Tearing Down the Wall of Sound

by Mick Brown

  The number of musicians that Spector assembled for the sessions, which took place between May and August at Abbey Road, almost equaled the size of the team that had once filled Gold Star. There were the drummers Ringo Starr, Jim Gordon and Alan White; Klaus Voormann and Carl Radle on bass; the keyboard players Gary Wright, Gary Brooker and Billy Preston; the horn players Bobby Keys and Jim Price; guitarists Dave Mason, Eric Clapton, Pete Drake and Harrison himself, along with members of the Apple group Badfinger. Voormann, who had played on the “Instant Karma” session, was fascinated and impressed to see Spector now working with a much larger ensemble of musicians, reassembling his old Wall of Sound on the foundations of a massed battalion of guitarists and keyboard players.

  “When you analyze what Phil did, it was just amazing,” Voormann remembers. “He took away all the baffles between the instruments, because he wanted the sound of each to meld into the other. And he was very particular about where he positioned the acoustic guitars, sitting them right in front of the drums so he got this live drum sound from the room sound. He somehow managed to get the sound so it sounded like glass on top. And then he would have a completely ‘dry’ bass drum, and a completely ‘dry’ bass and a completely ‘dry’ voice, against this whole thing. It sounded just incredible.”

  The sessions quickly fell into an established pattern. Spector would arrive at Abbey Road each afternoon, habitually dressed in neatly pressed jeans and wearing outsized aviator shades that were forever sliding down his nose. He would complain noisily about the antiquated air-conditioning and lighting, setting the temperature as close to “arctic” as possible, and plunging the studio into a state of near darkness. Saffron-robed Hare Krishna followers drifted in and out delivering vegetarian food. At the end of each session, Spector would depart with George Brand to be chauffeured back to his hotel, leaving the musicians to unwind in a series of prolonged jam sessions that would be boiled down to the “fourth side” of the eventual album.

  For the first few weeks things went well, then Spector began to grow impatient. Harrison—as much a perfectionist as Spector, and now particularly anxious that his first solo project should be as perfect as possible—constantly fretted over his vocals and his guitar playing. Usually, it was Spector who kept people waiting. Now the boot was on the other foot.

  The more Harrison belabored his performance, the more irritated Spector became—at Harrison, and everything around him. He couldn’t sleep in his hotel. England was dank and drafty. He hated the food. He felt perpetually homesick. He hated television: he phoned a friend in California and complained that he’d been “watching someone painting a wall for six hours.” His growing boredom and unhappiness now began to manifest in another way. He started drinking.

  Spector had always been abstemious in his habits. Drugs exaggerated his perpetual fear of being out of control. He would occasionally smoke a cigarette, or more likely a cigarillo, but it was not a habit. When he drank, it was sparingly. If musicians turned up at his sessions drunk or stoned he would become apoplectic. It offended his perfectionism.

  But now he started drinking in earnest himself, gulping down Courvoisier in the long hours as the sessions ground on. He would later explain to the Los Angeles Times journalist Robert Hilburn that he was “letting his hair down” after all the hard work of the ’60s.

  “I ran a company all that time. I didn’t even think about drugs and I never had any alcohol, to any extent, until 1972 [sic] when I went to England to work with George Harrison and I started getting bored.”

  But that was only part of the problem. As much as anything else, Spector was drinking to ease his nerves. More than anyone, he respected the Beatles’ place at the pinnacle of the musical hierarchy, revered them. For all his outward displays of arrogance and bravado, Spector was thrilled to have been acknowledged and, finally, accepted by them; at the same time he was terrified of the possibility of failure and rejection. He particularly idolized Lennon, who by this time had begun to drink heavily. Anxious and insecure, Spector followed suit. Spector would quickly go from being a garrulous drunk to an unpleasant one. Alcohol, according to one friend, was “poison to his system. Phil would have two drinks and he’d become Mr. Hyde. It was like he’d taken some kind of potion. He would turn on people and be horrible.”

