Tearing Down the Wall of Sound (49 page)

“He had a couple of guys with him. Big guys. And he took great pride in getting them to show their piece. He called one of them over and said, ‘Show 'em…,' and the guy got out his .45. A gun that would blow a hole in a house. Harry Dean Stanton and Kato Kaelin were there. And Phil said, ‘Come on, Henry, we're going to this club.' This was about three in the morning. And they opened it up for him. And we were sitting in the back room, and Harry Dean Stanton had his guitar, and Phil had him playing ‘Goodnight Irene' and we were singing harmonies, over and over. Phil was walking around, playing the producer—‘Play it again, Harry…'

“At about five in the morning, I said, ‘I've got to go. I have to drive my kids to school.' And Phil said, ‘No, no—you can't leave, because it'll change things.' He didn't want to change the chemistry, the balance in the room. He didn't want anyone to leave, because he liked it just the way it was.”

Those close to Spector noticed a pattern. He would drink to a point of near insensibility, and was prone to furious rages. “Phil could out-scream anybody I knew,” says Paulette Brandt. “I've never heard anybody being able to maintain yelling at somebody for ten minutes straight, but he could do that. When you see Phil screaming with bulging red eyes, it's like seeing Satan.”

Drink was not a pleasure, but an anesthetic, an escape from the despair over the death of his son that continued to enshroud him. More than once his housekeeper would find a drunken Spector, sitting on Phillip's bed, sobbing.

The incipient mental problems that had incubated for years began to become more obvious. Always a fitful sleeper, he suffered from raging insomnia. The years of buffeting his ears with music at full volume seemed to have had absolutely no effect on his hearing. Spector, it seemed, could isolate the sound of a single raindrop in a storm. “Whenever he went away, he always gave hotels a lot of problems,” Paulette says. “He could hear the wind through the dumbwaiter shafts, so he was continually calling maintenance because he couldn't sleep.”

Spector had always ritualized his behavior; shaving and showering at the same times each day; always careful to use exactly the same products and fretting if they were unavailable. But now his obsessive-compulsive behavior grew more pronounced. He developed a phobia about germs and became obsessive about hygiene and cleanliness, insisting the house was vacuumed and cleaned until it was spotless, demanding that his cars be ceaselessly cleaned and waxed. He began to wear surgical gloves around the home to protect against dirt, and was seen in restaurants carrying his own plastic cutlery, vacuum-wrapped to guard against any possible contamination.

Furthermore, his drinking had begun to exact a heavy toll on his health. On one occasion Paulette discovered that he was coughing up blood. Without telling him, she called his doctor and Spector was called in for tests. “That was too scary for me. I didn't want to lose him.”

Following the death of his son, Spector had started taking a variety of mood-altering and calming drugs, including lithium and Prozac. Prozac made him “a lot more reasonable,” according to Paulette Brandt. But, habitually, Spector would stop taking the medication before departing for New York, and the annual round of duties and celebrations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He had kept up his position on the nominating committee, and would traditionally hold court after the ceremony in a suite at the Waldorf. It was a chance for him to meet old friends, to luxuriate in the respect and admiration of his peers.

“Going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gave Phil a sense of belonging,” David Kessel says. “I think for a lot of the time he felt like he was completely drifting in outer space. When you're Phil Spector and you've achieved all those goals, you're on a mountain no one can even imagine, it's exhilarating and confusing and lonely. But he could see Ahmet and Keith Richards and Seymour Stein, and those guys made him feel good and part of something.”

The evening would invariably end in a drinking spree, for which his staff back in California would pay the price. “Going to New York was good for Phil,” Paulette says. “But it was always a scary time when he came back. You knew that someone would be in the doghouse for no reason.”

In October 1995 Bertha died. Her health had been in decline for some years following a traffic accident in which she had broken both legs, leading to circulatory difficulties. Spector was in New York at the time of her death. He asked Karen Lerner if she would fly to Los Angeles with him, because he felt unable to face the flight alone. But Lerner was unable to take the time off work. It was the end of their friendship.

