He's a Rebel

by Mark Ribowsky

  One day Phil wound out with Ronnie on the back of the Harley, Gerry with his girlfriend on the back of the BSA. “I remember saying to him, ‘This is a little silly, man. We’re gettin’ older now, we’re not kids anymore. We re just riding around on motorcycles,’ ” Goffin recalled. “Phil didn’t say anything, but Ronnie said, ‘You’re right.’ ”

  Nedra’s marriage made Ronnie want more from her relationship with Phil. When Ronnie used to tell Darlene Love that she was going to marry Phil, Darlene would try to talk her out of it. “You don’t want that, child,” she would say. “That’s the last thing in the world you want to do.” But now Ronnie began to push the idea on Phil, and while he knew the financial dangers of another divorce, possessing her legally made sense. Small and meek, Ronnie was no Annette; she was a little mouse in his presence and it was hard to imagine that she would want more than he was willing to give in mariage. On April 14, 1968, they married, in a ceremony attended by Ronnie’s mother, Beatrice. The other two Ronettes were not invited.

  “Only then did Ronnie admit she had not been married all along,” Nedra Talley said. “It was like ‘Oh, I was only joking.’ It’s hard to come out of a lie, but there was a competition thing with Ronnie and me. That’s part of being close. If I was married, she had to be. Or if I had kids, she had to. There was also pressure on Ronnie for family’s sake. She had not been raised to live with someone. Every woman wants to know that you respect and love her, and that the ring makes it all right.”

  Unlike what he had done to Annette, Phil tried to give Ronnie a great deal of attention after the wedding. Phil wanted children as much as Ronnie did, and when Ronnie did not conceive right away he had her take fertility pills. She was given the run of the house and the servants, and she thought it was neat that they bowed to her and said, “Yes, Mrs. Spector.” Ronnie also expected, because Phil told her, that she would be in the studio as his top recording concern. But in addition to not making any records, he told her she had no reason to leave the house, that she had everything there that she needed to be happy. In time, even if Ronnie wanted to go to the market, the bodyguards would intercept her at the door. If Phil decreed that she could go out that day, a bodyguard would drive her, keeping her under constant watch; if Phil said no, she would be turned back inside the house and the bodyguard would fetch her what she needed.

  “Phil had a habit of locking people in his house,” Gerry Goffin said. “It was like a dumb little game. If he couldn’t control the outside world, he had to control the inside one. So, to say the least, the marriage was a little strange.”

  Phil may have assumed he could manipulate Ronnie into seeing his methods of repression as the fruit of Beverly Hills elitism; if Ronnie was sensitive that her background and intellect made her unfit for the social graces, it would be a giddy head trip for her that—as a lady of leisure—she need never touch the concrete beyond the front gate and have her every need filled. Ronnie, however, grew increasingly despondent.

  “Ronnie would write me or call me and say, 1 can’t go out of the house’ and stuff like that, and I’d go out to her so she wouldn’t feel shut off,” Nedra said. “It wasn’t like she felt she was a prisoner then. She would be trying to be happy, trying to make her marriage work. She wasn’t miserable all the time. It was just certain sides of it she knew were not normal, like that she wasn’t allowed to go out. The chauffeur was there not because he was a chauffeur. He was ‘The Eye.’

  “It was a whole lot of nonsense, but that was Phil. I really think the reason Phil didn’t do any work then was because, with the marriage, it was more important to him to control her than it was to work. For Ronnie to even be in the studio all the time meant that she would be meeting people. So that was taken out of their lives. Ronnie was a singer and now it was like she was told to just forget that. That was the hardest part.”

  Along with the Stalin overkill, Phil tried to erase rock and roll as a reality inside 1200 La Collina Drive. Instead of rock, Wagnerian operas were the music of the house. Ronnie, it was said, was not even permitted to read Billboard or Variety, so as not to be distracted by the industry bustle.

  “I think Ronnie felt a little stupid,” Gerry Goffin said, “because as soon as Phil married her he stopped producing records with her.”

