Post a controversial music opinion

Looking at the credits to the Back to Mono comp it seems the only track where Spector has sole writing credits is "To Know Him Is to Love Him", not really a massive tune

But yeah, he does get a writing credit (that seems like more than a producer's writing credit) on many great songs

there was a big Hoffman thread with a variety of takes, but my takeaway was that it was definitely more than a Elvis tax thing and his contributions likely varied, could be a writing a bridge or punching up certain things, lyricc, or just the arrangements, or more trad cowrites. I suppose that whole era was such a machine, so many people had their hands on the songs. but I think he made significant contributions, it's just hard to tease out in the era before the Beatles/Dylan/singer-songwriter paradigm

I made a related observation re: Spector last year (to general disinterest)!

agreed re: general sentiment of spector being overrated. i don't care if he solely wrote every song he ever worked on, it's very milquetoast music and definitely stuff i think of as "dated" in a bad way by now. maybe wrong vibe for thread but i always considered him one of the great "villains" of rock and roll and subsequently have no issues diminishing his contributions. not meaning to be malicious and he was involved in some classic jams, i've just never understood "the big deal."

(also my thoughts on spector are very much informed by david axelrod's take on him: all that "wall of sound" bullshit created a nightmare for the engineer in those small ass studios spector used to use; that engineer probably deserves a lot more credit for making the idea happen than spector deserves for simply proposing it.)

I certainly rank Shadow Morton a bit higher among girl group producers.

xp I just thumbed thru the index of an interview book with various producers, and they definitely give Spector credit in various ways, for knowing exactly what he wanted and how to get it (even while talking about how his engineers knew the "formula" for producing the sound).

...and hey, here's Alan Parsons agreeing with my general take:

These days when you hear even the great '60s records on CD, my god, there are a few fluffs and bungles in there. I mean, the so-called Phil Spector 'Wall of Sound' may have sounded good on the radio, but if you hear it on CD it's got a few deficiencies...

is it a fault for him to have been producing for the primary medium through which his records would be heard in the real world? (AM transistor radio)

but i guess i don't buy that the arrangements and production don't mean anything, "be my baby" is a great song and was a great song played on the piano in the writing process, but is it a HIT without those drumbeats at the beginning? i don't know. whether that beat was spector or someone else or just the session drummer doing something cool on the fly (wiki says it was hal blaine doing it at the suggestion of jack nitzche (who himself played a big role in the wall of sound)

or in a totally different example, i was watching a brian jones doc and someone in the film pointed out that yes he didn't write "under by thumb" or "paint it black", but did those songs become hits because of the words and chord or because of his marimba part or his sitar part? i take a lot of exception to what we consider "songwriting" in general, it's still all derived from the sheet music industry

or like zep's "when the levee breaks" - was that memphis minnie? page's arrangement...or...I would argue the single most important part of that song is bonham's drumbeat

xp Of course it’s not his “fault”; it just doesn’t sound so great now

(fwiw, I'm also not sure I agree that "Be My Baby" would have been just as big a hit with other production!)

It would sound just as good on a strummed acoustic etc etc

or on a player piano

I mean it's clearly a masterpiece

It's a great song for sure, but surely it may have not as big a hit without that beat, etc. (though I guess corrs unplugged technically said "a massive tune")

i just wish the alan parsons project could have had the chance to do "be my baby" justice

Bearing in mind [usual disclaimer about how I don't know shit about music]; I don't think I agree that it would work as well with different production. I feel like a lot of the real hooks of "Be My Baby" are created by contrast against the Wall of Sound - the isolated intro drumbeats giving way to it, the vocals alternately blending with it and emerging out of it.

think it's also besides the point, like, a great song that is greatly enhanced by the production will probably sound pleasant/enjoyable without that production, but not necessarily *as* good, and that takes nothing away from the role the production played.

it's kinda like "anybody coulda thrown 42 touchdowns with Isaac Bruce and Torrey Holt" type energy

shit acoustic covers of big pop songs are the lowest form of music

Lol otm

i just wish the alan parsons project could have had the chance to do "be my baby" justice

Parson's larger point (if you're really interested) was what amazing stuff '60s producers were able to achieve with limited production technology – It used to be part of the job, fighting to get all these great sounds. It inspired you. Now you can get them at the push of a button, and while that's benefited the overall sound quality of the music I don't think it's benefited the music itself.

Parson's larger point (if you're really interested) was what amazing stuff '60s producers were able to achieve with limited production technology – It used to be part of the job, fighting to get all these great sounds. It inspired you. Now you can get them at the push of a button, and while that's benefited the overall sound quality of the music I don't think it's benefited the music itself.

i generally agree with this but there's no possible way i could have known that's what he meant by what you posted.

alot of the real hooks of "Be My Baby" are created by contrast against the Wall of Sound - the isolated intro drumbeats giving way to it, the vocals alternately blending with it and emerging out of it.

this is part of the production and arrangement!

basically, spector is a piece of shit on every level, glad he he died in prison.

the wall of sound is great and immediate, when i was a kid and heard "be my baby" on oldies radio is just sounded great, you don't have to think about it or have it explained, that's why millions of kids fell in love with it. it just jumps out of the speakers. and that's because they *aren't* perfect sounding records, they are *exciting* sounding records.

spector's legend definitely minimizes the contributions of other players, writers, producers and performers who were just as important as he was to them being great records.

but to pretend like it wasn't a great sound and hugely influential on the beach boys, the beatles, springsteen, and many other artists and producers is silly. springsteen and brian wilson very open about emulating it.

I can't imagine "Be My Baby" drums without the echo!

Spector productions are ground zero for songs vs. records. He made great records.

there's no possible way i could have known that's what he meant by what you posted.