  The longer the sessions wore on, and the more he drank, the more his mood began to sour. “Phil started getting pretty obnoxious,” Voormann remembers. Now it was Spector who began wasting time, performing in the control room with a stream of ad libbing and teasing. He took particular delight in making fun of the tape operator, Eddie Klein, who was endowed with a prominent nose. “Phil was on him all the time,” Voormann says. “If Eddie did anything wrong, there’d be half an hour of jokes and laughing at his expense. Cruel for Eddie perhaps, but great fun for everybody else. You could have a great time with Phil making you laugh and all that. But then it got to the point where you realized, My God, he’s fucking up the whole session, so can he please go home so we can get some work done.”

  On one occasion, Spector was so drunk he fell off his chair, injuring his arm badly enough that he was obliged to absent himself from the studio for a few days.

  In August, with the basic tracks completed, and his patience and enthusiasm apparently exhausted, Spector flew back to America, leaving Harrison to handle a number of guitar and vocal overdubs himself. On August 19 he dispatched Harrison a five-page memo outlining the work he felt was still required to bring the album up to scratch, written in the temper of a weary schoolmaster marking the homework of a particularly recalcitrant pupil.

  “Awaiting on You All”: The mixes I heard had the voice too buried, in my opinion, I’m sure we could do better…“All Things Must Pass”: I’m not sure if the performance is good or not. Even the first mix you did which had the “original” voice, I’m sure is not the best you can do…“My Sweet Lord”: An acoustic guitar, perhaps playing some frills, should be overdubbed or a solo put in…“Behind That Locked Door”: The voice seems a little down…I think you should spend whatever time you are going to on performances so that they are the very best you can do and that will make the remixing of the album that much easier. I really feel that your voice has got to be heard throughout the album so that the greatness of the songs can really come through…Much love. Regards to everyone. Hare Krishna, Phil Spector.

  Harrison would later protest that Spector had paid insufficient attention to the project. But Spector was unmoved by what he described to friends as Harrison’s “complaining. There’s a real problem if I have to be there to tell a Beatle how to sing.”

  “I know George said that he would have liked Phil to be present more,” Dan Kessel says. “But Phil’s view was: Hey, I did what I needed to do and I was there as much as I needed to be. I’m sure it wasn’t necessary for Phil to hold George’s hand while he was doing the twelfth overdub track of the third harmony part on the slide guitar for the last cut on side Z. In the film business, they have second units and second-unit directors for that kind of thing. And George received producer’s credit for his second-unit work.”

  Released in November 1970, All Things Must Pass was universally greeted as a masterpiece. Rather than engulfing Harrison, Spector’s densely textured production served to brilliantly illuminate and complement the strength of his songs and performances. The album went to number 4 in Britain, but spent seven weeks at number 1 in America, while the exultant “My Sweet Lord” reached number 1 in both countries—the first single by an ex-Beatle to top the charts. Thirty years later, Harrison would reissue a remixed version of the album on a CD box set, explaining in his sleeve notes his feeling that some songs required “liberating” from a production that “seemed appropriate at the time but now seems a bit over the top with the reverb in the wall of the sound.” Harrison also paid credit to Spector. “In his company I came to realize the true value of the Hare Krishna mantra.” Whether as an expression of universal love or personal forbearance in the face of trying
circumstance, he did not specify.

  John Lennon returned from America galvanized by his sessions with Arthur Janov and inspired to write a series of songs, bitter and cathartic, spewing out all his venom, anger and frustration—against life, the Beatles and everything. In September 1970, Lennon, Yoko and Spector assembled at Abbey Road, to begin work on what would become John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Klaus Voormann, who again played bass, remembers that the album was recorded in an adrenaline rush, with little time expended on discussion or rehearsal. “John had written down the lyrics and underneath he wrote C, F, G or whatever the chords were—that was our guide. And the words were written bigger than normal. He wanted us to really listen, to understand them and play something that fitted the lyrics.”

