by Mick Brown
Lunch was served in the dining room, but Spector excused himself and vanished upstairs. In the hallway a photograph of Spector with Nancy Sinatra stood on a console table, with three slim books on psychiatry, between bookends, like an ironic display. I ate alone, then walked in the garden, looking down through the trees to the rooftops of Alhambra far below. When at length he returned, Spector looked at the food, shook his head, and led the way back into the sitting room.
“I’m not addicted to applause,” he said, “because I live a life of reclusiveness.” He paused. “My friend Doc Pomus, when people used to say, ‘I hear Phil Spector’s a recluse,’ he would say, ‘Not recluse, reckless, baby! Reckless!’” Spector smiled to himself.
He paused. “I learned there’s not much in the world that appeals to me. Like, normal society doesn’t really appeal to me. Television—chewing gum for the eyes. It’s nonsense. Y’know, the real world—the nine-to-five, the banking—that doesn’t appeal to me. I’m not missing out on much by missing out on the real world. You’ve been on a plane. Is there much to miss out on there? Actually I’m flown in my own plane. I don’t see I’m missing out on much by going through security, or standing in line in the market reading the Enquirer, or watching Jerry Springer. What am I missing? I used to think I was missing a lot by not being normal; that I was an outcast. But not now.”
For years, he said, he had not been well. “I was crippled inside. Emotionally. Insane is a hard word, but it’s manic-depressive, bipolar. I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t say I’m schizophrenic. But I have a bipolar personality, which is strange. I have devils inside that fight me. And I’m my own worst enemy.”
For a long time—many years—he said, he had been unable to function as “a regular part of society. So I chose not to. Nicole is a twin. Her brother, Phillip, died when he was ten years old. Ten years ago. I don’t look for sympathy, but I had a difficult time after that. And Nicole and I went through a lot. It was a difficult time and all my close friends throughout my life—Lenny Bruce, John Lennon—had passed on. All the people I could talk to were gone. So I just sort of struggled along alone and chose not to work, and raise a daughter. And I chose, after the loss of Phillip, to get my life back on track.”
For years he did…nothing. He was incapable of action, he said. Paralyzed. Projects came and went unfulfilled. Nothing interested him. How, I asked, did he pass the time—the weeks, the months, the years? “I studied languages…” The sentence petered into silence. “I don’t remember how I spent a lot of that time. I don’t think it was a particularly good time.”
His mother and father were first cousins, he said. “I don’t know genetically whether or not that had something to do with what I am or who I became. And I was petrified by that fact. I was very scared and frightened by it. And as Nicole became older, I thought it would pass on to her. And even if she genetically wasn’t unwell, that she would become, by seeing me as an example, unwell herself, and be attracted to men like that—manic-depressive, or psychotic, or cuckoo.
“So getting myself together had a lot to do with having a relationship with my daughter. And I was determined to do it because of my daughter. I wanted her to know what a healthier relationship was like. And I wanted to have a healthier relationship with her than I could have as a neurotic, sick person. I wanted her to look up to me and say, ‘This is what a reasonable man is like.’ So she could have a reasonable relationship with me, and find a reasonable person, reasonable relationship in her life. I wanted to go places with her, do things with her—things that I couldn’t do before. It’s very important I could have a reasonable relationship with her. To be friends.”
He paused.
“You have to conquer yourself,” he said, “and take control of yourself.
“I make fun of a lot of people, like Brian Wilson, because they don’t have control over themselves. I think they’re largely phonies. They use their illness as an excuse. I have no mercy for that.”
But Wilson, I said, idolized him.
“I know. He does interviews; he writes his autobiography about me. I know, I know, I know.”
