HAL BLAINE (1929-2019)

I switched on my computer this morning to discover that Hal Blaine had died. Back in the sixties, if we cared, we simply assumed that Dennis Wilson played drums on records by The Beach Boys, Michael Clarke on records by The Byrds and Mickey Dolenz on records by The Monkees. And nobody did much care who played drums on records by The Ronettes, or The Chiffons, or The Crystals, or Jan & Dean, or Sonny & Cher, or The Mamas & The Papas, or Neil Diamond, or Nancy Sinatra, or The 5th Dimension, or Simon & Garfunkel, or any of the other 40 number ones and 350 top ten hits and as many as 10,000 sessions –including Elvis, Leonard Cohen and god only knows (pun intended) who else – on which Hail Blaine played drums.
         Session men were mysterious back room figures back then, probably a bit long in the tooth, set in their ways and – like Robert Plant assumed when Jimmy Page told him about the ‘session bassist’ he had in mind for Led Zeppelin – ‘some old bloke with a pipe’. In reality they were more important to those of us on the dance floor than the faces in the music papers, especially the rhythm sections.

         I have no idea how many songs in my iTunes folder feature the drumming of Hal Blaine but it’s probably more than a thousand, not just all those Spector, Beach Boys, Byrds and S&G tracks but heaps of lesser known songs by lesser known acts too. I don’t suppose any drummer was more prolific than Blaine, and when I come to think about it I don’t suppose any individual musician appears on more of these songs I have. And I take it for granted.

         In Out Of His Head, his critical study of Phil Spector, Richard Williams introduces his readers to the session musicians who worked with the great record producer, working his way through keyboard players, bassists, guitarists and horns. “Last, but also first,” he writes, perceptively, “were the drummers, whose work was to provide the foundation on which Spector’s greatest achievements would be based. In the beginning there was Hal Blaine, who virtually created a style by himself and became an elder statesman among West Coast session musicians. Of all the elite corps of session musicians who became known collectively as the Wrecking Crew, Blaine was most crucial to the Wall of Sound.”

         I am indebted to Richard for drawing my attention to the fade out in ‘The Bells Of St Mary’s’ by Bob E. Soxx & The Blue Jeans in which, uncharacteristically, Blaine thrashes his kit unmercifully, effectively pre-empting the drumming style adopted by Keith Moon. Mostly, of course, he’s just there, like a metronome, like Al Jackson in the MGs, Benny Benjamin at Motown and Charlie in the Stones.

         Because we played Phil’s Christmas Album every year as presents were being opened, our two kids associated its sound with that time of the year and, for years afterwards, believed that ‘Be My Baby’, ‘Then He Kissed Me’, ‘Baby I Love You’, ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and the like were Christmas songs. I’d love to have been able to tell Hal Blaine that, and that he provided the (American) soundtrack to the sixties for me – and I never even knew it, not until I really cared. Thanks Hal.

(I found the LP at the top of this post on the internet, and liked it because Hal is on the beach, and the first hit he played on was Jan & Dean’s ‘Baby Talk’, a US number 10 in 1959, which is not really surf music but echo-drenched doo-wop, a bit cheesy but we are talking 1959.)

KEN PITT (1922-2019)

I was saddened to hear of the death last month of Ken Pitt, best known as  the manager of David Bowie from 1965 until 1969. Ken and I got to know one another in 1985 when Omnibus Press published a paperback edition of his book Bowie: The Pitt Report, an account of the period when he managed David during which, for a short while, they shared a flat near Manchester Square in central London.

         Ken was a courteous and cultured man, a veteran of the music industry who did his best not to sound aggrieved by the fact that David Bowie had abandoned him for the indelicate and far more scheming Tony Defries, or Deep Freeze as we were inclined to call him on Melody Maker in the early seventies. Defries put Bowie on the map but at considerable cost as the two would eventually fall out over money matters in circumstances best described as fraught.

