that
was what he did. He went to work. I never
(03:52):
saw dad work at I never saw Dad play guitar
at home, so I knew he was a guitar player.
But did it make sense when you're five years old,
eight years old, ten years old, whatever. It wasn't until
high school, just a little before high school that someone said, oh,
I saw your dad's name on the Partridge Family album,
and I realized he was on that. But it started, oh,
(04:14):
that's interesting, you know, people recognize that. And then it
was later in high school when he started doing his
own work for his own jazz album. Then I started
seeing him playing at home. He never played at home
because he didn't have to practice, you know what I mean.
It wasn't like he'd sit there for hours practicing. I
never saw him play. So now he's doing his jazz
(04:37):
album in nineteen seventy six, seventy seven and eight, whatever,
and he's working on arrangements, working on things, and now
he's on the radio under his own name. So that
kind of got me going. But it wasn't until I
started doing the Wrecking Crew documentary that it realized the
impact that he and his friends had on American music
in the sixties. And even today I still learned things
(05:01):
I didn't realize he was on this or on that,
And it blows my mind the impact these musicians had.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Were you ever in the car with him listening to
the radio and where you heard music he had played
on come on?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
No, no, because that was the other thing. Dad didn't
realize unless it was like maybe, I mean again, I
don't remember. First of all, Dad never listened to music
when I don't remember Dad ever listening to music in
the car, which is really interesting because I remember Mom
driving with music on and radio, but Dad never because
(05:34):
that was work. Dad always listened to baseball or football,
whatever it was going on at the time, And you
never saw him come home and turn on music at
home because don't realize he's been gone twelve fourteen hours
a day playing music, all kinds of music. So I
think he needed it, always needed that break from in
his head. I'm sure he did. I mean, he must
(05:56):
have been listening to something, you know, jazz albums and
stuff he wanted to listen to do. But he also
the other thing is Dad didn't know what he was
playing on. Sometimes you realize. The great example is Jimmy
Webb gave him a little charm of a recki Evan Rey, sorry,
a little Grammy charm when Up Up and Away won
(06:16):
a Grammy and he says, what's this for it? He goes,
this is for the Up, Up and Away song that
we did with the Fifth Dimension last year. And my
dad didn't even know he was on it. Now here's
what's odd. If you listen Up, Up and Away, you
know it's Tim because he's got the his acoustic you know,
latin run through it, so you know that's him and
(06:39):
the other. But the thing is you realize Dad goes
to work, this guy sit down to throwing a piece
of paper. Usually was just the rhythm tracks, it was
just tracking dates. The artists aren't even there, so they're
doing that. Maybe an hour, here's another one, another one.
So they've done three or four songs in three hours.
(07:00):
Move on. They're not recording hits, they're recording songs. They
don't become hits. A hit becomes after you hear it.
Many times, that's when you start recognizing something, unless there's
something specific about the date. Maybe, but he had no
idea what he was working on. Most of the time.
Strangers in the Night was different because you know, that's Sinatra,
(07:21):
that was a different date. You know that you kind
of remember things. But most of the time, you know,
you realize he's been given twelve pieces of music a day,
five days a week, at sixty something pieces, and if
it's movies, well then it's just cues being being being,
you know. So, I don't think he knew a lot
of stuff he thought he was on he wasn't on,
(07:43):
And likewise, things he didn't know he was on he
was on. So and it happened with all of them.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
How as well, what's so crazy is how and you
talk about this in the documentary, just how it's unclear
completely how many people were actually you know, truly members
of the wrecking crew or how long they were and
the way it sort of was different places in different
times because it was moving parts, and that surprised you
(08:13):
as you further delved into.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
No, not at all, because here's the thing. The record
crew of the name. Let's clear it up for everybody
out there. The name is called the Reking Crew because
how was writing a book in nineteen ninety and he
was telling the publisher this is what the publisher told me.
He said, how I would always tell the story, which
is true.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
How Blaine. Sorry for those Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
The drummer Hal Blaine was always telling the story these
older guys, because don't forget my dad is even though
he's thirty in nineteen sixty, these guys are playing rock
and roll and demos and stuff like that in nineteen sixty,
which the older musicians in town, the established movie guys,
they're not going to take these dates. They're not going
(08:56):
to take these recordings because they could risk a lot
of money on a movie date, which could be a week,
and they're not going to do a demo for twenty
five bucks. Well, if these guys Dad and Hal Blaine
and Don Randy and Leon Russell and all these other
folks in Glenn Campbell, they're going to take it because
they're not. They're still starting out at this point and
(09:16):
they established this thing. So how comes up with the
idea that this name? Later in the nineties he says,
the older guy said, they're going to wreck the business
playing this rock and roll. So publisher said, that's a
great name for the book, and the books goes off.
