He's a Rebel (35 page)

In the midst of this crackling vibrancy, Phil finally found a band he could produce in the hues of his vision. The Modern Folk Quartet, an ensemble that combined acoustic folk with modern vocal harmonies, had made two folk albums for Warner Brothers Records, and one of their single records was John Stewart's “Road to Freedom.” As regulars at the Village Gate, they had opened shows for Woody Allen and John Coltrane. When folk and rock merged, the
group electrified its guitars and jumped into the L.A. thicket, performing at The Troubadour, Whiskey-a-Go-Go, and The Trip. Phil saw the MFQ, as they were called, as a unit he could make into his version of the Byrds. Negotiating a deal with the band's manager, Herb Cohen, he went into it headlong with the Phil trip.

“We spent three or four months hanging out with Phil,” recalled Henry Diltz, who was a member of the MFQ. “We'd go to his house and he'd keep us waiting, it would take him two hours to come downstairs and make his entrance. But then he'd be fine, and it was very inspiring to stand around the piano as he'd bang out chords and take us through these great old rock and R&B songs and try to get us to sing and harmonize a certain way. It was a nice feeling to have somebody famous like that interested in us.”

Wearing the MFQ like a bib, Phil made the club rounds with them, the prince of rock and his new mid-sixties vanguard. In the fall he took the band into Gold Star and cut a song he had bought from a Van Nuys singer/songwriter named Harry Nilsson. An uptempo folk-rocker titled “This Could Be the Night,” the song sounded more like a Wagnerian folk march with the Wall of Sound, but Phil thought it was a certificate of Sunset Strip viability. Preening in the hippie crowd, he was on an extraordinary high one night at The Trip. As the quartet was doing its set, Phil bounded from his seat and onto the stage with a twelve-string guitar. In one of the least-known major events of the rock epoch, Phil Spector—who renounced public performing because he could not bear a roomful of hard eyes staring at his rodent features—unfurled his guitar, picked up the microphone, and began warbling fifties songs backed by the Modern Folk Quartet. “It was weird—this was Phil Spector up there! But it was completely unannounced and some people in the place probably didn't know who it was,” Diltz said.

One of those fortunate to see and know was Kim Fowley, who happened to be at the club that night. Fowley, with his hulking size and black-vested, mortuarial foreboding, was a resident scenemaker, closely identified with Frank Zappa's freak circle. But few things blew Fowley away more than watching Spector front a rock band on a public stage. “Amazing, man, and the pity was that there was a lot of kids in there who didn't know what the fuck was happening,” Fowley remembered. “I think about it now and it's like, how's
that
for a memory? And he was good too. I'd never heard his voice. He
had good mike technique, good delivery. He sounded like he would've been a good lead singer.”

It was around this time that Phil became the central figure in a concert movie called
The Big TNT Show
. Shot intimately on videotape and then transferred to film,
TNT
was modeled after the 1964 concert film
The TAMI Show
, which provided major exposure to the Rolling Stones and the Supremes and years later gained fame as a prime documentary of sixties' rock. Phil was signed by producer Henry Saperstein to serve as musical director and associate producer for a fee of $20,000 against 20 percent of the film's profits. Two concerts were taped, on November 29 and 30, at Hollywood's Moulin Rouge Theater. The talent Spector chose made up a strange rock, folk, and soul mélange of past and present—Joan Baez, the Byrds, the Ronettes, Ray Charles, the Lovin' Spoonful, Donovan, Petula Clark, Bo Diddley, and a veteran soul act, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Eager to promote the Modern Folk Quartet, Phil used “This Could Be the Night” as the movie's theme and ran the song over the credits.

Awed by the amazing sixteen-week run of “Lovin' Feelin' ”—No. 1 for two weeks, the record spent seven weeks in the Top 3 before falling off the chart in late March—Larry Levine could not understand why Phil had no plans for a Righteous Brothers album. “Phil was so dumb. He was so brilliant but he was so dumb,” Levine said. “Here you got this record and it was selling millions
before
it ever got to the Top 10 and then it kept going and going. I said, ‘Phil, why don't you put an album out? Call it
Lovin' Feelin'
. He said, ‘No, I don't do albums that way. I put out a bunch of singles. When I got enough singles, I put out an album.' I argued and argued and finally I said, ‘Listen, Phil, let Bill and Bobby and me go in and we'll do it, just one album.' He said okay and we went in on a weekend and Bill produced it.”

