In the history of 20th-century music, there are a few significant backing bands that have performed in countless studio recordings, making them hits.
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In Alabama, there was a collection of musicians at Muscle Shoals. In Motown, there was the Funk Brothers. And in Los Angeles, it was The Wrecking Crew.
The Southern California session players were big in the ’60s and ’70s and performed on hundreds of Top 40 hit songs for artists like Sonny & Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Sinatra, the 5th Dimension, and the Beach Boys.
But the history of the band’s name has gone through some debate. Let’s investigate.
Did the Band Have a Name?
While known as the Wrecking Crew today, many say the collection of classically trained artists didn’t have an official moniker when they were banging out hits with big-name front people.
Drummer Hal Blaine is thought to have popularized the name in his memoir from 1990. His reasoning was that older musicians at the time thought the LA session group would “wreck” the music industry.
Nevertheless, iconic Pacific Northwest-born guitarist and bassist Carol Kaye says that the band was known actually as “the Clique” during their heyday. (Maybe Blaine stole the name from the Dr. Dre-produced ’80s hip-hop band, the World Class Wreckin’ Cru.) Others believe the group was mostly known as “the First Call Gang,” meaning they were prompt and ready on recording day. But that name was mostly used in the early stages of the band in the 1950s by bassist Ray Pohlman.
But it’s the name from Blaine in his memoir, Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew, that solidified the moniker.
Kaye, though, rejects that history. “We were never known as that,” he said. “Sometimes we were called ‘the Clique’, but [the Wrecking Crew is] a Hal Blaine invented name for his own self-promotion in 1990.”
Blaine, however, said no one called them “the Clique.”
Biographer Kent Hartman wrote of the chronology of the name in the book, The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best-Kept Secret. “Some of the studio musicians I interviewed swear they heard it applied to themselves as early as 1963; others say it was later. One says it was never used at all.”
Added the music outlet Songfacts: “We couldn’t find any references to ‘The Wrecking Crew’ in any publications from the era.”
Final Thoughts
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the band by any other name would sound as sweet. So, in the end, it doesn’t totally matter when and where the group picked up the name The Wrecking Crew.
The fact is they’re known now as that and it’s one of the best monikers in music.
Check out a trailer for the 2008 documentary about the band below.
