September 23, 2020 • 30 mins
Darlene Love was the anonymous voice behind many of Phil Spector’s earliest chart-topping teenage pop symphonies; songs like “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s the Boy I Love” bear Darlene’s uncredited but unmistakable vocal. Darlene talks about how she struggled to pull herself out of anonymity and into the spotlight, but how every attempt was thwarted by the same person behind the recording console: Phil Spector. Darlene’s story is a story about the battle for legacy in the face of a madman’s oppression.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Phil Spector was a musical genius,
one of the most successful record producers of all time.
He's now sitting behind bars, serving a nineteen years to
life sentence for murder. This is his story told by
his so called friends. This is the Special Agent Paul
(00:28):
Ramon with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working case number
double oh four DAP ten DASH seven four one nine,
case subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to
a period ending January nine. Interview subject is right Darlene
a k A. Darlene Love. Interview number one Dash one
two Dash two six three Dash six six six Recall
(00:49):
number eight August twenty eight, two thousand eight. We'll all ego.
Phil was twenty years old when he had his first
two number one records. That will make anybody think they're
bigger than they are. He was always a wheeler and
(01:12):
a dealer. People were actually afraid of him. I was
probably one of the only people who wasn't afraid of him.
It didn't bother him that I wasn't afraid of him.
Look could he do if he could kill me? Is
that all I just didn't have any fear towards him,
because I knew he had a big mouth and he
wasn't going to go through with any of his threats.
(01:34):
People that threaten you often just have a big mouth.
Plus Phil needed me at that time. He didn't have Ronnie,
he didn't have the Righteous Brothers. I was the only
one who sang and gave him to number one records.
So why are you going to kill somebody you love?
Your bread and butter? Why are you gonna do anything
(01:57):
that would leave so much mud on the tracks? Chapter eight,
(02:25):
Phil Specter and Darlene Love. I thought my own story
was over. I thought, maybe, just maybe I would gradually
(02:48):
forget all the things I had done, the things I
had been through, like they had been nothing more than
a dream of fantasy. The ups, the downs, the good
the bad. It was a struggle. My own story had
been a struggle. My career was a struggle, and I
just didn't want to struggle anymore. I sang professionally for years,
(03:11):
since I was a teenager, years in the church year
singing with the blossoms. Here's some Good Good, singing to
the tune of Good Good Loving by the Good Good Blossoms,
years singing behind Elvis, Sam Cook, Frank Sinatra, Chain Gang, Monster, Mash,
That's Life, Shoot, Shoot say the name, and I probably
(03:34):
stood at a mic in the studio behind them. And
then all those years I've spent singing for Phil, or
reeling from singing with Phil, or avoiding singing with Phil
wasn't too Frank. I was in the right place at
the right time, but we never got it right. It
(03:54):
was never made right. I ghosted on so many record
so much that sometimes even I felt like the ghost.
No one knew it was me singing on those records.
Half the time, I was never given proper credit. And
then later when I was given a proper shot with
my own name on the record label, I was put
through an emotional ringer. So I stuck myself at the
(04:18):
back of the stage again, stood in the shadows, again
towards singing back up for Tom Jones and Dion Warwick.
My marriage ended, I missed my kids. I was tired, frustrated,
so I said, the hell with it? Who needs it?
Who needs this story? This story that will never be right?
(04:40):
And so I thought the story was over, But it
wasn't over, far from it. The turning point happened in
a bathroom, of all places, not even my own bathroom.
I had put the singing behind me, took up odd
jobs cleaning houses. The houses were nice, the money was steady,
(05:00):
The money was instant, hundred dollars a day. The stress
level was low. No contract. The only expectation that either
I or the person who hired me had was that
the house would look better when I left than when
I arrived. Simple, easy. I provided for my kids, put
food on the table and close on their backs. The
(05:21):
house I was in on this particular day was in
the hills of l a somewhere. It was Christmas time.
I was in the bathroom cleaning the sink. The whole
room smelled of disinfectant mint lemon. I had this lady's
radio play and I was in the house alone, so
I turned it up real loud, and the song came on.
My song came on Christmas, Maybe Please Come Home. I
(05:45):
stopped what I was doing, rubber gloves on my hands,
one of them holding the toilet bowl brush. I pushed
my hair back with the part of my forearm that
wasn't covered in the soapy glove, and just stood there enjoyed.
