by Mick Brown
“Black music is our American culture. But our folk music is George Gershwin and Jerome Kern. I was always listening to jazz, rock and roll—sepia music, they called it then; black music. The thing that I liked about rock and roll music, before they called it rock and roll, was that they didn’t only sing their own songs. The Fortunes would sing ‘Marie’ by Irving Berlin. They were open about it. That was what was wonderful in those days. When we were number one with ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him,’ number two was ‘Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu’ by Domenico Modugno; number three was Conway Twitty with ‘It’s Only Make Believe’—a country and western song. So rock and roll really gave everybody a chance.”
He reached for his glass, enjoying the roll of the conversation.
Did I know he’d first met Elvis Presley in 1958?
“Sure…And in 1960 I worked on his album, coming out of the army. Very few people know that. But Elvis was terrific, wonderful…
“I went to New York and tracked down his publishers, Hill and Range music. I went to them and said, ‘I’m a genius and I want to meet Elvis Presley.’ They said, ‘Sign a contract.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to sign a contract.’ I looked up all the writers—Doc Pomus—all the names I saw on records, and I knocked on all their doors and told them who I was and what I did. I had already recorded ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him.’ I was working at the UN as a translator and as a court reporter. I went to see all these people and just pushed my way in. And these people introduced me to Elvis, and Elvis liked me.”
He laughed. “I believed I was the best in the world. I really believed that. Everybody I met from Johnny Mercer to Ahmet Ertegun, I would tell them I was a genius. And then they would agree with me. I’d prove it to them, by conversation, talk. I made demos for Elvis, for songwriters. I made ‘Suspicion’ for Terry Stafford—I didn’t get any credit or any money. I didn’t care. I just loved making records. I did a lot of songs for Ahmet and Jerry Wexler that I didn’t take credit for, because I loved them. Ahmet was like a father to me. All these people loved me; they saw money in me. And I was willing to work for nothing. I did Elvis’s album for nothing. I just wanted a reputation, and the way you earn a reputation is by working and people start buzzing. And to have Elvis talking about you—very important. To have Ahmet Ertegun talking about you—he’s brilliant, he’s a genius—that’s more important than money. I was living in a seventy-five-dollar-a-month apartment. Didn’t matter. I was young and vital and they wanted young blood. It was a great fucking time.
“In the ’60s I was motivated by a sense of destiny. I didn’t know that Lincoln Ford Mercury, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken were going to be using our songs. But I sure as hell knew our songs were going to be around in forty years. I tried to tell all the musicians about a sense of destiny. Because they made fun of me. Even my good friends today, they made fun of the little kid who was making rock and roll records, and the hold notes—over and over, the same thing, the same thing, the same thing; and not playing for three hours and then at the last minute we play. Six hours and nine hours and twelve hours, the same thing over and over. I knew…
“These were the greatest musicians in the world. I would want these guys and only these guys. I knew it was demeaning to them, to have these giants playing ‘hold’ notes, because they were much better than this, but I didn’t care. Barney Kessel, Red Norvo. I knew these guys were saying ‘Shit’…But when they were doing it for one hundred thousand dollars a year for everyone else, trying to get the same sound, they were laughing all the way to the bank.
“I would try to tell all the groups, to impose a sense of destiny on them. We’re doing something very important to me. Trust me. I always called it art. And I was the first person that took the words AR and called it ‘producer.’ I said, I am the producer. I do everything. I produce this work. I was concerned with art. And it was very hard because these people didn’t have that sense of destiny. They didn’t know how good they were. They didn’t know they were producing art that would change the world. And it did change the world.
“I heard something different, and I saw a different kind of music coming out. I waited eight, ten records before I added strings. I heard a different kind of rock and roll than Fats Domino or Chuck Berry, who were big influences for me. I didn’t want to imitate or copy them. I never knew why I was commercial. I couldn’t figure that out. I didn’t think that what I was doing was commercial. Except I knew I was writing hits; I always knew what a hit song was. But I thought that what I was doing was a little too sophisticated compared to Fats Domino.