  Timid as Ronnie was, it was only months before she cracked. Phil’s regular tirades and verbal threats scared her and she became so nervous and fearful of him and his shoulder-holstered bodyguards that she had to be given sedatives by doctors. Ronnie managed to slip past The Eye and to get a lawyer. On August 1, just three and a half months after the marriage, divorce papers were filed in her name which read:

  Since the marriage, defendant has been nagging plaintiff about everything including going out of the house. He has been acting too jealous towards plaintiff and has stated that he would not permit her to get a divorce. He has stated to her that if she seeks a divorce he will make sure she never smiles again. He has grabbed plaintiff by the arms and has threatened to stick his fingers in her eyes. He has used profanity to the plaintiff and her mother. He has stated to her that she would not be able to get a job in the entertainment world as long as he can help it. Plaintiff fears irreparable harm unless defendant is legally restrained from annoying and molesting her. Plaintiff is currently under a doctors care for nerves.

  In asking for $1,500 a month for expenses, Ronnie listed her net worth as “nothing,” while estimating Phil’s as “5 million.” Phil quickly answered with a counteraction against her, charging Ronnie with “extreme cruelty,” and on September 20 court papers were filed that said they were separated. However, Ronnie never moved out of the house, and days later Phil talked her into reconciling, mixing his avowals of love with fresh promises to record her.

  Ronnie—whom Phil could convince of anything if he had her face to face—dropped her suit and went on, comforting herself with her doctors’ medications and a new relief from the elegant rigor mortis of the house—alcohol.

  To Phil, having a child was the key to keeping the marriage together. When Ronnie still did not conceive by early 1969, they adopted an infant boy. As Phil wanted it to appear as though his firstborn was of his own seed, he carefully found a newborn baby with mixed blood. Born on March 29, 1969, and named Don’té Phillip Spector, he unveiled the birth of his son in announcement cards sent to friends. The announcement recited a heartwarming scenario of premature birth and uncertain incubation in the form of a three-act play. Act Three read: “Baby going home with mom and pop. Baby’s weight 11 pounds. Parents believe it! Ordeal over . . . Happy Ending.” The bottom of the card bore the inscription: “The above is a Veronica and Phil Spector Production.”

  In early 1969 Phil came to an accommodation with commercial music and his place within it. “I know people expect me to come up with another ‘River Deep’ momentous production. But that’s not where it’s at,” he told Rolling Stone later that year. “It’s in pleasing yourself and making hit records. That’s all that counts. That’s the only reason people come to see you.”* But he was also uneasy, at times agonized, about whether he could ride the commercial carousel. Frankly puzzled by what the market was, he said:

  Everybody’s a helluva lot hipper today, I’ll tell you that. There’s 13-year-old whores walkin’ the streets now. It wouldn’t have happened as much five years ago. Not 13-year-old drug addicts. . . . I tell you the whole world is a drop-out. I mean, everybody’s a fuck-off. Everybody’s mini-skirted, everybody’s hip, everybody reads all the books. How in the hell you gonna overcome all that? . . .

  . . . I know I can make hit records. I don’t worry about that. I’m apprehensive about certain people who don’t have any standards but drug standards, really. If they’re loaded at one time, my record will sound great; if they’re not loaded, it may sound bad. I’m apprehensive about the kind of things that people expect. I mean, they don’t really want hit records. . . . I’m apprehensive only to the extent that I don’t know how to lose yet; I don’t know ho
w to say “fuck it” about my art. I get too involved. . . .

  I’m still involved with why “River Deep” wasn’t a hit and what the fuck was . . . and am I that hated? Am I too paranoid? You know, you can antagonize people if they think you’re not human, if you say, “Aw fuck, I ain’t afraid.” A lot of people will get very angry at that, disc jockeys in particular. . . .

  People put you down for really criticizing, but I can literally tear apart nine out of ten groups. I have to tell you something is desperately wrong with most groups. I mean really bad, bad news. . . .

  But I can’t communicate with a lot of these [industry] people. I can’t really bullshit with them, I don’t have friends in the record industry. I don’t talk with them. We don’t jell; we don’t communicate; because I’m too bitter I think.†

  The tragedy of Phil’s two years in exile was that he was returning to a wayward and listless music scene more the outsider than ever, too removed now for his nonconformism to carry any creative sanction. Most centrally, his retreat had done nothing to preserve the concept of a record as a complete work. In the pale afterlife of the age of the producer, he could do nothing to change the state of rock. Only wistfully could he tell Rolling Stone:

  I think Mick Jagger could be a lot of fun to record. It’s not just the big artists; I think Janis Joplin leaves a lot to be desired recording wise. . . .