Phil would come to regret his decision. Medley produced ten tracks of his own choosing on the mid-1965 LP,
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
, all but the title song. Two months later he produced all but two tracks of the second Righteous Brothers album,
Just Once in My Life
. As Medley's self-importance ballooned, Bobby Hatfield fretted. Bobby had not lived easily with Medley's solo vocal on the entire first verse of both “Lovin' Feelin' ” and “Just Once in My Life,” believing Medley was slowly eclipsing him. By the summer
of 1965, Hatfield, flushed with the success of “Unchained Melody,” refused to sing with him. Contending suddenly with fratricidal Righteous Brothers, and not able to stress business perspective with two men he thought were rather dim bulbs and had little common sense, Phil intended to use a third Righteous Brothers album—the first two had sold extremely well—as a vinyl demilitarized zone. Aside from “Hung on You,” there would be three new songs by Medley and Hatfield; Spector would produce the Hatfield songs, Medley his own. In mid-September Phil cut Hatfield's covers of “Ebb Tide,” “For Sentimental Reasons,” and “White Cliffs of Dover.” Medley completed the songs for “Loving You,” “God Bless the Child,” and “Hallelujah I Love Her So.”

The album, though, was already under a cloud, not because the Righteous Brothers had a problem with each other but because they were at the end of their line with Phil and with R. J. Van Hoogten. Although Medley and Hatfield took a quantum leap with “Lovin' Feelin',” that first session was a hint of things to come. The Righteous Brothers—who had once quit as an opening act on an early Beatles tour because they couldn't stand the comparative anonymity—were now convinced that their popularity was as an echo of Spector's name. As promotion man, Danny Davis could commiserate. “It was particularly bad for the Righteous Brothers, more so than the Ronettes,” he said. “I remember the jockeys getting on the air and saying, ‘Here's the new Phil Spector record.' The Righteous Brothers railed at that. They hated Phil for it.” Neither was Medley content with the doggie-bone reward of producing album filler.

For months Medley and Hatfield, believing they could make their own records and extend their own popularity without Phil, had wanted to break from Spector. Van Hoogten provided a way to go about it. In July Medley and Hatfield, who were receiving sporadic royalties from Moonglow Records, had hired an accountant and ran an audit of Moonglow's books. The audit showed that Van Hoogten allegedly shorted them by $28,600 on royalties. Van Hoogten, meanwhile, had his own beef with Spector, who had not turned over a number of Righteous Brothers masters to him for sale in the foreign countries in Van Hoogten's domain. Van Hoogten took this as a breach of contract. On September 15, a day after Phil cut “Ebb Tide,” Van Hoogten sent Spector a letter terminating Moonglow's
agreement with Philles. A week later Van Hoogten instructed the Righteous Brothers to refrain from doing any further recording for Spector. While Spector's lawyers threatened Moonglow with a lawsuit, Medley and Hatfield decided to meet with Phil to clear the air of their grievances, which also included not receiving royalties due them by Philles. In recent weeks their expensive Hollywood agent, Jerry Perenchio, had met with Phil on that subject. “Jerry couldn't get through to him,” Danny Davis recalled. “Jerry knew faster than them he was dealing with a loony.”

Now, because the album was sitting half finished, Medley and Hatfield believed Phil would have to listen. Phil told them to come to the house, and Danny Davis brought them over. But when they arrived, they were told he was out. Unfortunately, they could plainly see that he was in, and only feet away, hiding behind the door. “Phil had one of those two-way mirrors where he could see out but you couldn't see in,” Davis said. “However, the house was always in a state of disrepair and, unbeknownst to Phil, the thing was broken and you could see him standing there. The Righteous Brothers saw that he wouldn't answer them and they were unbelievably pissed.”

As they drove back through the gates, Medley and Hatfield decided they would break the four-year contract with Spector. On September 23, they filed a lawsuit against Van Hoogten and Spector, boldly—and speciously—claiming that because Van Hoogten breached their Moonglow contract, his deal with Phil no longer could be held in force.

