Phil Spector's dead to me now

"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.)

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