He shrugged. “It’s sad, you know, but I don’t know if you can feel sorry for untalented people. Maybe he’s not that talented. Maybe he’s overrated. Maybe. Jimi Hendrix was not overrated. Janis Joplin was not overrated. I feel sorry that they died, because they shouldn’t have. They should have been a little smarter. Brian Wilson outlived his brothers, for God’s fucking sake. How do you figure that? Carl Wilson—pretty bright guy. Dennis—pretty silly guy; y’know, a muppet. And Brian outlives them? But maybe Brian wasn’t that talented to begin with, and we’re burdening him with that. We make these people more than they are. I don’t feel sorry for Brian Wilson; I never thought he was that talented to begin with. I’m glad he idolizes me; I wish that Jimi Hendrix idolized me. I heard he did. I’d be more impressed if somebody with a brain idolized me.”
I told him that when I had met Brian Wilson he had talked of perhaps wanting to be produced by Spector.
He smiled. The idea was clearly preposterous.
“I don’t know if I have a feeling for what Brian might want to express today,” he said. “I don’t know if I have a feeling for what Bob Dylan might want to express today. Or Bruce Springsteen. I went to see Bruce and he’s put himself back in that place he was in the ’70s, with the E Street Band and Clarence and Stevie Van Zandt. And he’s protected himself with three new songs and twenty-five old ones.
“Springsteen said, ‘I want to sing like Roy Orbison, write songs like Bob Dylan and make records like Phil Spector.’ He said that at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and we appreciate that and God bless him…”
What did he think when he first heard Born to Run?
“I thought he should have paid me some royalties!” He laughed. “Jerry Wexler called me and said, ‘He should pay you royalties, Phil.’ But, again, that’s a lot more exciting, appetizing, interesting than being idolized by Brian Wilson. Because there’s a vibrant force in music who cares and is influenced by you. That means something. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery until it becomes plagiarism. Better they should imitate me than somebody else.”
His wristwatch spoke. “It’s four o’clock.”
Who, I asked, had been the greatest love of his life?
He looked away in silence. “Good friends,” he said. “It’s been Lenny; it’s been John…It’s been my friends and my little boy Phillip was probably the greatest love of my life.”
Both John and Lenny, he said, were like brothers. “John—it was the perfect marriage. Just perfect. He loved the way I worked. He loved the way I thought. We just loved each other.”
And Lenny?
“Lenny was like an older brother. I recorded him, supported him when he couldn’t work—when they wouldn’t allow him to work, and I buried him when he died. Losing Lenny and John was like losing my dad. Very, very emotional. Although I was too young to understand the value of losing my dad. Old enough to feel the loss, but not old enough to appreciate the loss until I was much older, and then I realized.”
He fell silent.
“But you just learn to put things in perspective…” he said at last. “It’s like those records; they were the greatest love of my life when I was making them. I lived for those records. I lived and breathed those records. That’s why I never had relationships with anybody that could last. They were my life; they were more important than anything. Nothing competed with them.” He paused, bewilderment flickering in his face. “That’s why I can’t figure out why they have so little significance to me today.”
I asked about his three adopted children—Donte, Gary and Louis—and his face became a mask.
“I see them occasionally, but I don’t have a close relationship with them; I don’t pretend to. We’re friends. But the only relationship I have with my children is with Nicole, with whom I’m very close. You have to have children when you’re ready to have children.
It’s like anything. If I had made these records when I was forty, I would have been able to handle it a lot better. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I knew what I was doing artistically, but I didn’t know what I was doing emotionally or physically. I couldn’t answer any of the questions; I didn’t know what I was doing. So I certainly didn’t know anything about having children or relationships.”
He made no mention of his first marriage, to Annette Merar. Nor of Janis Zavala, the person who, more than anyone, had loved and cared for Spector over the past thirty years. And when I asked about Ronnie, he could not even bring himself to speak her name.
