Phil Spector 1989.Pdf

ROCK AND RDLL HALL DF FAME Phil Spector By Lenny Kaye T h e W A L L - to keep in, to keep out; to set a further edge, a border; a Broadway” ; befriended young songwriting teams like Ellie Greenwich component o f rooms, o f houses; upon which to hang overhead micro and Jeff Barry, Barry M ann and Cynthia W eil, Carole King and Gerry phones, tympanis, orchestral bells, reverberations, decorations and decla G offin; and tested his three-track theories in a series o f production liai rations, limitation without limitations - o f Sound. A Back-to-Monolith. sons with artists like Ray Peterson, Gene Pitney, Curtis Lee and the Phil Spector created that W all, making a music o f both grandeur and Paris Sisters. intimacy. Like a poperatic conductor, he gathered the dedbelic forces o f By late 1961, Spector was ready for “Tomorrow’s Sound Today.” the universe in service o f its most simplistic emotion: the moment when That became the motto o f Philles Records, which he formed with Lester love reveals. Sill and immediately successful with the Crystals’ “There’s N o Other His was the space-time continuum o f the three-minute single, a verse- (Like M y Baby).” Phil twisted the echo knob another notch, and by mid- chorus-bridge epiphany meant to be experienced in the present tense: “Be 1962, Philles was in high gear. The Crystals assured us that “He’s Sure M y Baby,” ‘T o Know Him Is to Love Him,” “(Today I Met) The Boy the Boy I Love,” even “Uptown,” while Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans I’m Gonna Marry.” Spector’s work, at random, presents pop-ular at its wondered “W hy Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts?” Phil Spector least ephemeral and most elemental, a we-put-the-us in music. Da Doo was twenty-one years old. R o n R on . Darlene Love was Spector’s “best” voice: as a member o f the Blossoms, Harvey Phillip Spector, bom December 25th, 1940, in the Bronx, was her harmonies were heard on dozens o f recordings and live shows before not merely a producer o f records; he was, and remains, A Record Produc and after her Philles hits. But when Phil discovered an aspiring “girl er. His public persona, flash and double daring, embodied an oversoul group” from Manhattan called the Ronettes, his heart sang its greatest that graced his art w ith genetic identity. hosannas: “Baby, I Love You,” “Walking in the Rain,” “D o I Love You,” The impresario o f sound’s musical genesis began at Fairfax High “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up (Is W hen You’re Making Up).” The School, where he learned to play guitar and piano. In 1957 he and school echo grew, and begat itself, until the sound encompassed the car radio mate Marshall Lieb began writing songs. A third friend, Annette Bard, and home phonograph, becoming one with the heavens above. And then joined Spector and Lieb to form the Teddy Bears. W ith that group, the there was A Christmas Gift to You... skinny seventeen-year-old wrote his first Top Ten hit T o Know Him Is His style gradually grew more cavernous, massive, possessed o f its ow n to Love Him,” inspired by the inscription on Spector’s father’s gravestone inexorable momentum and majesty. The Righteous Brothers sang “Un (T o Know Him W as to Love Him”), was the only hit for the Teddy chained Melody,” and as the river o f song flowed to the sea, only the res Bears, w ho disbanded shortly thereafter. onant echo remained. Each new single sought to top the previous one, Spector recognized (in the liner notes to the group’s LP) that “in no until — with Tina Turner howling into the gale-force winds o f “River other field o f creative . endeavor can the youngster express himself Deep, Mountain High” - Tom orrow’s Sound Today” caught up with for so m any.. People buy the sound, the arrangement, the beat, and yesterday’s memories at last. Realizing he’d come to the end o f an era, the rhythm.” Phil retired Philles Records in 1967, bringing to a close five years o f un Spectof’s creative genius flourished. Eighteen years old, back in N ew paralleled innovation. York, he co-wrote with Jerry Leiber what was to become a megahit for Though a nò less intense presence in the studio, Spector now took up a Ben E. King, “Spanish Harlem.” Tom W olfe in a legendary 1964 essay new role behind the scenes. He helped the Beatles organize the miles o f documented the skyrocketing success o f the young writer-producer. He tape that comprised L e t It B e; produced George Harrison’s A ll Things most