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Director Denny Tedesco received acclaim for The Wrecking Crew, a documentary about a group of talented studio musicians in the 1960. With Immediate Family, Tedesco charts the rise of session musicians Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Russ Kunkel and Waddy Watchel. The foursome, along with Steve Postell are now part of the band The Immediate Family. Tedesco talked to Deepest Dream about Immediate Family, a documentary that is available everywhere on December 15 via Magnolia Pictures.
Denny Tedesco gives an in-depth look at these musicians via a roundtable discussion with the band and reflections from their music collaborators. Carole King, Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Jackson Browne, Phil Collinls, and the late David Crosby are among the artists singing the praises of “The Immediate Family.”
Full interview with Denny Tedesco, in Q&A and Video form, is below. If you are a fan of The Wrecking Crew (which featured Denny’s father Tommy Tedesco), The Immediate Family is a worthy and insightful follow-up.
Denny, how are you?
Denny Tedesco: I’m good. How are you?
Great. First of all, You have so many luminaries that you interviewed for Immediate Family. So many different stories you can cover. When you have so many different stories and so many hours of footage, what is the key to crafting an effective documentary where you can go so many different avenues?
Denny Tedesco: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was the same thing with The Wrecking Crew. It was worse with The Wrecking Crew because it took 19 years to make and I was always constantly filming someone. We didn’t start editing until 12 years into that film.
And (my editor) goes, “you got to stop interviewing people.” That’s the biggest thing. So you don’t want five seconds of this guy and have 50 people in a film. You need to kind of fall in love and know the characters.
I totally get that, but that’s why God gave us DVDs. We got to have those outtakes. I’m recording history. I want to take a chance and always get as much as possible, just in case something comes up. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but when you start editing, you have your beginning, your middle and end.
In a sense, sooner or later, you knew there were things in Immediate Family that didn’t come and ever make it in the film. There was a whole thing about LPs and radio, how FM radio changed the rock and roll business, how LPs changed this business. And both of those things actually created helped the immediate family.
They became famous because of LP covers and sequencing on albums.
Sooner or later you got to pull things back. And one of the rules of thumb was, for us, if it doesn’t have something to do with these guys, you can’t put it in there. We got to move on.
When I started this film, I thought it was going to be called Immediate Family and Friends because I felt like there’s so many other guys we could talk to. We had to leave them out because you just don’t have enough time.
And it ends up being focused. COVID focused me. Once COVID hit, we aren’t going to outside people. When we started this, we had almost most of the stars in the can and I still didn’t have the main five characters in the band, so I had to slowly get them in safely.
But I don’t know if I answered your question!
Oh, you totally did. What I love about there are so many things to love about your documentary. I’m now on my Spotify. I’m listening to The Section albums. I am listening to The Immediate Family. How cool is it for you to spotlight these guys their lives, and then have their music with the section, and now that with the immediate family out to the forefront?
Absolutely. What’s great for me is I get to go rediscover some of that music. I wasn’t a big fan of Andrew Gold at the time and then once I start playing this song, I’m like, oh my God Waddy Wachtel killing it on that solo.
It just wasn’t my thing at that moment. The Section would have been my thing. I was totally into the fusion thing. And maybe I was just too young because I don’t remember it. And I went back and heard those albums. I’m like, wow, that’s my music.
Your external drives should be put in, like the Smithsonian or some kind of museum, as far as for posterity. And I hope to goodness you’re keeping them really well on the cloud.
I am. I know, I just so it’s funny you said that because I thought about it yesterday when I opened up and I see all these tapes now. I know most of it’s on drives, but it’s like you got me nervous thinking about it!
What kind of lessons and work ethic did you learn from your father (Tommy Tedesco) because you mentioned how your father would come home from the warehouse, and also sometimes he’d gig and then or, or actually work eight hours on perfecting his craft. Did that approach have a linear path as far as your own work ethic?
Denny Tedesco: It’s really interesting you brought that up because. I think the reason why I never gave up on The Wrecking Crew is because of the work ethic. There was this thing about what I did my whole life.
I didn’t play an instrument because I didn’t practice. I wasn’t a writer. I went to school to write. You know, in college, I wasn’t a writer. A writer writes every day, a musician plays every day. So there was something in the back of my mind with The Wrecking Crew.
I thought, I don’t want this to be on my tombstone – It’s another thing I never finished. And I kept going and going and going and finally got it out. (When it was released in) 2008, it was such a great success. But no one helped, would help us get it to the next stage, which was paying off the licensing. So that work ethic and understanding, I knew I had to get it out there because at that point I financially went too far.
I invested my life savings and my house and everything else, so the only way to do it is continue and pay off the half million. And that’s what I ended up doing from 2009 to 2015 – paying off the licensing with donations. But it was the work ethic that I learned from my father.
Speaking of Immediate Family, what’s it like to have this family in your creative and most importantly, personal life as well? How was that helped you?
Denny Tedesco: With The Wrecking Crew, I open it up with “this is the story of my father and his extended family, the Wrecking Crew.” I only knew musicians as family, even though my father’s the only (musician) in our family. But that’s all I saw them do, is hang.
I never saw them play their instruments. I never went to work with my dad. He didn’t play instruments at home. They hung out at card games. They came over for dinner. There was a lot of laughter. And that’s how I look at all these guys. I just love hanging out. I love being a voyeur with these guys, you know what I mean? Just hanging in the background. I’ll carry their instruments. I’ll do anything just to hang out with them.
On IMDb. It said back in 1982, you worked for the art department for The Beastmaster. Is that a correct credit? How was that experience?
Here’s the thing I think I worked on (the movie for) 3 or 4 days. I think I worked making props. I don’t remember what I did for some reason. I get more credit for that where people go, you were on The Beastmaster and I have no idea what the movie’s about. You’re the third person within the last six months that said something – that’s amazing!
What other credits from your resume do you want to spotlight?
Denny Tedesco: The other stuff that I’m doing is actually this thing called Hanging with Doctor Z, which is actually a comedy project with Dana Gould. We interviewed some of the great comics of our day, but it makes it it’s like a Merv Griffin or Johnny Carson show meets Fernwood Tonight. It’s very bizarre.
How is that collaboration been with Dana Gould and everything?
Denny Tedesco: Oh. It’s awesome. They’re the greatest. I mean, they’re (comedians and musicians) both basically the same type of person. One wants to be the other.
Can you pick a movie that’s one of your all time favorite films, and what is it about the specific movie that resonates with you on a personal level?
Denny Tedesco: Oh, that’s a hard one, but I think. I think. I know this sounds crazy, but the reason I started well when I did The Wrecking Crew and I did it in meeting families, the roundtable discussions. I use that all the time now in all my work. And why I like it is when you sit down with a bunch of people, you let them talk. It just comes out conversational.
The film I love is Barry Levinson’s Diner. And then there’s Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose. I love that film. You know that scene of the guys talking about Danny Rose, the horrible manager? But they’re all at a coffee shop and they’re zinging and, bouncing back and forth with discussions about this guy.
That’s exactly how I grew up with these kind of musicians just talking and laughing and and I always that they, they’re like I call it. Musicians. It’s like a quartet or quintet at a table, but without their instruments. They just love to talk and they zing and they zap. You know, it’s fun.
