He's a Rebel (33 page)

At various times in 1965, Phil gazed around at other acts, but never in earnest, figuring that the Righteous Brothers were a perpetual meal ticket. Early that year, Danny Davis got a call from concert promoter Sid Bernstein, who was instrumental in arranging the Beatles' U.S. tours. Bernstein touted Danny on a four-man blues rock band, the Rascals, who were a regular act in a Westhampton, Long Island, club called The Barge. “Sid wanted Phil to hear 'em, so I dragged him out there,” Davis recalled. Vinnie Poncia knew the Rascals and The Barge. He had
been a running buddy of the group's lead singer, Felix Cavaliere, in the New York scene when Cavaliere sang in a latter-day version of Joey Dee and the Starlighters, of “Peppermint Twist” fame. Three members of the Starlighters then formed the Rascals, who performed in Edwardian knickers and cloth caps after the old “Little Rascals” movie shorts. Fronted by the bearded, soulful Cavaliere, they combined R&B with the self-contained rock band format then coming into vogue. As such, Vinnie, whose wife Joanna was working in a backup band at The Barge, agreed that the Rascals could be Phil's entree to the stripped-down trend of rock.

“At that time, the music had started to move away from the giant sound and more toward the personal kind of records,” Poncia said. “And I thought that would be perfect for Phil. He grew up on that stuff, R&B, jazz bands. When we went in and made the Cher record, it was just two guitars, bass and drums, and he had a lot of fun. Phil liked to dabble with that kind of music because of the Beatles. He would always extol the virtues to me about how simple those records were. He'd say, That's what we gotta do. We gotta get back to just guitars'—and yet he'd be contradicting that all the time with his own sound going through the roof.

“Because that was the only identity he had left. He was the star, as far as he was concerned. He was the music, and he was afraid to go any other way. It was easy, he had it down, it was very comfortable: same engineer, same studio, you don't have to worry about some kid drummer, because that's another challenge. All he wanted was what he had.”

But Phil did go to see the Rascals at The Barge, and the band was so elated that he was there that they performed some of Spector's hit songs in homage. Phil listened impassively, then turned to Danny and said, “Let's get the fuck out of here. They don't do anything original.” Persuaded to stay, he heard the group's entire set and then went backstage to be introduced to them by Vinnie. “They wanted Phil to produce them,” Poncia said, “but Phil said he wanted me to produce them, for Phi-Dan Records, which immediately turned them off. They liked me but I was new to producing. They didn't want me, they wanted Phil Spector.” And so the Rascals declined, with the bitter taste of being brushed off by the godlike Spector. A short time later they signed with Atlantic Records, changed their name to the Young Rascals, and by the end of the year had their first hit, “I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart
Anymore.” Early in 1966, they had a No. 1 record, “Good Lovin',” followed by nine more Top 20 hits.

Phil received similar feelers to produce new acts, and Danny believed Phil wanted to widen his purview, not just to change with the times but for his own survival. By mid-1965 the Crystals and Darlene Love were forgotten and on the verge of leaving Philles, and the Ronettes were only a step behind in alienation. Danny certainly knew the risks of the label becoming too dependent on the Righteous Brothers. “We all knew it, the distributors, everybody. A lot of guys said, ‘Jeez, Danny, you gotta break another act.' And Phil knew it. That's why people kept bringing 'em to him.”

