Tearing Down the Wall of Sound (6 page)

Listened to almost fifty years on, however, it is apparent that notwithstanding Ross's starkly matter-of-fact description something quite magical had happened.

The song seems almost to amble into your presence with a gently strummed guitar, a simple snap on the snare drum and a whisper of softly humming voices, before Annette Kleinbard's voice enters, shaping a melody over the next two verses of almost stately formality, Spector and Lieb's hushed chorus—“and I do, and I, and I do, and I…” echoing behind her. In the middle section the song suddenly takes flight, soaring out of the minor register into a refrain of unsurpassable sweetness (Spector told Annette that he had derived the melody from a Wagner opera. “I don't know which one—I hate Wagner—but that's what he told me”) before returning to the original theme, to finally fade away in a mist of whispered “And I do's.”

The inspiration for “To Know Him” seems to seep into the song like a contagion. Annette Kleinbard might have thought she was singing a simple teenage love ballad, yet her vocal—fragile, innocent, artless—invests it with an unmistakably elegiac quality. Ostensibly a song about yearning it carries a palpable premonition of abandonment and loneliness, as if to confirm the melancholic truth that to gain what one most desires is at the same time to know that one day it will inevitably be lost. It was a song that seemed to resonate with all the pain of Spector's past, and a presentiment of his future.

What nobody seems to have realized at the time, however, was that it was a hit. Lew Bedell certainly didn't seem to think so. Dore 503 had “To Know Him Is to Love Him” as the B-side of “Don't You Worry My Little Pet.” Dipping a tentative toe in the marketplace, at the beginning of August, Bedell pressed up five hundred copies of the record and sent them out to his distributors. Two weeks later, on August 14, Bedell, Newman, the four members of the Teddy Bears and their parents convened in a room at the Los Angeles County Superior Court to hear the court's approval of the “master lease agreement” signed a month earlier in Bedell's offices. Under the ruling, Era was instructed to pay all monies arising from the group's recordings into a trust account and told that no payments could be made from the account without the court's approval. The company was also prohibited from passing on the Teddy Bears' contract to any other party that might not have the wherewithal to make good on it, or from changing ownership without the court's approval. Phil Spector was now legally entitled to make his fortune.

Writing off the cost to promotional expenses, Bedell took Lieb and Spector to Mays department store and bought each a pair of white bucks and matching woolen sweaters, which Bertha dutifully monogrammed with the group's name. They were then posed for publicity photographs. “We were very clean-cut,” Lieb would later recall. “Remember, we had very short hair, white bucks and weren't rebellious in any way. We had nothing to say about anything that would lead to any kind of trouble.”

         

For a month nothing much happened with “Don't You Worry My Little Pet.” Responding to a deluge of requests orchestrated among her friends by Annette Kleinbard, a couple of local disc jockeys flipped the record and played “To Know Him Is to Love Him” instead. The song quickly fell off their playlists, but the flurry of interest was apparently enough to convince Bedell that he should be promoting that song rather than the notional A-side. By early September, “To Know Him” was being played on heavy rotation on a station in Fargo, North Dakota—hardly a hub of the music business. At around the same time, Bedell got word that the programming director of radio station KDWB, in Minneapolis, Lou Riegert, had fallen in love with Annette's voice and was also playing the song to death. In the last week of September, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” finally crept into the
Billboard
charts at number 88.

The
Billboard
Hot 100 had been inaugurated only a month earlier, proclaimed as “the industry's fastest and most complete programming and buying guide” to the popular music of the day. Prior to that, a record's popularity had been measured on three separate charts, showing radio airplay, sales and jukebox plays. The Hot 100, for the first time, combined all these elements to measure a record's popularity.

The new chart reflected both the extraordinary diversity of pop music at the time, and the rapidity with which rock and roll—barely four years old—had begun to assert itself as a significant commercial and cultural force. At number one in the week that “To Know Him Is to Love Him” entered the charts was the Italian ballad “Volare” by Domenico Modugno. At number two was “Bird Dog” by the Everly Brothers. Other artists in the Top 10 included Tommy Edwards, the Elegants, Bobby Day, Jimmy Clanton and Little Anthony and the Imperials.

