Phil Spector's dead to me now

And of course the legal judgement stinks.

He produced a Celine Dion album in 1994/5. He saw her performing "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" on Letterman, asked to work with her, recorded stuff Celine's people thought was terrible, but he threatened to release it one day (he paid for/owns the recordings), and that their collaboration would "put her on the covers of Time and Newsweek" simultaneously. That was in 1996. He's been laying low since then.

The Spector/Ramones colaboration is absolutley fucking fantastic, and Alex is Believing The Hype (tm)

The Righteous Brothers might not have been hip, but they certainly were great.

I'm buying both of those albums, oh yes I am.

Uhhh....no, Alex greatly prefers the Ramones' earlier work. END OF THE CENTURY is a botched abortion of an album, full stop. I put it to you, Daniel, that *YOU* are Believing the Hype for singing the praises of Spector, when in truth he's a washed-up, reclusive has-been.

"End Of The Century"- the ultimate love letter to early 60's Pop (best period in popular music evah), wonderfully overproduced, overblown, over-everything. I've a friend who's constantly getting into an argument with some guy who says that "The Ramones were just sped up Beach Boys"- this album proves that guy right, and is all the better for it.

Btw, what hype is this that that refers to Spector as anything other than a has-been, Alex? And since when does reclusive = not worth singing the praises of?

Spector being a recluse is incidental. That he's washed-up and overrated was the point.

TMFTML
http://intonation.blogspot.com

Both of those bands are just ditch weeds to me, a wall full of anything probably won't make it much better.

Yes yes, I understand that - but my question is that what direction *could* they have taken that you would've approved of...? Because as great as those early albums are (and they are GREAT) they couldn't just keep doing that over and over without becoming (even more of) a cartoon, and a boring one to boot. The Spector thing seems like a logical progression to me, and I think he actually expanded their sound very nicely (a point on which we obviously disagree). But if not Spector, and not Brain Drain - what were there other options? Make a political Clash-style record? Go all post-punk-y and get some Reggae? Synths? I mean come on...

Now dead to all of us...

https://www.tmz.com/2021/01/17/phil-spector-dead-dies-81/

Poor old soul..

Not Spector, obv. The one(s) that got miffed when he produced The Vines/Starsailor, I mean. He still had a long way down to go.

damn taken from us much too late

I didn't know this

As the 1970s progressed, Spector became increasingly reclusive. The most probable and significant reason for his withdrawal, according to biographer Dave Thompson, was that in 1974 he was seriously injured when he was thrown through the windshield of his car in a crash in Hollywood.[citation needed] According to a contemporary report published in the New Musical Express,[citation needed] Spector was almost killed, and it was only because the attending police officer detected a faint pulse that Spector was not declared dead at the scene. He was admitted to the UCLA Medical Center on the night of March 31, 1974, suffering serious head injuries that required several hours of surgery, with over 300 stitches to his face and more than 400 to the back of his head.[54] His head injuries, Thompson suggests, were the reason that Spector began his habit of wearing outlandish wigs in later years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/arts/music/phil-spector-dead.html

His death was confirmed in a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The department said he died “at an outside hospital,” and did not give a cause.

NY Times not yet trusting tmz re Covid complications

Let's also remember the creators whose names are not as famous because Spector mastered the producer-as-star persona and often is seen as the one genius behind his studio's songs. Like songwriter Ellie Greenwich: POLL: Greatest Ellie Greenwich-penned song

Yeah of course.

Yesterday I almost started a thread based on “I Can Hear Music.”

Was just ranting a bit on FB and Twitter about this but Larry Levine is the real guy to remember here

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-me-levine13-story.html

I've got a friend that once played a gig backing some version of the Crystals with one original member. He asked her if she had any good Phil Spector stories, and her response was "*Are* there any good Phil Spector stories?"

You've Lost That Livin' Feeling.

Funnily enough I was listening to the album he recorded with Dion last night.

i grew up with my parents pushing the wall of sound retrospective on me from about thirteen. i started recording bands around the same time. used to joke about getting the gun out a lot. the ronettes, crystals, righteous brothers and the wrecking crew et al gave some of the most phenomenal studio performances in recording history, yet many of their names are not credited nor celebrated. i believe these records would have been just as special without spector. somebody would have recorded them, anyway. he didn't play shit. he didn't engineer shit. he barely even wrote shit. i'm glad the music industry and production process has evolved to largely eradicate figurehead middlemen to whom artistic merit is accredited. fuck every and any record producer who attempts to create a legacy from trying to claim it, let alone egomaniacal murderers. celebrate ronnie spector, celebrate the writers & performers who put their souls into these songs while likely tolerating spectors bullshit. good riddance. brian wilson done your magic trick better anyway.

so... Wall Of Silence headline?