That moment took it all in. It's a beautiful song
means so many things that so many people communicates so
(06:06):
much about the holidays and distance and longing, about love
lost and found so much and under three minutes in
that moment, it brought me back. I closed my eyes
and I was standing there and gold Star in Hollywood.
It was nineteen sixty three, it was August. Los Angeles
(06:26):
was in the middle of a heat wave. It was
a hundred and three outside, but inside gold Star it
was a meat lock or Phil always kept it cold.
The song was a triumph, one of my triumphs, and
the feeling the song gave me in that moment, the
feeling it always gave me trumped any of the bad
memories I was holding onto. The song gave me strength.
(06:49):
It reminded me that no matter how low things got,
how low I got, I never felt weak. I found
strengthen my songs, my voice, And no matter how many
times Phil tried to suppress me, to silence my name
or my voice, he never made me feel less than
(07:11):
because I wouldn't let him. That song reminded me that
I had that power. Standing in the bathroom, I opened
my eyes and looked at my face in the mirror
as the song faded out. Trust me, the irony of
listened to one of my greatest moments play on the
radio in the house I had been hired to clean
(07:32):
was not lost on me in that moment. In that moment,
I knew what I had to do. I finished the job,
clean the house. At the end of the shift, I
told the woman who hired me that I wouldn't be
coming back the next week. She didn't even know who
I was. To her, I was merely someone who had
answered an ad and dusted her house. She'd find someone else.
(07:55):
I walked out that door and started looking for the
next microphone. Years later, my performance of Christmas Baby, Please
Come Home became an annual holiday tradition on David Letterman Show.
Ladies and Gentlemen but one and only Darlene Lowe. Then
everyone knew who I was. I knew my name, even
(08:18):
that woman in the Hills of l A with the
bathroom so clean you could eat off it. Phil started
to call the Letterman Show and tell them he was
going to sue. He was going to sue for repeated
use of that song. His song. You see, because every
session was a Phil Specter session, and every song was
a Phil Spectra production. The TV studio knew they were
(08:40):
in the clear, but Phil thought he could just scare them.
That's what he did. He thought he could scare everybody,
bend them to his will. He tried to make people
think a lot of things, think that they were nothing
before him, and they'd be nothing without him. But me,
(09:02):
I was working well before I ever looked him in
his eyes, and I'm still working. Phil Specter didn't scare
me at all. If you had asked me back in
(09:46):
three if Phil Specter would one day be behind bars
for murder, I need to think about that for a moment.
You try to really really evaluate another human being, and
it's really difficult because I had my own premonitions about
all these people I worked with. I remember telling Sam Cook,
for instance. I told Sam, you'd better keep an eye
(10:08):
out all these women you keep running around with. One
of them is going to be the wrong woman, and
then you're going to be in trouble. I just had
a feeling with Sam that things wouldn't end well, not
that I thought they would end that soon. With Phil,
he seemed to be tempting fate. His obsession with guns
was constant. He he even brought them to the studio.
(10:30):
He take one from his pockets, swinging on his finger
like he was an outlaw in a John Ford film. Now,
remember I was the only person who would stand up
to Phil on the regular. I had a husband, I
had kids at home, I had a mortgage to pay.
This was a job to me. This was life. This
(10:51):
wasn't no game. So I was the one who would leave,
walk out the room. If that gun goes off, it's
not gonna shoot me. Guns don't shoot people shoot. Gold
Star was crammed with people, musicians, singers, guests. If that
gun fell out of his hand and hit the floor,
(11:11):
guess what. The odds are pretty good that someone's gonna
take a bullet. My prophecy on Phil was because the
way he acted with guns. He always had guns in
the studio, and he was always put them in his
pocket and taking them out and flipping them around and
all those things. I was the only one that would
leave the session because I would say, listen, if he's
(11:33):
gonna shoot somebody, it ain't gonna be me. Guns don't
shoot people shoot. I just think it was stupid and
dangerous to be in a recording studio. We had like
fifteen to twenty musicians in the studio while he was
doing this. If the gun were dropped and went off,
guess what I stood my ground. If Phil bought a
(11:58):
gun into the studio, I'd make and put it in
his car. It was the gun or me. The studio
wasn't big enough for both of us. So yeah, part
of me wouldn't have been surprised if you told me
back in sixty three that one day Phil's gun would
go off and that there would be an innocent person
on the other end of it. We the jury and
the bad titled action find the defendant, Philip Spector, guilty
(12:20):
of the crime of second degree murder a lot of culture.
