Georgia Landon WR121 Le Guin November 11, 2011

Phil Spector: Building the Wall of Sound

It was late in the summer of 1987 and I had just turned 15. August is unbelievably hot in Los Angeles, especially when you are teenager bopping aimlessly down Hollywood Boulevard with no car, hardly any dough and a two and a half hour bus ride to get home. My best friend Celeste and I would often find our way there and spend hours wandering through the crowds of tourists and the locals who hustle them, checking out the boys (too old) and the record shops (too expensive). We had only the vaguest idea of what we were looking for, and I imagine if we had actually found it it would have frightened us out of our wits anyway. Summer was almost over and Celeste and I were limp with ennui and heat exhaustion. We were loitering around outside Graumans Chinese Theater, stepping in the footprints left behind by Hollywoods glamorous past, when we decided to blow our bus money home on tickets to catch a matinee showing of Dirty Dancing. I cannot remember if I had actually cared to see the movie or if it was simply a respite from the heat, and as we claimed seats and parked our grubby Chucks atop the backs of the venerable seats before us, the lights went down on an otherwise empty theater. Into the cool, still darkness came a sound: Boom. Boom-boom. Crash! Boom. Boomboom. Crash! And then this incredible wave of sound rushed over us, so rich and lush and filled with longing, a longing that spoke to me of everything that I was on the verge of: romance and love. Glory and heartbreak. The rich orchestral strings, the singers yearning voice and the heavy backbeat that put the dirty in the dancingIt was Be My Baby by The Ronettes, and as Celeste and I jumped up and started dancing in the deserted aisles the music said everything I couldnt express about being a teenaged girl who just could not wait for it all to begin.

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Now, I was crazy about music: New Wave, Punk and what the kids nowadays call Goth (terrible, terrible word for it) and I was familiar with some music of that general late 50s - early 60s era. I loved Buddy Holly and The Beatles, of course, and my dads old Coasters 45s, but there was something about Be My Baby that moved me, that spoke to my passionate little unformed heart in a way that nothing else ever had before. That something turned out to be a weird little man named Phil Spector. Phil Spector, you may ask, that crazy man in the afro wig who shot that floozy in the mouth a couple of years back? Well, yes. One and the same. But once upon a time this man produced John Lennons Imagine, The Righteous Brothers Youve Lost That Lovin Feeling and Unchained Melody, Leonard Cohens Death of a Ladies Man and The Ramones End of the Century. The story I am telling today is not about Spectors sad and sordid downfall. I am telling the story of how Phil Spector, at the tender age of 23, seized the music industry in his pale, spindly fingers and bent it to his will, bringing about the Golden Age of Girl Groups and inventing the studio technique known as The Wall of Sound, forever changing the face of Rock & Roll. Phil Spector was born in The Bronx on December 26, 1939, though tellingly his mother Bertha often lied to her friends, claiming he had been born on Christmas and that she had given birth to the second Jesus (Brown 14). His parents were both Russian Jews who had immigrated to America as children, and while they met and fell in love as adults there seems to be some evidence that they may have been first cousins (Brown 13). He and his older sister Shirley enjoyed a happy early childhood with a close knit extended family, and like most little boys Phil worshipped his father, whose name was Ben (Ribowsky 13).

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The Spector home revolved around music. Ben was a guitar player and pretty, blond Shirley was certain that she would be a star one day, either in Hollywood or on Broadway (Brown 15). The radio was always on and young Phil absorbed the hits of the day, like Bing Crosbys The Bells of St. Marys and Johnny Mercers Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (Thompson 13). But darkness, perhaps in the form of mental illness, lurked behind the happy domestic scene and one April morning in 1949 Ben took his own life (Ribowsky 14). When he was laid to rest beneath a gravestone whose epitaph read: To Know Him Was to Love Him, the entire Spector clan was devastated, most of all nine year old Phil (Ribowsky 11). This tragedy would lay the groundwork for all that he would go on to achieve, both the good and bad. The Bronx held too many memories of Ben, and by 1953 Bertha realized that she and her children had to escape the black spell that New York held over them. They packed up and moved to the Fairfax neighborhood of Hollywood where there lived a large enclave of other East Coast Jews (Ribowsky 15). There Shirley and Bertha would turn the light of their attentions on young Phil. He was now the only man in their lives and they were determined to retain control of him. Clearly they did not intend to allow this Mr. Spector to slip away from them. By now Phil was a teenager, deep in the throes of an awkwardness and insecurity that he would never truly escape. He was only a couple inches over five feet, skinny, asthmatic and sallow of skin, complete with receding chin and hairline (Ribowsky 9). In fact, he rather dramatically resembled Pee-Wee Herman. He was a weird kid, high strung, hyperactive and alternately painfully shy and aggressively hostile. His mother hated to allow him out of her sight. She followed him around, telephoned him incessantly if he dared visit a friends house and brutally intimidated any girls that Phil might bring around. Once Phil began dating his first girlfriend, a young woman named Donna Kass, he began treating her in the same possessive, obsessive fashion (Thompson 17).