Wrecking crew is recognized more in the past decade for sure especially since the documentary.

it astounds me that it took an entire fucking documentary to shine a light on world-class musicians of several decades

i believe these records would have been just as special without spector. somebody would have recorded them, anyway.

Agree that Spector has been over-glorified at the expense of everyone else who worked on the records but isn't this going too far? Didn't he often commission the songs, participate in the writing process, match them to the groups, assemble the sessions - seems likely that some of those records would not have been made.

Spector played some guitar and piano iirc, but regardless there is little doubt the maniac still had a lot of control over the final form and sounds of those recordings if not, you know, exactly where to put the mic or whatever. This is not to discredit the incredible singers and musicians and engineers and others involved in making the albums sound the way they do, but that goes for everything from the Byrds to the Beach Boys to "Thriller" to literally hundreds of remarkable recordings made with the invaluable assistance of session musicians and behind the scenes assistants. Scam or no, Phil Spector was maybe the first to elevate the role of producer from technician to auteur, and there is little doubt that folks from Brian Eno to Rick Rubin owe him a debt in that regard even if both similarly neither play nor engineer shit.

Had that discussion somewhere else and some would assign that honor to Mitch Miller, believe it or not. See also “Come On-a My House.”#OneThread

it astounds me that it took an entire fucking documentary to shine a light on world-class musicians of several decades

spector was a bad guy. it's also pretty clear that he's the primary reason why his records sound the way they do, and the "record producers don't actually do anything" argument is super-disingenuous.

Posted this on What Are You Listening To 2020:

Heard a doc about this last night on Public Radio, but maybe American or something, can't find it on npr.org so far---anyway, blasts of multi-d music, several whole tracks, between brief interviews w participants----Crystals, Ronettes, other recombinant groups backed by/interacting with the Wrecking Crew and Phil's orchestral hordes, then I played the whole thing on the 'Tube ---the original songs mix well w roasted chestnuts---pretty psychedelic:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51MgJ5FDw9L._SX355_.jpg

i wouldnt like to necessarily discredit spector and dont deny that he may have been the 'first', but i may argue that it's likely his contributions were largely virtual and minimal compared to the toil and execution of the engineers, musicians, writers etc at his possible helm and disposal. dunno about you but i dont reckon the sound of a record is coloured that much by someone pushing others around and telling everyone to stand in the same room together and play everything at once.

https://i.imgur.com/gKRtNNW.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/nE6B8Xg.jpg

goddamnit imgur!

@TylerMahanCoe
3h
Since apparently a lot of people are unaware, a producer's job is to steward and facilitate the work of an artist, not push the work over and piss on it to mark territory. Phil Spector was a portrait of the music industry at its worst and that is the only legacy he gets.

A terrible person--long before the murder--but I hope he doesn't get written out of his own records. He conceived the sound. Others executed that sound, and they deserve all the credit due to them, but the sound was conceptualized by Spector.

xpost That's just silly. Take the "Be My Baby" beat alone. Hal Blaine has told different versions of its origin, but he's always called it a mistake, and Spector was the one that told them to keep it in. That alone is historic. But also Spector is the one that hired the musicians in the first place, picked the songs, picked the takes, decided to add castanets or four saxophones etc. There is plenty of credit to go around.

i always sound stupid when i try to express my anger about these things. i think im writing with vitriol toward egotism surrounding governance in record production. half these people just get in the way usually. i have heard more a lot more horror stories than fairytales when it comes to record producers. it makes me very cross.

Not to say Spector's approach/attitude always worked out. But the documentary I heard, hosted by Anthony DeCurtis, incl. interviews with principals that give some insight into how it all worked---like one guy was scared that his mistakes had ruined a take (these particular sessions were expensive as hell, for various reasons mentioned), and he confessed to Phil, who was all, "Na, listen to what I got!" The take sounded great, and that was in part due to having so many musos playing the same note---the player's mistakes got swallowed, and maybe others too.

I remember seeing some notes he'd written for George Harrison charting out ideas for particular songs and what to do about his limited singing abilities etc. Sensitively handled, amongst other things...

So, basically, if he respected the artist he was working with, or decided to, well anyway etc

"Decided to" is prob key.

Not that this is the arbiter of anything, but out of curiosity I checked the Rock and Roll HOF inductees. The Ronettes, Darlene Love, the Righteous Brothers, and Hal Blaine have all been inducted. (Ike & Tina Turner and Gene Pitney, too, although their connection to Spector is more incidental.) That doesn't begin to cover everybody who made those records what they were, and there will be lots of participants who will never get their due. That's the way it is with collaborative art--you could say the same of every film by every great filmmaker. But some of the primary participants have received much of the recognition they deserved, even if it took a while for some.

half these people just get in the way usually. i have heard more a lot more horror stories than fairytales when it comes to record producers. it makes me very cross.

xposts maelin you dont sound stupid at all, and you have put voice to a lot of my own reservations about Spector - thank you!

