Naturally, about three minutes later (metaphorically speaking) Phil fell out with Warner. I picked up the phone and learned that he had gone bonkers big time in Warner’s Los Angeles offices with the company heads like Mo Ostin, men you can have a laugh with, but who you just don’t abuse. Predictably, Warner had decided to drop Warner/Spector. I took it to Polydor and we started again with Phil Spector International. But things had gone crazy so fast it was still Christmas, so we put out the famous album again, in another nice wrapping and sold another two hundred thousand in quick time. It sold so fast that sometimes it became out of stock and was changing hands for thirty-five quid—a weekly wage to many people. Inevitably, Phil fell out with Polydor and we released it yet again, on another label. Every time we released it, it would sell another quarter of a million copies. It was crazy, but we all made pots of money. Well, I thought in a quietly reflective moment, we’ve gone from Warner/Spector to Phil Spector International and done well. It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. The vampire awoke, reached out of his coffin for the phone, woke me up, wanted me to form “Phil Spector’s World Records!” It had to happen.
Phil was screaming down the phone at me in his terrifying, high-pitched voice. “Come on over! I want to release everything now! I want to take over the world! Get out of bed!”
I did. I went to the airport, checked in and went back to sleep. In L.A. again, I woke and drove up to Castle Spector, Phil’s fortress high on Mulholland Drive. My previous experiences had taught me that the temperature at Phil’s fortress was kept about the same as Christmas in England. The A/C was cranked to maximum all the year round, and I soon got used to people laughing at me when I went over to his place in an army greatcoat and mittens. “Hey Buddy,” cab drivers would say when I hailed them outside the Sunset Marquis, at noon. “Where ya going? The fuckin’ North Pole?” Of course when they hear your English accent they know you’re some kind of eccentric anyway.
Since I’d last been there, Phil had found time to turn his Bela Lugosi home into a real fortress. It had even more machine-gun turrets at the corners and razor wire to keep out the nasty, thieving world. To stop her running away, he locked Veronica “Ronnie” Ronette up like she was some black Transylvanian princess in a tower and not the beautiful girl who sang “Baby I Love You,” and won the hearts of millions. But, while making her the Prisoner of Mullholland Drive, Phil forgot to lock up his secret liquor cabinet, which Ronnie, bored to death, accidentally discovered. Soon she was out of it, on whiskey and broken dreams. It was all Raymond Chandler in black-and-white, like The Big Sleep.
Sometimes, when I arrived, Phil would be firing guns down the long drive. I never knew what he’d look like because he changed his hair, his makeup and his complete outfit every hour. I wondered if he would end up like Howard Hughes, who also changed his clothes constantly, before he stopped wearing any at all. After the second of two very bad car smashes, when Phil was pulled out of the wreck clinically dead, but revived, the experience left him convinced that he was still dead. Maybe that was his fascination with Bela Lugosi. His other best friend was Stan Laurel. Before they died, he’d often had all three of his pals—Lugosi, Laurel and Lenny Bruce—around for dinner. The conversation must have been like something out of a surreal movie. When Lenny died, heartbroken, Phil organized the most spectacular New Orleans–style funeral, complete with plumed black horses and marching bands, in the middle of L.A. I often thought he still had his friends around for dinner after they died, in spirit.
His fascination for the macabre also extended to his décor, which was like the set of Gloria Swanson’s movie, Sunset Boulevard. Most of the rooms were pitch dark. A fish tank illuminated the living room. This could have been to hide the mess the car crash had made of his face. He had needed a thousand stitches and covered the livid scars with thick pancake makeup. I will always remember during our marathon drinking sessions how he would stroll around like a wandering minstrel singing “Baby I Love You” and playing a guitar with a .38, hitting it like an Irish drum, using the barrel as a sort of industrial pick. I would gingerly edge away and find a corner to hide around, convinced that I would be hit by a flying bullet. Happiness was definitely a warm gun—though how he didn’t shoot himself I never knew.
