Marshall had not seen or spoken with Phil in many years when, with no warning, their paths crossed in the summer of 1987. It happened in much the same way they first came together, among the people who all began adulthood equally unsure—at the thirtieth reunion of the Fairfax High graduating glass of ’57. Walking into the bar of the Santa Monica beach club where the reunion was held, Marshall never even imagined that Phil would come out of his seclusion and be there. As he ordered a drink, one of his ex-classmates asked him if he had seen Phil at the other end of the bar. Springing around, Marshall looked through the dim light and saw the large-nosed, weak-chinned face he knew so well. Phil, black shades hiding his eyes even in the darkened room, sat at a corner table with two bodyguards, drinking but looking fit and natty in a three-piece suit.
“I’m going to go over there and say hello to Phillip,” Marshall said to the other guest, who cautioned him, “Don’t bother. He won’t even recognize you.” That was the prevailing attitude there that night. Some of Phil’s old classmates had tried to make conversation with him, only to be dismissed by his wordless inattention. Harvey Goldstein, the jilted Teddy Bear, would not make any effort at a greeting. “I wouldn’t play his game,” said Goldstein. “That’s exactly what he wanted and there was just no way I was gonna give this guy any satisfaction at all.”
Marshall, though, felt he had to make contact. “I walked over and put my face in his face, I demanded his eyes, because he doesn’t look at people; that’s part of his little trap. I could see into him, man, even with the dark glasses. I just know that this guy was hurtin’ in some way.
“I said, ‘Marshall Lieb,’ and while he was sort of surprised and sort of not happy, it meant something to see me. I think he acknowledged me beyond all the rest of the people. He stood up and grabbed my hand with both of his. I said, you know, ‘How you doin’?’ and I had to wait for an answer and I just felt, ‘Oh shit, I’d like to talk with him.’ I mean, we are so beyond all that stuff in the past. But he’s sort of in his own kind of . . . I think he would have liked to say some things but he couldn’t.”
Marshall, reaching blindly, told Phil that he had made some attempts to reach him. He talked about Stan Ross for a minute. “But it almost seemed as if it wasn’t recording and some disassociated sentence would pop back. I could say that he looked drugged out but it’s not fair. I just felt really bad, because Phil is always in my heart, his pictures are all over the walls in my home. I mean we raised this guy, my mother and me—and he did ask about her, he said, ‘How’s your mom?’ That was really the only coherent thing he said.
“I told him I’d see him later in the evening, and a lot of people during the evening said, ‘Why don’t you go over and talk to Phil?’ and I just didn’t want to any more. It was too sad, for me too tragic.”
The more Marshall thought about that night, however, the more he thought he knew about the Phil Spector he lost. “He needed to be there,” Lieb said. “He needed for those people to pass by that table and say ‘Hello, Phil,’ and even though he would not acknowledge them he needed to them for know he was there. If it was just for the ego, he would’ve left early. But he stayed at that table the whole night, he was the last to leave. He made up his mind he was going to stay with that class, as a family. He came to be with those people who consider him just plain old Phil; this is his one identification with real life. Because, right now, what he’s living is not real life. He’s living some sort of death.
“It was the same as it was with Elvis. I was a close friend of Elvis, I watched him deteriorate as a person trying to kill himself, and when I saw that happening it was very difficult to watch someone who is strong and aggressive become so weak and troubled. When you are king and you are it, some people are frightened by it. That’s what they’ve worked for, to be it, and when they get there they think there’s more to go when there isn’t. Mick Jagger became it and enjoys being it. Phil became it but he isn’t quite comfortable with it.
“As frightened as Phil was when we were kids, he knew he was going somewhere. Now he has nowhere to go and that probably scares him a hell of a lot more.”
Marshall Lieb has been music supervisor for the movies Macon County Line, Ode to Billy Joe, and Take This Job and Shove It. He co-wrote the score of The Farmer with Hugo Montenegro.
Michael Spencer moved back to New York in 1969 and founded and became Executive Director of Hospital Audiences Inc., which with government and corporate grants organizes concerts and other cultural exhibitions in hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons. He was recently elected Co-Chairman of the World Congress of Arts and Disabilities.