So if there's any controversy of that is that it's like,
was it there? Was it not? None of the people
(09:38):
I interviewed remember the name, and so it was like,
it's not about how many were in it, it's about
there were fourteen, maybe fifteen people in the studio sometimes
that were always in the studio, and they were always
the same people. You could have Earl Palmer on drums,
You could have Al Blaine on drums. You always had
maybe two three to four guitar players. You had u
(10:00):
from the young woman and bass players. You had different
bass players because you had a stand up bass which
could be maybe Chuck Bergoffer or Lyle Rix, and then
you would bass guitar but in a more of a
troubled kind of thing, and that was maybe Bill Pittman
or Raye Pullman, and then you had a bass player.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So what happened was in the studio. You know, you
had a contractor who was the producer, says, hey, get
this is the arrangements. We need these guys. And they
would call the contractor. We call people, so if so
and so wasn't available, they get so and so so.
There was no set crew, there was no set band.
You know, you had your usuals obviously. You know, Lou
(10:37):
Adler had his group of you know, Joe Sarahs, you know,
has his people and these are all producers and Snuff Garrett,
you know, had his folks. So they would just go
in and knock it out. Now here's where it's really
crazy is in those days, in the early sixties, there's
only one track. There's only it's mono. So Glen Campbell,
who was one of the great guitar players in the
(10:58):
studios at the time, he said, I was playing with
Michael Jordan. Everybody in the room was a Michael Jordan though.
He said, you can't make a mistake. You have three
hours to go in and go out, because you know what,
we all have a gig at one o'clock. We can't
be messing around. We got nine to twelve. We don't
mess around, because we got to be at the next recording.
So if anybody's making a mistake, you're going to start
(11:21):
all over. You don't have the computers to punch in
at bar thirty two and pick up from there. So
if you start making a mistake multiple times, everybody's looking
at you, you're not coming back. And that's how it
was moving so fast. So that's why in the Wrecking Crew,
I have one hundred and ten songs, and I had
the leisure of that putting at least another fifty to
(11:43):
sixty songs in there. You know, if I really started
to dig in deep unds other stuff. It was a factory.
And I don't mean that in a negative way. You
could take it as a negative way, but that's the
way the business was. The labels realized if we put
out we can make money. If it gets on AM radio,
it helps each other. They now were nailing it, so
(12:06):
we need product, and these were the guys to do it.
They were the ones that could knock it out fast.
There was no messing around, And people said, well, well
did the bands play. Yeah, the bands could play, but
they weren't that good. Sometimes in the studio you don't
know a great example. And Roger mcgwinn said, with the
Birds now Terry Meltzer is producing it now. David Crosby
(12:26):
interviewed him later. He's very upset with that whole idea
of the wrecking crew going in. But Terry Meltzer said, hey,
we had a number one head. We got in in
three hours. Terry was the only one that they led,
not Terry Meltzer. I'm so sorry. Roger mcgwinn said, I
was the only one that was allowed in the Birds
to play on it. I sang and played twelve stern.
(12:49):
But they had Hal Blaine, Bill Pittman, Leon and Joe
Osborne and they knocked out tambourine Man and the A
side and the B side. They did that in three hours.
He said. When we did Turn Turn Turn, it was
seventy seven. Takes both number one hits. It's just a
different way of getting there. So Terry Meltcher as a producer,
(13:09):
his goal is to get in and get out. If
you don't have a single hit, if you don't start
having hits right off at those times, that's it. Move
on another group. So your goal is to get on
the charts and that's how it worked.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Had you ever, prior to do in the documentary, run
into any members of the Wrecking Crew in your life?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
No, the only ones. It's funny because Dad kept it
pretty separate his life. Was said, we didn't hang out
with musician families, which is so interesting. Dad was a gambler.
So the folks, if they were musicians that gambled, Yeah,
we hung out. I meaning I saw my card games
at home. If there were Italian there was Italian nights.
