Carol Kaye to Skip Rock Hall Induction, Rejects “Wrecking Crew” Label
Carol Kaye has made it clear: she won’t be attending her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction this fall.
The studio legend took to Facebook this week to confirm what she’d hinted at back in April—she has no interest in being honored under the “Wrecking Crew” banner, a name she’s long rejected. “I was never a ‘wrecker’…..that’s a terrible insulting name.” (See attached screenshot.)
Kaye has called out the nickname for years, tracing it to drummer Hal Blaine and dismissing it as revisionist branding. To her, she was part of a collective of working musicians—AFM Local 47—who never needed a crew name to begin with. “You are always part of a TEAM, not a solo artist,” she said. “There were always 350–400 Studio Musicians… working in the busy 1960s.”
Still, the Hall will induct her, ceremony or no. But Kaye’s not trying to make a scene, she’s drawing a line. “I refuse to be part of a process that is something else rather than what I believe in.”
Her résumé doesn’t need rewriting: Pet Sounds, The Beat Goes On, Feelin’ Alright, Wichita Lineman, Mission: Impossible, Good Vibrations. Originally a jazz guitarist, she picked up bass mid-session in 1963 and never looked back.
“I never played bass in my life,” she wrote. “But as a jazz musician, you invent every note you play.”
UPDATED June 23 2025 to include Denny Tedesco’s response to Carol’s statements above
No Treble CEO Jody Miller is a Chicago-based bassist, guitarist, engineer, and producer best known for his bass gear demo videos and as the co-host of The Bass Nerds podcast.
Good for you Carol! You are highly respected and appreciated for your role in the music industry and as a studio musician. As a bass player myself, your work has been very influential. Thank you 🙏 for that. Be well.
Carol absolutely should be recognized for her work on so many important recordings. She also has the right to accept any recognition only on terms she is comfortable with.
While she believes that those recordings were “team efforts”, it is also true that not every musician contributed equally to the finished product. Some (including her) had an outsized effect upon the final songs, but also did so in a way that influenced many musicians down the years.
Carol has always seemed (at least to me) to have something of a “Contrary” streak. That is not a criticism, indeed I believe that is what enabled her to carve out an incredible career in a business that often treats women poorly.
I love CK, but, she could have showed up with her compadres and add simply said she was accepting for ALL the session players that played those 20+ years on the thousands of hits we cherish to this day. That’s it. No need to disparage a colloquialism that she herself agreed to.