It wasn’t all bad. His three adopted children, aged about eight, six and five when I first met them, lived with him. Who looked after them, I have no idea. I have a sneaky feeling it could have been Phil’s bodyguard, George, who fed them and made sure they went to school and to bed. There never seemed to be any sign of a woman after Ronnie tunneled out. But they appeared to be delightful, charming, well-adjusted kids and it was obvious that Phil adored them. He would hold their hands, stroke their hair and smile indulgently at them.
However, when Phil once showed them a photograph of himself in the studio with Ike and Tina Turner, the kids said, “Which one’s you, Daddy?”
Sometimes when I arrived, Phil would say, “I’ll be back in a minute—” Then he’d disappear like the malevolent genie he was and leave me alone.
After I’d gotten used to his little games, I’d think, “Oh-oh. Here we go again. It’s mind-game time.” Often he wouldn’t be back for hours. Or he would go shopping! When I ran out of patience and got up to leave, somehow he always seemed to know, and he’d come running in, a strange smile flickering about his face like swamp lightning, to challenge me to some crazy drinking contest. These contests were a bit one sided. I would have to drink a bottle of vodka—though Phil could only have a bottle of diabetic Cab Sauv. Ten minutes later I’d be out of my brain singing along to “Frosty the Snowman” at top volume, and he’d be doing a war dance and shouting, “I won! I beat the fuckin’ Limey!” Surreal! It was hardly surprising, considering that above the bar was another of the placards that read: HANGOVERS INSTALLED AND RESERVICED.
Once, Phil really didn’t come back for hours. I was half convinced he was either watching me on a CCTV camera, or hiding behind the paneling watching me through a peephole, so I stuck it out. In the end I decided that not even Spector would hide that long staring at a bored Tony Bramwell, so I poured myself a large drink, then another and wandered off around the house making V signs wherever I thought I’d come across a CCTV camera.
Eventually I got tired of that and, stumbling across a room that contained a beautiful pool table, I decided to play myself. Why not? Unlike the drinking contest, I might even win. The balls were all over the table, so I collected them, racked ’em up, tossed a coin to see who would go first. I won and broke the pack like I was in the final of the Budweiser World Championships in Las Vegas. I went back and forth, had a few drinks. Got into it. Smoked a cigar from the stash in the humidor on the bar. Took off my army greatcoat. Loosened my tie. I was about to go for a difficult three-cushion shot, needing plenty of Body English, when I thought I could hear the crowd cheering me on, shouting, “Go for it, Bramwell! Go, baby, go!”
But it was George, Phil’s huge minder, going apeshit, shouting, “Oh no! Bramwell!” George had come looking for me.
Great, I’ll play George. “Rack ’em up,” I shouted back.
George was waving his arms and shouting, “No no no! Oh my God! Phil’s gonna kill me!” He was white. I thought it was the cold and offered him my coat. Eventually, when he could speak coherently, he said, “Look, Brammers, this is a hell of a mess. Both our jobs are on the line.”
“But I didn’t leave the house, George,” I said, “and I only poured a few drinks. Oh, and I smoked a cigar or two.”
He completely ignored me. “Do you remember where the balls were before you racked ’em?” he demanded in a trembling voice.
I said, “Not really, George. They were everywhere. All over the table.”
George said, “That’s right. But you better start remembering quick, because that’s how Minnesota Fats left those balls when he was playing Phil. And as Fats is dead, he ain’t coming back to finish the game. In fact, he packed his cue and ran out on the game, first time in h
is career, Fats said, and a ton of money riding on it. But he told me he ain’t never seen nothing like Phil—and never wanted to again. So this table, Tony, it’s a shrine. Fats is Phil’s all-time hero. It was gonna stay the way it was when Fats left it, forever.”
I looked at him and said, “George, don’t worry. I have a photographic memory, and I’ve just remembered where every ball was.”
It was freezing in that mausoleum of a poolroom, but George mopped his brow. He smiled. “Know what?” he said, “I think I believe you.”
I replaced the balls and we removed all traces of my presence before returning to the living room to wait for Phil. Obviously he hadn’t been watching me on CCTV, because when he came in, nothing at all was said, and we got on with taking over the world. Again.