it sucks that both things can be true, that he was a sadistic narcissist abuser & murder and that he gained a reputation as a talented producer. That the latter tends to overshadow the former is the world we live in, and i hate it too

But ... we get Ronnie, Darlene & all the great voices & musicians out of the bargain ... which is a blessing, and i will happily talk about them til the cows come home

More on RROF honors:

On December 15, 2009, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that Greenwich and Barry would receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award in March 2010 (which was posthumously awarded to Greenwich) for helping to define the Brill Building sound. At the ceremony,(...) Carole King inducted Greenwich, Barry, and other songwriting colleagues from the 1950s and early 1960s, including Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Otis Blackwell (also posthumously), Mort Shuman and Jesse Stone. Ellie's award was accepted by her sister Laura, while Barry's acceptance was read by Steve van Zandt.

Working with Phil Spector was working with the best. So much to love about those days.

Falling in love was like a fairytale.

The magical music we made was inspired by our love.

He was a brilliant producer, but a lousy husband.

The music is forever 1939-2021 pic.twitter.com/x2ltPa1frq

— Ronnie Spector (@RonnieSpectorGS) January 17, 2021

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er9nr6_XYAAfli9?format=jpg&name=large

this guy seems to equate autism spectrum conditions with the murderous control freak aspect of big phil, what a total fucking arsehole.

(xpost) I don't usually associate the word "anguished" with tweets, but I'm sure that one was.

Glyn Johns said on Sound Opinions that a record producer was equal to a film director, and he's far from the only producer to say that too, but Phil Spector is probably the one who blew that role up to modern auteurist proportions. The vocalists, co-writers, session players and engineers were all important (just as the cast, crew, screenwriters, composers, etc. were all important to Hitchcock or Spielberg's films) but the final record was certainly molded into his personal vision.

But what a thoroughly terrible human being. Go look for his eulogy at Ike Turner's funeral - even with his ongoing trial amplifying his baggage, it did nothing to soften him up. He may have thoroughly scarred by his upbringing, but his enablers did nothing to help the situation either. (Tom Wolfe's mid-'60s profile is one of his best - he probably had Spector's number from the start.)

*may have been thoroughly scarred

Headline: Convicted Murderer dies in prison. Previously known for ruining the “Let It Be” album.

— Dave Foley (@DaveSFoley) January 18, 2021

And All Things Must Pass.

I don’t really see the point in saying “Fuck you!!” when a bad person dies, assuming their awfulness is generally acknowledged; and I think Specter is widely known to have been an awful human being. But I also don’t have an appetite for reflecting on his accomplishments, such as they are… I decided not to listen to anything he produced awhile back, despite my love of the genre.

Previously known for polishing a turd called the "Let It Be" album.

phil spectre

Turd > polished turd.

xp

Stinks either way.

Phil S.P.E.C.T.R.E

vvg vg

:D

Obv it's up to the individual as to where they draw the line regarding this, but many of those records he worked on are truly joyful music - in large part because of the contributions of other people - and I don't want to let this evil fuck's awfulness stop me from enjoying them. I do respect the choice of anyone else to listen to what they want to of course, for whatever reason.

There was a thread on this subject a few weeks ago...it's going to come up with so many people now (though few as horrifying as Spector).

Someone asked Greil Marcus about Van Morrison (his COVID songs, which I have no interest in hearing) in an e-mail to the Marcus site a couple of weeks ago. I thought the last line of his response was good: "Put on some Van Morrison. Something long. Just let it play. See if it’s still part of you, or if you have to turn it off."

many of those records he worked on are truly joyful music - in large part because of the contributions of other people - and I don't want to let this evil fuck's awfulness stop me from enjoying them

He may ultimately be the "auteur," but those records also belong to Ronnie, Darlene Love and everyone else who sang them. As Darlene Love's lawyer put it to Spector (when he claimed that he didn't owe her shit, as in royalties), if she wasn't that important, why not release an instrumental? She talked about it in far more detail today than Ronnie, but everyone was proud of those records - it's part of their life's work and it's arguably their legacy. They always meant the world to them. The fact that Love couldn't get credit for many of the records she sang, they way she was denied royalties that were entitled to her, the way Spector tried to control her - even attempting litigation to prevent her from singing the hits he claimed he alone "owned" - that shit hurt as much as anything else he's done. When she won her court battles, she got everything she wanted - not just money, but recognition and the right to sing whatever she wanted. So don't feel bad about enjoying them because think of everything she and others went through to not only get their due but stake their claim to that work.