“I thought we had gone a little too far and each time I felt we were breaking the barrier a little too much. I thought we’d gone too far with ‘Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah.’ It was so big and busy that I couldn’t even put the drum in. There’s no drum on that record; only a bass drum. There was nowhere sound-wise I could fit it in. I tried for six hours and couldn’t fit it in. And then I thought, Well, maybe this record won’t work. And I always had that dilemma.”
What he had always wanted, he said, was the best, and to be best, and only the best. “I was very sure of what I was doing. I convinced myself that Gold Star was good, but it was the hardest studio in the world to work in. It would take me days and days to get the right sound, whereas at Motown…I used to be so envious of them, because they could go in and in five minutes get that same drum sound and ‘ooh, ooh, baby, baby,’ and make number-one record after number-one record. I’d say, ‘Shit—how do they do it so fucking easily?’ The Supremes, thirteen number-one records or whatever it was and I’m working my ass off, and my groups are leaving me left and right because I’m not putting out records. They loved me, but they couldn’t stand it. But it was more important to create the revolution to make the change. You think back on the history of American music and only a few names come up; not quantities of names. So I figured that’s okay.
“At Philles I was turning down records every day. I turned down ‘Louie, Louie’—all these number-one records. My distributors would call me, asking me to put them on Philles. I said, ‘I can’t put this shit on Philles, even if it is number one in Seattle or wherever. I mean, I love “Louie, Louie,” but I can’t put this shit on my label with “Be My Baby.” I have a standard, and I can’t lower it for money. I can’t do it.’”
He shrugged, as if to say, What could be clearer than that?
“Y’know, the hardest part was convincing people that it could be done. I’ve tried to teach Nicole, the hardest thing in life is people who don’t get it. About anything. I would explain what I was doing to people and they just didn’t get it.
“If I wanted three pianos, I couldn’t get three pianos in the studio, so I’d get three piano players sitting at one piano, fighting to get their hands on it. Leon Russell, Brian Wilson sometimes…”
He laughed at the memory.
“People said, ‘Three people sitting at a piano? You can’t do that! You can’t make the needle go into the red! You can’t do this or that.’ It’s always: You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. So timing put me in a position where I can do these things. Because I had these ideas, these thoughts, these sounds in my head. I would read about Mozart and Beethoven and Wagner and it was all about what they had, how they could express themselves and how many people didn’t believe in them.”
So you wanted immortality? I asked.
He nodded vigorously. “Yes. Very much. I think when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was thinking, People will remember this. When Gershwin wrote, he may have said, ‘I don’t know about this American in Paris,’ but I think he said, ‘This is something special.’ I think Irving Berlin had an ego, that he wanted people to remember this. I think he wanted to be number one. And so did I.”
He fell silent, as if, for a moment, awed himself by the story he had told, and the magnitude of its accomplishment, woven as it was from truth and myth so entangled it was impossible to tell one from the other. In the silence, I noticed that the classic
al music was still playing in the background.
He didn’t like to talk about the past, he said. But that couldn’t be right, because here, seated on the sofa talking about the past, he flamed into life—names, dates and song titles spilling out, old friends saluted, old enemies traduced.
“Berry Gordy?” He laughed. “I don’t see Berry doing very much. Wrote some good songs, ‘Money’ and all of that. But beyond that I feel there were more talented people in the organization. Like I think Holland, Dozier and Holland, they are genuinely giants in terms of writing and producing. They made some interesting statements. ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There.’”
When I asked him about the Righteous Brothers and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” he appeared to enter a reverie.
“You know, they didn’t want to do ‘Lovin’ Feelin’.” They wanted to do rock and roll, ooh-boop-a-doop stuff—the kind of stuff they were doing on Moonglow. They didn’t want to do a ballad.” He shook his head, as if to say, “idiots.”
