Phil Spector Finally Gets His Due

Posted: April 13th, 2009 | Filed under: Culture, Music, Personalities, Ruminations | No Comments »

Finally after several years and a retrial, Phil Spector, the ultimate combo of musical genius and maniacal murderer, is in jail. A jury of his peers — if such a gathering is possible for a cockamamie like Spector — found him Guilty of Murder 2d.

Back when he was charged, I wrote a column which is posted here at my site. I thought I’d reprint it here, since the news is timely again. Here ’tis again in its entirety:

It is the evening of the day.

Half the Beatles are gone. Elvis is oil on velvet. The Stones are flummoxed. Deluded by dotage, they think mugging their way through “Sympathy For The Devil” is rock ’n’ roll. Mick is more than a kiss away as an over-the-hill gigolo, “The Man From Elysian Fields.”

And cute little Michael Jackson has been freakin’ in Neverland so long he’s morphed into a new species. His TV interview was a trip to the Shelby County Fair, a front row view of the Bearded Lady with three legs and the feats of legerdemain she performs with a ping pong ball.

Yet another boomer icon has turned left on red. Somebody asked me the other day if I’m surprised that Phil Spector’s been charged with murder?

You kiddin’ me? This guy was wack when prepsters still wore Weejuns and circle pins and Ranch burgers a side of fries with tartar sauce were the sustenance of choice. The First Tycoon of Teen is and always was a walking razor, an accidental homicide one quick 911 away.

For heaven’s sakes, he was the model for maniacal “Z-Man” Barbell in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” He’s the producer whose last significant album was River Deep Mountain High, a gloriously flawed Ike and Tina Turner release. During recording, Spector had the cohones — or stupidity — to tell disagreeable Ike Turner to sit in the corner and stay out of the way. (So distraught was Spector by the album’s lack of success that he faded totally into his own parade. On the radio the other morning, Laura Shine, echoing the mistaken belief of many, thought he was already dead.)

Surprised by the murder charge?

What took him so long? Legend has it Phil went Saturday Night Special on Joey Ramone while overproducing End of the Century.

Last week neighbors heard the sound of firecrackers at 5 in the a.m. at Spector’s very own Xanadu, a manse on a mountain top. On the floor of his vestibule was a never-was actress named Lana Clarkson doing her best Joe Gillis impression. She played bit parts in “Scarface,” “Amazon Women on the Moon” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but her most famous role is now, forever and always as the 21st century’s first Nicole Simpson.

Surprised?

Hell, no, this is rock ’n’ roll, baby.

Spector’s dad committed suicide. A teen-age Spector took the name of his first hit — “To Know Him is to Love Him” — from pop’s headstone. Then he went on to mold the orchestral face of rock music. He’s the guy who conglomerated glockenspieled opulence with backbeat. “Spanish Harlem,” you know, Ben E. King, Spector wrote it. The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,” the most played 45 in the history of Western Civilization?

All Phil. Capeche?

Rock ’n’ roll’s greatest song, “Be My Baby,” written by Ellie Greenwich, is his production, a tune Brian Wilson is reputed to have listened to every day since 1963. OK, Wilson’s a dude with his own issues. But here’s how seminal that Ronettes’ tune is. I wrote about the song awhile back. Allan, a pal and my percussional tech support, a guy who is married with two kids and, by all outward appearances, hovers near 11 on the sanity scale, chastised me. As in immediately, and with vigor, when I miscounted the number of bomp-bah-bomps at the song’s intro.

The fragile, plaintive voice on the record mesmerizes still. Legend has it that, before recording the lead, Spector did 27 overdubs, layers of horns and guitars and organs and choral. Then Veronica Bennett did her thing in one take. (That the song we are talking about might actually be “Walking in the Rain” is beside the point. We’re riffing on primordial cultural mythos here. Work with me.)

Anyhow when all that was said and done, Spector was more than smitten. He swept the lass away. She became Mrs. Ronnie Spector but found herself enslaved, banned from the studio. Phil’s San Simeon became her Tower of London. Fortunately, she didn’t become Anne Boleyn. Six years later she escaped.

Lana Clarkson can’t say the same. She can’t say anything at all. Phil Spector, the First Tycoon of Teen, the greatest producer and innovator rock ’n’ roll has ever known, has proven to be the fool on the hill.

Listen to his music — the Crystals, the Chiffons, the Ronettes, Ben E. King, Darlene Love, the Righteous Brothers, Gene Pitney. Brilliant stuff, the legacy of Phil Spector, Studio Svengali. Phil Spector, accused of Murder in the First with Robert Shapiro on retainer.

---