The Immediate Family Spotlights Oft-Overlooked Session Musicians

One of the best developments to come out of the ongoing flood of pop music scholarship has been those books, podcasts and films that have put the spotlight on the many people working behind the scenes to make a song or an album happen. Artists like Taylor Swift or Joni Mitchell or Lana Del Rey may be the faces and names adorning the album sleeves, but the credits are filled with the names of musicians and technical wizards that are there to bring the visions of these stars to life.

A great example of an overdue peek behind the curtains was Denny Tedesco’s 2008 documentary The Wrecking Crew. The film homed in on the efforts of the crack team of musicians who played on hundreds of pop songs that flooded the zone in the ’60s and ’70s, including the director’s father Tommy Tedesco, bassist Carol Kaye, keyboardist Dr. John and guitarist (and future star in his own right) Glen Campbell.

The newly released film The Immediate Family essentially picks up where The Wrecking Crew. The focus of this documentary are the group of L.A. studio musicians — drummer Russ Kunkel, bassist Lee Sklar, guitarist Danny Kortchmar, songwriter / guitar player Waddy Wachtel, among them — who helped codify the sound of pop, rock and country in the ’70s and beyond. Their list of credits is enormous, ranging from Laurel Canyon icons like Carole King and Joni Mitchell to British expats Phil Collins and Feargal Sharkey.

The movie is a wonderful testament to these lifelong musicians whose impact is oft-overlooked by those listeners who don’t pore over the liner notes of every album they purchase. (Guilty as charged.) Some of the major league artists that the members of the Family worked with over the years, including King, Collins, Jackson Browne and Neil Young appear on screen to sing the praises of these musicians. And director Denny Tedesco helps amplify the work that these men did through a smart use of archival footage and through neat moments where he films them playing along with some of the iconic songs that they helped craft.

This world of gigging musicians is something that is familiar not only to the movie’s director Denny Tedesco, but also Jonathan Sheldon and Greg Richling, the co-founders of Pfonetic, a newly enshrined film production company. Before getting into the movie business, both men were full-time musicians. Sheldon led buzzy alt-rock band Naked in the ’90s while Richling spent two decades as a member of the Wallflowers and has credits on albums by Fiona Apple and Macy Gray. Knowing what goes on behind the scenes in the music industry, they explained when we spoke over Zoom recently ahead of the film’s digital release tomorrow, and knowing how players like these are oft overlooked only made their efforts to give these men their flowers while they’re still with us feel that much more important. (This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.)

Paste: How did this project get started?

Greg Richling: We had another producing partner on this project named Jack Piatt who was close with Denny Tedesco. We got to talking one day about how much we loved The Wrecking Crew and how long it had been since we’d heard from [Denny]. We developed an idea that we thought might be an interesting follow-up, and we presented it to Denny. He really loved the idea mainly because of the family component of these four musicians that make up the Immediate Family. These guys have known each other since 1969, 1970. And it was an interesting story how they all came together and fell in with playing with James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and a host of singer-songwriters. We presented this idea of focusing on this specific group of players and their relationship and all the records they’d worked on together and apart. But most interestingly, how they wound up in their 70s in a band called the Immediate Family. They have a common thread where, when they were all kids, they saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and wanted to be in a band. But their bands fell apart and they fell into session work. So the idea that they go through this amazing career, and now, in their mid-70s, are finally doing the thing that they really always wanted to do, which was playing in a band with a bunch of pals.

Both of you were full-time musicians before you moved into the world of film production. Is that something that attracted you to this project — to put the spotlight on these folks that don’t get top billing in the liner notes of the albums they played on?

GR: I think it’s really important, just from a preservation standpoint, to tell the stories of people behind the scenes on records. When you make them yourself, you realize how many people play a role in getting these things over. The general public doesn’t really know most of the people that are behind the scenes making the records that they love. I think that probably did interest me because that was my life for a long time. But I also think that John and I feel it’s a duty to preserve the stories of musicians that would be lost to time. If you look back 100 years from now and say, “Who’s Lee Sklar?” You’d have to go put a record on and go, “Oh, what a great bass player.” But having movies like this shine a light on Russ and Lee and Danny, it’s giving historical perspective on a group of people that contributed a lot to music. It’s leaving something behind. It’s a window into their lives and who they were.

Was it a hard sell to get these guys on board for a project like this? You’re shaking your head, so I’m guessing not.

GR: I think having someone come to you and say, “Do you want to be the subjects of the follow-up to The Wrecking Crew?” It’s pretty flattering. So it didn’t take long for them to say, “Wow, this could be really cool to have our life story told on the big screen.” As far as the interviewees, all of the famous artists that they played with, not one of them said no. I think it’s because they share the same sentiment. All of them were like, “It’s always about me. Let’s make it about these guys. Let’s shine a light on all of these players that work with us that we love.” They were all thrilled to do it and lined right up. Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Jackson Browne were the first four that we interviewed. They jump-started the whole thing. Once we got them in the can, we’d say to anyone else, “We’ve got Jackson and James and Linda and Carole,” then it was, “Oh, okay, I’ll do it.” It was the domino effect. It really happened naturally. Everyone was a good sport and were happy to talk about someone other than themselves.

