The Wrecking Crew (20 page)

For their all-important follow-up release Bowen knew he had to really come through. The song had to be chosen with the utmost care. Now that he had tasted success, Frank was not going to be pleased with anything less than making the Top 10 this time out. And it wasn't good when the chief was unhappy.

Trying to keep their shared momentum going, Bowen came up with the novel idea of marrying the melody from an instrumental piece of soundtrack music he had heard from the movie
A Man Could Get Killed
to a set of newly commissioned lyrics. The result yielded just the kind of beautiful, distinctive song that he thought Sinatra could outright own from note one.

Coming into the studio for the big recording session, Glen Campbell had no idea what to expect. He found himself as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Playing for Frank Sinatra was serious business. Granted, it was every musician's dream, a milestone worthy of one day telling the grandchildren about. And Campbell was in no way intimidated; he knew he was good. But it was also not the kind of date during which a mistake was to be made. Sinatra, a well-known perfectionist, would never tolerate that.

Fortunately, Campbell was in excellent company. He was one of four Wrecking Crew guitarists on hand for the occasion, including stalwarts Al Casey, Bill Pitman, and Tommy Tedesco. The blend of their sounds along with a vast number of string and horn instruments would almost certainly minimize the chance of any one of them standing out too prominently in case of an errant note.

Better yet for Campbell, the recording engineer, Eddie Brackett, had decided to position the guitar players immediately adjacent to Sinatra's vocal booth, with Campbell being the closest. The soon-to-be thirty-year-old Arkansan was practically giddy over the seating arrangement. Here he was, on his first studio date playing for the most revered performer in the history of popular music, and he would get to watch the man do his thing from a mere six feet away, the best seat in the house.

Another Wrecking Crew musician on hand that evening was Michel Rubini. He had been playing a variety of session dates on piano and harpsichord for Jimmy Bowen for the better part of a year, and the producer had recently elevated his status to the position of assistant producer at Reprise. It was a glorified gofer job much of the time, but it did have its good points. Aside from the drudgery of screening the piles of demo tapes that came flooding in the door each day from artistic hopefuls the world over, Rubini also was allowed his first real crack at producing a few things himself, working with the teenage Dino, Desi & Billy, among other acts. And, of course, given his unrivaled prowess on the ivories, whenever a major-league session came up like the one with Sinatra, Bowen made sure that Rubini was right there with him.

As the musicians took their places at precisely 6:00
P.M.
, Bowen came into the huge studio tracking room and announced to everyone, “After we rehearse, we're going to do one song for Frank tonight, and then one song after that for Dean.” Nobody needed any last names.

To spend so much of Reprise's money on so many musicians for one three-hour session meant that Bowen wanted to squeeze as much out of it as he possibly could. With Sinatra notorious for being willing to only do one or two takes of any given song, Bowen figured there should be plenty of time to slide in a tune for Dean Martin during the back side of hour three.

For the next two hours, the musicians rehearsed like never before, making sure everything about their performances was pitch perfect. With Bowen finally calling a ten-minute break at a little before 8:00
P.M.
, a fleet of assistant engineers immediately flooded into the studio, making sure that every microphone was still in place and every metal folding chair was still squeak free. No chances could be taken on a night as important as this.

As everyone settled back into position after hurriedly grabbing a cup of coffee and/or hitting the head, the back door of the studio suddenly swung open. A hush quickly fell over the large room. The artist known to millions of fans as simply the Voice was entering the house.

In marched an entourage befitting that of a major foreign dignitary, a single-file procession of over twenty immaculately dressed individuals, the men in dark, custom-tailored suits and the women in expensive evening dresses, jewels, and furs. They were an assortment of friends, family, and flunkies, all clearly on their best behavior and all there to watch Frank. About the fourth from the front of the snaking line of humanity came Sinatra himself, walking just behind his usual contingent of menacing-looking bodyguards.

Jimmy Bowen immediately stepped out to greet his boss, as did the date's arranger, Ernie Freeman.