27

“Anybody Have a Calculator?”

A
t the age of fifty-six, Spector's status as a music legend was assured, and the industry that had once rejected him now clasped him to its bosom. In 1997 he was inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriter Hall of Fame. His induction coincided with an announcement by BMI that “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'” had surpassed John Lennon and Paul McCartney's “Yesterday” to become the most-played song in BMI history, and the first song to exceed 7 million performances.

Later that same year, Spector flew to London to be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the British music magazine
Q.
Spector had taken on an additional secretary, Norma Kemper, the wife of the drummer David Kemper, who was a regular member of Bob Dylan's touring band. It required an exchange of some forty faxes between Kemper and the editor of
Q
and the organizer of the awards, Mark Ellen, over such details as timing, dress code, accommodation and the provision of a six-seater stretch Mercedes, before Spector finally agreed to attend. Kemper concluded her side of the correspondence with the words “He's all yours now…”

Spector arrived in London with his daughter Nicole and Jay Romaine, a Los Angeles policeman whom he had recently taken on as a factotum and bodyguard, much the same role that George Brand had once filled. The party put up at the Savoy. In his acceptance speech, Spector launched a comedic attack on Britain's current pop sensation: “Am I the only one who believes the Spice Girls are the anti-Christ?” Referring to American right-wingers who had compared the Spice Girls to porno-movie stars, Spector joked “at least in porno films the music's sometimes good.”

He dedicated the award to Nicole, seated at his table, “and her brother Phillip, who died age nine, six years ago.” Paul McCartney, who was also present, walked out during Spector's speech, apparently in a huff about the award being given to his old enemy.

It seemed that even Spector's long-held dream for a movie about his life was about to be realized. Cameron Crowe had made his name in the '70s as a precociously talented young journalist for
Rolling Stone
magazine, before moving into films, writing and directing
Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Now Crowe had been approached with a view to directing a film about Spector by the producer Paula Wagner and the actor Tom Cruise, who was a huge Spector fan. From the moment the project was mooted, Cruise was so excited by the prospect of playing Spector that in preparation for the role he had taken to wearing a pair of Spector-esque shades and rehearsing his posture, pulling in his chin to look more like his subject. In March 1997, two days after the Academy Awards at which he had been nominated for Best Actor for his role in
Jerry Maguire,
Cruise met Spector for the first time at his Pasadena home. Apparently psyching himself up for the meeting, Cruise arrived with “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'” blaring from the car stereo. Over the next few months Crowe would spend time with Spector at the Pasadena house and in New York, poring over the details of his life and work and deliberating how best to commit the story to film. Spector, he believed, was one of the great characters and stories of rock and roll, but he simply couldn't resolve where the film would end—at least, not at that point—and at length the project petered out.

In November, Tommy Tedesco, guitarist on so many of Spector's great recordings, died. A memorial service was held at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Northridge, featuring an “orchestra” of some thirty guitar players performing in tribute. Jimmie Haskell was among the congregation. “At one point I stuck my nose out of the door, and there was Phil, in the back doorway. I said, ‘Come on in, Phil.' So we stepped in. And he said, ‘Gosh, can you get those guitar players' names; they're good aren't they?' I said, ‘Yes, I can, Phil—do you really want to use all of them?' And he said, ‘Well, maybe…'”

Haskell dutifully took note of all the guitarists onstage, but when he called Spector to give him the names Haskell was unable to get through, and Spector didn't return his calls.

         

In the years since she had recorded “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me,” LaLa Brooks's thoughts had often turned to what she'd been paid for her part in Spector's success, and what she might be owed.

By her own account, LaLa had received just $1,000 for singing on the Crystals' hits. “We got no royalties from Phil; not one dime. Nothing.”

After leaving Philles, the Crystals moved to United Artists, and then split in an acrimonious row over the ownership of the group's name. Dee Dee Kenniebrew toured with another set of girls as the Crystals. LaLa married the jazz drummer Idris Muhammad and set about raising a family. “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me” were a precious part of her past—but they were the past. By the 1980s, however, '60s rock and roll was once again becoming big business, with the proliferation of oldies stations and classic hits being repackaged for compilation albums and used on the soundtracks of new films.