When I first met him, he didn't seem like that
kind of a person, a crazy gun person. It was
Jack Nietzsche that introduced me to Phil, recommended me. Jack
knew everybody I was singing in the Blossoms. We did
our own thing, but we did a lot of background singing.
I joined the group when I was still in high school.
(12:42):
Had to get my parents permission, so we got a reputation.
Jack told Phil that we were exactly what he was
looking for. Phil wasn't a bind. It was a bind
of his own, but a bind. Nonetheless, he was planning
for the Crystals to record this song. He's a rebel.
But he got wind that Vicky Carr was about to
(13:02):
record her own version of the song for Liberty Records.
Phil wanted his version to hit the radio waves and
the store shelves first. He wasn't gonna be one up
by another label. The problem was, the Crystals were torn
on the East Coast. Phil was in l A. He
needed to cut that record now, So that's how we
(13:24):
were brought in. I knew all thelong that we the Blossoms,
were singing on a record that was going to be
credited to someone else. I knew that from the jump. Now,
maybe the Crystals weren't aware of that fact. Maybe they
heard the song on the radio and maybe their jaws
dropped to the floor and they realized it wasn't their
voices on the track. I've been uncredited for so long
at that point, it wasn't something that shocked me, to
(13:47):
be honest, I wasn't even crazy about the song. Phil
paid me three grand flat to cut that tune, so
I was good. Phil was beside himself when our version
went to number one, but he was even more pleased
when Vicky Carr's version didn't even break the top one hundred. Now,
(14:09):
one of the next songs we've recorded, He's the boy
I love. That was supposed to be credited to me.
That was supposed to have my name on it, my
stage name, Darlene Love. Phil gave me that name, and
I figured where he went through the motions to give
me a catchy stage name. He would put it on
the record label, DJs would say my name on air,
(14:32):
kids would look at my name, maybe my picture on
the sleeve while the forty five spun. But when he
released it on his Phillies label, once again, it was
credited to the Crystals. Remember to him, it was always
a Phil Specter production. It didn't matter who sang on
it or who played on it. It was his record,
(14:53):
his show. He didn't care how anonymous any of us were.
The tower my heart sunk. I was hurt. I was angry.
It hurt that people were here in my record and
didn't know it was me. It hurt that I had
been lied to used. It hurt like hell. But I
(15:14):
made sure that it didn't bring me down. I was
determined to never give Phil Specter the satisfaction of knowing
that he broke me. We'll be right back after this
word word word. I may have had my own premonitions
(15:42):
about Sam Cooke and Phil Specter, but none of us
could have seen what was coming in late nine. That
day in November hit all of us like a brick.
We had been busy making other plans. As they said,
we had wrapped recording the Christmas album that summer. A
Christmas gift for you from Phil Specter, That's what he
(16:04):
called it again, putting his name out in front of
everyone else. We had recorded through a sweltering summer, put
our all into it, an army of musicians Hal Blaine,
Barney kessel Sonny Bono, Leon Russell, Tommy Tedesco. There was
no room to move in gold Star. Heel loved Christmas
(16:26):
music despite his Jewish background. He loved how big the
music was, how emotional and sentimental it was. It was
the Wagner lover inside of him. He also got a
big kick out of the fact that Irvin Berlin, a
fellow jew, was the one who wrote White Christmas. The
atmosphere was very playful and very joyous, and I think
(16:49):
that joy comes through on the record. It was one
of the few times I enjoyed being in a studio
with Phil. The record was packaged and set for release
and an honest Friday, November twenty second, nineteen and then
the bottom dropped out further details on an assassination attempt
(17:11):
against President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. President Kennedy was shot
as he drove from Dallas Airport to downtown Dallas. Governor
Connelly of Texas in the car with him was also shot.
It is reported that three bullets rang out. A secret
serviceman was heard to shout from the car, He's dead.
(17:36):
President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas. The record was
pulled from Shells shortly after. Phil blame poor sales on
the assassination. Phil was years old, his first t number
one records, Oh Make Anybody Think They Are And then
in early nineteen sixty four, the Beatles played Ed Sullivan.
(17:57):
The landscape of America changed Draft Stickley in so many ways,
and just a matter of months, that kind of change
was difficult for Phil to navigate. The whole thing began
a new pattern, a pattern of blame. We always had
to have something or someone to blame for his failures.