Number 88 was a respectable enough beginning, but it's possible that the song might have gotten no further had Lew Bedell not been able to call on a powerful ally—Dick Clark, the host of the television show
American Bandstand,
the most important platform for pop music in the country.

Originally known simply as
Bandstand,
the show had been created in 1954 by a Philadelphia disc jockey named Bob Horn who, shrewdly noting the rising storm of rock and roll, devised the simple format of placing performers in front of a camera and having them lip-synch to their current hits, while an audience of teenagers twisted and jived around them—a template that would become the standard for pop shows for decades to come. Broadcast on a local station, WFIL-TV,
Bandstand
offered a profligate display of the new and deliciously dangerous possibilities of rock and roll, each week featuring doo-wop groups like the Flamingos and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and RB singers such as Fats Domino and Little Richard. A roster of regular girls, always blond and buxom, would give a countdown on the charts and conduct brief, laudatory interviews with the performers. Joe Boyd, who as a teenager was an avid viewer, and who would later become a distinguished record producer himself, recalls the particular
frisson
engendered by the sight of the
Bandstand
babes interviewing “dangerous-looking pompadoured black men in sharkskin suits. It was not lost on us that these were probably the only occasions on American TV in 1955 when white girls and black men could be seen in such close proximity (
Bandstand
dancers being almost entirely white, of course).”

In 1956, Horn's tenure on
Bandstand
came to an abrupt halt when he was arrested on charges of statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The charges, it would later transpire, were a frame-up, seemingly instigated by people who apparently loathed Horn and all his program stood for. He was later acquitted, but by that time
Bandstand
had passed into the hands of Dick Clark—a man whose clean-cut demeanor and twinkling toothpaste smile was guaranteed to offend no one. Clark was in his mid-twenties and was smart enough to observe his audience closely and listen to their opinions. Renamed as
American Bandstand,
and broadcast across the nation each Saturday at noon, the show quickly became mandatory viewing for teenagers anxious not only to hear the new records and see their favorite stars but also to keep abreast of new dance steps and the latest fashion trends. Clark, in keeping with the mood of the times, ensured that these were conservative. Girls that appeared on the show were not allowed to wear slacks or tight sweaters and boys were obliged to wear a jacket and tie. Smoking and chewing gum were not allowed.

Members of the audience quickly developed their own fan following, and on the back of the show's success Philadelphia developed its own music scene of flash-in-the-pan, clean-cut pop idols and forgotten-by-tomorrow dance hits, while Clark himself became arguably the most important man in the record business.

When Clark aired “To Know Him Is to Love Him” on
American Bandstand
in the third week of September, giving the song immediate national exposure, the joy in the Era offices and among the Teddy Bears was unconfined. Clark would become a controversial figure a year later, when a U.S. House of Representatives committee launched its investigation into payola in the music industry.

The investigation was largely instigated by ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a symptom of the moral panic that swept across America in the wake of the rise of rock and roll. As the longest established performing-rights association, ASCAP held the monopoly on show tunes, Broadway songs and jazz, and had strong ties to the most conservative elements of the music business, not least the handful of major record labels whose dominance had been seriously challenged by the rise of rock and roll. By the late '50s, independent labels had broken the stranglehold of the majors on radio airplay, and songs licensed by ASCAP's rival BMI (Broadway Music Inc.) dominated the charts. ASCAP argued that the only way the pernicious and morally degrading music could possibly be getting frequent airplay was because disc jockeys were receiving payola—cash payments or gifts in kind—to play the records, and duly began lobbying the House of Representatives to investigate. In fact, it was not unusual for a disc jockey to find an envelope stuffed with dollar bills left on his desk with a batch of new releases, or to be treated to dinner, with perhaps a hooker for dessert, by a friendly promo man. Strictly speaking, payola was not illegal, but it was considered unethical, and in 1959 a subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, under Judge Oren Harris, launched a far-reaching investigation into record industry practices.