(13:49):
I saw Hell once in a while. But I didn't
meet Don Randy till many years later. I didn't meet
Carol or any of them until years later, until I
started making the film. But the only one I really
saw with Snuff Garrett, because he was a major gambler
and he and Dad were you know, you know, friends,
and they just came in card games. And I remember
Dad or Snuff would come and he had he was rich.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's how I remember he was rich because he had
a Rolls Royce and he had a driver to drive him.
And you know when you had a little kid that
was look at that and I'd say good night. I'd
go and kiss my dad good night. When they're den
where they were playing cards in a smoke filled room.
You can imagine it's probably still he could scrape off
(14:33):
the DNA of the smoke. You go there, say good night,
kiss him good night, and go to bed. The next morning,
I go to school, I go couldn't go back into
the same room, good morning, goodbye, and going to school,
kiss them again, and the smoke is still there. They're
still gambling twelve hours later. I mean they were addicts.
These guys serious and they i'd been serious and they
(14:56):
snuff would tell me later, he goes, oh, we'd be going.
We have a lot of o'clock date. No, we could
do Come on, one more hand, one more hand, we
could do it. We could do it. Yeah. They would
just go right to the last minute before they have
to leave for work.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Who influenced your interviews style?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Well, the first the thing I did with the round
tables on both films. I loved Broadway. Danny Rose, the
film with Woody Allen where he plays this just a
weird manager of weird acts. And what I remember in
the film was a bunch of managers or agents sitting
in a deli talking about this guy Danny Rose, and
(15:34):
I realized that was what I remembered at those card
games or dinners with those guys, you know, when people
were hanging out the banter. I loved being a voyeur
because I'm just a you know, little kid listening in
and I thought that was the greatest thing. So when
I put the roundtable together, I put them all in
(15:55):
at the card table literally in the studio, and let
throw out a question, let them go, and that let
into other things. So that's how it worked, and then
I did it was at the time I was working
on these other shows off a TV land. There were
this guy named Robert Small was the producer and director.
(16:16):
Watching the guys interview people, you know, I started learning
about it. You let them answer the question, let it
go longer. Sometimes I will. I've learned to not jump
in at the end of an interview. You know it's
at the end. Don't go okay, thank you, that's it.
I try to let it go in long pauses because
what happens is they're still thinking and something might come out.
(16:40):
A great example was the last question I had with
Don Henley in for Immediate Family. He was talking about,
you know, Don Henley as a solo artist. Danny Kachmar
of the Media Family or the band. He was his
producer and he's the one that encouraged him to do
a solo act. And they don't get along. They really,
(17:00):
you know, they haven't talked in years, probably, But Don
Henley was so kind to do this interview. And I
let that interview go long. I mean not long. That
last question. I let it go and I just sat
there and he out of nowhere, he goes. You know,
I got to say, he said, you know, I give
Danny all the credit in the world for me becoming
(17:21):
a solo artist, because if it wasn't for Danny, I
want to be here. That's huge for someone that they
don't care for each other. And that's only because the
pause and the uncomfortableness and maybe silence. Sometimes they'll give
you more than you expect. You don't know. It's a
long shot, but no, I've learned a lot. Let it
(17:42):
breathe right, Yeah, I still continue. I mean, there's interviews
that are great and there's interviews that are bad. Sometimes
it's my fault. Sometimes there's no control I have over it.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
So for the Wreck and Crew, easiest interview or interviews
and Jimmy Webb I love Jimmy and most difficult interview.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, so Jimmy Webb amazing, absolutely amazing. You know, I'm
shooting at this time. That time, I was shooting tape,
and I remember saying to an hour tape, giving it
to the editor to say, here, you got sixty minutes
of gold. You could put a number, any number of
sixty minutes, to say thirty two, and that whatever you
(18:23):
said was could be in it. That's how good it was.
I mean, he was so poetic, so articulate. Everything about
it was good and great. Most difficult. I always laugh
about this because it was Brian Wilson, the opposite, both
of them pop music's greatest writers. But you know, we
(18:43):
know there was you know, Brian went through a lot
of hell in his life, so it was a lot
of damage. And I remember shooting film at the time,
and when you're shooting film, you have eleven minutes a role,
so you have to also be conscious when you're shooting film,
don't shoot anymore film, But you don't start your interview
right off the bat, you don't. I would not roll
(19:06):
film until I warmed the guy up or the person up,
because I don't want to waste any good stuff or
I don't want to waste any bad stuff. For the
first five minutes, I want to throw, you know, get
him warmed up and hang and then I would touch
my camera person and to start rolling without them knowing.