  But the one that really would be the most satisfying probably would be Dylan because I could communicate with him and justify what he really wants to say—no matter what it is—musically, which is something that you don’t see very often happening today.

  Many of the artists today just sing, they don’t really interpret anything. I mean the Doors don’t interpret. They’re not interpreters of music. They sing ideas. . . . [The Rolling Stones are] just makin hit records now. There was a time when the Stones were really writing contributions. See that’s a big word to me—“contributions”! . . .

  Now I’m getting a little tired of hearing about, you know, everybody’s emotional problems. I mean it’s too wavy. . . . I’m getting so fed up with it. No concept of melody—just goes on and on with the lyric. . . . They’re making it a fad. If it had more music it would last, but it can’t last this way. . . .

  They are going to really kill the music if they keep it up, because they’re not writing songs anymore. They are only writing ideas. . . . They don’t care about a hook or melody. . . .

  You see, I don’t have a sound, a Phil Spector sound—I have a style . . . as opposed to Lou Adler or any of the other record producers who follow the artist’s style. . . .

  My style is that I know things about recording that other people just don’t know. It’s simple and clear, and it’s easy for me to make hits.*

  But if he recognized he could do little himself about the disemboweling of pop, what yanked him back in the end was the second death of black music. Acid, superbands, open-air rock masses, and black militancy had blown soul out of the pond. The seventies were about to begin with no real core of soul outside of the lazily corporate Atlantic and Motown. “I don’t consider Motown black,” Phil said in the Rolling Stone interview. “I consider them half and half. Black people making white music. The Monotones, the Drifters, the Shirelles, Fats . . . I mean, all those artists not making it, and around anymore. That’s a big debt. But maybe it’s only because nobody’s doing it.”*

  Phil wanted to at least have a crack at paying back that collective white debt. Months before, even while still in his holding pattern, he signed his first new act in over two years. Steering clear of the torn denim and glazed eyeballs of the mainstream, he went with an integrated cocktail-lounge soul group, the Checkmates Ltd., a composite of refined Drifterish R&B and the self-contained backbeat of both rock bands and soul revues. The Checkmates, a guitar-bass-drum unit fronted by black singers Bobby Stevens and Sonny Charles, avoided the urge to fuse their emotive Motown-style blues with acid rock in the manner of Sly Stone. As a result, they had not climbed out of the narrow strobe light of Las Vegas stages. Although they were popular along the vestigial jazz and casino in–crowd, two Checkmates singles and an album released by Capitol did not do well. In a curious way, the Checkmates—Stevens and Charles, beyond whom Phil did not see—were an evolved form of the Righteous Brothers without the sawdust. They played well to black and white audiences, and Phil—who at twenty-eight was now the picture of Nehru-jacketed, aging hip—believed rock could still be embroidered with honest, decorous soul. Eventually Phil opened discussions with A&M Records, one of many labels that had been courting him since the Philles dim-out, about cutting a record with the Checkmates as the means of his return. Herb Alpert was one of the very few producers in the business with whom Phil did not erect a rivalry of the mind—Alpert’s Tijuana Brass records were so extraneous to Phil’s music that when Larry Levine had played them for him Phil thought Larry was pulling his leg. Through the years, the two Fairfax High alumni were respectful of each other. A&M won high marks from Phil for bucking the trend of failed independent labels to challenge the majors by the late sixties. Of inestimable value, Herb also had Larry Levine at Sunset and La Brea, in a studio Larry set out to build in the acoustical image of Gold Star.

  The A&M deal Phil made in late 1968 was a provisional one, and though the spoils of his past brought Phil a custom logo for his records—the label would read “A&M” and “Phil Spector Productions,” the latter marked by a fiendish little man in a black cape and high hat—the fact that Phil would not be reactivating his own label meant the certain death of an era and an uncertain promise for the future. Phil himself raised no great expectations; disinviting any comparisons with his old hits, he told Rolling Stone: “I live off what I’ve done and my reputation is there, and it’s unspoiled. I keep it that way.” When word of the A&M deal was out, Lester Sill, from personal experience, did not believe Phil could ever be committed or dependable aiding someone else’s empire. “My reaction was that he was just roaming and using,” Sill said.