         Nevertheless, Bowie had much to thank Ken Pitt for. It was Ken who turned David onto the first album by the Velvet Underground, whose music so influenced his own, and encouraged him to broaden his skills by branching out into acting, theatre and mime. Recognising that David was more than simply a rock’n’roll singer, he booked him to appear on European song festivals and saw nothing wrong when the songs he wrote and recorded leaned more towards mannered ballads than the pop mainstream. Ken was still managing Bowie at the time of his first hit ‘Space Oddity’ in the autumn of 1969 but they parted company soon afterwards.

         Born in 1922, Ken was well versed in the machinations of the music industry by the time he encountered Bowie. He first worked in music as a publicist, promoting tours by visiting US jazz and folk performers, including Duke Ellington and Bob Dylan’s earliest UK tours, and he also managed Manfred Mann at the start of their career, along with Crispian St Peters and Goldie & The Gingerbreads.

         Having befriended Ken through publishing the re-issue of his book, we stayed in touch and, indeed, for many years I acted as a conduit for him since anyone seeking to find him – usually writers – made me, as his publisher, their first port of call. He lived in Spain for much of the year until he retired to a senior community in Hertfordshire where I knew his phone number and address. Ken swore me to secrecy and, though some of those wanting to interview him – usually TV people or reporters from downmarket tabloid newspapers – were quite indignant when I refused to reveal his contact details, I never betrayed his whereabouts. I would pass on requests, usually by enclosing them in a letter as he eschewed e-mails, and leave it up to him to respond or not. Invariably he didn’t. For many years we exchanged Christmas cards and Ken once told me that from the Let’s Dance era onwards David always sent him a Christmas present, usually a small ceramic ornament.

         One interview request to which he did respond was my own when in 2003 Q magazine commissioned me to write about Bowie’s relationship with the press for a DB special edition. Here’s a transcription of the phone conversation we had.

         CC: Why is it that David has such a good rapport with the media and knows how to manipulate it so well?

         KP: When I started he knew nothing about it. He’s got to take the credit because he had a lot of natural charm. One lady who fell for him was Penny Valentine and also George Tremlett. It got around amongst journalists that he was a very bright boy, a lot of fun to interview.

         CC: Did you tutor him in dealing with the media?

         KP: He would always listen to me when I was on the phone when I was taking about PR and giving advice to people. Also, he was very nosy… inquisitive, always looking at papers on my desk. That’s how I discovered his Anthony Newley fixation... he saw a poster for Stop The World I Want To Get Off and asked me about it. I certainly gave him advice from the very beginning. He was anxious about what to say. I would tell him exactly what the interviewer’s interests were, and I told him that whatever you do, don’t argue, don’t get into a heated conversation. I never put him up to saying anything that wasn’t true. I told him you’ve got to try to anticipate the interviewer, tell him or her what they want to hear, and adopt a different style according to the different types of media.

         CC: Do you think he was ambivalent about telling the truth?

         KP: Yes. He certainly wasn’t broke [a reference to an MM interview I did with DB in 1976 in which he said the only reason he was touring was because he needed the money].

         CC: How did you feel about him coming out as gay?

         KP: I wasn’t at all happy when the ‘I’m Gay’ interview appeared. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would have advised him to do. I had been observing what was going on in San Francisco, how gays were creating comfortable housing out of slums, designing clothes, going into business and flourishing. I could see how the gay scene was changing and I realised it would happen here eventually. And I knew that if the right kind of artist was to talk about this with great sincerity it would break down all the barriers. That’s why we did the interview with Jeremy… a dreadful magazine. I was horrified by the Michael Watts interview [in Melody Maker, January 1972], and the fact that it was repeated in the Evening Standard that night.

         CC: How it is that he has managed to maintain such a good relationship with the press.

         KP: He’s interesting to talk to and he gives interesting answers to questions. I think the reason why David has managed to maintain a good relationship with the media is his ability to reinvent himself. He’s never boring.

         Ken lived to be 96, dying after a short illness.