It was the singer's fault, or the label's fault, or
(18:18):
the audience has fault, or it was the fault of
an American president struck down in Dallas by God knows who.
I never heard him except the blame for anything, even
the Righteous Brothers. He hit gold with the Righteous Brothers
in You've Lost That Love and feeling was his everest.
It was his peak, that was his mountain high. It
(18:39):
was almost double the length of a single at that time,
and it's still dominated the charts. It got played on
radio and TV more than any other song in the
twentieth century. The twentieth century, that song was the twentieth
century understand. As crazy as they went for that in
the United States, they crazier in the UK. Andrew law
(19:03):
Gold him, the Rolling Stones manager, took out a full
page ad in the paper simply to sing the praises
of the song and to phil He called it the
last word and Tomorrow's sound today, and said that it
was responsible for exposing the overall mediocrity in the music
industry and even that level of fame, that level of
(19:25):
success wasn't good enough for him. He weaseled his name
under the songwriting credit of There As a Woman, the
B side of the single that Bill Medley and Bob
Hatfield had written on their own. They were irritated because
it took a third of the tracks royalty money and
funneled it directly to Fill even though he didn't write
the thing. More drama followed. Of course, Bill and Bobby
(19:49):
were fighting with each other and fighting with Phil, and
then Phil released an album of the Righteous Brothers material
that the duo didn't approve. The next thing, you know,
they jumped ship and go to MGM. Phil is suing them,
and then a few years later he's talking about them
in Rolling Stone magazine, calling them untalented and saying they
(20:11):
were really non intellectual and unable to comprehend success. They
couldn't comprehend success. They were intalented. Man, leave it to Phil.
Only Phil would have a hit that huge and then
so easily mess it all up. I think those sorts
of experiences led him to be even more controlling, controlling
people like me, and that's why after I had finally
(20:38):
cut myself free from Phil and signed a contract with
Philadelphia International, with gamble and huff. He found a way
to get me back without me even knowing. It was
a power move, no doubt. I was in Philly for
a few months. They'll have the same lawyer. They sold
the contract back to him. I had a turning point
(20:59):
that day in the studio in the early seventies recording Lord,
if You're a woman. Not the turning point I had
cleaning that woman's bathroom that would be years later. This
was an opposite kind of turning point, the moment when
I said to hell with it all, put my headphones
on the mica sand and walked out of phil studio forever.
I didn't see him again for twenty years. At the
(21:20):
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they were given him
a damn Award when he took him another twenty two
years after his to give me mine, And despite the
fact that he never gave me proper credit, that he
bought back my contract just to get under my skin,
that I had to sue him for royalties ode despite
all of that, when I was inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand and eleven,
I thanked him. I called him a genius. At that
(21:44):
point he was in jail, but I knew a word
would get around to him. He'd hear my speech, and
I wanted him to know that, no matter what he
did to me, I was going to go out on
top January, New York City, the Waldorf Astoria. Phil Specter
(22:38):
never mentioned Darlene loved during his speech at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He could see
Darlene in the audience from his eagle eye position at
the podium on stage. His three inch Cuban heels helped
with the elevated advantage point. She applauded with the crowd,
smiled at Phil from where she sat at her table.
But Phil made sure that he kept the moment to himself.
(23:01):
Just like the songs he recorded at gold Star, his
moment on stage was a Phil Specter production. It had
been a while years even since Phil made a public
appearance like this. He had spent most of the nineteen
eighties living the life of a reclusive midas who had
lost his golden touch. In nine eighty six, he left
the Hollywood mansion where he held court and where he
(23:23):
held people hostage for two decades. He moved into another mansion,
in Pasadena, this one previously owned by Robert Reid of
the Brady Bunch. He said he was downsizing, but instinctively
went in the opposite direction. He went big bulgarian, three stories,
two acres or waterfall and a jacuzzi. The Mediterranean style
(23:43):
mansion offered him ample room to never be seen by
anyone else for as long as he wanted. Everything he
did in the eighties was done in secret. He got
married again, this time to his assistant turned girlfriend, Janezavola,
and the couple had twins in nine two. He kept
the marriage hidden from many. He really sold that image
(24:03):
out of touch, hermetic, paranoid, cartoonish part Howard Hughes and
part Howard the Duck with the three armed bodyguards that
flanked him as he made his way to the stage
at the Waldorf Historia that night. He didn't know it
as he walked, wobbling from side to side from one
too many Roman Cokes. But in less than two years
he would find himself hold up in the presidential suite
(24:24):
of the Waldorf Historia for a year as he mourned
the death of his nine year old son, Philip Jr.