I know, that's why I expanded on it! (I felt I owed it to Parsons to elaborate, given your uncharitable dig/interpretation of the brief initial passage I posted)

no i gotcha, was kinda being a dick to alan parsons

this is more like it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2uJEMqPYk

i hear reverb, disrespecting the purity of the song

also if you play the chords with any elaboration you're disrespecting the purity of the song. actually playing an instrument is disrespecting the purity of the song

this is part of the production and arrangement!

that was what I meant?

I really like a lot of stuff that Spector inspired-- Beach Boys, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen. I like The Ronettes and The Crystals. "Wall of Sound" is not good, though, never was. I guess it must've been pretty amazing to hear a tonne of reverb on everything when all this stuff was coming out, but it just sounds like a mess. The truly brilliant producers of that era as far as I'm concerned were all in Detroit

Beyond stanning for Shadow Morton specifically, I'd say you can listen to comps full of girl-group songs, and they'll pretty much all "sound better" than those muddy Spector productions... admittedly, part of it may be poor mastering on those ABKCO CD's from the '90s (I haven't heard later reissues, after Sony Legacy started handling the Phillies stuff instead, so don't know if they were remastered or what).

i just wish the alan parsons project could have had the chance to do "be my baby" justice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLvFbBR4XOg

Saying that Spector's productions sound like crap now (in terms of audio quality, hi-fidelity, etc.) seems to be largely missing the point. Most stuff sounded like crap by modern standards back then. Lots of it can be "cleaned up" using modern digital techniques to sound better than it did originally. But Spector's stuff is nearly impossible to clean up, because so much was bounced down to a single track and the individual recording tracks are long gone.

That's an interesting point, but are the master tracks still lying around for almost any of this old stuff?

Probably not, but it's easier to clean up something with a small ensemble recorded more or less with a live sound, provided the parts are separated enough in the frequency space.

Most stuff sounded like crap by modern standards back then.

???

I remember reading an interview with Pete Townsend many years ago where he said "in distortion, there was music of a much higher order than anything I could compose".

I think the wall of sound does something like that. You're losing detail and clarity when a large ensemble is compacted obv. The more interesting thing is how stuff seems to emerge from it that isn't really there.

There's another quote, but I don't remember the source. That most people hear pop recordings as "a vocal with a big sound behind it". And I don't agree with that, it sounds pretty bogus. But one effect of the wall of sound is the arrangement becomes more of an image, and less of an object. It has material properties like density and opacity, but it's not a tangible thing you can deconstruct anymore. It's something like a dream.

And maybe there's an instinct to attribute that to one mind, instead of many hands, which of course is wrong and nothing to do with how this thing actually came about.

As others have pointed out, when the most common way to listen to pop music was AM radio, modern standards of audio quality are kind of beside the point. I guess hi-fi home audio equipment existed, but people probably weren't using those very expensive rigs to play "teeny bopper" mmusic.

The Byrds used to literally give acetates to DJs and drive around listening to the new song, then they tweaked the final mixes after evaluating

There's another quote, but I don't remember the source. That most people hear pop recordings as "a vocal with a big sound behind it".

That sounds like something Steve Albini said in The Problem With Music.

Every record I hear these days has incredibly loud, compressed vocals, and a quiet little murmur of a rock band in the background. The excuse given by producers for inflicting such an imbalance on a rock band is that it makes the record sound more like the Beatles. Yeah, right. Fuck’s sake, Thurston Moore is not Paul McCartney, and nobody on earth, not with unlimited time and resources, could make the Smashing Pumpkins sound like the Beatles. Trying just makes them seem even dumber. Why can’t people try to sound like the Smashchords or Metal Urbain or Third World War for a change?

Isn't that more "a vocal with a small sound behind it", though? I personally agree with the general ire at vocals sitting too high on top of the music (though as someone who has tried their hand at mixing it's really tough to find the right balance where you're showcasing the music but not submerging the vox into shoegaze territory).

Anyway, all this wall of sound challopsing has actually made me a bit mad - it's a great technique and it sounds good, gaaaaah. ums upthread otm.

Are there examples of non-Spector productions of Spector compositions that people might prefer to the Spector version - assuming both versions were roughly contemporaneous and featured similar-type vocals?

One I can think of is "I Wonder," which The Ronettes and The Crystals recorded but my favorite version is the one by The Butterflys on the Red Bird label, which was produced by Jeff Barry and Steve Venet. The only complication is that the Barry/Venet production is itself rather Spectorian in sound.

Yes, ums is otm about "an *exciting* sound". There's an energy that it wouldn't be possible to sustain if your mind was too busy picking individual elements apart.

The Albini quote is not the one i had in mind, tho there are def similarities. The Pumpkins are kind of like a muscular version of a shoegaze band, right? Not sure how Corgan's voice could be submerged, that would be like trying to bury a chainsaw.

beam my beam my butthole

The Byrds used to literally give acetates to DJs and drive around listening to the new song, then they tweaked the final mixes after evaluating

Bands still were doing this into the '90s... listening to mixes in the car!

I mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb88TkuBODw

This blows the original out of the water imo

I disagree that the "wall of sound" thing was "of an era", too. When I listen to contemporaneous Motown tracks I can't believe that Spector had any mythos whatsoever, comparatively; "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is one of the greatest productions/arrangements/mixing achievements in history imo, but I couldn't tell you who produced it without googling it

OTM re: "River Deep" (I know the cover was recorded four years later, but still...)

Even the "Remastered Version 1991" of the Tina version sounds like it's coming from the basement of the bldg. next door!

Tina's performance on the original is fucking amazing amazing, undeniable, just like all-time great; that said, nobody will ever convince me that Spector's production on it is anything but piss poor

Yeah, Tina herself is amazing, of course