The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret Paperback – May 21, 2013

Carol Kaye's and other criticisms aside, as a music fan intrigued by the process of creation, I'm still willing to buy a book and sift through and get the wheat from the chaff. And I did in this case. Maybe this is in part because the songs mentioned are the soundtrack to my growing up as a kid, "transistor radio" strapped to my ear.The book is extremely detailed and of course you are going to get beefs from people that were actually THERE, because if you are the author and interviewing so many people (an impressive list) about a period many decades ago, nobody is going to agree on details and of course you have the leftover baggage that can fester over time. You guys with personal relationships can battle it out amongst yourselves.I did find Hartman's writing a bit tedious at first, and honestly there was a period about 20% of the way through where I wondered if I were going to make it. But then subject matter really did take center stage and I felt also that Hartman's prose magically got more to the point.One reason for the 5 rating is that I appreciated his construction of the story. It is a real challenge taking a decade-plus period, with a lot of key players, and trying to handle it all chronologically as he did (and is really what most of us want). Too many authors are too literal in their chronology and the stops and starts are maddening. You need to write a few sentences about Glen Campbell, or Carol, or Blaine, or whoever and then go grab somebody else and update us on them. Hartman took a measured approach, dropping in some names out of nowhere with just enough information to make us care a little, and then picking up their detailed and interesting stories later. Excellent job there.I read a lot of books about musical artists and the music business in general. But it's all been from the 80s on up. If you want to know what was happening when music became, well, rather "good" as it did sometime around the mid-60s, this should be on your list.

Growing up in LA as a teenager in the 60's, we lived for our music. Going to the "record store" such as Wallichs Music City in Hollywood, to check out the latest LP from all of the groups from the Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds, Mamas & Papas, Simon & Garfunkel and so many others was one of the more enjoyable pastimes to do when out on a date, etc.I'm not only a fan that grew up in this era, but I've always pride myself on knowing a lot about the music and musicians who played on these dates, or so I thought until I read the Wrecking Crew. I did learn a lot of exciting tidbits that put all of the music and what happened behind the scenes into a new context!Kent Hartman's book lives up to its claim by providing an inside story of rock and pop that reveals a lot of insights that I was unaware of, especially on how the Wrecking Crew came to be. He does this by telling a story about each of the key players as individuals, and then brings them all together as an ensemble and describes how they collaborated with these and other groups to make #1 & memorable hits for them.One of my favorite stories was about the '66 recording session for Strangers in the Night, first he tells about how a session musician was asked to give up his seat at the piano when Sinatra's long timer accompanist Bill Miller came into the studio,and you could feel the tension of that date. But it gets better as the drama unfolds behind how it was resolved when the producer Jimmy Bowen weighed in.Then, we learn how the famous scat ending (aka do be do be do) was added to the tune, which was also new to me, as it wasn't planned and came right out the session. It was such a great hit that Strangers would soon knock off the Beatle's Paperback Writer right out of the top of the pop charts to become #1.All 19 chapters have something uniquely interesting to read, which is why it was a read I couldn't put down, and would love to see a Volume II come out.Enjoy,Mike