Kim Fowley recorded in the late seventies under various group names including the Renegades. After advertising for an all-girl punk band in L.A., he put together the group, including Joan Jett, that later became the Runaways. He has had two books of poetry published, The Earth Is Really Flat and The Oblong Tiger.
Annette Kleinbard (Carol Connors) became one of the top lyricists of motion picture and television source music in the 1970s and 1980s. She co-wrote (with Bill Conti) “Gonna Fly Now” for the movie Rocky and the themes of Sophie s Choice (with Marvin Hamlisch), Falling in Love (with Michel Legrand), and Mr. Mom. She was nominated for two Academy Awards and a Grammy for the theme music of Rocky III, and for four Emmys. She also co-wrote (with David Shire) the hit song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” As music supervisor for the movie Tulips, Marshall Lieb brought her in to collaborate on the score with Billy Goldenberg.
Stan Ross sold Gold Star Studios in 1984; scheduled for demolition, the hallowed landmark of rock and roll was destroyed by a fire a few months later.
Lew Bedell still runs Dore Records from the same office on Vine Street in Hollywood.
Don Peake won two Academy Awards for scoring short subject films, In the Region of Ice in 1978 and Violet in 1982.
Lou Chudd got out of the music business in the early seventies and made millions in steel pipe manufacturing and investment banking.
Lester Sill is President of Motown Records Publishing.
Lee Hazelwood produced Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” and duetted with her on several other records in the 1960s. He released a solo LP in the seventies and then lived in seclusion for years in Sweden before moving back to Phoenix, where he is now retired.
Chuck Kaye is Executive Vice President of Warner-Chappell Publishing.
Russ Titelman formed a working relationship with Lenny Waronker, the son of Liberty Records’ Si Waronker, and the two of them produced James Taylor’s Gorilla and In the Pocket LPs in the mid-seventies. As a staff producer for Warner Brothers for the last fifteen years, Titelman has produced records by Randy Newman, Christine McVie, Chaka Khan and most recently Steve Winwood—winning a Grammy in 1986 for Winwood’s Back in the High Life album. He also co-produced Brian Wilson’s debut solo, Brian Wilson.
Annette Merar Spector returned to L.A. and in 1976 married spiritualist Richard Tapper and had a child. Divorced now, she lives in the San Fernando Valley, studies religion and philosophy, and says she still loves Phil, though with a certain pain. “Living in the shadow of this man is very hard. I always wanted to be gifted, to be something special. And because of him, I feel I’m not.”
Warren Entner followed his stint with Spector’s Three by becoming an original member of the Grass Roots. He later was the executive producer of the 1983 movie The Pirates of Penzance.
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller remained vital producers into the early eighties. After producing Peggy Lee’s Mirrors LP in 1975, they returned to rock, working with Procol Harem (“Pandora’s Box”) and Stealers Wheel (“Stuck in the Middle with You”). They released a two-record album in 1981, Only in America, a compilation of many of the legendary songs they produced and wrote in the fifties and sixties.
Beverly Ross composes Broadway shows and owns a recording studio in New York.
John and Fred Bienstock work out of the same Brill Building offices they
had three decades ago, as overseers of the enormous Chappell Music publishing combine, which absorbed Hill and Range Songs in the mid-1970s. Their cousins and onetime bosses, Jean and Julian Aberbach, left the music business and now own a prestigious art gallery.
Doc Pomus wrote songs for Dr. John and co-wrote with Willie DeVille three songs on Mink DeVille’s Le Chat Bleu album in 1980. He also wrote the title song of B. B. King’s Grammy-winning There Must Be a Better World Somewhere LP in 1983.
Terry Phillips became a staff producer at Decca, writing and producing songs for the Hobbits. He later formed a label, Perception Records, which had hits that included King Harvest’s “Dancing in the Moonlight.”