“Hello, boys,” said Sinatra. “Ready to make a record?”

As the threesome held a short, private chat away from everyone else while looking over the music charts, Sinatra's longtime personal music director and pianist, Bill Miller, came into the studio. Assuming that he was to play the piano on the session, just as he had done for Sinatra during the past fifteen years, Miller walked over to Michel Rubini, who was already seated behind the Steinway concert grand on the far side of the room. Miller tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” Miller said politely. “I'll need to take your place.”

A startled Rubini at first didn't know what to think. Bowen had specifically told him that he was to play the main piano part on the song. But it now looked like Sinatra had his own guy. And who was Rubini to argue, anyway? He knew that he was way too far down the Reprise food chain to even merit a say in such matters.

“Oh, sure,” Rubini said cordially, getting up. “No problem.”

With nowhere else to go, he decided to head into the booth. As Bowen's assistant producer, Rubini figured that would be the best place to watch the proceedings and to help out if needed.

As Rubini silently eased into an area along the back wall of the small room, Bowen, intensely focused and now seated in position behind the large mixing console, seemed to sense someone's unwanted presence behind him. He turned to see who it was.

“What the hell are you doing in here, Rubini?” the harried producer said, looking both surprised and irritated. “You're supposed to be out at the piano. We're just about to roll tape. You're not producing tonight.”

“Yes, I know. But there's a guy out there who told me not to play. He kicked me off the piano.”

“What?”

Bowen looked like he had just swallowed a dose of the same nasty castor oil his mother used to force down his throat as a kid. His carefully scripted recording session, the most important of his career, was about to unravel. Rubini already knew the piano part cold, and it was central to the song. There was no time to show someone else how to play it. To compound matters, Sinatra, not the most patient of men, was waiting at the microphone.

“I'll take care of this,” Bowen said, jumping to his feet. “C'mon.”

As Bowen and Rubini strode across the studio's polished parquet floor toward the piano, Bowen knew he was going to have to think of something fast. His job hung in the balance.

“Bill, good to see you again,” the producer said, extending his hand. “This is Michel. I think you two have already met.”

Miller nodded.

“I know you're Frank's piano player,” Bowen continued, “and I've admired your work for years. But I've rehearsed a special part with Michel here that's not on the sheet music. I don't have time to show you now what we need.”

Bowen, of course, was making it all up on the fly. There was no special part for Rubini to play. But Bowen had to find a way for Miller to save face. For if he didn't, Miller's boss would lose face as well. And Frank Sinatra never took kindly to looking bad in front of others.

“So, Bill, if you don't mind, please come in the booth and help me with the song in there.”

Whether Miller knew what was really going on no one could be sure. Nevertheless, the gentlemanly, elegant fifty-one-year-old pianist arose and graciously agreed to accompany Bowen out of the room. As they walked away, Sinatra, who had been watching the whole exchange from nearby, looked askance at Rubini. He seemed to be saying, “Okay, pal, I have no idea who you are. You
better
be good.”

But the abrupt switch, as important as it seemed at the moment, would soon turn out to be the least of Frank Sinatra's worries.

With Michel Rubini now safely back in front of the keys and Jimmy Bowen ensconced in the control room with his engineers (and Bill Miller), all systems were finally a go. As the concertmaster, Sid Sharp, lowered his baton in one swift motion, the thirty-piece string and horn section, along with the Wrecking Crew's ace rhythm section led by Hal Blaine on drums, burst forth into a sweet-sounding ten-second instrumental intro, followed by the entrance of Sinatra's resonant light baritone voice.

At first, all was bliss. Ernie Freeman's spectacular arrangement had all the earmarks of creating the smash recording they had all envisioned. The instrumentation sparkled like a pair of diamond earrings on a moonlit night. Sinatra's world-weary yet romantic bel canto vocal interpretation proved to be the very essence of longing and, ultimately, joy. But as the song smoothly sailed along toward its conclusion, with the musicians playing several bars over the last thirty seconds during what had been written as the fade, something didn't sit right with Sinatra. Used to cold endings on most of his songs, he suddenly had no lyrics left to sing while the music continued.