“I worked six months on that fucking record. And a lot of people had come down to the studio and said, ‘It’s marvelous, it’s wonderful.’ Herb Alpert came down and said, ‘It’s incredible,’ this and that. I’d spent months overdubbing and re-overdubbing, and finally I had it down right where I thought it was pretty good, but that nobody would get it. Nobody would get the fucking record.
“I played it for a few people and nobody had heard anything like it. I didn’t know if we’d changed the musical world or done something completely catastrophic. So I had to go back to New York.
“I played it for Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil in my office on Sixty-second Street. I put it on, the record goes ‘You never close your eyes…’ and Barry says, ‘Whoah, whoah, wait. Wrong speed.’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘You’ve got it on thirty-three; that’s the wrong speed, Phil.’ That’s the first comment I hear!
“So I immediately called Dr. Kaplan, my psychiatrist, and I said, ‘Doc, I have to see you right away. I just worked six months on this record; it cost me thirty-five thousand dollars and the fucking co-writer thinks it’s on the wrong fucking speed.’ I called Larry Levine my engineer and said, ‘Have you given me the right pressing?’ I’m fucking paranoid. I didn’t know what to do. I called Donny Kirshner, the co-publisher—he’s got Carole King, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Gerry Goffin. I said, ‘Donny, I got to play you this record.’ He said, ‘I hear it’s a monster.’ I said, ‘You’ve got the best ears in the business, I’ve got to bring it over to you.’ So I bring it over and put it on. He goes, ‘Boops—it’s great, it’s great, it’s great; what do you call it?’ I said, ‘ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” ’ He said, ‘How many you got pressed up?’ I said, ‘Half a million.’ He said, ‘ “Bring Back That Lovin’ Feelin’”…’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘ “Bring Back That Lovin’ Feelin’”—that’s your title.’ I said, ‘No, no, no—“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” Trust me.’ That’s the second opinion. So I call Dr. Kaplan again…
“Then I call Murray the K, the biggest DJ in New York City. I said, ‘Murray, I need you to do me a favor. I have this new Righteous Brothers record. I need it to win the show tonight, because it’s a four-minute-and-five-second record; there’s never been a record this long before.’ And I’m lying on the label; I put three minutes five seconds—I got in a lot of fucking trouble. So he comes over and he listens to the record. This is the last opinion of the day—five o’clock in the afternoon. And he’s listening and listening, and it gets to the middle section—where the bass guitar line is. So Murray the K listens to it, and he says, ‘That bass line—that “La Bamba” thing, what’s that?’ I said, ‘That’s part of the song.’ He said, ‘That’s fucking sensational.’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ He said, ‘That’s how it should begin…’ I said, ‘It can’t begin that way.’ He said, ‘Make that the beginning.’ I said, ‘I can’t make that the beginning, Murray.’ And those are my three experts; the co-writer, the co-publisher and the number-one disc jockey in America, all killed me. I didn’t sleep for a week when that record came out. I was so sick, I got spastic colon; I had an ulcer.
“We did ‘Lovin’ Feelin’,’ ‘Unchained Melody.’ And in appreciation they left me; they went for the big bucks to MGM.” He paused. “They never had a hit again. I had all the hits. They had nothing.”
The Top 40 hits, the power plays, the tantrums, all the hype and bombast that came with being the First Tycoon of Teen—“We did it all! We did it all…!”
He threw himself back on the sofa and fell silent.
“We played the part…Tom Wolfe wrote about that. It just seemed natural at the time. I just felt I didn’t fit in. I was different. So I had to make my own world. And it made life complicated for me, but it made it justifiable. Oh, there’s the reason they hate my fucking guts; I look strange, I act strange, I make these strange records, so there’s a reason to hate my guts. Because I felt hated. Even when the music became big, I never felt like I fit in. I never hung out with everybody. I never did all the drugs and the parties. I didn’t feel comfortable. It felt too commercial to me. I preferred the studio. The outside world was like being the star again. Going out was always the big ordeal. Too hard. It was like being in front of an audience.”
