Hal Blaine Story

[Micha]

Same goes for I Get Around from those concerts. Dennis rocks!

The 'live" "I Get Around" from 1964 is nothing of the sort, as has been established for over a decade.

Um... I don't think I get what you mean, Andrew. I may have badly constructed my sentences, so that they could be misunderstood. My point was that the 1964 live in Sacramento "I Get Around" - the booted real live version, not the one from the Live LP - was a more energetic version than the studio version. It is in a slightly faster tempo, that's a fact.

Andrew, I'm not trying to argue, but what exactly has been established for over a decade? Thank you for your countless insightful posts. 

[Andrew G. Doe]

Same goes for I Get Around from those concerts. Dennis rocks!

The 'live" "I Get Around" from 1964 is nothing of the sort, as has been established for over a decade.

Um... I don't think I get what you mean, Andrew. I may have badly constructed my sentences, so that they could be misunderstood. My point was that the 1964 live in Sacramento "I Get Around" - the booted real live version, not the one from the Live LP - was a more energetic version than the studio version. It is in a slightly faster tempo, that's a fact.

Andrew, I'm not trying to argue, but what exactly has been established for over a decade? Thank you for your countless insightful posts. 

Oh, for sure - the SOT version is energetic. And technically, awful. I was referring to the version on the LP. :-)

[cutterschoice]

In Hal's defense, I don't think he's lying, even if it is misinformation. He's played so many sessions and he's over 80 years old - you're gonna confuse some song titles along the way.

And based on that interview alone, Hal didn't say Little Deuce Coupe, the interviewer did. It could have been bad research on his part. Hal's following statement could be explaining his approach to drumming on any number of Beach Boys songs.

[guitarfool2002]

In Hal's defense, I don't think he's lying, even if it is misinformation. He's played so many sessions and he's over 80 years old - you're gonna confuse some song titles along the way.

And based on that interview alone, Hal didn't say Little Deuce Coupe, the interviewer did. It could have been bad research on his part. Hal's following statement could be explaining his approach to drumming on any number of Beach Boys songs.

It tends to blur together once you've logged hundreds if not thousands of individual dates, and without actually playing the song for someone like Hal and having him comment on what he heard, he is only human with a human memory. I think we forget that aspect in the research sometimes, and assume one session stands out as a sharp memory over a few hundred others he did that year. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for sure, as Hal has no reason to distort that kind of thing and he's been nothing but complimentary of Dennis as a musician in nearly every interview where the topic came up.

[Andrew G. Doe]

In Hal's defense, I don't think he's lying, even if it is misinformation. He's played so many sessions and he's over 80 years old - you're gonna confuse some song titles along the way.

And based on that interview alone, Hal didn't say Little Deuce Coupe, the interviewer did. It could have been bad research on his part. Hal's following statement could be explaining his approach to drumming on any number of Beach Boys songs.

It tends to blur together once you've logged hundreds if not thousands of individual dates, and without actually playing the song for someone like Hal and having him comment on what he heard, he is only human with a human memory. I think we forget that aspect in the research sometimes, and assume one session stands out as a sharp memory over a few hundred others he did that year. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for sure, as Hal has no reason to distort that kind of thing and he's been nothing but complimentary of Dennis as a musician in nearly every interview where the topic came up.

Entirely fair point as once the BB hit big there were knockoff bands coming out of the woodwork (thank you, Gary Usher) like you wouldn't believe, which woudl explain Hal's claim and also that of a certain well-known bass player to have played guitar on "SUSA" (I've looked into this, and the session was almost certainly for The Hot Doggers cover). Three, four sessions a day for 15, 20 years is going to run together.

[Jon Stebbins]

The problem is the meme among writers and journalists veered so strongly into the "wrecking crew played on all the Beach Boys hits" realm that Hal and others came to accept it because they've been told that, and asked about that in a leading way for decades. He assumes if he played on Help Me Rhonda, Cal Girls, Good Vibes, Pet Sounds then he must have played on all the other classics too. Not because he remembers or wants to grab credit, but because that is what the conventional wisdom or general consensus has been for so long. I've had long conversations with Hal, some of them more than a decade ago, and he pointedly told me that he and Dennis NEVER played on a session together. Of course we know this is untrue as the session tapes reveal a multitude of times that they were on the same session. I think that's revealing. Hal whips out the story about Dennis ruining his drums when he borrowed them (because they were already set up in the studio) but he makes a point to say Dennis borrowed them to play on a "demo"...that's how he described it. He couldn't admit that it might have been on an actual master session. Hal also likes to say how Dennis hired him to play the drums on POB, giving the impression that Dennis didn't even play on his OWN LP. But we come to learn that Hal was probably only on one or maybe two POB tracks, while Dennis played drums on five. Its a pattern, and its deeply ingrained, and its not because Hal is a bad guy, or needs to get more credit. Its just because "Hal played on all the BB's stuff, and Dennis didn't" is one of those things everybody thinks they know, that isn't really true...like Mama Cass choking on a ham sandwich.

[bgas]

The problem is the meme among writers and journalists veered so strongly into the "wrecking crew played on all the Beach Boys hits" realm that Hal and others came to accept it because they've been told that, and asked about that in a leading way for decades. He assumes if he played on Help Me Rhonda, Cal Girls, Good Vibes, Pet Sounds then he must have played on all the other classics too. Not because he remembers or wants to grab credit, but because that is what the conventional wisdom or general consensus has been for so long. I've had long conversations with Hal, some of them more than a decade ago, and he pointedly told me that he and Dennis NEVER played on a session together. Of course we know this is untrue as the session tapes reveal a multitude of times that they were on the same session. I think that's revealing. Hal whips out the story about Dennis ruining his drums when he borrowed them (because they were already set up in the studio) but he makes a point to say Dennis borrowed them to play on a "demo"...that's how he described it. He couldn't admit that it might have been on an actual master session. Hal also likes to say how Dennis hired him to play the drums on POB, giving the impression that Dennis didn't even play on his OWN LP. But we come to learn that Hal was probably only on one or maybe two POB tracks, while Dennis played drums on five. Its a pattern, and its deeply ingrained, and its not because Hal is a bad guy, or needs to get more credit. Its just because "Hal played on all the BB's stuff, and Dennis didn't" is one of those things everybody thinks they know, that isn't really true...like Mama Cass choking on a ham sandwich.