One such moment occurred at a party in L.A. given by Lance Revendow, the race-car driver son of heiress Barbara Hutton. A band was performing at the party whose lead vocalist was a little fellow with round glasses, John Sebastian, who played a lute tucked under his chin. Phil heard the band, the Lovin' Spoonful, and said, “I don't like their name. They'll never happen.” But Phil was mildly intrigued with their folk-rock sound, which was played jug-band style. The Lovin' Spoonful stemmed from the Greenwich Village folk scene, whose influence in rock was growing with the emergence of Bob Dylan; in 1965 the Byrds, an L.A. band, recorded Dylan's “Mr. Tambourine Man” using a loud electric guitar line and soft harmonies, creating a profound new rock form that seemed made for the plaintive, airy L.A. state of mind. The Lovin' Spoonful were as eager as the Rascals to be produced by Spector, and they sent Phil a demo of a record called “Do You Believe in Magic?” Phil liked it, and played it for Vinnie Poncia one day while strumming a guitar to the melody. But he never did connect with the group, and the Spoonful signed with Kama Sutra-Buddha Records, a label begun by twenty-five-year-old Artie Ripp and on which they had five Top 10 hits over the next three years.

“Phil was considering them but passed on it,” Poncia said. “He would dabble with new groups, get involved to be associated with something, and then pull out, never commit to it. Which was a big mistake. Phil needed groups like that. Had he taken the Rascals or Lovin' Spoonful, he would have fulfilled his dreams of expanding. Had he gone through with all those people he was associated with, he would've been like Berry Gordy at Motown.”

The biggest problem for Phil was facing the reality that working with a band that had songs and a sound would mean a reduction in his
authority—which, unlike Berry Gordy, was tied directly to his own work. “Every artist wants to have a voice in something,” Poncia said. “The Rascals and Spoonful would have come in with songs so left field and not of his character—or with any of his input in their development—that he would have to be strictly a producer, just to get the shit down on tape. He couldn't have the same stamp on it, and he didn't want to do that. It would have required a total revamping and a totally different outlook in the studio, making an entirely different kind of record.

“Not that Phil was incapable of doing it, because it was so much easier to make a Rascals record. But his ego was involved, it would've been too much sharing of the spotlight—which wouldn't have been the case, it was only in his head. Phil wouldn't have been any less effective on a Rascals song than a Darlene Love song. Once he got in the studio and made the record, it didn't matter who wrote the song. He could've done 1 Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore' and made a better record, because nobody makes a record like Phil Spector.

“But he was just so involved with himself at the time. Again, he never knew it was gonna end, he never knew that something like that was gonna make a difference. He never wanted to change, to adjust. He wanted complete autonomy and control, like he had over Ronnie.”

As soon as Phil obtained his Mexican divorce, he began openly living with and squiring Ronnie around. Weeks later Ronnie, hoping to ease the family tension, told Nedra and Estelle that she and Phil had run off and gotten married. By then, though, Phil's obsession with Ronnie was the cause of serious dissension among the Ronettes. The solo Veronica ventures had not sat well with Nedra in particular, and she bridled when Phil released a Ronettes album—which was mostly a compilation of their hit singles—and titled it
Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica
.

“The way he used Ronnie, it was divide and conquer,” Nedra said. “Because at that point, he was separating her off, which was understandable. They were involved with each other and she saw it as her way to fame. Anyone would feel that way with someone patting them on the back and promising to make them more special. But I did not feel Ronnie could be objective to what was best for the Ronettes. Sex, love, and business don't work well together.”

Most crushing to Nedra was that Phil had succeeded in prying open the ties that had held the Ronettes: family unity and loyalty. When Ronnie said she deserved to get more than the one-third share each Ronette received, Nedra wanted to cry but what came out was anger. “When that happens,” she told Ronnie, “count me out.”

“My cousin Estelle was more under pressure, because it was her sister,” Nedra recalled. “But my argument was: as long as we were the Ronettes, I started out in a trio and that's the way I stay. If Phil was getting what he wanted from Ronnie, I can understand him building her up. But he wasn't going to build her up at my expense. And he couldn't replace one of us, bring in another girl like with the Crystals, because we were family. So we stayed with thirds.”

Phil may have been incurably in love, but Ronnie learned how strange and demeaning Phil Spector's love could be.