Fame, success, the recognition he had always craved—when finally he found it, all of it was “a burden,” he said. “It was…scary. It was very frightening. It was a power. I felt powerful. But it was frightening because you always think of losing it every minute of the day. You look at poor people all the time. You think of yourself as poor all the time. You’re remembering yourself as poor all the time. You never quite accept it. Guilt all the time. And if you’re not too stable to begin with…Now I realize that if money can’t buy happiness you’re looking in the wrong places; you don’t know how to spend your money.”
Did he honestly believe that?
“Well, you can certainly get things to help you make yourself happy. People who say they don’t give a shit about money, I don’t know if they’re telling me the truth.”
What did money bring him?
“I never thought about it. Money just came with the art. It was a gift. It never was part of the plan.”
So he hadn’t dreamed of being rich?
“Never. Recognition, and power and control. But never, never that money was part of it. No, that wasn’t part of the game plan…”
I was reminded of something that Spector had once said about Lenny Bruce; that the great tragedy of Bruce was that he was remembered for all the wrong reasons—as a junkie, rather than a wise, funny and fearless man. Did Spector ever worry that a similar fate might befall him, remembered not for his brilliance but as…
“Maniacal?” He gave a thin smile. “Yeah, that’s why I say now: Let the art speak for itself. If the art’s maniacal, I’m maniacal.”
He paused. “Orson Welles spent his whole life chasing money, because he never made any money. And then he ended up being three hundred pounds, doing wine commercials. He never lived up to the genius that he was because he never knew what he wanted to do. He never made that commitment to what to be. He was caught up in being a playboy, a movie star, maybe being a senator. He didn’t know what he wanted to be. I made a commitment to what I wanted to be. I let the art speak for itself.”
I wondered, had he felt frightened when music changed in the mid-’60s, and the Wall of Sound began to fall out of fashion?
“It never bothered me.”
Surely, it must have, I protested.
He shook his head. “It really didn’t. I was a manufacturer of records, and a publisher and a writer. I was more intellectually surprised by the Beatle invasion and how to deal with that. But when the Beatles were still number one, two, three, four and five, I was still doing my thing. I was more devastated when the Christmas album didn’t sell. That was devastating to me, but I couldn’t take it personally because Kennedy was killed.
“But that was
a monumental thing to me—all the groups, all the work, all the time, all the money. Columbia had offered me a fortune for them to put it out…That was devastating. But when the winds changed, no. You know when I got a little concerned? When folk music came in. Peter, Paul and all that shit. Joan Baez…Dylan I could understand, because he was unique. But when all these fucking terrible folk groups from the Troubadour…and then when disco came in, whoah…That was disconcerting to me. When I don’t understand something, I get confused by it.”
He had lost his enthusiasm for music in the ’70s, he said. After working with the Beatles, what could possibly interest him?
“I did Dion because he was the king of doo-wop and I grew up listening to his music. I wanted him to be the next Bobby Darin, who was my dearest friend and I miss him very much. But I didn’t spend as much time with Dion on the album as I should have, because I really wasn’t interested. It was winding down for me, getting ready to pack it in.”
And Leonard Cohen?
“I wanted to work with Leonard and I like him. I knew it wouldn’t sell shit.” He shrugged. “I didn’t care.”
What could interest him after that? Michael Jackson?
“The most depressing, heinous thing. Starting out life as a black man and ending up as a white woman, what’s that all about? But the King? He’s no king. He’s a good singer, a good dancer. Good, but not Fred Astaire, not Elvis Presley…”
Rap music?
“Like the c got left off at the printers.”
Oasis?
“Jerks.”
Kurt Cobain?
“When Kurt Cobain died, somebody phoned me from Time magazine and said, ‘I haven’t been this upset since John Lennon died.’ I said, ‘You don’t know the difference between Kurt Cobain and John Lennon?’ He said, ‘No, what’s the difference?’ I said, ‘That’s too bad, because Kurt Cobain did!’”
Spector fell back on the sofa, as if exhausted by his tirade. “It’s all been done! It’s all been done!”