  Phil’s immediate concern with the Checkmates was finding new songs for them to record. Rock was now dominated by performers and bands who generated their own songs, and this trend had mandated the end of the great early sixties song combines. Out of that whole incredible confluence of music and hustling along Broadway, only Don Kirshner was left intact, but only because the boob tube had insulated him against rock reality. Kirshner made millions withstanding musical truth and honesty; his bubble-gum-music groups, the Monkees and then the Archies, were money-making machines of deceit (the Archies did not even exist outside of the studio) churning out songs by the likes of Jeff Barry, Goffin-King, Tommy Boyce, and Neil Diamond. For Kirshner, it was a satisfying if short-lived mirage of the old pecking order, and his lingering influence in that context brought Phil to New York for the first time in years. When he arrived, though, he found a Kirshner with little influence and few useful writers. But Spector still had charmed luck. While he was in Kirshner’s office two writers, Irwin Levine and Toni Wine, walked in to pitch their material.

  Levine, the son of prizefighter Benny Levine, had been around for a while, a lyricist without success, and he now was back with melodies composed by Wine, a top commercial jingle singer. Both thought they had walked in on a comedy act. “It was quite a scene,” Levine recalled. “Kirshner was totally perplexed and embarrassed because there was Phil Spector calling him all kinds of names and jumping on top of the furniture like a crazy person.” Phil, as he loved to do, was goofing on Kirshner, testing his slow-burn placidity; Kirshner, not having seen Spector for a while, had forgotten how far Phil could go. “He was calling Kirshner ‘Golden Ears,’ because they used to say Kirshner had golden ears for music, and Phil was makin’ fun of that, sort of half joking, but Kirshner was very sensitive and was totally embarrassed. Toni and I were standing there hysterical and Kirshner was saying, ‘You’ll have to excuse me. This is a strange person.’ I knew Donnie a long time and I never saw him in that position before. Phil c
ould just unnerve him.”

  Phil liked Levine and Wine; they were a good audience for him and they were seasoned writers. The three of them went right from Kirshner’s office to Wine’s apartment and the pair played Phil some of their songs. “He told me, ‘I’m gonna record the Checkmates and it’s gonna be a smash, babe,’ the whole routine,” Levine said. They honed a few riffs into a working melody and then Phil left, telling them to work on it. When he came back some time later, Levine and Wine had words and music.

  “I had this idea from a Sidney Poitier movie that was out, For the Love of Ivy,” said Levine. “I was thinking of that maid and we came up with the ‘black pearl, precious little girl’ hook. Phil came in and he loved it.”

  The fairytalelike balladry of “Black Pearl” made it a song with great charm—an essential Phil had lost sight of with “River Deep”—and he made a split-fee deal with Herb Bernstein, an arranger whose publishing house employed Levine and Wine, and Herb Alpert’s Irving Music. Phil then took that and several others of their songs back to L.A.

  A well-rested Phil Spector—with hip new leather-and-suede duds and a large assortment of dark glasses and nifty, fashionable-length hairpieces—jumped out of the bushes in 1969 with the rush of a man determined not to let the sixties get away without a reminder of his place in them. First, his wombat face—snout-nosed, pebble eyes twinkling behind rose-colored shades, asparagus hair clumped under a corduroy cap—came before a multitude of theater audiences as a dope dealer in the opening scene of the movie Easy Rider. The film, co-starring and directed by Dennis Hopper, was made for $400,000 and grossed millions as a classic sixties’ set piece of alienation. It also nearly bankrupted Hollywood studios when filmmakers followed its lead and left the lots to go on location. As such, it was the actualization of Hopper’s dream of three years before. Phil was presented with the opening cameo by Dennis, and his dope pusher role was a ratchet in the film’s smug amorality. Sitting in the back of a large white Rolls-Royce, Phil was a tightly framed rodent who sniffs Peter Fonda’s cocaine, grins, nods, and says not a word as he makes the score that finances Hopper and Fonda’s motorcycle odyssey into the Hades of America. Phil saw it as accreditation of the hip perversity he always craved—just so no one missed it, he sent out Christmas cards composed of the movie’s still shot of him in the Rolls, coke spoon going noseward, with the greeting: “A Little ‘Snow’ At Christmas Time Never Hurt Anyone!!” However, the ineffable Hopper may have had an ulterior motive: an ace card in the arcane poker game with Spector.