“Not to get on a dissertation about ex-wives and shit like that. But wives and marriage isn’t a word, it’s a sentence; and wives last through our marriage, ex-wives last forever, and all that other bullshit. No disrespect, but I haven’t spoken to my ex-wife in more than thirty years; I couldn’t give a shit whether she lives or dies. I’ve been vindicated in the courts over and over. But she can still get up forty years later and sing the same fucking song and get applause. Could a typist do that? Could a stenographer? Look at it this way; I also recorded Tina Turner. She’s not complaining; she’s not suing anybody. Is it my fault that this ex-wife is not Tina Turner? Maybe it has something to do with a lack of a talent there that she can’t get justification in the courts. Maybe the courts should say, ‘You should be more talented,’ but they can’t say that. Maybe she’s not Diana Ross, Tina Turner. I made her famous, and she resents that. But give it up, for God’s sake. I don’t want anybody to thank me. I just say, ‘Why say, “Fuck you.” ’ Just leave me alone! ‘Oh, but he’s a control freak…’
“If you come down to what people really hate about Phil Spector, it’s that he controls everything…”
Did he care, I asked, what people thought of him?
“Very much. What’s very important to me is respect, that people respect me, respect what I did, and think that I’m the best at what I do. Other than that, I don’t care…”
And did he think he had been a good person?
The question stopped him for a moment. “Reasonable,” he said at last. “Reasonably good. I mean I haven’t done anything…” The thought went to silence.
“It’s funny—there isn’t anybody who has touched me who hasn’t had some sort of success with me; anyone who has touched me in the business who hasn’t made money; anyone at all. Not that it means anything, but it’s interesting. Because you hear such negative shit that people say, and yet every one of them has achieved some sort of success with me. So, yeah, yeah…good person.”
He paused, lost in thought. “My daughter sometimes asks me, ‘Dad, are you lonely?’ And I say, ‘Why do you ask me that?’ And she says, ‘Because you’re alone a lot of the time, and you keep to yourself and you don’t tell much about yourself.’ And I say, ‘Well, there’s a difference between being alone and lonely.’ I am alone, but I’m not lonely. I’ve talked to women about relationships, and I’ve heard what they wanted, and I walked away saying, ‘Gee…that’s what she wants in a relationship?’ And I’ve thought, I don’t know what I want in a relationship, but I know one thing; I want a hell of a lot more than that. And maybe I can’t find it with anyone. I’m not searching; I’m not looking for a relationship, because maybe it’s not there.
“I’ve got to learn to have a relationship with me and feel comfortable with me, doing what I’m doing and what I’m about. I would feel comfortable, as corny as it sounds, having a good relationship with myself. It’s what I’ve always wanted. For forty fucking years. A decent relationship with myself. A reasonable relationship with myself.
“I’m not going to ever be happy. Happiness isn’t on. Because happiness is temporary. Unhappiness is temporary. Ecstasy is temporary. Orgasm is temporary. Everything is temporary. But being reasonable is an approach. And being reasonable with yourself. It’s very difficult, very difficult to be reasonable.”
Once again he rose from the sofa and left the room. We had been talking for more than three hours, and now it was growing dark outside, the shadows lengthening in the room. Someone, I noticed, had turned off the music.
At length, Spector returned. In the growing twilight, he suddenly looked very old, and very vulnerable.
Had he reached a point in his life, I asked, where he knew he had to change or he would die?
“Well, I don’t want to sound like those people…like Charlie Sheen, who has gone through drug problems…” He gave a grim laugh.
“It was evolving…It had something to do with Nicole, but it evolved. I just couldn’t stand the way I was anymore. I don’t know if it was a question of dying; it was a question of not being able to live that way anymore. I had to find a way to approach life reasonably. And I was not…there. And a couple of years ago I just made a pronouncement that I would…beat it. That I would beat my brain and do it.
“I was an insomniac. You get addicted to that. And then I said to myself one day: What the fuck’s so great about being addicted to insomnia? What’s that all about? You sit up all night and you go crazy. You don’t sleep. Your mind starts playing tricks on you; you do terrible things to yourself. It’s a terrible situation. So a couple of years ago I decided I was going to beat the devil; I was going to get better.”
So how did he set about accomplishing that?
“I just waged war with myself.”
With medication?