Don Kirshner followed his bubble-gum-music windfall with a new gold mine in the 1970s: the television rock concert. His late-night In Concert and Don Kirshner s Rock Concert series—featuring a comically stiff and glazed-eyed Kirshner introducing each act—thrived into the early eighties even though rock critics savaged the shows’ vacuous glossiness. Another Kirshner television project was an alternative to the Grammys, the self-congratulatory “Rock Music Awards.” His label, Kirshner Records, was a big winner, fueled by the pomp-rock group Kansas—but then it collapsed along with the band in the mid-1980s. After thirty years of inordinate power, Kirshner is today without a voice in the industry.
Ray Peterson is a top attraction on the country music circuit.
Curtis Lee is in the construction business in Yuma, Arizona.
Ahmet Ertegun is still president of Atlantic Records, which merged with Warner Communications in the 1970s.
Jerry Wexler produced dozens of records with Tom Dowd in the sixties and seventies, including those made by Dr. John, José Feliciano, and Dusty Springfield. Appointed Senior Vice President at Warner Brothers in 1978, he has continued working in the studio and produced Bob Dylan’s Saved album and Dire Straits’ Communique.
Tom Dowd also produced Jerry Jeff Walker, Eric Clapton, and the first three Allman Brothers albums. More recently he worked with Rod Stewart, Kenny Loggins, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Yes, and Pablo Cruise. Now semiretired, he lives in Miami.
Aaron Schroeder also remains in the Broadway music publishing circle. His company is now called Aaron Schroeder International.
Gene Pitney continues to record and tour. His latest album includes a cover of “He’s a Rebel.”
Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote together briefly after King’s massive success as a solo act in the early 1970s—her sensitive and powerful Tapestry LP had four Top 10 hits and sold over 13 million copies—burned out, and King’s 1980 LP Pearls reprised some of the classic Goffin-King hits. Goffin also wrote with Barry Goldberg, and King with her husband Rick Evers, who died of a heroin overdose in 1978.
Jack Nitzsche climbed out of the nadir of his drinking and emotional crises in the late seventies to score the movie An Officer and a Gentleman—winning an Academy Award for writing (with his wife, singer Buffy Saint-Marie) the song “Up Where We Belong”—and other films including 9½ Weeks, Breathless, Without a Trace, Starman, The Razors Edge, and The Seventh Sign. He and Saint-Marie live in Kauai, Hawaii.
The Crystals continue to perform on the nostalgia circuit, but with only Dee Dee Kennibrew from the original group. La La Brooks gave up singing for a modeling career; Mary Thomas is a housewife in Brooklyn. Kennibrew brought suit—unsuccessfully—against Spector in the 1970s to recover back royalties for the group.
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil endured far longer than any other of the Broadway writing teams of the early sixties. Though Mann’s attempt at a singing career in the 1970s was a failure, he wrote Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch” (with Hill) and Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again.” Weil collaborated briefly with Carole King in the eighties and Mann and Weil won a Grammy in 1988 for the Linda Ronstadt-James Ingram duet “Somewhere Out There,” from the movie An American Tail.
Snuff Garrett produced six straight Top 10 hits by Gary Lewis and the Playboys in the mid-sixties and two Top 10 hits by Sonny and Cher in the early seventies. He is retired and living in Arizona.
Bobby Sheen formed a short-lived label, Salsa Picante Records, in the mid-seventies and for over a decade has sung in a latter-day touring version of the Coasters.
Ronnie Spector retains her identity, with Tina Turner, as one of the great rock femmes fatales, still playing on her sex kitten image on records and in shows. She appeared, singing fragments from “Be My Baby,” on the Eddie Money song and video “Take Me Home Tonight,” and signed with Columbia Records; her second solo LP, Unfinished Business, was released in 1987. Her primary interest is as a quivering echo of the past, performing her old Ronettes hits ad infinitum. The mother of twin sons, Austin and Jason, she has not spoken with Phil since their divorce.
Larry Levine is chief engineer at Premore Studios in North Hollywood.
