He's a Rebel (49 page)

“He deserves an award, he really does,” Lester Sill said. “In spite of whatever he is, he's certainly a genius. I think if he just didn't let that crazy ego get in his way, he would still be an incredible producer today. It's a shame too. He became such a dark, morbid person. That black cloud is all around him.

“I hurt for him because he's such a talented guy and he needed help a long time ago. There was a kind side of him that people never saw. I remember the late Paul Case, and how Phil couldn't do enough for Paul, and how Phil once gave everyone in the office Polaroid cameras that cost him $150 each. There was that side to him. But he never allowed it to flourish and it hurt him.”

“I'm on the board of the Music Hall of Fame and two of the last six years I've brought up Phil's name for an award of some sort,” said Marshall Lieb, whose long footpath from the Teddy Bears was pocked with his own destructive tendencies and withdrawals before he was reclaimed by motion picture scoring. “But they've gone somewhere else. There's a lot of opposition to Phil on the Grammys too. His name comes
up, and it's nice to know it keeps coming up, but it doesn't get much further than that. It's just automatic; mention the name and people just sort of say ‘What a bonebrain.' It all has to do with the past, and right now it's not far enough in the past for some people to overlook some of the things Phil has done on a personal level.

“But, with me, there's enough time gone by where when I run into somebody who knows him I'll say, ‘Tell Phil that Marsh said hello, give him my number, tell him to call me.' The scars and wounds are not there any longer. Like veryone else, there was a time I was bugged at him for something or other. But you put that stuff aside. Life is too dang short.

“I would really like to put Phil on a picture. I gave a lot of people their first jobs in film, in a new medium other than recording, and that would be great for Phil, get him away from the bullshit and pressures of that industry. I have fought to offer Phil a picture project, but you mention it to movie people and they get scared; you're not sure that he's gonna show up and how he's gonna act—which is also a fear of the awards people. I could make it work, though, I know I could. He would know I wasn't like the Mo Ostins of the world, that I cared about him as a person.”

Marshall had not seen or spoken with Phil in many years when, with no warning, their paths crossed in the summer of 1987. It happened in much the same way they first came together, among the people who all began adulthood equally unsure—at the thirtieth reunion of the Fairfax High graduating glass of '57. Walking into the bar of the Santa Monica beach club where the reunion was held, Marshall never even imagined that Phil would come out of his seclusion and be there. As he ordered a drink, one of his ex-classmates asked him if he had seen Phil at the other end of the bar. Springing around, Marshall looked through the dim light and saw the large-nosed, weak-chinned face he knew so well. Phil, black shades hiding his eyes even in the darkened room, sat at a corner table with two bodyguards, drinking but looking fit and natty in a three-piece suit.

“I'm going to go over there and say hello to Phillip,” Marshall said to the other guest, who cautioned him, “Don't bother. He won't even recognize you.” That was the prevailing attitude there that night. Some of Phil's old classmates had tried to make conversation with him, only to be dismissed by his wordless inattention. Harvey Goldstein, the jilted Teddy Bear, would not make any effort at a greeting. “I wouldn't play
his game,” said Goldstein. “That's exactly what he wanted and there was just no way I was gonna give this guy any satisfaction at all.”

Marshall, though, felt he had to make contact. “I walked over and put my face in his face, I demanded his eyes, because he doesn't look at people; that's part of his little trap. I could see into him, man, even with the dark glasses. I just know that this guy was hurtin' in some way.

“I said, ‘Marshall Lieb,' and while he was sort of surprised and sort of not happy, it meant something to see me. I think he acknowledged me beyond all the rest of the people. He stood up and grabbed my hand with both of his. I said, you know, ‘How you doin'?' and I had to wait for an answer and I just felt, ‘Oh shit, I'd like to talk with him.' I mean, we are so beyond all that stuff in the past. But he's sort of in his own kind of . . . I think he would have liked to say some things but he couldn't.”

Marshall, reaching blindly, told Phil that he had made some attempts to reach him. He talked about Stan Ross for a minute. “But it almost seemed as if it wasn't recording and some disassociated sentence would pop back. I could say that he looked drugged out but it's not fair. I just felt really bad, because Phil is always in my heart, his pictures are all over the walls in my home. I mean we raised this guy, my mother and me—and he did ask about her, he said, ‘How's your mom?' That was really the only coherent thing he said.

“I told him I'd see him later in the evening, and a lot of people during the evening said, ‘Why don't you go over and talk to Phil?' and I just didn't want to any more. It was too sad, for me too tragic.”

The more Marshall thought about that night, however, the more he thought he knew about the Phil Spector he lost. “He needed to be there,” Lieb said. “He needed for those people to pass by that table and say ‘Hello, Phil,' and even though he would not acknowledge them he needed to them for know he was there. If it was just for the ego, he would've left early. But he stayed at that table the whole night, he was the last to leave. He made up his mind he was going to stay with that class, as a family. He came to be with those people who consider him just plain old Phil; this is his one identification with real life. Because, right now, what he's living is not real life. He's living some sort of death.

“It was the same as it was with Elvis. I was a close friend of Elvis, I watched him deteriorate as a person trying to kill himself, and when I saw that happening it was very difficult to watch someone who is strong and aggressive become so weak and troubled. When you are king and
you are it, some people are frightened by it. That's what they've worked for, to be it, and when they get there they think there's more to go when there isn't. Mick Jagger became it and enjoys being it. Phil became it but he isn't quite comfortable with it.

“As frightened as Phil was when we were kids, he knew he was going somewhere. Now he has nowhere to go and that probably scares him a hell of a lot more.”

