Tearing Down the Wall of Sound (52 page)

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 classical 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!”

         

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.”