This is a music documentary for the connoisseurs and the heads. The Immediate Family is a rock band comprised of five guys in their 70s, a recently formed supergroup of alpha-level session musicians who have worked together for half a century, veterans of the west coast rock and country-rock scene, and who played on records by Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and many more.
They are Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel and Steve Postell on guitar, Russ Kunkel on drums and the massively white-bearded Leland Sklar on bass. These were musicians who benefited from the 70s trend of putting name-check credits in sleeve notes, and so became a professional aristocracy of the recording studio; everybody wanted to hire these easygoing, non-diva musicians who were effortlessly brilliant. They created the west coast sound, or at any rate laid down the foundations for it – the unsung heroes of MOR rock to be heard on every FM station and in every elevator.