From leukemia. Be my baby boomed over the house p A,
but Phil didn't want to talk about be my baby.
Phil was drunk on the moment, drunk on the attention,
and drunk on whatever the mind eraser of choice was
(24:45):
that day. He rambled on about George Bush, about the
presidential inauguration that was only two days away. The audience
shot each other confused, if not mildly entertained glances, and
when he got around to talking about music, he skipped
over all the people who helped get him to the place.
He found himself that day, standing at the podium addressing
(25:06):
a room full of industry giants, he didn't ring out
the names of the singers and the musicians who had
layered the bricks in the wall of sound. Instead, he
pointed fingers. He pointed a finger at Bruce Springsteen, and
then another at Eric Carmen, and yet another at Abba.
Accused them of ripping him off. They all ripped him off.
He played the stereotype to a t. His bodyguards had
(25:29):
to cut him short and peel him away from the podium.
Phil went home and got lost in his Pasadena mansion again.
Down the road from Pasadena, twenty six year old actress
Lana Clarkson wasn't paying any attention to the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that night. The name phil
Specter meant nothing to her. Instead, she looked at a
(25:52):
poster mock up for her latest movie, Wizards of the
Lost Kingdom Too. There was a castle in the distance.
It lay at the end of a craggy cliff that
was shaped like a lightning bolb. Two foreboding heads hung
in the clouds. The dramatic tagline at the top of
the poster read, Across the Sea of Dreams, behind the
curtain of time lies the land of ultimate fantasy. Lana
(26:15):
got lost for a moment looking at the image, got
lost in the other worldliness of it. It was a
place she had never seen before, the kind of place
she would probably never see beyond the make believe of
a Hollywood sound stage, a castle, a mansion, high in
the clouds, at the end of a long and winding road.
It really was a fantasy. She'd been eating out the
(26:37):
actress thing for years now. She was tall, blonde, classically beautiful.
Her parents had named her after Hollywood legend Lana Turner,
and like Laana Turner, Lana Clarkson was the embodiment of
tinseltown elegance. She brought a level of halcyon class to
every minor role she could snagged. She had walked on
On Three's Company in The Jefferson's On Night Writer, and
(27:00):
Who's the Boss on the A Team in The Love Boat,
but her movie career wasn't progressing beyond the B list
or even the C list. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom
Too was set for release in March, and she was
worried how many theaters in town would even show it.
At the poster would get hung up, she prepared herself
for another straight to video co classic the right people
(27:23):
would never see. Laana wasn't paying any attention to what
was happening at the Waldorf Historia that night. She stared
at the poster wondered if this would be the role
that was different, the one that got her one step
closer to something she never thought was attainable, the fabled
mansion in the Clouds. It will be fourteen years later,
(27:44):
almost to the day that Lana Clarkson approached that unattainable fantasy.
She walked the craggy cliff walk to the door of
a hilltop castle in Alhambra, Her host was Phil Specter.
Even fourteen years later, she still knew nothing about it.
The invitation was sudden, unexpected, and the castle was magical
(28:04):
but also eerie. Something about it all didn't feel quite right.
She was driven up the quarter mile driveway, but then
she thought, what was he gonna do? What was he
going to do to his bread and butter? Why would
he do anything? It would leave so much blood on
the tracks. This episode of Blood on the Tracks is
(28:36):
brought to you by twenty seven Club, a podcast that
I host on musicians who died at the age of seven.
Season two, featuring Jim Morrison is now available as the
season one with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribed to
The seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heart radio, app
or wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, this
episode was also brought to you by disgrace Land, the
(28:57):
award winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by
Yours Truly. Episodes on The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Cardi b,
The Grateful Dead, j Z Prince, and many many more
are all waiting for you right now. Just search disgrace
Land on Apple podcast, I Heeart radio app or wherever
you get your podcast all right. This episode of Blood
(29:18):
on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundi and scored
in mixed by Matt Boden, Posted by me Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan's Breaker and Henry Juneta.
