Wrecking Crew Gets Wide Release March 13

Finally, after years of waiting, The Wrecking Crew, a truly great musical documentary, is being released in theaters on March 13.

The Wrecking Crew may have been the greatest band there ever was, and yet it was never really a band at all, writes Ron Wells.

For this Wrecking Crew was the name given to the fantastic studio musicians living and working in Los Angeles in the the 1960’s when rock and roll was really beginning to take off. The songs they worked on are an iPod full of hits that is the sound track for everyone who grew up during this period, or even for those who grew up much later and have still heard the music played on radio, television, or even YouTube.

The musicians’ names are little known except to those in the music industry, but they should all be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not have their faces faces sculpted into the hillside by the Hollywood Sign. For Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson, and Tommy Tedesco, among a whole host of others were instrumental in launching some of the greatest pop and rock songs ever recorded.

“Monday, Monday,” “Good Vibrations,” “The Beat Goes On,” “Along Comes Mary,” and countless other rock songs, as well as commercial and film themes, are only a few of the hundreds of songs which are mentioned or played in this documentary. It’s like listening to the best jukebox money can buy.

The film has won many many film festival awards in the last four years, but it could not be released widely until all of the money was raised to pay for the rights to the music.

Read the rest of Ron Wells review here from last year.