  Lennon would later describe Primal Therapy and the album that resulted from it as like being given a mirror to look into his soul—“and I wasn’t looking in it from a sort of mystical perspective which tended to color things, or a psychedelic perspective or being-the-famous Beatle perspective or making-a-Beatle-record perspective, all those things gave a color to what I did.”

  Lennon had never written songs more revelatory, nor more corrosively powerful—and nor would he ever again—about personal abandonment, the hypocrisies of the British class system, the opiates of religion, wealth and fame: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain…” he sang in the magnificent “God,” offering a renunciation of all the things he did not believe in—Jesus, Elvis, Beatles. “I just believe in me.”

  Spector listened carefully. Putting aside whatever thoughts he might have had of rebuilding the Wall of Sound, as he had for George Harrison, he instead fashioned a stark and spare production that perfectly matched the tenor of Lennon’s songs, from the brittle, snapping anguish of “Mother” (heralded by the tolling of a funereal bell) to the gossamer delicacy of “Love,” employing only a piano (played by Spector himself), bass and a gently strummed acoustic guitar.

  “I think Phil himself had strong ideas about how the record should sound, and he and John talked about it,” Klaus Voormann remembers. “It certainly wasn’t just a case of Phil saying ‘I do what John wants me to do’ it was more that Phil knew what was the best approach for this particular album. But that’s where he’s so brilliant. He didn’t have to do his big sound; he could do something very fine, delicate and sensitive, whatever was appropriate for the song and the moment.

  “He was very calm, very concentrated, very reliable; a really, really good producer. And he was incredible when he was just sitting at the piano, playing songs, whether it was one of John’s he was working on before recording, or one of his own. I remember one day he did a version of ‘River Deep—Mountain High’ as a ballad, just him on the piano, with his funny, squeaky voice, and it was so beautiful. You knew then, this man is a genius. But he wouldn’t let it be captured on tape. He was always hyper-aware of what was going on around him. You sensed he would know if a tape machine was running three rooms down the corridor. He’s a tough cookie from New York; nobody can cheat him…that sort of attitude.”

  Recording the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album had the effect of forging the bonds between Spector and Lennon. They had much in common. Musically speaking, both shared a love of early rock and roll—the Sun recordings and Chuck Berry—and each had enormous respect for the other’s work. But the ties went to a deeper, more symbiotic level than that. For both men, the wellspring of their creativity was an anger at the world, born of a deep unhappiness. Both had been nine years old when they lost their fathers—Lennon’s deserting him, Spector’s taking his own life (one can only imagine Spector’s feelings listening in the studio as Lennon performed the song “Mother,” addressing his absent father with undisguised fury—“Father, you left me, but I never left you…”). Spector could identify with Lennon’s view that “talented people must always be in great pain—their sensitivity is what makes them great artists.” Spector had always found it hard to forge deep and abiding friendships. He did not readily give of himself to other people. His guard was always up. But in John Lennon, he believed he had found a kindred spirit, someone who had suffered as he had, and who was just as vulnerable. He would come to describe Lennon as “like the brother I’d never had.”

  Spector had never before deferred to anybody in the studio, but he had no hesitation in subordinating himself to Lennon as “co-producer.” “John knew how to shut Phil up,” one friend remembers. “He was one of the few people who’d let Phil know if he was out of line. Other people didn’t have the courage.”

  Nor did Spector raise any objection when it became apparent that Yoko had equal say in all matters. Spector’s attitude toward women could be haughtily dismissive, but he indulged Yoko, listening attentively to her suggestions (even if he seldom acted on them), all too aware that, without Yoko on his side, Lennon would be lost to him. “Actually, it wasn’t difficult to work that out,” Peter Brown says. “John deferred to Yoko in everything and put her on this pedestal. But it was perfect for Phil and for Yoko. It gave him something to work on, and she was desperate to make music that would be recognized. She was a very single-minded person. She saw Phil as a tool; somebody who was very powerful in the business, who clearly could be used because he wasn’t a Beatle person. Their agendas coincided.”