So I had eleven minutes of roll. I had five
(19:28):
rolls fifty five minutes, and I thought, okay, I got
three pages of questions. I'll put them, make sure I
got the best questions up front, just in case, you know,
something happens. And at the end of the interview I
had all three pages of questions answered and I only
had one role shot, which means it's a horrible interview.
Eleven minutes of Oh my god, what did I just do?
(19:51):
And it was because you couldn't get past the one
word answers yes, no, no, And it was just that
he wouldn't articulate anything. He wouldn't, you know, no matter
how I presented it, it didn't go anywhere. R It's
very you know, that's is Brian. And at the end
he walked out. I was so depressed and I said, wow,
I said it out loud. I just waited eight years
(20:13):
for that, and my dpe she goes eight years eleven minutes.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's like, oh, man, wow, now I know you waited
a long time when you were in the process of
the wrecking crew to do the interview with your with
your dad, and at that point your dad's health had deteriorated.
That must have been a terrible lesson to learn, right,
(20:40):
meaning waiting.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, well, that was the lesson I looked because I started, Yeah,
well exactly, and I started, that's very great question because
I started when I was shooting film again. I shot
sixteen the first days. You know, that was me being
a director with a oh I want to look like this,
you know, my youth kind of got to me and
I wanted to shoot the film, which gives you, like
I said, it's hard. You got ac assistant cameraman prepping
(21:05):
the camera, you got this, this, this, there's more to
it than just getting a video camera shooting, and so
shut the round table on film and Dad's Did you
know Dad was diagnosed and they gave him eleven minutes
or eleven minutes, I'm sorry, eleven months. So by the
time I got to Dad about you know, he'd lasted
(21:26):
a year and a half. By the time I got
to him about a year later. With the film crew
and stuff. He had become very weak, so that energy
you see in the film is gone, and that was
not something I wanted to be. I didn't want him
to be remembered by and the questions. It was hard.
So what I learned there is my biggest regret was
(21:47):
I should have been talking to him every day, going
over there, you know. And it's funny because we all
run into that now our parents are passing away, or
is you know, our friends are passing away, and you go,
you hold on. You just don't ask the questions. You
don't go over there and talk more. You're afraid. I
don't know what it is, but I could have gone
over there with a cassette player and ask him things,
(22:07):
because in the end, it's really now what it looks like.
It's the message and that's where it's important. It is
about the message. So you could have black screen. If
he told me something really important, that would have been
just as good.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
We'll be right back with the Taken a Walk Podcast.
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast. I do
have to ask you about Jim Gordon, the great drummer
who was part of the wrecking crew, who was incredible
as a musician and had quite the career, you know,
co writing credits on Layla and just an endless you
(22:41):
know string, but also a tragic and dying in prison
after the terrible tragedy with his mother. Any thoughts or
things you uncovered about Jim Gordon.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No. I mean, it's interesting because there were three drummers
at the time. There was how Earl comes first, he's
a little older than how By a couple of years
Earl establishes a lot Earl Palmer, then How's there Hal Blaine,
and then Jim Gordon. Everybody had their favorite. A lot
of people had Jim as their favorite boy. He was
an amazing drummer, an amazing drummer and percussionist, so a
(23:19):
lot of times he was always just playing percussion on
the sessions. It was very sad because I wanted to
I even tried to get a hold of we got
a hold of the prison, thinking well, maybe he's well
enough to speak, because I was always thinking, you know,
maybe he's the one that knows everything, Maybe he knows
what they did not to go into the tragedy at
(23:41):
the time. This is again way long time ago, nineteen
ninety nine or whatever, but people just saw him decay.
It sounded like it sounded like it went slowly and
then all of a sudden towards the end, it was
just you know, he was sick. And it's interesting because
I have a Facebook page of the Wrecking Crew and
(24:02):
it's done really well. It's one hundred and seventy five
thousand people of fans of the music and the people
or the musicians. If you put something on there about
Phil Spector, like his anniversary of his birth or something,
you know, just not something, it doesn't matter what it is,
you will have people going crazy. How dare you? You know,
(24:23):
da da da da? You about to be talking about
the music? Nothing to do with him. We don't glorify him,
but people have a reaction to it. When Jim Gordon
died a couple of years ago, the reaction was different,
and I think it is, you know, a horrible crime
of killing his mother, but there was a sickness involved.