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Like so many other misfit teens, his only escape from the stresses of school and his family life was music. He loved listening to music: Jazz, Classical (with a particular passion for Wagner) and Soul (he had very little use for Rock & Roll, considering it a sanitized, whitewashed rip off of R&B) and he loved his guitar, playing in his bedroom in the dark all night long (Ribowsky 10). At sixteen years of age Phil had managed to carve a niche for himself at Fairfax High with his skill on the guitar, and when in the middle of one dark night despair turned to inspiration he called his best friend and musical partner Marshall Lieb: Marsh! I got a new song. You gotta hear it. It was called To Know Him is To Love Him (Ribowsky 12). Determined to cut a record, Phil decided to rent studio time at Gold Star Sound Studios. He needed forty bucks to pull it off. Bertha chipped in $10 and so did Marshall. Another friend named Harvey Goldstein was talked into contributing and the final $10 came from a lovely young girl named Annette Kleinbard who was Donnas best friend. She also had a fine soprano singing voice, which was fortunate since her ten bucks bought her a place in the band (Brown 36). They called themselves The Teddy Bears, as a tribute to Elvis Presley (Brown 37). Phil and Marshall had an aural vision, so to speak, and they drove Gold Star owner and sound engineer Stan Ross out of his mind recording the track. In the early 60s studios used only two tracks to record songs, one for the instruments and one for the vocals, but these crazy kids attempted overdubbing and supplemental guitar and vocal parts that were unheard of at the time (Ribowsky 27). According to Lieb, We wanted the sound of the first track played back over the speakers in the studio and to sing to that- everything into the mike at once. That would make the sound bigger, fuller (Ribowsky 28). Ross said, We were experimenting, too, in those

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days. Every time engineers went into the studio, we were feeling our way, trying to find out what rock and roll was (Ribowsky 29). Not all of the experimentation was successful, but Ross used his expertise to polish the rough edges and at sixteen Spector was already pushing the boundaries of technology to create a rudimentary Wall of Sound (Thompson 25). It worked. In 1958 To Know Him Is to Love Him by The Teddy Bears hit #1 on the American Pop Charts (Brown 44). The song has practically become a standard. You may think that you dont know it but trust me, you do, and it has been covered by everyone from Dolly Parton to Amy Winehouse. The original recording is so impossibly sweet, so naively wholesome it sounds as foreign to modern teenaged ears as Aramaic, but that innocent sound was the product of Phil Spectors terrible loss, and the singles success inspired Machiavellian behavior in Phil that would soon become signature. His sister Shirley muscled her way into managing the group, and the two Spectors subsequently gave poor Harvey Weinstein the boot: he hadnt contributed much to the record and they didnt feel like splitting the royalties four ways (Thompson 32). The Teddy Bears were short lived. None of their subsequent singles received any attention and the band quickly crumbled under the weight of Shirley Spectors abrasive mismanagement (Brown 46). Phil was heartbroken, but the success of To Know Him is to Love Him brought the budding young genius to the attention of well-connected music producer Lester Sills (Thompson 37). Sills was amazed by Spectors abilities and found the odd little kid to be loveable. It wasnt long before Phil left his mothers home and began staying with Sills, sharing a room with his ten year old son. Soon after, Spector flew to New York City armed with letters of introduction from Sills (Thompson 41). There Spector wasted no time in climbing the ladder of success, and didnt waste any thought on those people he had to step on to do it, either. He was astoundingly confident or