If Eno or Rick Rubin were murderous psychopaths then I might be playing "grey area" on this, but packing a room full of musicians doesn't really make the dude a production genius or anything. The people who came after completely outclassed him in every way-- Ashford & Simpson, Harvey Fuqua, idk, this guy has always been musical fool's gold afaic. There is no Spector recording that I find interesting from a production perspective in any way. I'll save my mental gymnastics for when Robert Blake dies

I think his apotheosis was Death of a Ladies' Man. I can't imagine anyone else writing and recording that album. I suspect it was as close as he got to making a record of his own.

packing a room full of musicians doesn't really make the dude a production genius or anything

I'm not especially a fan of the wall of sound aesthetic either but isn't the 'genius' in part that he did something that was counterintuitive and contrary to most standard ideas about good recording and mixing and still made it work?

I'm not especially a fan of the wall of sound aesthetic either but isn't the 'genius' in part that he did something that was counterintuitive and contrary to most standard ideas about good recording and mixing and still made it work?

Pretty much. Saying he was merely "packing a room full of musicians" completely misses the point (partly because EVERY pop star of that era packed their studios with musicians). A lot of what Brian Wilson did for the Beach Boys came out of his unorthodox methods, which generally degraded and distorted the sound to an extreme degree. It was called a "wall of sound" because instruments were basically squashed together to the point where the sound of two different instruments playing the same notes or chords were no longer distinguishable. A ton of echo, a ton of dubbing and re-dubbing, a ton of compression - he didn't want listeners to be able to pick out different elements like you would on a hi-fi record of a small orchestra, he made something close to monolithic and overwhelming. It can be soggy and bathetic - despite a few masterpieces, most of his recordings with the Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner tracks were NOT really good - but he produced at least two dozen stone-cold classics on top of the rare Christmas LP that holds up as a great album.

Not an exact analogy, but this reminds me a bit of the Welles/Mankiewicz debate over Citizen Kane.

Not much of a real debate over Welles/Mankiewicz, that was only turned into one due to lazy speculation. Anyone who bothered to research the production documents like every draft that's been turned in could see how much of Mankiewicz's work was changed.

The debate goes on--someone turned it into a movie. (I mean, I side with Welles too, but it's there.)

Well, the movie got raked over the coals for it. Fincher and the producer eventually backpedaled and downplayed that idea when the NY Times interviewed them about it. (In the end, the best defense they had was that the film was from Mank's skewed POV, hence it was what he wrongly believed.)

Bringing it back to Spector and the question of authorship, I don't think there's necessarily a standard formula that can be applied. Ultimately you have to weigh the work on a case-by-case basis. For example, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Elligton Songbook is Ella's album only in the sense that she's the primary artist. Duke and Strayhorn wrote and arranged all the music, it's their band...I have no problem grouping it with other Ellington album when considering that body of work. But the album is centered on Ella's vocal interpretations of those songs. It's mainly about her singing. With Spector's '60s records, I think the balance is tilted more towards Spector because that big sound is the main focus of those records IMHO. I still think of them as Ronettes or Crystals or Darlene Love records, but when you string them all together, they all have a unifying sound that comes straight out of the production. You could say the same for, say, a Motown record but with Spector that authorship has been defined by a single person rather than a team/label. He's not the sole artist, but he's the primary voice.

"voice" in a figurative sense, not in the literal sense as in singing of course

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/darlene-love-phil-spector-death-1115794/

I'm not especially a fan of the wall of sound aesthetic either but isn't the 'genius' in part that he did something that was counterintuitive and contrary to most standard ideas about good recording and mixing and still made it work?

I don't hear it! If we're gonna pit murderous record producers head-to-head, I find so much more interest and innovation in Joe Meek's production. And I can't think of any other producer who failed at their job so spectacularly as he did w Cohen, with The Beatles-- it's particularly amazing how he took Ramones and turned their stoopid into just stupid. I like his work on the two Plastic Ono albums, good collaboration, there, and that's all there is for me with Spector; I admit I never listened to the Christmas album tho

Terrible person etc. but his initial work (i.e the Back To Mono boxset) was fantastic (with the input of many others of course).
Regarding his work with Lennon, I remember the original take for "Instant Karma", before production, and it's borderline terrible ! Somehow I can't find it back on YouTube.

I like his work on the two Plastic Ono albums, good collaboration, there, and that's all there is for me with Spector;

Lennon later claimed he and Yoko did most of the actual "production."

http://www.wildwaynerocks.com/amityville7.jpg

I can't weigh in on the novelty or skill of his productions, but as a master of coaxing pathos from teenage dreams, he's up there with the doo-wop masters themselves. RIP.

initial work (i.e the Back To Mono boxset)

yeah, I figured that release, Ronnie's distressing memoir and general listener interest had clearly resolved together to settle this 30 years ago: a solid few fistfuls of pop singles (directed by him, if that fits better than "produced" for some) and one great LP from 1961-66, then a full-time abusive lunatic after that. He obviously had some quality of charisma that would keep the likes of Lennon and Cohen in the studio in between screaming fits and firing guns, but probably the same kind that also let him charm strange women home to then terrorise overnight, for decades. (Possibly targeting both at low points of mental health and substance abuse? The Ramones collectively seem fragile enough to be susceptible to an abuser generally.)