In the middle of all this Phil decided to go into the studio and produce an album with Dion DiMucci, as in Dion and the Belmonts. Mostly I left him to it, and took time to do some sunbathing around the famous pool at the Sunset Marquis. I was amazed to see a constant stream of people I knew well staying at my hotel. Elton John was doing his famous Benny and the Jets concerts at the Dodger Stadium, dressed in his glittery baseball outfit. He had flown all the showbiz press and media over from the U.K. including Bob Harris and the Old Grey Whistle Test people. During a respite from the fortress, I was sitting by the pool, reading Rolling Stone, when I heard Bruce Springsteen’s familiar New Jersey voice behind me.
“Hi Bramwell—what’s happening?”
When Bruce heard I was working with Spector, his eyes lit up. “My hero! Introduce me,” he begged.
The E Street Band used Spector’s Wall of Sound a hell of a lot—indeed, Born to Run sounded as if it could have been a Spector production, it was so close. Bruce was doing a week’s residency at the Roxy in L.A. and when the press found out where he was staying, they turned up in force. However, he already had a reputation with the press, so they were terrified to approach him. Even the hardened music journos and drunks circled at a distance like jackals, waving and trying to attract my attention. In the end, when I went to the men’s room, I was besieged. “ ’Ere, Tone, ’ow about introducing us to Bruce, eh?” I quickly became Bruce’s unofficial PR rep. “Bruce, this is Ray Coleman. Tony Parsons, this is Bruce Springsteen.”
The shows at the Roxy were little short of phenomenal. Everything Bruce had been working toward came together. He was on the top of his form. Combat trousers and knitted hat. A complete showbiz band fronted by a magic tramp, the sort of show that usually only happens in the movies. This was before Bruce got into the bodybuilding. He was still skinny, fey looking, really. Stealing all the girls’ hearts. At the first show I sat with Annette Funicello, the beach-movie icon and head Mouseketeer for Disney. Also with us was Carol Connors, who was one of Phil Spector’s Teddy Bears, when Phil had written, “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” After the show, I introduced Bruce to the girls. He decided that he wanted to go to Disneyland. We all went the next day, getting VIP passes through Carol, who now wrote for Disney. We spent a wonderfully silly day there, and had the best pirate-hatted, all-the-ride-taking time ever. It felt unreal. Me at Disney with the head mouse and the E Street Band. Only in America.
Before we left town, I knew Bruce would ask me again to introduce him to Phil. Funny as it seemed to me for a Brit from Liverpool to introduce one American icon to another, I did it gladly. I reasoned that if Phil grabbed Bruce round the neck, throttled him, shouting, “You stole my sound, ya bum, I’m gonna rip ya fuckin’ neck off!” there would be little I could do, except perhaps offer to put out Phil’s Christmas album again. Happily, they got on. It blew Bruce’s mind (his words) especially when he found that Phil was doing an album with Dion, who was another of Bruce’s all-time heroes. It was like, here are your fantasies, Bruce—fill your boots up. It made me go all fuzzy, too.
While I had seen the press go weak at the knees for Springsteen, Bruce himself was now “in awe.” He was shy, both with Spector and Dion. Cool, however, was recovered, and he and Phil joined in and helped with a couple of the tracks. Bruce, Phil and Roy Carr, a journalist on the New Music Express, became the Belmonts for Dion for the day, clapping and cooing, doowopping and oohing and aahing away in the background. What the Eagles once called “oohs for dollars”—except this was free and fun. I watched as bliss set in for once around Phil Spector for a few hours. Born to Run? Time to go.
Phil moved out of the fortress eventually—too many bad memories, he said—and into his new Alhambra home, where a dead body was discovered in 2003, leading to his arrest. I was sorry to hear about it. In all the years I knew him, although women seemed to find him fascinating, and he often had affairs with female singers he produced, I had never known him pick women up or have a casual one-night stand, as appears to be the case with the woman found shot in his home. But I know one thing: whoever is still left from the old days will not be surprised.
It was almost predictable. The miracle is, it took so long. As John Lennon, who fatefully cowrote with Paul “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” once said to me, “Phil’s a genius but he’s nuts.” John would have recognized Phil’s flawed personality because it described John himself perfectly.