“I remember when the babies were small and I was in the kitchen and ‘Da Doo Ron Ron' came on the radio, and I thought, ‘God, why aren't I being paid for this?' Then I would call California and speak to Phil's secretary and say, ‘Listen, can you tell Phil that I called and please can he give me some of my money, just give me something.' And his secretary would say, ‘I'll get him to call you back.' One time he did call me back and I said to him, ‘Phil, can you just give me what I deserve. I've made you hits.' And he said, ‘I'll get back to you,' but he never did. Nothing. I wasn't going down the tubes, you know—my husband made a salary—but I just wanted what I deserved.”

Eventually LaLa made an appointment to meet Allen Klein. “He said that Phil would do anything for me because I was the only one that Phil ever cared about…bullshit things like that,” she remembers.

“Then he gave me a copy of the box set and said, ‘Phil said to give you this, he loves you and misses you badly.' I said, ‘Do you know what? Phil, in my eyes, could have taken a piece of shit and put it in the middle of the floor and told me to sit in it, that's how insulting that it is.'

“Allen Klein's son was there with him and he was trying to calm me down, but by this time I was so pissed off. I told Allen Klein that he could go to hell. I was crazy as could be. When I was walking out of the door he was still telling me, ‘Phil loves you and would do anything for you.' But it didn't come to nothing. I told him that I was a child that Phil had taken advantage of and that he would reap what he had sowed.”

         

LaLa wasn't the only Philles artist whose thoughts had turned to the question of just reward. In 1988, the Ronettes had begun litigation against Spector to retrieve what they alleged were unpaid royalties. They were joined by Darlene Love.

The Ronettes had long been a group in name only. Ronnie had remarried, to a show business manager named Jonathan Greenfield, and continued to pursue a solo career. Nedra had effectively retired from music to raise a family and help her husband Scott in the Christian ministry. Estelle had led a more troubled life, experiencing psychiatric problems. Apparently unable to accept that the Ronettes had long since ceased to exist, she would sometimes talk of going into the studio with Spector and taking dance lessons in readiness for going back onstage.

The architect behind both the Ronettes and Darlene Love suits was Chuck Rubin. In the '60s Rubin had worked for the booking agency GAC, which represented, among its many other acts, the Crystals, the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers. But Rubin says his attempts to promote the groups were often thwarted by Spector. On one occasion he proposed that the Ronettes and Righteous Brothers should tour together as a package, but Spector vetoed the idea.

“Because of his unusual way of dealing with his artists we couldn't put too much focus on them,” Rubin says. “The prevailing view was that Spector was very proprietorial about his artists—overly proprietorial, sometimes irrationally proprietorial. We knew not even to bother him with certain kinds of offers.”

Rubin moved into management, handling acts including the Shirelles, B. J. Thomas and the RB singer Wilbert Harrison. In 1971, Harrison asked Rubin for his help in retrieving unpaid royalties he believed he was owed for his 1959 hit “Kansas City.” Every lawyer Rubin approached to help him in the task turned him down. “One of them eventually told me, ‘Look, Chuck, nobody's going to try and get Wilbert Harrison his royalties from twenty years ago because they'll ruin their relationship with the industry doing that. And the minute you find an attorney and do it, you will be an outcast and a pariah, too.'”

Undeterred, at length Rubin found a patent and archive attorney, who happened to be a rock and roll fan, who agreed to take on Harrison's case on a contingency basis. Seeing an opportunity, Rubin set up his own company, Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation, and contacted all the artists he had worked with in the '60s. “And I was shocked to find out that none of them were getting royalties. None. They said to me, ‘If you can get Wilbert paid, call me.' It took two years to get Wilbert his money. He was the only artist I had. The next day I had one hundred. And they were right. I became a pariah.”