...of remarkable pop singles...

fgti otm. The best Spector cuts succeed on account of the songwriting/performance and despite the production. I can’t think of a single one where a remix isn’t/wouldn’t be preferable. I mentioned All Things Must Pass upthread – if, as I suspect, a leaner new mix will be released this year, my ears may finally be able to make peace with it. Conceptually, Spector’s overwrought Wagnerian/Brucknerian shtick was indeed quite novel at the time, and the fact that it occasionally borders on the saturation of noise even more so, but (musical) execution was not his strong suit.

Strongly disagree with "despite the production." I think the Rolling Stone piece above (by Darlene Love) gets at both sides of the equation nicely: the visionary inside the studio, the awful person outside of it. He even tried to prevent her from appearing on Letterman, where whole new generations got to discover her (not to mention the income).

_I like his work on the two Plastic Ono albums, good collaboration, there, and that's all there is for me with Spector; _

Lennon later claimed he and Yoko did most of the actual "production."

That's good to know! I love both those albums but haven't done any research on their history

Certainly sounds that way

birdistheword at 10:39 17 Jan 21

I'm not especially a fan of the wall of sound aesthetic either but isn't the 'genius' in part that he did something that was counterintuitive and contrary to most standard ideas about good recording and mixing and still made it work?

Pretty much. Saying he was merely "packing a room full of musicians" completely misses the point (partly because EVERY pop star of that era packed their studios with musicians). A lot of what Brian Wilson did for the Beach Boys came out of his unorthodox methods, which generally degraded and distorted the sound to an extreme degree. It was called a "wall of sound" because instruments were basically squashed together to the point where the sound of two different instruments playing the same notes or chords were no longer distinguishable. A ton of echo, a ton of dubbing and re-dubbing, a ton of compression - he didn't want listeners to be able to pick out different elements like you would on a hi-fi record of a small orchestra, he made something close to monolithic and overwhelming. It can be soggy and bathetic - despite a few masterpieces, most of his recordings with the Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner tracks were NOT really good - but he produced at least two dozen stone-cold classics on top of the rare Christmas LP that holds up as a great album.

I think the musical insight was the fact the made the music for the medium, small AM radios, rather than try to make it for nice speakers, he just exaggerated the audio effect, the heavy compression that AM has, he made it to pop on small mono speakers

Yeah the small speakers/cars radio is certainly key to understand his sound : these songs were made to sound great on these very limited/lowfi speakers (not that they sound bad on hifi though but they may lack subtlety !).

i keep hearing this thread title to Celine Dion's voice

"Phil Spector's dead
Phil Spector's dead to me nowwwwwwwwww"

I listened to the Xmas album this holidays through Spotify/a cheap bluetooth speaker and it sounded great.

closest we can get now

Not once have I ever heard any of the Back to Mono stuff and thought it sounded bad, or could be improved.

Fun to listen to some of the circulated outtakes. It's kind of like listening to the Carl Stalling stuff, or "Pet Sounds" sessions, where you hear this big familiar dense thing get stopped and started on a dime by this huge group of talented musicians. Good banter, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPnFt1AJ_d0

If you listen at 1:56:06, Lennon discusses the uh hectic recording of Rock and Roll, during which sessions Spector ran off with the tapes. Lennon does a spot-on impression too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls8yjYKT6hA

. A ton of echo, a ton of dubbing and re-dubbing, a ton of compression - he didn't want listeners to be able to pick out different elements like you would on a hi-fi record of a small orchestra, he made something close to monolithic and overwhelming.

wasn't this motivated in part by trying to create a big, powerful sound over weak AM radio waves?

(xpost) Spector does a good Lennon, too, in the documentary from a few years ago.

wasn't this motivated in part by trying to create a big, powerful sound over weak AM radio waves?

The Motown production teams were similarly motivated and, iirc, had a tinny AM-transistor-radio-sounding speaker installed in the studio to evaluate mixes.

I assume it's really similar to listening to a mix through a set or ear pods to hear how they sound today.

Yeah, let me clarify something - I don't think these records sound "bad" aesthetically. They're great records mainly for the way they sound. The reason I leaned on negative terminology was to emphasize why those records were unique and why Spector's methods were unorthodox. If you read Geoff Emerick's book on the Beatles, he talks about a similar thing - a lot of what they did wasn't for audio fidelity, and because of that, their methods went against a lot of rules at EMI and conventional wisdom among engineers. Spector's innovations were probably less likely to come from an engineer alone because even if it was to their taste, someone in that position would risk getting fired or losing future job prospects if they applied the same methods to a record produced by someone else.