  “Everybody talks about Phil as this crazy man, out of control,” Klaus Voormann says. “But behind all that he was actually this very quiet, intelligent man who had a great sense of humor. And he got on with Yoko particularly well. He could talk to her, make jokes with her—and it must have been hard for him, because she said lots of things to him that, for a professional, were unbelievable. She wouldn’t know technically what was going on, and she would say something that didn’t hit the spot at all, that was completely wrong, but he would find a way to explain it to her, or overlook it. He was very diplomatic.”

  Spector himself would talk later of Yoko being “quiet and helpful, and good to have around. And I gave her credit on the label. I had no choice. John was a brother and he loved her, so I had to figure out a way to use Yoko for my benefit. And the way I used Yoko was that I worked with John twenty-four hours a day, or sixteen hours a day, and when it became sleep time and crazy time for us, I sent him off to Yoko. She could see the value of me, like Ike Turner could see the value of me. Ike was dominating Tina until I came along, and he said, ‘Go to it.’ He let me rehearse with her, take her along, do anything I wanted, because it was in Ike’s best interest. And for Yoko, it was in her best interest, because she was along for the ride. And she was getting more famous. But my ego is so in control and I’m so confident in my ego and talent and ability that I didn’t mind giving her a credit on the label.”

  With Spector preoccupied with his work with Lennon and Harrison, Ronnie had been languishing in New York, convinced that her career was now all but over. But in February 1971 Spector gave her news that lifted her spirits. George Harrison, always a fan, had written a song especially for her—a stately ballad called “Try Some, Buy Some.” Ronnie, astonished and delighted at the prospect of recording a Harrison composition, flew to London in high optimism and gave interviews to the British music press, talking enthusiastically of resurrecting her career. But when it came to the recording at Abbey Road, she was completely baffled by the song. “Try Some, Buy Some” was a long way from “Be My Baby.” Harrison had written a hymn about rejecting materialism and embracing Krishna that Ronnie could not even understand, let alone invest with any meaning.

  Spector dressed the song in a richly textured arrangement of strings and mandolins, which seemed more the point of focus than Ronnie’s voice. Ronnie herself would describe it as “like a movie where the star only appears now and then” and would candidly admit she thought the record “stunk.” The record flopped. Her comeback over before it had begun, Ronnie packed her bags and returned to New York.

  Spector, by comparison, was working at a rate to rival his furious energy of the early ’60s. In June, he joined the
Lennons at their home recording studio at Tittenhurst Park, to begin work on yet another album, Imagine.

  The anguished catharsis of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band had proved strong meat for Beatles fans, and the album had been only an equivocal success, reaching number 6 in America and number 8 in the U.K., its sales a drop in the ocean compared to those of Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Stung perhaps by the success of the man he had always regarded as very much a junior partner, Lennon had now come up with a collection of songs rich in hooks and melodies that equaled, in some cases surpassed, anything he had written for the Beatles.

  Throughout the three-week sessions, Spector once again subordinated his role, attending principally to faithfully rendering all the nuances of Lennon’s songs, infusing them with a rare warmth and intimacy, and encouraging him to sing more movingly than at any time in his career.

  During the recording of the title track, Lennon’s hymn to utopian peace and brotherhood, proceedings were enlivened by the arrival of Spector’s friend Dennis Hopper, who had flown over from Cannes. In the years since Easy Rider, Hopper had been vigorously pursuing a regime of mind-altering drugs and alcohol and he presented a querulous and quixotic figure. “At one point,” Hopper recalls, “Phil came up to me and said, ‘John just took me aside and told me “your friend Hopper has a gun hanging out of his pocket. Maybe he should do something about that.” ’ So guess I had a pistol in my pocket. Well, I did have a pistol in my pocket. But the truth is, I didn’t know too much about anything at that point.”