This episode featured Lindsay cox Is Darlene Love. Blood on
the Tracks is produced by myself for Double Elvis and
partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are
(29:38):
available at Double Elvis dot com on the Blood on
the Tracks series page. If you like it, you hear,
please be sure to subscribe the Blood on the Tracks
on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app wherever you get
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leave a review for Blood on the Tracks on Apple Podcast,
you can hashtag blood on the Tracks on social media
(30:00):
you leave your review there. We'll pick two winners each
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that's at Double Elvis. Go ahead and get that a fall,
all right. As always, you can find me blabbing about
other crazy rock stars on Disgrace Land and Club and
you can talk to me per Usual on Instagram and
Twitter at Disgrace, lad Rock Alozy Dad
Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Phil Spector was a musical genius,
one of the most successful record producers of all time.
He's now sitting behind bars, serving a nineteen years to
life sentence for murder. This is his story told by
his so called friends. This is the Special Agent Paul
(00:28):
Ramon with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working case number
double oh four DAP ten DASH seven four one nine,
case subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to
a period ending January nine. Interview subject is right Darlene
a k A. Darlene Love. Interview number one Dash one
two Dash two six three Dash six six six Recall
(00:49):
number eight August twenty eight, two thousand eight. We'll all ego.
Phil was twenty years old when he had his first
two number one records. That will make anybody think they're
bigger than they are. He was always a wheeler and
(01:12):
a dealer. People were actually afraid of him. I was
probably one of the only people who wasn't afraid of him.
It didn't bother him that I wasn't afraid of him.
Look could he do if he could kill me? Is
that all I just didn't have any fear towards him,
because I knew he had a big mouth and he
wasn't going to go through with any of his threats.
(01:34):
People that threaten you often just have a big mouth.
Plus Phil needed me at that time. He didn't have Ronnie,
he didn't have the Righteous Brothers. I was the only
one who sang and gave him to number one records.
So why are you going to kill somebody you love?
Your bread and butter? Why are you gonna do anything
(01:57):
that would leave so much mud on the tracks? Chapter eight,
(02:25):
Phil Specter and Darlene Love. I thought my own story
was over. I thought, maybe, just maybe I would gradually
(02:48):
forget all the things I had done, the things I
had been through, like they had been nothing more than
a dream of fantasy. The ups, the downs, the good
the bad. It was a struggle. My own story had
been a struggle. My career was a struggle, and I
just didn't want to struggle anymore. I sang professionally for years,
(03:11):
since I was a teenager, years in the church year
singing with the blossoms. Here's some Good Good, singing to
the tune of Good Good Loving by the Good Good Blossoms,
years singing behind Elvis, Sam Cook, Frank Sinatra, Chain Gang, Monster, Mash,
That's Life, Shoot, Shoot say the name, and I probably
(03:34):
stood at a mic in the studio behind them. And
then all those years I've spent singing for Phil, or
reeling from singing with Phil, or avoiding singing with Phil
wasn't too Frank. I was in the right place at
the right time, but we never got it right. It
(03:54):
was never made right. I ghosted on so many record
so much that sometimes even I felt like the ghost.
No one knew it was me singing on those records.
Half the time, I was never given proper credit. And
then later when I was given a proper shot with
my own name on the record label, I was put
through an emotional ringer. So I stuck myself at the
(04:18):
back of the stage again, stood in the shadows, again
towards singing back up for Tom Jones and Dion Warwick.
My marriage ended, I missed my kids. I was tired, frustrated,
so I said, the hell with it? Who needs it?
Who needs this story? This story that will never be right?
(04:40):
And so I thought the story was over, But it
wasn't over, far from it. The turning point happened in
a bathroom, of all places, not even my own bathroom.
I had put the singing behind me, took up odd
jobs cleaning houses. The houses were nice, the money was steady,
(05:00):
The money was instant, hundred dollars a day. The stress
level was low. No contract. The only expectation that either
I or the person who hired me had was that
the house would look better when I left than when
I arrived. Simple, easy. I provided for my kids, put
food on the table and close on their backs. The
(05:21):
house I was in on this particular day was in
the hills of l a somewhere. It was Christmas time.
I was in the bathroom cleaning the sink. The whole
room smelled of disinfectant mint lemon. I had this lady's
radio play and I was in the house alone, so
I turned it up real loud, and the song came on.
My song came on Christmas, Maybe Please Come Home. I
(05:45):
stopped what I was doing, rubber gloves on my hands,
one of them holding the toilet bowl brush. I pushed
my hair back with the part of my forearm that
wasn't covered in the soapy glove, and just stood there enjoyed.