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obnoxiously arrogant, depending on who you asked, and over the next two years he worked for and broke ties with Trey, Hill & Range and Atlantic records (Ribowsky 79, 83 & 88). During that time he co-wrote the classic song Spanish Harlem for Ben E. King (Thompson 46), but by then he convinced himself that what he really wanted wasnt to be a Rock & Roll star, but to be the man wielding control over the Rock & Roll stars. He had a vision of the music producer as artist, a completely new concept (Brown 51). Spectors dream was finally realized in 1961 when he and Sills decided to form their own record label, called Philles (Ribowsky 95). He had been working with Hill & Range but of course felt no compunction about running out on them, and in fact stole their most promising new group, The Crystals, right out from in under their noses (Thompson 59). The Crystals were a group of five very young black women from Brooklyn; and while Phil was warned that records made by female vocalists would never sell he wasnt worried, because The Crystals wouldnt be making the record. He would be (Brown 184). Spector recorded The Crystals first single in June of 1961. It was a sultry summer night and the girls came straight from their Prom, arriving at the studio still dressed in their gowns (Brown 91). The sound room was crowded with excited young girls in crinolines and rhinestones and the air was thick with harmonies, perfume and nerves. Their enthusiasm turned to anxiety faster than you can say Cinderella, though, once they got a taste of Spectors exacting demands. Phil had to control every single move in that studio, and he had learned about control from the master: his mother. Spector was in his element, and Theres No Other (Like My Baby) was a big success, reaching #20 on the Pop Charts (Brown 95). In July of 1962 he found the perfect song for The Crystals next hit called Hes a Rebel, written by Gene Pitney. There was only one problem: at the time Phil was in Los Angeles and The Crystals were on the road touring in New York (Thompson 64). Spector was undaunted.

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His songs were his songs, and in his eyes a vocalist was just as replaceable as a guitar or a microphone. Besides, he was the legal owner of the name The Crystals (Ribowsky 120). He quickly found a new group of young female vocalists headed by Darlene Love, changed their name from the Blossoms to The Crystals and recorded the demo (Thompson 64). It was a huge hit, and the original Crystals were shocked to hear their name attached to this unfamiliar song. Still touring, they were quickly forced to learn it so they could perform their new hit single to demanding audiences (Brown 106). Phils growing ego left little room for competition or collaboration, and after the success of Hes a Rebel he began to chafe in his partnership with Lester Sills. Michael Spencer, one of Spectors oldest friends, stated it bluntly: Lester was a father figure, and Phil always turned on the father (Brown 109). He felt no guilt at all about referring to his former patron as a parasite and cut off communication. Sills, not one to swallow an insult, retaliated by deliberately recording a number of lousy singles on the Philles label, knowing that the blemish on Spectors track record would drive him crazy (Ribowsky 129). Finally Sills sold out his share in Philles for a mere $60,000, simply to be rid of the irritation of Spectors betrayal (Ribowsky 130). Spector responded by recording a demo called Lets Dance the Screw; he pressed a copy and sent it to Lester Sills. It was his way of saying Screw You to the man who had been like a father to him (Ribowsky 131). I heard this song, once, on Spectors friend Rodney Bingenheimers Los Angeles radio show and let me tell you, it was an insult. Too bad for Sills, Spector harbored some serious Daddy issues. Spector had never forgotten the sounds he had created at Gold Star. There was something about the acoustics in that dumpy little place that haunted him and he had never been able to recreate them elsewhere (Ribowsky 27). In 1962 he returned, and he knew exactly what song he wanted to record, a song he loved from his childhood: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. Still

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searching for that bigger, fuller sound, he employed three guitar players, three bass players, two sax players, a drummer and a percussionist. He asked Darlene Love, Fanita Barrett and Billy Sheen to perform the vocals using the name Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans (Brown 106). When he told the ensemble what song he intended to record, everyone assumed he was joking. It never even occurred to anyone that he could be serious until they had finished recording the instruments and started on the vocals. It may have been crazy, but when Spector played the demo for a New York publisher the man stopped him after hearing only four bars and offered him $10,000 up front now, without even hearing what the rest of it sounds like (Brown 107). It was Spectors first experience with total control at Gold Star Sound Studios, and the single was a big hit, reaching #8 on the charts (Brown 108). When you listen to this song you can finally hear that fat, lush, sound that Spector had been trying to create since To Know Him is to Love Him. Nothing else out there sounded quite like it. Phil had used the unique conditions at Gold Star to create a completely new sound. He crammed the tiny studio with as many musicians as possible, using multiple guitars, basses, pianos, violins, hornswhatever his imagination demandedoften topped off with faithful gofer Sonny Bono on tambourine or castanets. Because the studio was so small each instruments microphone picked up the sound of multiple instruments, and once he had worked his magic in the control room he built a dense Wall of Sound (Thompson 52). This created music with a huge, dramatic, almost Wagnerian sound: Little symphonies for the kids, Phil called it (Brown 1) What followed was a string of over thirteen Top 40 hits including the classics The Boy Im Gonna Marry by Darlene Love, Da Doo Ron Ron and Then He Kissed Me by The Crystals (Ribowsky 5). Each song more clearly expressed Spectors vision of the power of music and of teenage passion. Then He Kissed Me is breathtakingly poignant, with soaring strings