Rubin charged his clients 50 percent of whatever he could secure on their behalf, painstakingly following the paper trail of missing money himself—often down an endless tunnel of masters being sold and resold by various companies—and employing lawyers to prosecute the cases.

“By the time we came to represent these artists, half the original companies didn't even exist anymore. A company would go down and sell their entire catalogue in bankruptcy for a couple of thousand dollars. No one knew that these songs were valuable; that there would be this second life—third life.” His first case involving a Spector act was over a videocassette called
The Girl Groups
produced by MGM in 1983, and featuring material leased from vintage TV programs such as
American Bandstand
and
Shindig!
Rubin ended up representing a number of the acts featured in the film, including Darlene Love; Fanita Barrett and Gloria Jones as the Blossoms; and Nedra Talley and Estelle Bennett from the Ronettes (but not, at that point, Ronnie).

After securing a share of the spoils from MGM, Rubin turned his attention to scrutinizing the royalties from Spector's recordings. The Ronettes, he discovered, had signed a standard contract in May 1963 giving them a basic 3 percent royalty on the net retail list price, based on 90 percent of all double-sided records manufactured and sold. “Most artists signed a contract like that. And you know how they'd sign it? ‘Come in, sit down, sign here and you'll be a star. Don't bring anyone with you, just sign…'”

The Ronettes claimed that they had received just one check from Philles for $14,482 in 1963 but had received no royalties after that. Like virtually every other record company of the day, Philles had claimed that “offsets”—the costs for recording, promotion and the like—that were built into the contract had absorbed any profits accruing to the group from the record sales.

In 1988, Rubin launched suits against Spector on behalf of both the Ronettes and Darlene Love. It was the beginning of a protracted saga that would still be running twelve years later.

The first case to come to court, in 1997, involved Darlene Love. Love could remember signing a contract with Spector in 1963 but had long since lost it. (She would subsequently claim she had only received one royalty statement for her recordings, listing deductions for such things as “cartage”—delivery of musical instruments to the studio—with a handwritten note from Spector at the bottom of the statement: “Hopefully there will be something left next time.”) However, Fanita Barrett did have a royalty report that included Love's name, and from that Rubin was able to extrapolate what Love's contract would have entailed.

The case was tried in front of a jury. Prior to the trial itself Spector was obliged to give a deposition to Love's lawyer, Ira Greenberg, which was taped. “Spector was sitting there, sparring with Ira, but Ira was ignoring him,” Rubin remembers. “Then Ira got to the documents. These were originals that we had gotten from Harold Lipsius; these were old, dirty—the original contract of the Crystals, letters, documents showing the incorporation of Spector and Lester Sill in Philles and so on, because Lester Sill signed the Crystals contract. When Ira handed them to him, Spector raised his hands and he was wearing surgical gloves…”

On the first day of the trial itself, Spector was at his grandstanding best. “Phil gets on the stand, and he knocks the jury senseless,” Rubin says. “They were rolling in the aisles. It was like a comedy show. The judge was laughing. Even Darlene was laughing. The second day, it was Ira's turn.”

Spector had claimed that Love was simply a session singer who had never had a contract, but he could offer no explanation for her name appearing on Fanita Barrett's royalty statement.

“It was clear that he thought he was the only one that was really contributing to the recordings,” Ira Greenberg remembers. “He said nice things about Darlene, but he basically said the singers were interchangeable parts, no different from members of the band. I pointed out that he had put out recordings
The Best of Darlene Love, The Best of the Ronettes—
but there was no
The Best of the Sound Engineer
or
The Best of the Drummer.

“Phil was wearing these little granny glasses, and you could see his eyes starting to roll around in his head,” Rubin says. “Then Ira pulls his punch, takes one of the dusty documents, drops it on the floor, then puts it on the stand and says, ‘Could you identify that document? Would you pick it up and read it?' Phil said: ‘I refuse to touch it. You can't make me touch it.' Now the jury is looking at him like he's a little crazy. So he was eventually forced to touch it. Then Ira picks another document, and so it goes. That was it. When the jury ended deliberations, we heard the magic words ‘Anybody have a calculator?'”