He nodded. “Medication. I started to work with doctors and work with drugs that would work on my mind that would produce results; and I was not getting them. I’m very frightened of drugs; I’m very frightened of fucking with my brain, and I didn’t want to interfere with anything that could hurt me creatively or anything like that. So I was filled with fear and trepidation. Actually it was longer—three or four years ago—and over a slow, slow period of time and this and that, and very methodically, and every day getting up saying, ‘No, you’re not there yet,’ and months would go by, years would go by…”
Had all his years of therapy been of any help?
“Not enough.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s something I’d either not accepted, or I’m not prepared to accept or live with in my life, that I don’t know about perhaps. That I’m facing now. I didn’t want it to be because of Nicole. I want it to be because of me. I want to get back in the record business because of me. I don’t want to be like these people…‘I found the woman of my dreams; I’m going to be so happy, blah, blah, blah.’ I made this commitment to me. I want to change for me. I want to try and have a reasonable existence, and if I can’t, I can’t. So I’ve been experimenting with medication that I think would help, and not interfere with my creative process and my thinking process, and it’s been very slow, very difficult.” He paused. “I couldn’t have done this conversation six months ago.”
Six years ago?
“Absolutely not.”
Sixteen years ago?
“Maybe under false pretenses, but probably no. I wouldn’t have even thought of it. I was completely…I was another person. I’m a completely different person than I was three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago. I’m constantly evolving, constantly changing.”
Even now, he said, it was difficult for him to have a meeting like this.
“I can’t stand to be talked about. I can’t stand to be looked at. I can’t stand the attention. I don’t defend myself. I don’t defend others. I decided many years ago that I wasn’t going to make any public statements. I’m a diabetic and as a young child I was told I could never eat chocolate and drink Coca-Cola, so I have great willpower. And it takes a tremendous amount of willpower to abstain from commenting. I commented my heart out in the ’60s. I controlled everything. I was a control freak.” He laughed.
“I don’t like talking about the past. I don’t even like meeting people from the past. It’s difficult for me. I have a difficult time. Reunions…troublesome for me; very troublesome.” It was only recently that he had been able to
start bringing his old friends back into his life. “A lot of my enemies are dying off, which is a shame, because they define me in so many ways.”
So who were his closest friends?
He thought for a moment. “My attorneys,” he said, and laughed. Neither of us could have imagined at that moment just how prescient that statement would be.
I asked him to tell me about the Starsailor sessions and he shrugged. He liked their songs, and the singer James Walsh’s voice. He found it “intriguing to do a couple of sides with them. No particular reason beyond that…”
For years nothing in music had interested him, but now, he said, he could feel the inkling of something in the air, like the ’60s all over again. “That’s all it is, a feeling. I never thought about anything I did before. I didn’t think, Why the Ronettes, why the Righteous Brothers, why John Lennon? I just did it. So I didn’t think, Why Starsailor? It just feels okay. And I haven’t had that instinct in me for years and years.”
He made no mention of the difficulties during the session, the fact that he had expected to record the complete album and had been fired. “I don’t know if I can devote the time to a group now that I devoted to John and George. So I go in with Starsailor, I do a couple of sides. I perhaps go in with Coldplay and do a couple of sides…
“I feel comfortable in the studio. I feel reasonable.” He stopped for a moment. “Really, I’m not even sure what I want to do. I just know that what I do is better than what anybody else does.”
His wristwatch spoke: “It’s six o’clock.”
“I don’t know what to say anymore,” he said. He was tired of talking about himself. “I’m scared of interviews because I don’t have the answers to a lot of questions.”
None of us do, I said.
“I mean, I don’t know the answers to why…I keep asking myself, What will he ask that I don’t know the answers to? I can’t even tell you about some of the things from the past because…” He fell silent. Then leaned forward intently. “Listen. People tell me they idolize me, want to be like me, but I tell them, ‘Trust me, you don’t want my life.’ Because it hasn’t been a very pleasant life. I’ve been a very tortured soul. I have not been at peace with myself. I have not been happy.”