Darlene Love sang on the Jeff Barry-written soundtrack for the movie The Idolmaker and tried a Las Vegas singing career, but has never gotten far from her Spector identification. She put together a club act backed by “The Wall of Sound Orchestra” and released an album, Darlene Love Live at Hop Singh’s, which consisted mainly of her reprising her old Philles standards. She also was featured in Ellie Greenwich’s 1985 Broadway musical Leader of the Pack, doing exactly the same thing. Recently she had a small role in the film Hairspray, which starred Sonny Bono, and in the Broadway flop musical Carrie. She also recorded an album, Darlene Love.
Fanita James has sung backup for Tom Jones’ stage show since the early 1970s.
Lou Adler went on to manage Carole King and become one of the music industry’s biggest power brokers.
Sonny Bono reunited with Cher professionally in the midseventies for an unsuccessful revival of their television show. He opened a restaurant, Bono’s, in Palm Springs and was recently elected that city’s mayor.
Cher had no more chart hits in the seventies, but made plenty of headlines as the chief consort of rock stars. She married, had a son by, and made an album with Gregg Allman; after their divorce she dated Kiss’s Gene Simmons, Les Dudek, and most recently Rob Camilletti, twenty years her junior. While her music career waned, Cher’s acting career flourished. She appeared on Broadway and in the movie version of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, and then won rave reviews for supporting roles in Silk-wood and Mask. She won the Best Actress Academy Award in 1988 for Moonstruck. She hit the charts again in 1988 with “I Found Someone” from her Warner Brothers album Cher.
Ellie Greenwich fell idle after the rise of the singer/songwriter in the late sixties. Her 1985 Broadway musical Leader of the Pack (written with Ann Beatts) was part autobiography and part catalogue of her old hit songs. Paul Shaffer was originally featured in the thinly veiled role of—in Greenwich’s words on the playbill’s acknowledgment page—“the brilliant Phil Spector.”
Jeff Barry found his niche in bubble-gum music—he wrote the Archies’ six million-selling hit “Sugar Sugar”—and television theme songs—The Jeffersons, Family Ties. He also co-wrote (with Peter Allen) and produced Olivia Newton-John’s 1972 hit “I Honestly Love You.”
Vinnie Poncia worked with superstar producer Richard Perry on records Perry produced with Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, and Carly Simon. Poncia has also produced Melissa Manchester. He co-wrote the Leo Sayer hit “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.”
Danny Davis also worked for Motown and Casablanca Records. He now does promotion at the Gallin-Morey show-biz management firm.
Brooks Arthur produced Janis Ian’s Between the Lines LP and today produces music videos.
Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield reunited briefly in 1974 and had a No. 3 hit with “Rock and Roll Heaven,” a tribute to dead rock stars. Medley cut an album in 1982, Right Here and Now—the title track written by Mann and Weil—and toured again with Hatfield. In 1988, Medley had a No. 12 hit, a duet with Jennifer Warnes, “The Time of My Life,” from the movie Dirty Dancing.
Dennis Hopper became as much of a sixties’ cliché
as Easy Rider, but he was rediscovered in the 1980s as a middle-aged crazy. He played a cocaine-snorting leather fetishist in Blue Velvet and won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his middle-American father role in Hoosiers. His most recent work was directing the film Colors.
Irwin Levine and Toni Wine wrote the first Tony Orlando and Dawn hit, “Candida,” in 1970. When Wine married music publisher Chips Moman, Levine teamed with Larry Brown to write Dawn’s No. 1 hit “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Ole Oak Tree” in 1971 and then collaborated on the rest of the group’s follow-up hits through the mid-seventies, including “Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose” and “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You).” They own a publishing company, Levine and Brown Music.
Dan and David Kessel produce songs for their New Wave label, Martian Records, many with a distinct Phil Spector feel—such as the Wigs’ cover of “To Know Him Is to Love Him” and Cheri Gage’s cover of “Here It Comes (and Here I Go).” They also produced an updated Ventures and Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello Christmas song, and they perform and cut records under the name of the Martians, notching a minor hit with “Baby Hold On.”
Phil Spector finally received due recognition by the music industry. A lifetime achievement award was presented to him by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January of 1989.
PHIL SPECTOR DISCOGRAPHY
The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below
A&M Records
Aberbach, Jean
Aberbach, Julian
ABKCO Records
He's a Rebel Page 36