Was it a challenge filming this during the pandemic? Some of the interviews were over Zoom and I saw a COVID testing credit in the credits.

Jonathan Sheldon: I think what was interesting is The Wrecking Crew took over a decade to do, and we were able to bring this in in three years. We worked right through COVID and had to get creative with a few interviews. But by and large, they showed up when we asked them to. The outpouring of interest was what really set this thing afloat. One thing begat the other so we could show early interviews to investors and say, “Look, we’ve got this progress. Keith Richards wants to do an interview and Neil Young, of all people who never does interviews. Don Henley who’s as hard to get as any interview.” We kept pulling rabbits out of the hat through COVID. This goodwill started happening to the project. There was no studio behind us. There was no wealthy producer within our team. It was really like, “How do we get creative and figure out a way to make this happen?”

GR: I did have that moment where I thought, “Wow, we got this done pretty quickly even though we had to contend with COVID.” I feel like we got lucky with that. When COVID hit, Danny went, “Oh my God, we don’t have any interviews done with the subjects.” Once they were tested and were quarantining and being careful, we knew that that wasn’t an issue. We broke the crew down to a very, very small unit. I stopped going to the interviews during COVID to just not be in the way and not have any extra people that don’t really need to be there.

That said, how exciting was it to get that moment where you realized, “Oh we can actually get Neil Young on the line for this film? That was a huge get.

GR: That took a little bit of work. That’s the part of producing that I like most: getting the lay of the land and trying to understand what’s the best way to go about getting what you need for the film. It’s not without its challenges. I would have loved to have a camera set up in the room and have it not be Zoom. But that was the way he wanted to do it. That was the only way he was going to do it. Better Neil on a Zoom than no Neil.

JS: Neil Young doesn’t want to do and doesn’t need to do press. He’s only doing it because of his reverence for the players that are in this film. I think that’s true across the board. Like David Crosby. I think his last interview was ours. He really wanted to speak his piece about how much these musicians meant to him. In some ways, these films give opportunities for luminaries to give all of us the right way of seeing this work in the context that deserves to be appreciated. I think that piece of this puzzle is very important. The Wrecking Crew did a lot for the way that we viewed the music of that era. I think Immediate Family will adjust people’s appreciation for the contributions of these musicians.

I loved the sequences with the four or five of them together around a table, having these conversations about their time together. Was that something you and Denny wanted in the film from the beginning — to show how these guys interact?

GR: That was one of the great Denny Tedesco ideas that had carried over from Wrecking Crew, where you had Plas Johnson and Tommy Tedesco and Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye around this dining room table, almost like they’re in a dimly lit Italian restaurant or something. It was intimate and that really worked. One of things I think Denny did incredibly well, and it was such a creative idea, was the way he would present the players today in the studio and fade in the classic tracks. It works so well to tie the past into the present and align people with this idea that, “Oh wow, he played on that,” and “Oh my God, he wrote that part.” It was a sort of show it, don’t tell moment. I always think it’s better to show than talk something to death.

As well, you really get a sense of the personalities of these guys. Waddy and Danny have a lot of ego about their abilities, which comes out best in that sequence of Waddy playing on Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherri” and insisting that their idea of including a sax solo was stupid and that he should play something instead. Whereas with someone like Lee, he’s saying things like, “Maybe give me a chance to try something here and if you don’t like it, no big deal.”

GR: Sort of textbook personality band behavior. Guitar player out front with confidence. Rhythm section more reserved, humbly stabilizing things. I love that line in the movie where Lee says, “My motto is that everything I do is etched in mud.” One of the things I love about Waddy in the film is that he has these anecdotes where he goes back in time and remembers these things that happened during the making of these songs that are ingrained in our brains from the thousands of times we turned the car on and there’s that song. What you learn is, there’s this ego involved, but at the end of the day, they’re trying to make something the best that it can be. Waddy wasn’t afraid to go, “Alright, whatever, Steve wants to put a saxophone there, but I’ve got a great idea. I know what this should be.” Not only does it give you an insight into the personalities of players that have made it and stuck around for decades — the kind of person you have to be to fight for your ideas and make something better — but also there’s that kind of comedic element to it. He added a lot of humor to the film with his irreverence. I think it added a lot of insight into why these guys have been around as long as they have. It’s because they really care. They’re not just phoning it in.

What’s the one big thing you want people to take away from this film?

JS: One of the things that we take the musical accomplishment by a front person as complexity, and there’s oftentimes other geniuses, other superthinkers contributing the actual hooks that are embedded in your mind when you think of a classic song. The opportunity to get a human being in front of you who’s actually contributed to this work is what the movie ultimately does. I think it gives a due bow to those musicians who did that work.

GR: When we approached Danny Kortchmar about doing this film, he made it very clear to us that the most important point of the film for him was that people that saw it felt it was an inspirational movie. That they could see this film and get a sense that you could have a really great life and have a really long lasting career if you can find something in life that you love doing. It’s never over. It’s never done. You can love playing guitar when you’re 17, and you can have that same zest at 76 years old if you love what you’re doing.