Danny, for one, was never really sure how deeply Phil cared for Ronnie. “He definitely threw himself at Ronnie. He romanced her pretty good,” Davis said. “I remember him telling me at the outset he was crazy nuts about her because she was great sexually. He was very enamored at that, and I know for a fact that they were doin' ménag-à-trois scenes.” As with Annette, Phil could at times treat Ronnie like his queen, lavishing her with clothes and, now, a three-carat diamond ring. And yet, at other times, he could be extraordinarily spendthrifty with her. “One time Ronnie went out to California with Phil on her own, without Estelle and me,” Nedra recalled. “He brought her out as his girlfriend, or wife, but he put her in the studio just long enough to justify that we had to pay for the session. So her trip was paid for—by us, not him. He had his cake and he ate it too, and we paid for it.”

But even these sessions were infrequent as Phil became more absorbed with the Righteous Brothers and veered hard away from any kind of Ronettes product. After “Born to Be Together,” there was only one Ronettes record in 1965, the Spector-Goffin-King “Is This What I Get for Loving You?” which died at No. 75 in June. Nedra thought the neglect had as much to do with Phil's twisted insecurities as it did his musical interests.

“Ronnie getting involved with Phil caused the destruction of the Ronettes,” she said. “Phil made a lot of promises to Ronnie, but the other side was that he couldn't do those things because if he did, he believed he would lose her. It was like: if you're special to me, I'm going to make you special and push you forward—but with one hand he's got
strings and he's pulling her back. He's saying: ‘I can't let her go
too
far off my leash because then I can't control her.'

“It was the extreme jealousy. Phil knew that Ronnie was not in love with him as a man. She was in love with who he was. I think he felt that if he made her a success in her own right and she became all that she could be, then maybe someone would come along who was good-looking and a producer and a genius—and then why would she need Phil Spector? So he would only do so much with her, he would give her an inch and take back two inches. And then he took back more than that.”

The two of them
weren't
exceptional talents, but they did have a musical contribution to make. I loved them. I thought they were a tremendous expression for myself. I think they resented being an expression
.

—
PHIL SPECTOR
on the Righteous Brothers

Phil had seen the creative weight of rock shifting westward as early as the autumn of 1964—the last important thing he did in New York was playing the funky guitar break for Leiber and Stoller on the Drifters' “On Broadway” in 1963. To prep himself for resettlement in the hip new L.A. rock community he fully intended to serve as headmaster, he leased an appropriately regal castle. It was one of those ego-assuring Lotus Land fantasies in wood and brick: a five-bedroom, twenty-one-room Italian-style house with a swimming pool, nestled off a hushed side road in Beverly Hills. The house and the leafy grounds at 1200 La Collina Drive, only minutes from the action on Sunset, had once been part of the enormous Woolworth
family estate, which was now subdivided into tracts. Other houses on the land had been made from the servants' quarters and the horse stables. Phil had the prime lot, the Woolworth master house, which was owned by the aging British actor Reginald Owen. Owen's wife, Barbara, leased it to Phil at the bargain rent of $1,000 a month.

The house, furnished down to the last napkin ring, greeted a visitor with a Louis XV credenza in carved gilt wood and a green marbletop table in the entrance hall. Louis XV doré-framed armchairs with Aubusson upholstery sat in a hallway lined with Piranesi prints, a Chinese Chippendale frame mirror with carved birds in a gilt finish, an antique French clock, and bronze candelabras. The living room, with its twenty-foot ceilings and gable archways, was a veritable Louvre, offering an ormolu Napoleon round table with miniature medallions, two beige satin sofas, portraits of King Louis XV and Queen Marie Thérèse in gilt frames, a large French clock on the mantel, rose velvet and red satin Louis Philippe armchairs, and a black ebony Steinway concert grand piano. Upstairs, Phil could loll on a blue velvet king-size bed next to a lavender silk chaise longue and a purple velvet antique settee and silver-leafed chests. The library had bookshelves of French and English classics, wing chairs, a Rembrandt print, ceramic Chinese horsemen, antique gravures of military men in uniform, and a red leather wastebasket.