I stumbled across this on YouTube last night.
It’s a fascinating interview with Carole Kaye. She played guitar and bass on so many hits and films from the 60’s and 70’s.
She talks about her famous sessions and plays the bass and guitar through it all.
I think she may well be the coolest person on the planet.
Well worth an hour and 10 minutes of your weekend.
Carol Kaye: Session Legend Interview
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Thanks for that, I’ll have a look at this. I’d never heard of Carol Kaye until I heard Laura Veirs’ song about her.
Absolutely brilliant. I’m ever so slightly obsessed with Carol Kaye and Hal Blaine – those two musicians are pretty much the greatness of pop music distilled. Amazing how many records they played on, how many HUGE hit records, at that.
In that interview she’s particularly complimentary about Earl Palmer.
Same with me, Bob. I idolise Hal Blaine for his phenomenal work with Spector and Brian Wilson.
I love all studio muscians. Far from the oft trotted Hepworthian trope of bored session players knocking it out, they are superb musicians with soul and passion making some of the finest music. Session payers who phone it in rapidly get replaced – there is no more meritocratic system. I love the Steely Dan “Aja” Classic Albums with the likes of Dean Parks, Bernard Purdie, Larry Carlton, Chuck Rainey etc talking about making the album. These guys aren’t phoning in, they are defning the DNA if the music.
Wifi limitations of holiday gaff prevent watching the vid, but CK always said she did many parts for supposedly all black backing groups where marketing considerations prevented from admitting a FEMALE and WHITE person played them. She’s a good jazz guitarist too, and has a lively online presence. Respect.
Heppo’s whole shtick on this is where non-musicians come a bit unstuck as an authority on music. Of course you don’t need to be a musician to tell a good record from a bad one, but if you’re going to try and get technical, better know your stuff. He always sounds a little bit foolish when he gets on this one.
In the recent documentary about the Wrecking Crew, Roger McGuinn tells the story of how Kaye, Blaine, Tedesco and the gang had “Hey, Mr Tambourine Man” done and dusted in three takes, while the Byrds looked on in awe. Later, when they insisted on playing on their own records, they recorded “Turn, Turn, Turn”. And recorded it. And recorded it. McGuinn: “That was a hit record too … but it took us about 75 takes to get it.”
Heppo is absolutely wrongity wrong on his assessment of session players.
Has he never heard ‘The Swampers’ to name but one band of session musicians?
If they are just “knocking it out” then I am a Dutchman ‘s uncle.
As stated above, the competition was fierce. You were expected to approach it in a professional manner and if you didn’t there were plenty of others eager to take your place.
The good ones took pride in doing their best with the material, even if they were bored stiff with it.
I’ve only watched part of it, and it looks very interesting. But I think David Hepworth was making a different point to the one that others have said here (although I’m going on memories of a column in a magazine which close three years ago.) I don’t think he was suggesting that the session musicians were bored hacks, but instead that some of the best pop music depended on the very high level of musicianship available in the American studios, whether it was Nashville or Los Angeles. I thought it was a riposte to the punk idea that it’s all you have to do is learn three chords, rather than years of learning a craft, turning up on time and putting the music first.
Actually, in fairness to the old grump I did just google “David Hepworth session musicians” and pretty quickly found a piece praising the Wrecking Crew to the heavens, talking about how important their ear and interpretation and ideas were to those amazing records.
I do seem to remember him writing something dismissive about studio musicians once, but now I’m not sure if I heard that purely from @twang! Where did that come from?
If I’ve got it wrong, sorry Heppo!
Yes I heartily agree. Let’s all blame @twang.
Quite right too. The BASTARD.
Hur hur. May your box sets always pixilate in the final ep. He was talking about “Astral weeks”, words to the effect that this transcendent music was made by a bunch of bored session musos phoning it in. But, as is often the case with the Hep, he came back to it a few times. But it is often a antisnob non muso dis to slag off session musicians when they are by and large fucking great players.
It may have been on a podcast. It may even have been Mark Ellen. But in the court of social media, it being the sort of thing you probably would have said is enough to be found guilty.
The BASTARD is too mild by ‘arf. Suggest the ‘the’ is put into capitals. THE BASTARD now that has a sense of the proper.
Astral Weeks? What is he on about?