"Wrecking Crew" Film Focuses on Session Players Courtesy Hal Blaine Wrecking Crew members at work in a Los Angeles studio. Denny Tedesco's documentary about the musicians still faces a financial hurdle before it can be commercially released. In the 1960s many of the hits coming out of Los Angeles under the names of the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, the Monkees and other top pop acts were actually recorded by an elite but largely anonymous corps of studio musicians nicknamed the Wrecking Crew. To gain them some belated public recognition Denny Tedesco, a son of one of the most prolific of those session players, spent more than 15 years making a documentary about the ensemble. But there's just one problem, and it has held up commercial release of "The Wrecking Crew" since 2008, when the documentary made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival. The film includes dozens of snippets from songs the Wrecking Crew played on, but the record companies that own the recordings want so much money from Mr. Tedesco, whose total budget was less than $1 million, that he has turned to a fund-raising campaign, including an event scheduled for New York in mid-June, to meet their demands. "There are 132 music cues in this film, and you'll know 99.9 percent of them," Mr. Tedesco, 51, said. But when I asked one record company for a quote, they said it was going to cost $2.5 million. He has managed to bargain the labels down, but, he added, "I've still got about 25 songs left to pay off and need to raise $175,000 before I start to see the light." Mr. Tedesco's plight underlies the difficulties that the makers of music documentaries increasingly face. As the recording industry has seen its sales tumble by more than half since 2000, labels are intent on squeezing every bit of profit out of songs in their catalogs. Licensing that music to films - whether big Hollywood productions or modestly budgeted documentaries - is an attractive source of revenue. "It's harder now, because the music industry needs those licensing fees," said Eddie Schmidt, who has just finished a three-year term as president of the International Documentary Association. If you're making a film about a singer-songwriter, that person might have some influence over what gets licensed. But here the people who are your subjects aren't necessarily the names on the records, so you have to go to third parties and say, "What's your price?" " The Wrecking Crew consisted of 20 or so musicians, the guitarist Tommy Tedesco among them, and played in one configuration or another on thousands of records, including Jan and Dean's "Surf City" and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night." Their first major successes came in 1962, providing the "wall of sound" for Phil Spector singles like "He's a Rebel." As the "60s progressed, they played on hits by the Byrds, the Fifth Dimension, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Rivers and the Carpenters. "The Wrecking Crew were the best of the best, with the additional gift of being able to function as mini-arrangers within each song," explained Kent Hartman, author of a recent book about the ensemble. The producers depended on them to make the songs better, and that's why they kept getting asked back time and time again: They knew how to turn a song into a hit. Some members of the ensemble, most notably the guitarist Glen Campbell and the pianist Leon Russell, later became stars in their own right. But as hired hands the musicians had no ownership stake in or legal claim to the songs they recorded, and record company executives who may have felt a debt of gratitude for their contributions at the time have long since departed. As a believer in copyright Mr. Tedesco is philosophical about his situation. "The reality is that I want to pay," he said. But the problem is this business. There are just so many people involved, so much turnover, and so many licenses and contracts, at least two different parties for every song, the label and the publisher. He said there were more than 400 different rights holders to be dealt with. "No one is gouging here, and on a song-by-song basis these are really low fees," said Pamela Lillig, vice president for film and television licensing at BMG Chrysalis. But with 132 cues the body of work is enormous, formidable. Most projects are not this intense with the rights in them, or, like Martin Scorsese on the blues or Ken Burns on jazz, are very well funded. So we are trying to help in any way we can, because we want these musicians to get their due and have a light shined on their work. If the Wrecking Crew can be said to have had a leader, it was probably the drummer Hal Blaine, who was the contractor for many of the sessions, played on more than 50 No. 1 records and is interviewed in the film with several other of the players and producers. Now 83, he's frustrated - though not surprised - that "The Wrecking Crew" hasn't been released commercially. Screenings at film festivals are nonprofit showcases for filmmakers. "It's a shame, but that's the way it is," Mr. Blaine, said. Business is business, a cold and calculating business, cutthroat at times, and there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it. You just have to accept it.