Just found out that Phil Spector passed away in a prison, from Corona. It is just stunning how far he had tumbled from what once was unshakable throne in the music history - nowadays everybody thinks of him only as a convicted murderer but there was a time when he was the biggest producer in the world. Besides creating a unstoppable series of mega hits in the 1960s, Spector won Grammy for the Record of the Year in 1971, was inducted in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and The Songwriters Hall of Fame and was included on every list of the greatest pop musicians ever - curious as he was not really musician himself but a producer. Spector actually might be the first person who significantly embodied the idea of the producer; since he had such recognisable, unmistakable style, the performers were somehow less important - it was all about the finished product and a grandiose pop symphonies with Phil Spector signatures.
I need to write a little bit more about why Phil Spector was important. Really, he was the biggest pop producer of all times. Much, much more important than George Martin who, compared to him was very subdued (actually, come to think of it, everybody is subdued when compared to Spector). Until Spector came along, producers were people in the studio who organised and arranged recording sessions but we never heard about them and rightly so - they were invisible, shadowy men mentioned on the LP covers but we never really knew what exactly were they doing. Phil Spector had his own grandiose vision - based on Richard Wagner, no less - that his hit singles must have phenomenal, grandiose orchestration where tinkle bells and flutes and chimes will shine on the top of the biggest orchestra you can imagine. He detested LP albums and stereo sound - for him it was all about hit singles recorded in a glorious mono as you can hear on a transistor radio. It does sound as he was some sort of mad magician dancing around the cauldron, humming to himself and adding more and more magic ingredients - the final touch (performers and the voices) was kind of afterthought, because they were not the stars - HE was the star and everybody understood that. In fact, all these girl groups were coming in & out like on a factory track - they had to do as told and than he moved on to a next project, the new smash hit.
The list of his hits is simply amazing: he started with #1. in 1958 (""To Know Him Is to Love Him", which if I remember correctly was the epitaph written on his father's gravestone) and than it just went bigger and bigger - "Spanish Harlem", "On Broadway", "There's No Other (Like My Baby)", "Every Breath I Take", "He's a Rebel", "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" , "Be My Baby", "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', "Unchained Melody", "River Deep – Mountain High", "The Long and Winding Road", "My Sweet Lord", "Imagine", "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" - in all of this you could always recognise this is 100% Phil Spector and no one else. I mean, The Beach Boys and The Beatles were bowing to him in awe. There is a phenomenal Christmas album recorded in the early 1960s with the whole stable of his than-performers (Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Crystals, etc) which to this day stands as probably the best pop Christmas album of all times - not only that the music is glorious, but Spector really wraps it all in a sensationally exaggerated style.
And than, we come to Phil Spector as a person. By all accounts - even back in the 1960s - an socially awkward, geeky bully who loved to dominate everybody and was known as a bossy creep. Not someone who gets the best out of people by inspiring them or persuading them but demanding and intimidating them. With the exception of Darlene Love who would tell him where he can stick his little white prick, majority of people accepted this behaviour because they desperately wanted the magic stardust he was spraying over his smash hit singles. Sometime in the 1970s it gets really darker (fists, guns, drunkenness in the studio) and than proportionately to his isolation and reclusiveness it looks as the madness grew bigger and unchecked. There is a very interesting episode from 1990s when he saw Celine Dion performing "River Deep – Mountain High" on TV and he was intrigued enough to suggest a collaboration - flattered and excited Dion invited him as a producer for the recording of her new album (which will eventually become "Falling into You") but as he started showing his old bully tactics and demanded 365 takes, her team quickly told him to pack his bags - they used Jim Steinman instead, who funny enough is one of the many Spector copycats but apparently far more friendly. And than in 2003. he actually did what he always threatened and killed someone - a lifetime of behaving like a multimillionaire madman eventually caught up with him.
Do we remember him as a genius producer or as a murderer?
It depends naturally on a individual listener. Those who know him just vaguely from a movie with Al Pacino will remember him as a weirdo because they don't have other points of reference. I have listened his classic 1960s music so many times that for me he will forever stay a mad genius - nothing will make me stop listening his music, which to this day is brilliant. In fact, now I might listen it all over again. Just like discoveries about dark sides of Ike Turner or Michael Jackson, it all comes down to a individual - we might accept they were disturbed individuals in their private lives but it does not have to diminish the pleasure in their legacy. On a simply human level, I hope that Phil Spector is now finally at peace, free from all the demons that haunted him.
No comments:
Post a Comment