SOME of the things Spector did may have been to accommodate AM radio, especially at the mastering stage. (Levine reportedly dubbed all of their final mixes down one more time with a hard EQ pattern and a shot compression. This is generally what you do with a cutting master, but to them this was THE master, not a dub, and it's what's typically used for any reissue.) I don't think they were unique in that regard. A lot of people making teen pop records then had the same idea - it sounds great in the studio, but how does it sound over the airwaves and out of a radio? That's why you had some engineers who would rig up something that could broadcast a tape playback to a radio. (It's not just the speaker, the transmission alone makes a difference in how you hear something on the radio.)

I would argue that the most extreme and characteristic aspects of his records had little to do with radio presentation. It's possible that was on his mind as he developed that overall sound, but he stuck with it long after AM radio was no longer a major factor. Even when he does a more stripped down album like Imagine (which he did actually produce), he still "degrades" the sound in the same exact way. Listen to the 2000 remix, which is a lot clearer, and you get a sense of how much compression, EQ, etc. was added at the mixing stage alone. You hear a lot of the same sound on the Dion and the Leonard Cohen albums, and even the Ramones album from 1980.

It may be helpful to listen to his earlier records on the box set (the first ones he actually produced), and then jump to something like Baby I Love You or You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling. It's an enormous difference. As a producer, he basically started as a Leiber & Stoller protégé, and it shows - he's doing the sweet soul music they perfected with the Drifters. Within a few years, that big, reverberating monolithic sound is in place.

Re: Plastic Ono Band, he did play piano on "Love" and he was heavily involved in the mixing, but yes, otherwise he was MIA for most of the sessions. As a joke, Lennon even rented a billboard, asking Spector to come back and produce his album. "Instant Karma!" is Spector's greatest Beatle-related production. Lennon actually got the personnel, consciously loading up musicians to simulate what he thought was essential to the "wall of sound," but everything else was Spector. His orchestrations on Let It Be suck, but they sound like standard schmaltz - he didn't try to engineer them into a wall of sound. When Lennon brought him in for "Instant Karma!" he asked Lennon what he wanted and he was told to make it like his old records, and that's what we get - huge difference.

Anyway, he was a great producer, but again, as mentioned many times before, great artists aren't necessarily the people we'd like them to be in their private lives (or even public lives). Spector, Ike Turner, etc. are all lousy shits and rightfully belonged in jail. They don't deserve to be celebrated as people but you have to accept their contributions to popular music, which are pretty enormous.

Actually "Baby I Love You" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" shouldn't be in italics - I'm talking about the singles, not any LP's that may have the same name.

Also, to be fair, "Across the Universe" was actually heavily processed compared to "The Long and Winding Road" et al. It's more like the wall of sound and it's also probably the ONE track that may have benefitted from all those overdubs, though I'm still on the fence about that. Lennon loved it though.

Yeah it’s too bad that raw version of « Instant Karma » is not available anymore because you realize how the production really made it great.

FWIW, a new All Things Must Pass mix is scheduled to be released this year. It was delayed from last year due to COVID because it was originally planned as a 50th anniversary project.

I don't know enough about the sessions to say for sure, but it always sounded like a strange case of an artist hiring a producer who was completely wrong for what they wanted, and wrong in a way that should have been predictable. The only other case I can think of where you had an artist and producer in a similar situation with equal authority over a project is Dylan and Lanois on Time Out of Mind. In both cases, you have long established individuals who were at a point where nobody says "no" to them, and yet they were at odds over how the album should sound.

Anyway, Harrison complained many times that he hated reverb and wished the album sounded differently. He even said he imagined it being more like the Band (as in the eponymous "brown" album or Music from Big Pink), but why the hell would he hire Phil Spector? I would think someone would have a good answer to that, but I've never seen one.

I think all things must pass sounds abominable. I remember reading that Harrison hired Spector's to "give him a hand" with producing but specter just got shit-canned on brandy the whole time. Still seems to have put his mark all over it

Spector even

I actually think it works MOST of the time...a bit overdone and some arrangements are flat out schmaltzy like the title track, but the idea of building a cathedral-like sound over spiritually-minded songs isn't a bad one. "What Is Life" alone sounds fantastic.

(Forgot to mention above, I don't count Oh Mercy because Dylan didn't know Lanois would be so unyielding. He was also more open to ideas after what he considered a bad run of albums where he struggled to figure out how to make a modern-sounding album. With Time Out of Mind he knew what he wanted, which is basically the sound of every album he's done since.)

I think All Things Must Pass sounds great, and was never going to sound like the Band.

Time Out of Mind, btw, the story I heard is that Lanois had a second studio going on where he could mess with the tracks. That is, Dylan heard the "clean" stuff but Lanois wasn't done with it yet. And it sounds great, too, imo. I mean, as if Dylan (or anyone else at his level who complains about a producer messing up their album) did not have the power to say "no."

How's *the* Steve Hoffman's bootleg remaster of All Things Must Pass?