While the three sides jousted in the courts of Los Angeles County, Phil was in a bind. He wanted the Righteous Brothers album to be out in time for the Christmas buying season, yet he could not get the pair into the studio. Van Hoogten, in a Machiavellian twist for mutual gain, agreed with Phil that Bill and Bobby finish the album pending the legal outcome. The appeal fell on deaf ears. For whatever reason—either because they believed they could, or they were advised by Jerry Perenchio that they could—Perenchio sought a contract for the Righteous Brothers with another record company. Even though any label would risk immense damages in signing the act now, an aggressive MGM Records was very hot for them. MGM was in the middle of a wave of a new big-name signings and rumors filled the air that they were close to notching the Righteous Brothers. With the potentially disastrous defection staring him
in the face, Phil sent Medley a cheeky telegram on October 26. Designed to wheedle and shame the pair back into the fold, it read:

Dear Bill:

Well aware of current situation involving lawyers, managers and others. This is to let you know that during the present involvement, there is no possible chance for you to have an album out for the Christmas market, or to even have an album out in general, unless you record.

Bill, believe me, this can only hurt you. You may think not, at present, but no matter what the outcome and however long it takes to reach it, I can only lose money, you can lose a career. Please remember that it is Moonglow you're suing, not me, and you could by court order hold up all future monies payable to them by me. To protect yourselves, I don't think you can sustain without any product. I personally feel it's foolish for you to do so. 'Nuff said.

Phil Spector

Later, on December 1, Phil released the Righteous Brothers' album, titled
Back to Back
, and “Ebb Tide” as a single. To fill out the album, Phil had foraged through tapes of Medley-produced songs and slapped six of them onto the record. When Medley and Hatfield saw and heard it, they wanted to kill. Among the tracks that Spector chose was one song Medley had cut in September as a demo with only four musicians, “Without a Doubt.” This, Medley said in court papers, was made for his “private use . . . as a first step in the production of recordings.” In addition, Medley claimed that the tapes had been “pirated” after he left them stored in the studio. Of the remaining tracks, sung by Hatfield, one, “Hot Tamales,” had been released in 1962. The other two, “Late Late Night” and “She's Mine All Mine,” were incomplete.

In liner notes on
Back to Back
, Phil chose to subtly disassociate himself from the album as a whole beyond the separate producer's credits. While calling “Late Late Night” a “polished, skillful performance of a complete musical arrangement,” he trenchantly added that “The Righteous Brothers thought you would like to hear it.” If Phil thought this would also somehow placate the pair, he was wrong. Outraged that the release was kept from them, and believing Spector
was trying to make fools of them, Medley said the album was “a disparagement of my talents as a producer.” The Righteous Brothers demanded that the album be removed. They lost the motion, but the point was moot. Spector and Van Hoogten's battle now was to stop MGM from signing Medley and Hatfield. On December 5 Phil's attorney, Jay Cooper, wrote a stern letter to MGM's Jesse Kay, reading: “Please be advised that the sole and exclusive right to record the Righteous Brothers at this time is with Philles Records. Our client intends to, and will, use all available legal remedies for the protection of his rights.” Four days later Van Hoogten's attorney, Jack Weinstein, called MGM lawyer Alfred Schlesinger and tried to strike a deal giving MGM permission to record the Righteous Brothers if it would agree to put sales money in escrow pending the court case. Schlesinger replied tersely: “No.”

On January 3, 1966, Van Hoogten picked up
Billboard
and read that the Righteous Brothers had signed with MGM and would soon release a single and an album on its Verve sublabel, with a “super promotion.” Both Spector and Van Hoogten bolted to their attorneys to try to void the deal. Phil could not mask his contempt for this treason. Bitterness dripping like battery acid, his court papers called the signing a “free ride” at his expense, as he had made the act what it was. The Righteous Brothers had done over $3 million in sales with him, he pointed out. As much as the pair disclaimed
Back to Back
, the LP had sold 200,000 copies in two weeks. The swirling, sonorous “Ebb Tide” was on its way to No. 5. By implication, they owed him.

But within Spector's papers was a hint of a self-recrimination too, the confession of a man who knew he fooled himself into a sense of eternal security. Danny Davis's warnings about investing too much in the Righteous Brothers was prophetic when Phil protested that “disc jockeys throughout the country associate Philles Records with the Righteous Brothers.” Losing the duo, he said, “would mean losing the confidence of the disc jockeys at major stations . . . and destroying the goodwill and reputation of Philles Records with distributors. This will surely cause Philles to lose the business of many distributors, the loss of which cannot adequately be compensated in damages.”