“What the hell am I supposed to do when the orchestra keeps on playing?” the unhappy crooner said to Bowen as the young producer stepped out into the studio at the end of the take.

“Well, Frank,” said Bowen, once again forced to think on his feet, “just scat your way out. You're the king of that.”

So Sinatra gamely gave it a try as the musicians ran through the number a second time. But instead of rolling out an improvised series of made-up words and sounds that would appropriately fit the melody and feel of the song, all the singer offered was a pedestrian parade of “tra-la-la's.”

Bowen, now trying to be
very
diplomatic, said from the control booth at the end, “Okay, Frank, that was good. Now, how about if we try that once more? Do it a little differently this time.”

Growing impatient and keenly aware of the large audience looking on (there were close to a hundred VIP guests seated in the huge studio), Sinatra, consummate pro that he was, decided that enough was enough. With cigarette in hand and a take-no-prisoners attitude etched on his face, he came through on the third take with an inspired flurry of “dooby-dooby-doos” that took the song's fade to an entirely different level.

Bowen, for one, was both exultant and relieved. He knew that he had pushed his boss to the limit.

“Okay, that's it. We got it,” the producer said over his mic as the entire studio broke into applause.

With that, Frank Sinatra immediately walked over and said “thanks” to the production staff and a few others, nodded to the musicians, and then headed for the door, with his posse of personal guests falling into formation behind him with military-like precision.

For Glen Campbell, the events of the intense three-hour date left him dazed. During each of the takes, he had found that he just couldn't keep his eyes off of Sinatra. More so, each time he had looked at the singer it seemed like Sinatra was looking right back at him. Campbell felt honored, assuming that the vocalist must have been admiring his exceptionally fine guitar skills.

Afterward, Campbell had also noticed Bowen and Sinatra discussing something while looking his way from across the studio. With his curiosity getting the better of him, the guitarist just had to know what had gone down.

“Bowen,” he said, catching up with his friend in the booth. “Was Mr. Sinatra talking about me out there tonight?”

“Yep.”

Campbell grinned in anticipation. He was certain that he was about to receive the compliment of a lifetime.

“Well, what did he say?”

“Frank said he wanted to know who the fag guitar player was that kept staring at him.”

After a beat, they both burst into laughter.

But having put all the musicians on a quick break before beginning the recording session for Dean Martin, the producer had far more important things on his mind than Glen Campbell's uneasy man-to-man eye contact with Sinatra. Bowen wanted to know what his assistants thought about the unusual scat tag at the end of the third take. Was it too far out, too corny, to be commercial? He needed to know now. Acetate copies of the recording had to start shipping via the airlines to major-market radio stations around the country that very night in order to beat out a just-released version of the same song by another artist.

“So, what do you think?” Bowen asked after Michel Rubini, who had joined him in the booth, finished listening to the playback.

“Well,” Rubini said, deciding to lay it on the line, “people are either going to laugh you out of town or they're going to turn on to it. One or the other.”

Bowen's gut told him it was the latter. Different was good. Top 40 rewarded different. So he went with it. And the producer was maybe even more right than he knew: “Strangers in the Night” would soon knock the Beatles' “Paperback Writer” right out of the number-one spot on the pop charts. It would also go on to win the Grammy Award for record of the year, in the process becoming one of Frank Sinatra's best-known recordings.

For Hal Blaine, who had employed a modified version of his famous “Be My Baby” drumming pattern during the session, “Strangers in the Night” would become his second-straight record of the year. He had also laid down the beat on Herb Alpert's Grammy-winning “A Taste of Honey” the year before (along with a mix of Wrecking Crew players and straight jazz players), where his
boom-boom-boom-boom
count off on the bass drum had become that song's signature element. Life was good and getting better all the time for the drummer.