Marshall Lieb
has been music supervisor for the movies
Macon County Line, Ode to Billy Joe
, and
Take This Job and Shove It
. He co-wrote the score of
The Farmer
with Hugo Montenegro.

Michael Spencer
moved back to New York in 1969 and founded and became Executive Director of Hospital Audiences Inc., which with government and corporate grants organizes concerts and other cultural exhibitions in hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons. He was recently elected Co-Chairman of the World Congress of Arts and Disabilities.

Kim Fowley
recorded in the late seventies under various group names including the Renegades. After advertising for an all-girl punk band in L.A., he put together the group, including Joan Jett, that later became the Runaways. He has had two books of poetry published,
The Earth Is Really Flat
and
The Oblong Tiger
.

Annette Kleinbard
(Carol Connors) became one of the top lyricists of motion picture and television source music in the 1970s and 1980s. She co-wrote (with Bill Conti) “Gonna Fly Now” for the movie
Rocky
and the themes of
Sophie s Choice
(with Marvin Hamlisch),
Falling in Love
(with Michel Legrand), and
Mr. Mom
. She was nominated for two Academy Awards and a Grammy for the theme music of
Rocky III
, and for four Emmys. She also co-wrote (with David Shire) the hit song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” As music supervisor for the movie
Tulips
, Marshall Lieb brought her in to collaborate on the score with Billy Goldenberg.

Stan Ross
sold Gold Star Studios in 1984; scheduled for demolition, the hallowed landmark of rock and roll was destroyed by a fire a few months later.

Lew Bedell
still runs Dore Records from the same office on Vine Street in Hollywood.

Don Peake
won two Academy Awards for scoring short subject films,
In the Region of Ice
in 1978 and
Violet
in 1982.

Lou Chudd
got out of the music business in the early seventies and made millions in steel pipe manufacturing and investment banking.

Lester Sill
is President of Motown Records Publishing.

Lee Hazelwood
produced Nancy Sinatra's “These Boots Are Made for Walking” and duetted with her on several other records in the 1960s. He released a solo LP in the seventies and then lived in seclusion for years in Sweden before moving back to Phoenix, where he is now retired.

Chuck Kaye
is Executive Vice President of Warner-Chappell Publishing.

Russ Titelman
formed a working relationship with Lenny Waronker, the son of Liberty Records' Si Waronker, and the two of them produced James Taylor's
Gorilla
and
In the Pocket
LPs in the mid-seventies. As a staff producer for Warner Brothers for the last fifteen years, Titelman has produced records by Randy Newman, Christine McVie, Chaka Khan and most recently Steve Winwood—winning a Grammy in 1986 for Winwood's
Back in the High Life
album. He also co-produced Brian Wilson's debut solo,
Brian Wilson
.

Annette Merar Spector
returned to L.A. and in 1976 married spiritualist Richard Tapper and had a child. Divorced now, she lives in the San Fernando Valley, studies religion and philosophy, and says she still loves Phil, though with a certain pain. “Living in the shadow of this man is very hard. I always wanted to be gifted, to be something special. And because of him, I feel I'm not.”

Warren Entner
followed his stint with Spector's Three by becoming an original member of the Grass Roots. He later was the executive producer of the 1983 movie
The Pirates of Penzance
.

Jerry Leiber
and
Mike Stoller
remained vital producers into the early eighties. After producing Peggy Lee's
Mirrors
LP in 1975, they returned to rock, working with Procol Harem (“Pandora's Box”) and Stealers Wheel (“Stuck in the Middle with You”). They released a two-record album in 1981,
Only in America
, a compilation of many of the legendary songs they produced and wrote in the fifties and sixties.

Beverly Ross
composes Broadway shows and owns a recording studio in New York.

John and Fred Bienstock
work out of the same Brill Building offices they had three decades ago, as overseers of the enormous Chappell Music publishing combine, which absorbed Hill and Range Songs in the mid-1970s. Their cousins and onetime bosses, Jean and Julian Aberbach, left the music business and now own a prestigious art gallery.

Doc Pomus
wrote songs for Dr. John and co-wrote with Willie DeVille three songs on Mink DeVille's
Le Chat Bleu
album in 1980. He also wrote the title song of B. B. King's Grammy-winning
There Must Be a Better World Somewhere
LP in 1983.

Terry Phillips
became a staff producer at Decca, writing and producing songs for the Hobbits. He later formed a label, Perception Records, which had hits that included King Harvest's “Dancing in the Moonlight.”

Don Kirshner
followed his bubble-gum-music windfall with a new gold mine in the 1970s: the television rock concert. His late-night
In Concert
and
Don Kirshner s Rock Concert
series—featuring a comically stiff and glazed-eyed Kirshner introducing each act—thrived into the early eighties even though rock critics savaged the shows' vacuous glossiness. Another Kirshner television project was an alternative to the Grammys, the self-congratulatory “Rock Music Awards.” His label, Kirshner Records, was a big winner, fueled by the pomp-rock group Kansas—but then it collapsed along with the band in the mid-1980s. After thirty years of inordinate power, Kirshner is today without a voice in the industry.

Ray Peterson
is a top attraction on the country music circuit.

Curtis Lee
is in the construction business in Yuma, Arizona.

Ahmet Ertegun
is still president of Atlantic Records, which merged with Warner Communications in the 1970s.

Jerry Wexler
produced dozens of records with Tom Dowd in the sixties and seventies, including those made by Dr. John, José Feliciano, and Dusty Springfield. Appointed Senior Vice President at Warner Brothers in 1978, he has continued working in the studio and produced Bob Dylan's
Saved
album and Dire Straits'
Communique
.