(24:44):
He was, you know, psychotic or schizophrenic, and there was
I think people understood there was that sickness, and I
think it was a very interesting thing and seeing how
people reacted to him dying, so.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
It is this is something I know, you know, Joel
Selvin and Joel has been on the podcast, and Joel says,
how you know, the music business allows or tolerates drug
addicts and alcoholics and devians, but mental illness comes along
and they sort of turned their back on somebody. And
(25:21):
he said that the music industry sort of turned its
back on Jim Gordon.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I think one of the only people who.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Stayed in some touch with him, he said, was there's
maybe two people, but one was Jackson Brown.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Oh, I didn't know that. I know Jackson did because
I know Hal tried to stay in touch with him,
and how got a note back written in scribble He
wanted to come up and visit and said, no, how
don't you you know? But that's great that Jackson did.
Here's the thing the problem with our business in film
and TV, and I think it's gotten a lot better
with the me too movements and these other movements. You
(25:57):
can't get away with what you got away with sometimes last,
you know, in those past, especially in when the studio
players in those days, in the early days, they weren't
so much in the sixties, there wasn't so much drug use.
Maybe some pot and stuff, but they were mostly probably
guys that were drinking. But she still we had to perform.
There was a like I said earlier with Glenn Campbell
(26:18):
said you had to be there, you had to nail
it because we don't have time to mess around. There
were those three hour sessions. Later when there was the
sessions went for days. Earl Palmer said, he goes in
the sixties we had recording dates. In the seventies, he
were recording projects. They could go weeks. And that was
the change, you know, so people tolerated more bullshit, you
(26:42):
know from people. I'm hoping that changes. And I think
here's the other thing is no one knew about maybe
like a great example, the great percussion player Julius Wecter.
They didn't know what was wrong with Julius. Julius had
to recks. He just would go off, you know, and
whatever you did. No one knew what was wrong with Delist.
(27:02):
There was no diagnosis probably at the time or no
one understood it. And I think that was the same
thing with probably Jim. They it just got he's off,
what the hell?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
That's I think that's what happens in those days. Hopefully
it's better now.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I hope.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
So, so what drove you to do the Immediate Family documentary.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Nothing drove me to do that. It came to me
because that was you know, for those who't know, the
Wrecking Group I started in ninety six didn't come out
till twenty fifteen, so it was nineteen years when eight
came around. I finally got into festivals. I finally made
the thing, got into festivals, and was basically going in debt.
(27:45):
I did go. I went bankrupt in the end, but
I had to pay off a half a million dollars
from two thousand and when I came out in eight,
I couldn't get a release because I couldn't pay for
the music. Yet I was in festivals, but that's different.
So I had to basically for the next seven years
pay off all those songs, one hundred and ten songs.
(28:07):
And it wasn't about the music industry holding me hostage.
It was about economics. People would look at these films
say they're not going to make any money, they're music docs.
Well I had to prove them wrong. So I came
out with every which way to raise money from a
bake sale on. I mean, I did everything, and I
had people dedicating songs, you know, at the end of
(28:29):
the movie you see people dedicated song you know, be
my baby, or you know if Brian willgood vibrations, whatever.
So you give me a thousand dollars to get your
name on the end. So it took a long time
to get there. So I was shelf shocked. And the
last thing I wanted to do was I want bankrupt.
I didn't want to do a music dog for sure.
Well my wife was not going to let me put
(28:50):
any money into a project. And then this came along
in twentynineighteen when producers came with an idea from Lisa Roy,
who was a fabulous publicist and she worked in the industry.
She ran she ran publicity for Media Family, and she said,
what about this to the guys, and they came to me,
so what do you think of this idea? And I said,
now I got that one. I totally understood that because
(29:12):
you've given me four I knew all the guys, knew
of all the guys, and not know all the guys.
Even he knew steps tell the guy that was the
young one, but I knew why he walked out. I
knew who he was. I knew who Russ Kunko was.
I knew Dainty Coach, I knew Leland Skillar, I knew
everybody who they were, and I thought, okay, I got that.
