Veteran session bassist and 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Carol Kaye said she won’t be attending this year’s ceremony, claiming that it doesn’t reflect “the work that studio musicians do and did in the golden era of the 1960s.”
Kaye was inducted into the Hall this year via the Musical Excellence category. The 90-year-old bassist has played on an estimated 10,000 recordings, including works by the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel and Frank Zappa, and was part of the Los Angeles-based musical collective the Wrecking Crew.
The pioneering bassist revealed her decision not to attend the Rock Hall ceremony in a Facebook post, which you can read below.
Why Is Carol Kaye Declining the 2025 Rock Hall Ceremony?
“People have been asking: NO I won’t be there,” Kaye wrote. “I am declining the RRHOF awards show … turning it down because it wasn’t something that reflects the work that studio musicians do and did in the golden era of the 1960s recording hits.”
Kaye said she also declined the “Denny Tedesco process,” referring to the director of the 2008 documentary The Wrecking Crew, which featured her. Despite being a part of the collective, Kaye said they weren’t known by that name while they were active, and that drummer Hal Blaine came up with it years later.
“You are always part of a TEAM, not a solo artist at all,” she continued. There were always 350-400 studio musicians (AFM Local 47 Hollywood) working in the busy 1960s, and called that ONLY. Since 1930s, I was never a ‘wrecker’ at all — that’s a terrible insulting name.”
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Kaye then detailed how she switched from guitar to bass out of necessity and became one of the most prolific recording artists to ever pick up the instrument.
“Just so you know, as a working jazz musician (soloing jazz guitar work) in the 1950s working since 1949, I was accidentally asked to record records by producer Bumps Blackwell in 1957, got into recording good music with Sam Cooke, other artists and then accidentally placed on Fender Precision Bass mid-1963 when someone didn’t show,” she explained.
“I never played bass in my life, but being an experienced recording guitarist, it was plain to see that three bass players hired to play ‘dum-de-dum’ on record dates wasn’t getting it. It was easy for me to invent good bass lines. As a jazz musician, you invent every note you play, and they used a lot of jazz musicians (and former big-band experienced musicians on all those rock and pop dates too).”
Kaye said that ultimately, she feels the Rock Hall ceremony doesn’t properly acknowledge the group contributions of the myriad sessions musicians with whom she worked. “I refuse to be part of a process that is something else rather than what I believe in, for others’ benefit and not reflecting on the truth,” she wrote. “We all enjoyed working with EACH OTHER. Thank you for understanding.”
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These exclusions are particularly egregious.
Gallery Credit: Bryan Rolli