George and Ringo and especially Paul were pretty normal lads, but there is no doubt that John was different. He used to see other faces in mirrors when he looked into them and heard voices. Much like Phil—or Philip, as he preferred to be called when I managed him—though frankly, he was unmanageable. There’s no escaping the fact he was, as John said, nuts. Wobblers in the studio, shooting out the lights when the musos weren’t doing what he wanted, shooting the Coke machine, blowing the end of the gun like Billy the Kid. He was always in court, always in turmoil. Fortressed up. Pulling his cloak around him up there on the west turret, staring through the Nitesight on his Armalite for intruders, but maybe seeing only three black girls hanging out by the gate who wanted to make a record. “Come down and let us in, Phil.”
At the end of October, I escaped the madness of Spector’s castle. I flew back to London, along with Bruce, and all the Old Grey Whistle Testers and the music press. The whole contingent was now as thick as thieves. They wrote their articles on the plane and in London the next morning, the newspapers said: “Is London Ready for Bruce Springsteen?”
The long flight left me plenty of time to reflect on both Phil and Bruce, each of them brilliant in different ways, both prone to depression. One could cope and one didn’t try. In the midseventies, long before producer Jon Landau over in the U.S. had coined the immortal dictum, “I have seen the future of rock and roll and it’s Bruce Springsteen,” and Time and Newsweek sat up and paid some attention, Bruce was already known as a sort of “Noo Joysey Bob Dylan” anyway.
I had promoted Bruce’s first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, in the U.K. Right off, it started to get some good airplay, and I managed to make it Noel Edmunds’ Album of the Week, and Kid Jensen’s Radio Luxembourg Album of the Week. It wasn’t long before I realized that, incredibly, nobody this side of the Atlantic was interested in Springsteen’s music publishing. I asked his manager, Mike Appel, if I could help find him a publishing deal. Mike jumped on the idea so Adrian Rudge and I took the material to Intersong, Polygram’s publishing arm, and Bruce was signed up. Then Adrian persuaded Manfred Mann to cut his “Blinded by the Light.” It was a hit. I persuaded the Hollies and their singer, Allan Clarke, to cut songs, like the “Fourth of July,” “Asbury Park,” and “The Priest.” Bruce was a happy man and we struck up quite a friendship.
However, Bruce ground to a halt. He’d reached a plateau and was still doing gigs at the Bottom Line in New York, or the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, and although these were nice gigs to do, his backing band, soon to be feted as possibly the backing band of all time, was constantly falling apart because Bruce couldn’t pay them properly or regularly. Bruce also had his own personal problems and was often depressed. Looking back on these situations it seems like a dream. Bruce Springsteen depressed and having n
obody to talk to? But, it happens all the time. Memories like mine are filled with talented people who didn’t make it out the other end to success. There is no guarantee that just because you have what it takes, that you’ll be lucky and win.
Bruce would call me at all hours, for some light relief and to cheer himself up. Later, he called more often because more was happening for him in Europe. We became “phone pals,” our conversations ranging far and wide until Born to Run broke in the States. He was like Spector on adrenaline. “Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and stepping out over the line . . .” Nice.
He made the front covers of Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone and his career was up and running. How good it is to see someone who is talented take flight.
When we arrived in London, Bruce checked into the Churchill on Portman Square and we went down to do a sound check at the Hammersmith Odeon, where he was to do a gig. By now, it was like a traveling road show with Bruce as a sort of Pied Piper. The Whistle Test people were filming, journos scribbling. The place was hopping. It was as if everybody sensed that something explosive in the music world was happening before their very eyes. History tells us it was.
However, I was watching Bruce very carefully, and something else was also happening. As Bob Dylan once said about a hapless journo, “You know that something’s happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” I don’t know if Bruce was jet-lagged, or just plain tired, or if events were moving so fast that they were doing him in. He certainly wasn’t drunk or speeding. But I could see that something was building up inside him. He was getting very impatient, especially with the people who had been sent along from CBS, his record company.
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