And the spin on that was they got a band
(29:35):
called Immediate Family. Okay, now I got control over it
because there's a hook to it, just like a song,
you need a hook, just you know, like the record
grew the name, there's a hook. I got it. And
so the difference between the media family and my dad's
group of musicians. These guys did the records and then
(29:56):
go on the road to support the records, that's a
big difference.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I love that one particular shot in the documentary.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I think they're in New York City.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I believe all kind of walking along and the joy
of them all being together just radiates at that moment.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, it does. It's so funny because there's point it's
all real stuff. You know me obviously he set it
up to you. Let's just walk around them. I need
to get b roll. Blah blah blah. There's a point
where Leland is taking a picture of some tourists because
they came up to him. Excuse me, do you mind
taking a picture of us? You know, and you see
Leland like holding up their camera or their iPhone and
(30:37):
taking a picture and smiling, joking with them. That's all real.
There's that point at the end of the movie where
I see them walking towards us and Leland says, hold on.
He stops and he turns totally left. He goes, there's
me and he turns off camera, walks off camera, and
he walks to the New York one of the windows,
(30:57):
the shop windows, and Santa Claus in the window and
cracks me up because it's real.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah, we had wadi On and Russ Kunkle as well.
So what was interesting about russ Is? And he said
this right out of the gate, because I was asking
him for some of those specific memories of certain sessions
and he said, he said, I got to stop you
right here for a second. He goes, because obviously I
remember the specialness.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Of the event.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I remember what a joy it was being, you know,
in the session with Joni Mitchell as an example for Blue.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
He said, but that's a long time ago to remember the.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Deep specifics, and that's a lot of years that have passed.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And I thought that was hysterical.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
But let me ask you as a great interviewer and
someone a great read of.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
The person you're interviewing.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
How do you get more out of somebody who says that.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
That's a really good question. It's a really good question.
I don't know if I've learned that yet. I mean,
it's funny how it's just things happen by accident all
the time. And the hardest part was when I get
when it did immediate family. Don't forget the first one,
Like I said, took nineteen years from beginning to end,
and I was still interviewing people for the DVD a
week before I had to turn that footage in in
(32:14):
twenty fifteen. So when I did media family, when the band,
when I said to the band, hey, this is my pitch,
Da da da, next day they said yes. And they
also said and Carol King could be interviewed in three weeks.
Oh my god, I only have three weeks to think
about this. I don't know if I bullshited my way
through the first this first thing with these guys. You know,
(32:35):
I pitched them an idea. I don't know if I
really know this story because I'm you know, I'm sixty three,
so I'm a kid. I'm still a teenager when all
this music's going down, I know of it, and I
you know some of it. To be honest, I never
listened to it. I was into other music. So I
went back and listened to everything, but I Carol King
in three weeks. I'm panicked. So now I started, I
(32:59):
start that I do that interview and do as much
information or much research as I can. I read a book,
and I read other books and went on, Well, there's
nothing worse than later you hear something from the next
interview about the Carroll. Well, you know, I mean, now
you can't go back to Carroll ask that, do you
know what I mean? So you gotta you have to
start playing off of each other onto the next one.
(33:21):
You know, I like the I don't remember if it
was James Taylor that told me about the plane crash.
So that led to, oh, I can ask everybody else
from that point on about the plane crash, and then
you start building the story. But you can't go back.
I mean, you can go back with the guys themselves
because you're trying to do multiple interviews with them. But
(33:41):
you know, you got one shot at Carol King or
James or Jackson or Linda. You know, and especially because
we did after Carroll, I didn't read it quickly into
Jackson James, Phil Collins into Ronstead Blue Ad. I mean
(34:02):
I had about seven or eight people by December, and
we made this nice sizzle reel, took it to Sundance,
hoping for the best, as we all filmmakers do. Hoping
for the best. Nothing happened, but all of a sudden,
March came and boom the world closes, COVID hits. Now
I have a bunch of interviews with all these stars who,
(34:25):
thank God, be God, because we would never have gotten
those people in those years with COVID. No one wanted
to do that, obviously for obvious reasons. But I also
have a film with a bunch of stars and nothing
about the people that we're talking about. I didn't have
any of the guys in the film, and there everybody
is all there's eventies. So I'm thinking, what, Oh my god,
(34:46):
we got to get this stuff in the can and
slowly and safely, And we started going back out there
slowly and got the guys in the can.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
It's a great documentary. It's fantastic, as is the wrecking crew.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I'm happy it's about those guys. It's about the musicians.