The investigation spread panic through the industry. Disc jockeys all over America resigned or were fired for accepting payola. Among those investigated were Harold Lipsius and Harry Finfer, the owners of Universal Distributors in Philadelphia, one of the principal distributors of “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” Also investigated was Dick Clark. Clark, it transpired, had a share in the copyrights in 163 pop songs, 143 of which had been given to him. Furthermore, the investigation suggested, a high proportion of the records broadcast on
American Bandstand
were manufactured by companies in which Clark had a financial interest, or were songs published by companies he owned. “Mr. Clark managed to keep an average of 4.1 records owned by [his] publishing, manufacturing or artist management firms in the charts every week between October 1957 and November 1959,” the investigators' report stated. Among the companies in which Clark had an interest was Jamie, the record label owned by Universal Distributors. Clark admitted that he had invested $125 in Jamie, which had returned him a profit of $11,900. It was also revealed that Jamie had paid out $15,000 in payola, although Clark denied receiving any of it. At the request of his employers ABC-TV, Clark quickly gave up all his business interests, and he emerged from the hearings with the commendation from Judge Oren Harris that he was “an attractive and successful young man,” albeit one who “took advantage of a unique opportunity to control too many elements in the popular music field.” (The disc jockey Alan Freed, generally acknowledged as the man who coined the term “rock and roll,” was not so lucky. In December 1962, Freed pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial bribery and was fined $300. But it was effectively the end of his career. He died three years later, bitter, broken and penniless.)

Clark's decision to promote “To Know Him Is to Love Him” on
American Bandstand
was to prove beneficial to all concerned. Two weeks after the song had been broadcast on the program it rose to number 40 in the charts, and by late October it had reached number 4, prompting Clark to invite the Teddy Bears to appear on the program in person. Seizing the opportunity, Lew Bedell booked the group on a whistle-stop promotional tour through New York, Washington and Philadelphia, and in the last week of November, Spector, Annette Kleinbard and Marshall Lieb boarded the plane for New York.

Harvey Goldstein did not make the journey. Even though he had played no part in the recording of “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” Goldstein returned from his army reserve training expecting to resume his place in the Teddy Bears. But Spector and Lieb had decided that he was now unneeded. Before the group's departure, Spector informed Goldstein that Dick Clark was paying expenses and didn't want somebody who hadn't sung on the record. Goldstein was out of the group. It was only later that he would discover that Clark did not pay expenses for people to appear on his show. Goldstein would later file suit against the remaining three members, claiming that he owned 25 percent of the Teddy Bears' name. The action was eventually settled out of court; bonds were placed in trust for Goldstein and he continued to be paid royalty checks for a decade to come.

On November 28, the Teddy Bears made their national television debut on
American Bandstand.
The following week, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” rose to number 1, where it was to remain for the next three weeks. (In Britain it went to number 2.) By the time the record finally dropped out of the American charts some four months later it had sold almost 1.4 million copies. As a mark of his gratitude, Lew Bedell reportedly sent Mrs. Dick Clark a mink coat.

         

For Spector, the success of “To Know Him” was not only a personal triumph, it was a vindication. The small, insignificant, put-upon boy had proved everybody wrong. Success now went to his head like helium.

“Before the song was a hit, Phil used to come in and say, ‘Anything doing today, Mr. Bedell?'” Lew Bedell told Mark Ribowsky. “He was so obsequious, I figured he was half Japanese, this guy. Then, after it was a hit, he walks in and it's ‘Hey, Lew, baby, we're doin' good.' He starts calling Herb ‘Hey, you.' You never saw such a complete change in a little fuckin' Jewish kid.”

Nor were relations improved when it came to discussions about what the Teddy Bears should record next. Spector had brought in a ballad called “Oh Why,” which played on a similar musical theme to “To Know Him.” But Bedell, who as paymaster believed he had the right to decide what the group recorded, disliked the song. In that case, Spector told him, the group would go elsewhere. This was not quite the act of bravado it seemed. Unbeknown to Bedell, Spector had already been approached by Lew Chudd, the head of a rival company, Imperial Records, offering the Teddy Bears a contract at twice the royalty rate they were receiving from Era—three cents a copy. With the group having delivered their four songs for Era, there was little Bedell could do. Cursing Spector and the group for their ingratitude, he washed his hands of them.