Immediate Family, a new documentary by the filmmaker behind The Wrecking Crew, captures the rise of several game-changing rock and rollers.
Five of the world’s most prominent rock ‘n’ rollers walk side by side through Times Square, just before performing three straight concerts at the Iridium nightclub. And almost nobody recognizes them. “I don’t remember anybody going, ‘Look at those guys,’” says Waddy Wachtel, guitarist for the Immediate Family, session musicians who have played with Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Phil Collins, Carole King and hundreds of others since the ’70s. “It was just another semi-busy afternoon. People just doing what they do.”
Although giant-bearded bassist Leland Sklar clarifies that he did get recognized before those 2019 concerts, and snapped photos with three or four fans, the Immediate Family, stars of a new documentary, remains both unprecedentedly important and pointedly non-famous.
“If somebody stops me on the street and says, ‘Oh, I love your playing,’ yes, of course, I love that. How could you not?” says Danny Kortchmar, one of the group’s three guitarists. “But I don’t miss it. I certainly wouldn’t want the thing that Carole and James had. It didn’t do them any good, let me tell you.”
Denny Tedesco directed and produced Immediate Family to follow up his first film, The Wrecking Crew!, about an earlier generation of studio musicians who backed ’60s pop giants from Frank Sinatra to The Beach Boys. Tedesco’s late father, Tommy, was a guitarist for that band, and Denny made the film to “rediscover what he did,” he recalls via Zoom. Immediate Family was a natural next step, “like someone handed a baton over,” according to Tedesco. And while Tedesco and his wife, co-executive producer Suzie Greene Tedesco, went into debt licensing the classic songs for The Wrecking Crew!, its success allowed the filmmaker to secure financial backing for Immediate Family, including a rights-acquisition deal with indie giant Magnolia Pictures.
Shortly after Tedesco’s crew started filming in 2019, Wachtel, Sklar, Kortchmar and drummer Russ Kunkel, who’d been known for nearly 50 years as The Section, rebranded themselves as a new band called the Immediate Family. They began playing gigs on their own and added a longtime collaborator, guitarist Steve Postell, for a self-titled 2021 album.
“We enjoyed it a lot. It wasn’t a drag,” Kortchmar, 77, says of the new film. “We didn’t have to sit around for hours and hours, the way a lot of movies are made.”
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Immediate Family, a new documentary by the filmmaker behind The Wrecking Crew, captures the rise of several game-changing rock and rollers.
By Steve Knoppy.
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Immediate Family stars Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Waddy Wachtel, Steve Postel and Russ Kunkel.
Kootch, Sklar, Waddy, Postel and Kunkel in NYC.
Magnolia Pictures
Five of the world’s most prominent rock ‘n’ rollers walk side by side through Times Square, just before performing three straight concerts at the Iridium nightclub. And almost nobody recognizes them. “I don’t remember anybody going, ‘Look at those guys,’” says Waddy Wachtel, guitarist for the Immediate Family, session musicians who have played with Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Phil Collins, Carole King and hundreds of others since the ’70s. “It was just another semi-busy afternoon. People just doing what they do.”
Although giant-bearded bassist Leland Sklar clarifies that he did get recognized before those 2019 concerts, and snapped photos with three or four fans, the Immediate Family, stars of a new documentary, remains both unprecedentedly important and pointedly non-famous.
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“If somebody stops me on the street and says, ‘Oh, I love your playing,’ yes, of course, I love that. How could you not?” says Danny Kortchmar, one of the group’s three guitarists. “But I don’t miss it. I certainly wouldn’t want the thing that Carole and James had. It didn’t do them any good, let me tell you.”
Denny Tedesco directed and produced Immediate Family to follow up his first film, The Wrecking Crew!, about an earlier generation of studio musicians who backed ’60s pop giants from Frank Sinatra to The Beach Boys. Tedesco’s late father, Tommy, was a guitarist for that band, and Denny made the film to “rediscover what he did,” he recalls via Zoom. Immediate Family was a natural next step, “like someone handed a baton over,” according to Tedesco. And while Tedesco and his wife, co-executive producer Suzie Greene Tedesco, went into debt licensing the classic songs for The Wrecking Crew!, its success allowed the filmmaker to secure financial backing for Immediate Family, including a rights-acquisition deal with indie giant Magnolia Pictures.
Shortly after Tedesco’s crew started filming in 2019, Wachtel, Sklar, Kortchmar and drummer Russ Kunkel, who’d been known for nearly 50 years as The Section, rebranded themselves as a new band called the Immediate Family. They began playing gigs on their own and added a longtime collaborator, guitarist Steve Postell, for a self-titled 2021 album.
“We enjoyed it a lot. It wasn’t a drag,” Kortchmar, 77, says of the new film. “We didn’t have to sit around for hours and hours, the way a lot of movies are made.”
Carole King, James Taylor, Danny Kortchmar in IMMEDIATE FAMILY
Carole King, James Taylor, Danny Kortchmar in IMMEDIATE FAMILY, a Magnolia Pictures release.
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
Immediate Family begins with Kortchmar, known as “Kootch,” whose mother bought him a Stella guitar as a kid, although he didn’t take to it until he saw Elvis Presley on television. Vacationing with his family in Martha’s Vineyard, he befriended a 13-year-old Taylor; as Taylor evolved into a megastar, Kortchmar gigged in bands, first in New York, then Los Angeles, until producer Peter Asher hired him to play on Taylor’s second album, 1970’s Sweet Baby James, along with pianist King and drummer Kunkel. (Craig Doerge eventually replaced King on keys in Taylor’s band, and he was a founding member of The Section.)