I haven't been compelled to give End of the Century a listen for the first time in almost 40 years. I loved it at the time, but I was still in the relatively early throes of Ramones worship, who my friend Peter got me onto in 1979 (smalltown life). My favourite was "Danny Says." I'm looking at the song titles and not being flooded with great memories--I think I'll let it be, to coin a phrase.

Time Out of Mind, btw, the story I heard is that Lanois had a second studio going on where he could mess with the tracks. That is, Dylan heard the "clean" stuff but Lanois wasn't done with it yet. And it sounds great, too, imo. I mean, as if Dylan (or anyone else at his level who complains about a producer messing up their album) did not have the power to say "no."

I like the album as is too, but I also prefer some of the "less-produced" recordings on Tell Tale Signs and elsewhere (specifically the early recording of "Can't Wait," "Red River Shore," the "Cold Irons Bound" from Masked & Anonymous and the faster live rendition of "Highlands"), I think they're better even if what they released was still good.

Dylan and Lanois argued a LOT though, especially on that album. They've both talked about this in separate interviews since then. I think people can understand that on a very basic level - even if you're in a position where you have the ultimate authority, I'm sure you can understand what it's like to give in a little when you're constantly butting heads with someone you don't want to fire. Dylan once said he didn't feel the least bit satisfied even after 1) getting his first platinum album in decades and 2) winning his first major Grammy awards for it because it always sounded to him like someone's trying to steer it one way and someone else is trying to steer it another way.

Harrison's official site used to sell a hi-res version of the album. 24/96 I believe. Just find that, you can't do better.

I didn't know the Ramones' music until long after they broke up. In retrospect, it's one of their better post-'70s albums, but I could see how a lot of critics may have been unkind when it immediately followed four classics (five if you include the live album) that remain their absolute best work, IMHO. To be really unkind, it was the start of a gradual decline, barring Too Tough to Die. But it's got some great stuff on it, especially "Danny Says" which is my favorite track off there too.

I'm pretty sure I've read a quote from Harrison from around 1970 saying he didn't like the clean, contemporary production of the era, and hired Spector specifically for the density and opacity of his sound.

So what drew Lennon to repeatedly work with Spector?

it always sounded to him like someone's trying to steer it one way and someone else is trying to steer it another way.

Or maybe that was another quality that makes it great? Even so, we're talking about an inscrutable guy that had already gone with Lanois once before, and, for that matter, famously shelved tons of his own good stuff, do dunno if even Dylan knows best. Though Dylan has done such a good job as Jack Frost that I wish he would produce other people. Or, you know, hire out his ace band and top-notch engineers.

Phil Spector's greatest sin is that he was not Steve Albini.

Very informative thread! Didn't know all that about Time Out of Mind, but Dylan writes thoughtfully about the making of Oh Mercy in Chronicles, explaining his position on what he was going for, but sympathetic to Lanois' frustration as well (might should have been one produced by Jack Frost AKA BD, but yeah he was trying to figure out how to make acceptably modern records---before going back to the Mississippi Sheiks etc., which seems to have helped lead him toward his 00s Americana grooves).

I would take Dylan's production from Love and Theft on over Lanois' production, period.

Yeah. Of course there was also the influential success of his old sideman T-Bone Burnett, via suprise hit of O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack etc., so that may have helped him (self-assurance and critical/commerical-sucess-wise) move past the Lanois-associated trend-dominated era.

So what drew Lennon to repeatedly work with Spector?

No idea, but Lennon got along with him, idolized his early records and liked what he did on Let It Be and "Instant Karma!" so it never seemed strange that he would hire him for other stuff.

Or maybe that was another quality that makes it great? Even so, we're talking about an inscrutable guy that had already gone with Lanois once before, and, for that matter, famously shelved tons of his own good stuff, do dunno if even Dylan knows best. Though Dylan has done such a good job as Jack Frost that I wish he would produce other people. Or, you know, hire out his ace band and top-notch engineers.

Probably, I mean Dylan has clearly struggled with making records before. By that, I mean people around him see him trying to figure out what he wants and not knowing. Al Kooper said Dylan drove him crazy on New Morning because it seemed like he was changing his mind every day, and he also suggested that the bad reviews for Self Portrait was the main catalyst, which undermines the myth that Dylan purposely put out a bad album (as well as Dylan's own claim that he purposely put out a collection of songs that would "evaporate" when he released New Morning). I think the world of Dylan but the guy's still human, he has doubts like every other artist.

Dylan's main engineer is Chris Shaw, and he works on a lot of stuff (https://www.chrisshawmix.com/), and guys like Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton et al have gone on to tour with other people and produce other records.

Is Larry Campbell the guy who is the Levon proxy in Robbie Robertson’s Once Were Brothers?

I'll add that the controversial side of Spector's work (not him as a terrible person, just his work) is the legacy of heavy-handed producers. That remains a polarizing topic in terms of what a producer should be. But more invisible producers don't get the press that someone like Lanois gets, and when you look at the paychecks they get and the high profile they have, it's not hard to understand why some people want to be producers like that.