But I'm certain I heard she did choke, at some point.  Tho that was probably not what killed her

[cutterschoice]

I heard she tried to snort a ham sandwich

[Micha]

I remember though that Brian claimed he had to replace Dennis' drum track for LDC because it wasn't good enough. So even if the AFM contract rightfully says he laid down a drum track, this doesn't mean it was the one that got used.

3-track recording doesn't allow for select replacement of individual instruments, and even if it did, an O.D. Session would generate its own AFM sheet.  If Brian deemed it not good enough, they'd have to rerecord the whole thing.

Yes, that's something that always puzzled me about that whole thing. I always figured they'd record live all playing together, so even it there was a seperate mic for the drums with it being recorded on one track, you'd hear at least its reverb on the other tracks. And even if it had been recorded seperately, I'd think it would be very hard to rerecord the drum track of all things because the other instruments follow the drums.

But then, at the "Lost Concert" they "explain how the Beach Boys make a record" and say they start off with Denny on the drums, then add Al on rhythm guitar, then add Carl on lead guitar and so on, as if they'd record each instrument seperately. So how did they do it? Does anybody know for sure? The song they explain it on actually IS LDC, but of course on the studio version there is no Al and no lead guitar, either.

However: The day after the LDC recording session there actually was a session with Hal Blaine at which they laid down a basic track for "Back Home", so theoretically Brian could have said, "Hal, listen to this, the drums on this track aren't that good, is there anything you could do about it?" If the musicians were paid per hour, he'd get his money by the Back Home AFM sheet anyway.

I tried to compare the sound of the drums on "Surfer Girl" (recorded the same day as LDC), "Little Deuce Coupe" and the booted "Back Home" to see which resembles which. Had the LDC drum track been rerecorded the next day, the sound should be rather like on BH than on SG I couldn't tell though, as the drum parts of those three recordings are so different. SG uses the cymbal, LDC the hi-hat, and BH combines the snare with the floor tom, so even the snare sounds different on all three recordings.

[Roger Ryan]

As late as the SMiLE sessions (and perhaps beyond), Brian was adding instrumental overdubs during the mixing stage. This is telling because it is not an ideal situation, but one that became a neccessity when Brian felt he needed another track for instrumentation and didn't have one available (a similar thing happened with vocals). Working with three and four track throughout this period, Brian's approach would be to record the musicians live to two-track (or three-track), then mix the results to one track allowing for two or three tracks of vocals. You could continue to do reduction mixes to free up more tracks, but the generation loss would result in increasingly muddy-sounding recordings. Given this situation, I can't imagine that the drums would ever be "replaced" on these early recordings. More-than-likely the entire backing track would be re-recorded.

The "Little Deuce Coupe" story on "Lost Concert" is not accurate to how the track was actually recorded in the studio; it's more of a cool way to intro the song in concert.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

"Hal, listen to this, the drums on this track aren't that good, is there anything you could do about it?"

Hal would say, "Sure, book a session and we'll re-cut the track."

[Micha]

"Hal, listen to this, the drums on this track aren't that good, is there anything you could do about it?"

Hal would say, "Sure, book a session and we'll re-cut the track."

How do you know that?

[guitarfool2002]

"Hal, listen to this, the drums on this track aren't that good, is there anything you could do about it?"

Hal would say, "Sure, book a session and we'll re-cut the track."

How do you know that?

It's just humor. But there is an element of truth to that. In the 60's, especially before 8-track, groups of musicians recorded together, if not for the full track than mostly for the basics: i.e. drums, bass, rhythm guitar, etc. Spector and Brian and their counterparts in NYC would groove on the sound of a large group of musicians creating an overall *sound* in the studio, in a specific room and with specific characteristics of those rooms.

If you do that, whatever happens on that recording session is locked in for good, because the whole band is operating as one. You could not "fix" what was recorded as part of an 11 piece studio band any more than you could fix an errant note played by the 2nd cello in a full string orchestra. Even if you overdub, the mistake will still be there. 

The availability of extra tracks changed all that.

The Little Deuce Coupe live thing is just for show, it was more to point out the different components of the record and what role each member had in the overall sound of that record instead of showing how they actually recorded.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Yeah, of course I can't know what Hal actually would have said, but LDC was recorded in a world before multi-tracking as we know it today.  The track itself might have even been recorded in mono.  Does anybody recall that?  With such a simple line-up instrumentally, they may have prefered to record the backing track in mono to save a generation--I'm not sure.  But if that was the case, forget about fixing anything post hoc.

That's the way to record, in my opinion--as live as possible.

And I do think the idea of subtracting drums from a mix and OD-ing new ones would have been fairly foreign to them--not that they would never have thought it possible, because there were 8-tracks around and it surely dawned on people what new possibilities this opened, but I think the reasons for doing that would be hazy.

[bgas]

A picture postcard of one of Hal's Pals, prpobably meant for AGD, but signed to "Lori" instead: 
http://cgi.ebay.com/Authentic-Autographed-Carol-Kaye-Promo-Photo-/330548776562