{"id":483319,"date":"2019-03-12T14:17:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T20:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=807174"},"modified":"2019-03-12T14:17:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T20:17:47","slug":"the-byrds-roger-mcguinn-remembers-hal-blaine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/the-byrds-roger-mcguinn-remembers-hal-blaine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Byrds\u2019 Roger McGuinn Remembers Hal Blaine"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The first time Roger McGuinn<\/a> met Hal Blaine was in January 1965, at the recording session for \u201cMr. Tambourine Man.\u201d McGuinn had recently formed his new band, the Byrds<\/a>, but the full group wasn\u2019t ready to record in a professional studio just yet. Instead, Blaine, the veteran drummer who had already tracked everything from the Ronettes\u2019 \u201cBe My Baby\u201d to Elvis Presley\u2019s<\/span><\/em> Blue Hawaii<\/span> soundtrack, joined Wrecking Crew bandmates Bill Pitman, Leon Russell, Jerry Cole and Larry Knechtel to back McGuinn on what would become the group\u2019s breakthrough Number One hit.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In later years, McGuinn and Blaine would cross paths at assorted recording sessions and Hall of Fame tributes, but it was their first meeting that made the most lasting impression on McGuinn: \u201cThe Wrecking Crew was truly a great band,\u201d he says. \u201cThey played so well together and they could always follow each other in time, but they didn\u2019t always play a strict beat. They\u2019d go up and down and back and forth, but they were always together.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

A day after Blaine\u2019s death at the age of 90, McGuinn called<\/span><\/em> Rolling Stone<\/span> to share his memories of the drummer and discuss Blaine\u2019s vast, underappreciated influence on rock & roll.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I really think Hal was as important to rock & roll as Elvis Presley. Everybody knew he was playing drums on these hits, but he invented that beat, that boom boom-boom \u201cBe My Baby\u201d beat that the Beatles used. I used to call it a Beatles beat, but it was really a Phil Spector<\/a> beat, and Hal came up with it. Spector continued it with all his records, and the Beatles picked it up and it became ubiquitous. It was<\/span> the<\/span><\/em> rock & roll beat of that particular time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first time I heard \u201cBe My Baby,\u201d I was working in the Brill Building and we were big fans of Phil Spector, so we\u2019d get all his record and analyze them, tear them apart.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe \u201cMr. Tambourine Man\u201d would have been a hit without the Wrecking Crew. The Byrds were not that great a band at that point. Michael Clarke was just learning how to play drums. He learned to play on cardboard boxes. We needed a real drummer. That day in the studio when we recorded \u201cMr. Tambourine Man,\u201d Hal was great. I was intimidated by those guys. They were all a little older than I was, very slick, like James Dean in<\/span> Rebel Without a Cause.<\/span><\/em> They were almost punks, with their collars up. I was just 22, and I remember Hal Blaine saying, \u201cDon\u2019t be so nervous kid, go out and get a couple of beers and then come back.\u201d He tried to loosen me up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next day, David Crosby, Gene Clark and I put vocals in the track. When we sat down and heard the song, I said, \u201cMan, I can\u2019t believe we did that.\u201d Hal and the other studio musicians really pulled it together and made a strong track, which I know the Byrds could not have done.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, when I was doing solo work for Columbia, I had Hal on some of my stuff. He walked into the studio one day and said, \u201cLast time I played with this guy, he got a Number One.\u201d It didn\u2019t work out that way for my solo stuff, but it was great seeing Hal again. He was extremely professional in the studio. He gave direction well, and was kind of a bandleader, really.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then I saw him a few years ago in 2007, at a tribute at the Musicians Hall of Fame. I know Hal was really proud to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because he was wearing his Hall of Fame induction jacket in Nashville. Hal was a good comedian. He was always cracking jokes in the studio. And that day in Nashville, we were on the bus driving around to different hotels, and he and the guys were all making jokes. He had a real bawdy, lewd sense of humor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday, when I was reading Hal\u2019s obituary, I thought, \u201cWow, what I thought was a Beatles beat was really a Hal Blaine beat.\u201d And that beat continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time Roger McGuinn met Hal Blaine was in January 1965, at the recording session for \u201cMr. Tambourine Man.\u201d McGuinn had recently formed his new band, the Byrds, but the full group wasn\u2019t ready to record in a professional studio just yet. Instead, Blaine, the veteran drummer who had already tracked everything from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-483319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 07:46:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}