I haven't seen Once Were Brothers but Campbell joined up with Levon Helm after Dylan, they were close collaborators too until Levon died.

Yeah, I think it's more about whatever restores Dylan's xxxp self-assurance in the studio (incl. how those songs should go/how can he finish them, which is certainly a thing mentioned in Chronicles and demonstrated on The Cutting Edge--and something on Tell-Tale Signs: he stops playing, and somebody asks, "Is that it?" and he says, "I don't know." How those good-to-great tracks ended up alone together maybe, though figuring out why he left some things in the can, compared to shit that made the albums, is always--well, he sometimes overthinks--but what can self-consciousness be like, if you are carrying that Bob Dylan mask and legacy around--?)

FWIW, Lenny Kaye was interviewed once for a book on Todd Rundgren since he produced an LP for Patti Smith (not one of my favorites, but it has a few of her best recordings like "Dancing Barefoot"). This always stuck out for me:

"I learned [Todd's] philosophy which is, and something I’ve repeated many a time to any band I’ve produced with, it’s a great aphorism which is: ‘If you know what you want, I’ll get it for you. If you don’t know what you want, I’ll do it for you.’ And that’s pretty much the job of a producer, and producers like it when artists have ideas."

https://pulmyears.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/wizard-wednesdays-dancing-barefoot-at-lenny-kayes/

Time Out of Mind is Lanois' nadir: fog machines and smoke to obscure how underwritten and uninteresting half of Dylan's songs are.

No idea why anyone would have a problem with "End of the Century". It's good!

I don't remember TOOM well enough to say (although it seemed like he got so depressed that he found his way to humor, "Erica Jong" and all), but if DL did obscure it well enough to get for inst Album Of The Year at the Grammys, wouldn't that kind of shit-shining be worth considering as successful production?

It's like looking for a ring amid the brambles and thickets but realizing there is no ring.

Oh well, life's a journey.

Life’s an illusion
Love is a dream

No idea why anyone would have a problem with "End of the Century". It's good!

xp And "h'mmm, good shit-shining!" might've gotten him even more work (if that's what he did, or some needy stars thought he did).

But then compared to what came after, of course...

James, compare that w their Laswellization, Too Tough To Die, and please let us know what you think (I've never heard either, but better you than me).

Per Dow’s request, I just switched over to listen to the first track of Too Tough to Die and am about to switch right back.

Re: _Plastic Ono Band_, he did play piano on "Love" and he was heavily involved in the mixing, but yes, otherwise he was MIA for most of the sessions. As a joke, Lennon even rented a billboard, asking Spector to come back and produce his album.

(It's not just the speaker, the transmission alone makes a difference in how you hear something on the radio.)

Wow

Speaking of reputations, that album was produced by Andy Johns, whose name as engineer is on several of the greatest rock albums ever made. And yet the band claims he would pass out drinking wine and that they produced it themselves.

I love the sound of Time Out of Mind, and if that is Lanois's nadir, then hats off to that guy.

I’m onto side two of End of the Century. It’s okay, but honestly it’s making me want to listen to The Undertones.

“Rock ‘N’ Rock High School” being the umpteenth song with RnR in the title and/or lyric that doesn’t quite measure up, although perhaps it’s better than most. Now songs about funk otoh...

I listened to this record this morning, the echoed booming of the drums was the most notably Spectorian attribute of the punkier tracks.

I love the sound of Time Out of Mind, and if that is Lanois's nadir, then hats off to that guy.

Same here. The only track I thoroughly dislike is "Make You Feel My Love" (it should've been replaced by "Red River Shore"), but otherwise the less ambitious songs ("Dirt Road Blues," "Million Miles" and "'Til I Fell in Love with You") sound like great mood pieces. They make me wish Augie Meyers had played on more Dylan albums - Love and Theft is the only other one that features him.

Dylan wanted him on Modern Times, but weather conditions prevented Meyers from making the trip up from Texas.

Bill Wyman's new article for NYMag is pretty damn good: https://www.vulture.com/article/phil-spector-music-producer-murderer-obituary.html#_ga=2.227531550.2076685399.1611222315-356502157.1611222315

re End Of The Century, I've never heard it on vinyl, so I don't know how it originally sounded, but in the 90s I had it on CD and it sounded really muddy. I sold that off and bought the remastered version in the early 00s and it was a massive improvement. now I like it more than Road To Ruin tbh.

Bill Wyman article good but

Ellie Greenwich and Phil Barry

Plus they worked for Leiber and Stoller and so they were actually in the Brill Building proper.

Also, LaLa Brooks sang “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which is not noted.

A couple of those lost Celine Dion tracks actually leaked. Not surprisingly, they're pure schlock, but if I had to sit through her records, the first track would be almost tolerable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pvvOnWOMTs