Originally Posted by
GuitarGeek
Well, has as been said, everyone was using studio musicians back then. I think in the case of The Beach Boys, the early albums are actually them playing, it was only when Brian started getting artistic, like say around Pet Sounds or maybe slightly earlier, that they started resorting to the doppelgangers in the studio. I believe I've read that Carl Wilson, at least, still ended up playing on the records.
I always reckoned, though, that since Brian couldn't tour (after his first nervous breakdown), he was in the studio recording the backing tracks for the next album, while the others were on tour, and when they'd get back to LA, they'd overdub their vocals. In that instance, it kinda makes sense. Also, as Glen Campbell notes in the documentary, the other four, at least, argued non-stop when he was on tour with them, so he reckoned that might have been part of why Brian started using studio musicians (ie so he wouldn't have to argue with them in the studio...at least, not until it was time to do the vocals, anyway).
Well, there were a lot of bands that used studio musicians. Aerosmith used Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter on a couple tracks on their second album (including, very famously, their version of Train Kept A'rollin'). There's quite a few Kiss songs that have studio musicians taking the place of at least one band member . Steve Lukather has a list on his website of all the records he's played on, one of which, actually is Voices by Cheap Trick (and he actually admits he was never sure why he was called in for that session, because of how good a guitarist Rick Nielsen is).
Awhile back, we got into a discussion about a series of one hit wonder bands, something like five or six of them, based out of England, all of them turned out to be the same bunch of musicians, same producer, even the same singer. I believe Beach Baby by First Class (which I swear I always thought were Americans) was one example. The singer apparently took to billing himself as a "five time one hit wonder" or something like that.
In the case of The Tubes, I recall reading years ago that it's Lukather playing the solo on She's A Beauty. I somehow ended mentioning this to someone who is involved in the LA recording scene, and he said "Yeah, that whole record is basically Toto pretending to be The Tubes". I mentioned that to someone else, who said "Oh, well, that would explain why it sounds like Jeff Porcaro's drumming", though I've also read Prairie Prince was the one member of the band (besides Fee Waybill, obviously) who wasn't replaced by a deputy on that album. I've read the same thing happened with Chicago around the same time: on some of those songs, Peter Cetera is the only band member on the track.
One assumes it hinged on record company executives who were convinced that you needed that "LA sound" to get "maximum radio penetration" (or MTV airplay, or whatever), and the best way to get that sound was to use the A Team on your records.
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