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and a driving beat supporting Lala Brooks sweet, fresh vocals, a whirlwind of underage romance. That is when Phil discovered The Ronettes. Girl Groups were known for their sweet innocence and lady-like demeanor, but The Ronettes were bad girls. Ronnie Bennett was the lead vocalist, a sexy girl with big hair, tiny dresses and tons of eyeliner. The group was under contract with Colpix and going nowhere; but Phil, with Ronnies mothers help, tricked the label into releasing the girls using some shameless lie about nodes on their vocal cords (Thompson 77). By this time the funny-looking kid from the Bronx had transformed himself into an extremely eccentric fashion icon, sporting long, elaborately curled toupees, Baroque waistcoats and huge sunglasses. He wore high Cuban heels and an excessive dousing of musky cologne (Brown 103,104). I think the look worked for him and apparently Ronnie agreed because she quickly fell for him. Spector became obsessed with her. He monitored her every move, inside the studio and out, and despite the fact that he had just married his long-time girlfriend the two of them embarked on a torrid love affair (Brown 154). In August of 1963 Be My Baby by The Ronettes, considered by many to be the defining single of the Girl Group era (Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys thought it was the greatest pop record ever made (Brown 186)), reached #2 on the American Pop Charts. Spectors crew had spent a sweltering summer at Gold Star cutting the demo. Michael Spencer recalled: It took forty-two run throughs to get it the way he wanted it (Ribowsky 149). You can hear all of that heat in the music: Ronnies voice burns with a kind of sultry innocence, sweet and seductive, like a young girl deep in the throes of forbidden love (go figure). The record was powerfully successful, but times were changing, and so was the music industry. By fall, President Kennedy had been assassinated. Beatlemania was sweeping the country, and sentimental harmonies about first kisses and white weddings were rapidly

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becoming dated to the point of kitsch. Music technology was advancing and stereo recording would soon be introduced, rendering many of Spectors innovations obsolete. He would continue to produce incomparable music for several years, but even when producing such important Rock & Roll albums as The Beatles Let it Be, it was clear that his finest moments had passed. And, as inevitably happens, his less successful peers began to eagerly anticipate his downfall (Brown 213). In 1966 Phil and Ronnie were married. Sadly, Phils obsessive fear of losing control turned their marriage into a nightmare for Ronnie. He kept her a prisoner in their home, closely monitoring all her actions and relationships. When she finally decided to leave him and filed for divorce, Phil told Ronnies mother: I am completely prepared for that day. Ive already got her coffin. Its solid gold. And its got a glass top, so I can keep my eyes on her after shes dead (Werner 38). It was a horrible foreshadowing of what was to come for him: isolation, depression, and senseless death. Fellow producer Vinnie Poncia said of Spector, He knew about alienation. He always feared he was out there on the fringe looking in (Ribowsky 204). In 2003, when the highly publicized shooting of the failed B-movie actress Lana Clarkson occurred at his mansion, he had been out of the public eye for years (Ribowsky 6). But while he may have been out of our sight he was never far from our stereos. Bands as disparate as Abba and Bruce Springsteen have cited Phil Spector and The Wall of Sound as major influences upon their music. Brian Wilson claimed that he was unable to think like a producer until he had studied Spectors music and that Phil opened up a door of creativity for me like you wouldnt believe. Some people say that drugs can open that door. But Phil Spector opened it for me (Brown 185). Whether he is guilty of murder or not his reputation is irrevocably damaged, but nothing can change Phil Spectors contribution to popular music. His records may be dismissed as

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bubble gum pop aimed at acne creams target market, but where is the harm in that? Even Igor Stravinsky said, My music is best understood by children and animals. Who can claim that the music of their childhood hasnt stayed with them, that the songs they loved as dreamy adolescents didnt form the vision of love that they still hold secretly in their hearts? Thomas Wolfe dubbed him The Tycoon of Teen (Brown 1), and I think it an honorable title because I know that the feelings his music inspired in my teenaged years were of the finest kind: love filled with hope, free of modern musics irony and cynicism.

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Works Cited Brown, Mick. Tearing down the Wall of Sound: the Rise and Fall of Phil Spector. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Print. Ribowsky, Mark. He's a Rebel: Phil Spector: Rock and Roll's Legendary Producer. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2006. Print. Thompson, Dave. Wall of Pain: the Biography of Phil Spector. London: Sanctuary, 2003. Print. Werner, Craig Hansen. "Solid Gold Coffins: Phil Spector and the Girl Group Blues." A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006. 37-40. Print.