aptly dubbed Spector “The First Tycoon o f Teen.’;;. .? M u st Pass; and was instrumental in the creation o f John Lennon’s bound Spector bad a singular knack for matching great performers - singers ary-breaking Plastic Ono Band and Im agine LPs. In the eclectic Seventies, like Darlene Love, Tina Turner, the Righteous Brothers and the Ron- Spector produced the first Derek and the Dominos single, “Tell thè ettes’ Ronnie Bennett (later to becom e Ronnie Spector); players like Truth” ; a thrilling Darlene Love single, Mann and W eil’s “Lord, If drummer Hal Blaine, pianist Leon Russell, saxophonist Teenage” Steve You’re a W oman”; Leonard Cohen’s Death o f a Ladies’ Man; and the Douglas; arrangers like Jack Nitzsche and engineers like Larry Levine, in R am ones’ End o f the Century. studios like Gold Star, in cities like Los Angeles - w ith the most wonder His classic records surround us still: the Ronettes’ “Be M y Baby” has ful o f songs: ‘W alking in the Rain,” “He’s a Rebel,” “You’ve Lost That been heard in four different films (For Keeps, Quadrophenia, M ean Streets Lovin’ Feeling,” “River Deep, Mountain High.” In the hallowed confines and D irty D a n cin g). A new version of that first Number One, T o Know o f the studio, he created a multilayered environment for the performance Him Is to Love Him,” recorded by Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and to happen. Emmylou Harris, became BM I’s most-played country song o f 1987- In The chronological measuring stick o f a Phil Spector production is in December 1988, SRO crowds packed N ew York’s Bottom Line for a lov its expanding use o f echo. He had originally become intrigued w ith the ing onstage re-creation o f A Christmas G ift to You, starring Ronnie Spec-' possibilities while watching Lee Hazelwood record Duane Eddy. It tor and Darlene Love. was about the same time that Phil was taken under the business wing “Nobody ever wrought deeper changes in the way the rock industry o f entrepreneur Lester Sill. A n apprenticeship in N ew York City with looked, felt, behaved,” wrote Nik Cohn. T o come out o f a vacuum and the writing-producing team o f Jerry Leiber and M ike Stoller (begin force such changes, at such speed, w ith such totality — even now, it’s hard ning in M ay 1960) was his entree into Brill Building society. It was to conceive the force and self-belief it must have taken. Phil there that Spector played the guitar break on the Drifters’ “On Spector, no doubt, was an earthquake.” ROCK AND ROLL HALL DF FAME THE PRODUCERS The Kind of Noise You Can’t Forget: 19601964 By Ken Barnes I n THE BEGINNING, giants rocked the earth. And after them came the bel, Ludix. Jerry Ragovoy produced the Majors (“A W onderful Dream”), producer-entrepreneurs, molding their artist protégés into craven images Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters (“Cry Baby”), Irma Thomas (“Time o f the rock 6? roll pioneers. The starmakers valued the look over the Is on M y Side”) and “Stay with Me,” by Lorraine Ellison. sound, creating armies o f cigar-store Elvises and idol curiosities. It was al In the early Sixties, the N ew York record biz institutionalized the hus together too much m a n q u é business. The script they followed was tle long before Van M cC oy (who was scraping together a record here summed up in Bill Parsons’s “A ll American Boy”: “Along come a man and there) made it a dance h it Spector and so many others started there, w ith a big cigar/He said, ‘Come here, boy, I’m gonna make you a star.’J?* following the example or under the direct tutelage o f George Goldner, But by the turn o f the Sixties, the entrepreneurs had shifted their em Jerry Leiber and M ike Stoller and A1 Nevins and Don Kirshner - triple- phasis from the look to the sound. threat producer-songwriter-deal- Manufacturing hits was still the makers w ith a few years’ head game’s aim, but the new script start on the new breed. Some of was Gene McDaniels’s “Hundred the up-and-comers slaved in cubi Pounds of d ay”: “He took a hun cles in the song factories. A fter a dred pounds o f clay/And he creat while Jeff Barry and Ellie Green ed. ...” W hat the producer-entre wich, hearing their perfect fits o f preneurs created were “ little romantic depression dressed for symphonies for the kids,” as Phil success by Spector’s and Bems’s Spector, with all die hauteur an discoveries, would get the urge a u teu r could conjure up, charac to role-play their own.

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