The greatest thing about that film for me was there
were no gatekeepers. There was no one saying, who do
you want to interview? Oh, well hold on and you
don't here for months, you know, you know, the manager
blows you off or the assist someone blows you off.
(35:20):
There was no blowing off here. I didn't call anybody.
Someone would call and said, yes, Carol can be interviewed,
Linda could be interviewed. Jackson's good for the next Wednesday.
Da da da. It was like instantaneous because the difference
between these guys and my dad. Dad wasn't friends with
Brian Wilson or hanging out with anybody. He went from
(35:41):
three hours, three hours, three hours, he went to work.
They all respected each other, they all got along, but
they didn't hang out. They didn't go on the road
with them for a year and really become friends. They
didn't have dinners together, you know. And that's the difference.
And don't forget Dad's thirty in nineteen sixty. You know,
the Beach boys they're all teenagers, you know. I mean,
(36:03):
there's a relationship that's different. And when these guys are
on the road with Linda. That's their sister. That's her brothers.
You know, they're all the same age. They're all coming together.
Carol and Danny Knu, James and look, James and Danny.
James and Danny went back to when they were teenagers
(36:23):
in the Cape. You know, they were thirteen and fifteen.
I think that's when they first met and that's how
that whole relationship goes from that point on.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
So, Danny, in closing, you mentioned earlier it took I
think you said nineteen years for the Wrecking Crew to
from start to finish. If somebody's listening to this, whether
it be a musician, whether it be a producer, filmmaker,
artist of any type who's trying to get something over
the finish line and it's taken forever, what advice from
(36:53):
someone who has lived it do you give them?
Speaker 2 (36:56):
I think listen, if you truly believe, and you're being
honest with yourself. Here's the thing. If the film had
been Wreckingku in the festivals, if it hadn't won a
dozen awards, if it hadn't the the reviews were not amazing,
if it all hadn't happened, I would have given up
and walked away. That would have been the sensible thing
(37:18):
to do, but I was so in debt and I
knew the film was The film was fine. There was
never an audience that didn't like the film. I mean
that was the truth. And I always thought, but I
have to pay off this debt. The only way to
pay off the debt was to figure out how to
make that half a million dollars, and no one was
giving us the money. So I had to figure out
(37:39):
it different ways, and I came up with ways. If
you truly believe in something, you just got to keep going.
If the door closes, okay, go through a window, go
a different way. I learned something on a project once.
It was it was a real estate project that we
were doing as the guy was basically, you know, we
were doing an infomercial forma and he would tell guy learning,
(38:01):
He goes, listen, you're gonna make twenty phone calls before
you get a yes. That's really important because you're gonna
get turned down constantly. If you don't have that thing
to get turned down as an actor, as a musician,
don't do it. Give up.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Now.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
The great line I think I heard Matt Damon said
when people said you know, hey, I'm thinking about becoming
an actor. What do you think? And he said, don't
do it, Absolutely not. Don't do it. He said, for
one reason. If they listen to him and don't do it,
they shouldn't have been an actor. If they really want
to be an actor, they should ignore him and you
just do it. And that's the way it is. I mean,
(38:38):
you know, my father said to you know, when he
was doing those seminaris to the kids, you never stopped playing.
You didn't start this. You didn't pick up the instrument
to make money. You did it because you enjoyed what
you were doing. You liked it, and then you started,
Oh my gosh, you made you made a dollar. Oh
my gosh, you're making Oh you're making a living. He
(39:00):
never stopped playing his guitar, even after the stroke, Even
after a stroke in ninety two which ended his career
in the studios, he would still pick it up and
mess around playing it.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Never, he did it for fun. And that's what it is.
If he can't make a living and do it for fun.
You know, writers write every day, musicians play every day,
pages probably paint every day. That's how you do it.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Benny, thanks for being on Taking a Walk, taking a
Little Walk down Memory Lane and music history, The Wrecking Crew,
amazing documentary The Immediate Family as well. Do check him
out and thanks for your generosity.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Thank you, and hopefully I will see you soon because
I have a new one I'm doing is on Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I hope we will see you.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Growing up outside of New York City listening to him
on w NBC.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Looking forward to catch it up again.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Thanks buzz, Thanks Denny.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Really great, I mean, a great interview.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Thank you. That means the world from you. Thank you
very much.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast with Denny Tedesco, The Wrecking Crew and Immediate Family,
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