That moment took it all in. It's a beautiful song
means so many things that so many people communicates so
(06:06):
much about the holidays and distance and longing, about love
lost and found so much and under three minutes in
that moment, it brought me back. I closed my eyes
and I was standing there and gold Star in Hollywood.
It was nineteen sixty three, it was August. Los Angeles
(06:26):
was in the middle of a heat wave. It was
a hundred and three outside, but inside gold Star it
was a meat lock or Phil always kept it cold.
The song was a triumph, one of my triumphs, and
the feeling the song gave me in that moment, the
feeling it always gave me trumped any of the bad
memories I was holding onto. The song gave me strength.
(06:49):
It reminded me that no matter how low things got,
how low I got, I never felt weak. I found
strengthen my songs, my voice, And no matter how many
times Phil tried to suppress me, to silence my name
or my voice, he never made me feel less than
(07:11):
because I wouldn't let him. That song reminded me that
I had that power. Standing in the bathroom, I opened
my eyes and looked at my face in the mirror
as the song faded out. Trust me, the irony of
listened to one of my greatest moments play on the
radio in the house I had been hired to clean
(07:32):
was not lost on me in that moment. In that moment,
I knew what I had to do. I finished the job,
clean the house. At the end of the shift, I
told the woman who hired me that I wouldn't be
coming back the next week. She didn't even know who
I was. To her, I was merely someone who had
answered an ad and dusted her house. She'd find someone else.
(07:55):
I walked out that door and started looking for the
next microphone. Years later, my performance of Christmas Baby, Please
Come Home became an annual holiday tradition on David Letterman Show.
Ladies and Gentlemen but one and only Darlene Lowe. Then
everyone knew who I was. I knew my name, even
(08:18):
that woman in the Hills of l A with the
bathroom so clean you could eat off it. Phil started
to call the Letterman Show and tell them he was
going to sue. He was going to sue for repeated
use of that song. His song. You see, because every
session was a Phil Specter session, and every song was
a Phil Spectra production. The TV studio knew they were
(08:40):
in the clear, but Phil thought he could just scare them.
That's what he did. He thought he could scare everybody,
bend them to his will. He tried to make people
think a lot of things, think that they were nothing
before him, and they'd be nothing without him. But me,
(09:02):
I was working well before I ever looked him in
his eyes, and I'm still working. Phil Specter didn't scare
me at all. If you had asked me back in
(09:46):
three if Phil Specter would one day be behind bars
for murder, I need to think about that for a moment.
You try to really really evaluate another human being, and
it's really difficult because I had my own premonitions about
all these people I worked with. I remember telling Sam Cook,
for instance. I told Sam, you'd better keep an eye
(10:08):
out all these women you keep running around with. One
of them is going to be the wrong woman, and
then you're going to be in trouble. I just had
a feeling with Sam that things wouldn't end well, not
that I thought they would end that soon. With Phil,
he seemed to be tempting fate. His obsession with guns
was constant. He he even brought them to the studio.
(10:30):
He take one from his pockets, swinging on his finger
like he was an outlaw in a John Ford film. Now,
remember I was the only person who would stand up
to Phil on the regular. I had a husband, I
had kids at home, I had a mortgage to pay.
This was a job to me. This was life. This
(10:51):
wasn't no game. So I was the one who would leave,
walk out the room. If that gun goes off, it's
not gonna shoot me. Guns don't shoot people shoot. Gold
Star was crammed with people, musicians, singers, guests. If that
gun fell out of his hand and hit the floor,
(11:11):
guess what. The odds are pretty good that someone's gonna
take a bullet. My prophecy on Phil was because the
way he acted with guns. He always had guns in
the studio, and he was always put them in his
pocket and taking them out and flipping them around and
all those things. I was the only one that would
leave the session because I would say, listen, if he's
(11:33):
gonna shoot somebody, it ain't gonna be me. Guns don't
shoot people shoot. I just think it was stupid and
dangerous to be in a recording studio. We had like
fifteen to twenty musicians in the studio while he was
doing this. If the gun were dropped and went off,
guess what I stood my ground. If Phil bought a
(11:58):
gun into the studio, I'd make and put it in
his car. It was the gun or me. The studio
wasn't big enough for both of us. So yeah, part
of me wouldn't have been surprised if you told me
back in sixty three that one day Phil's gun would
go off and that there would be an innocent person
on the other end of it. We the jury and
the bad titled action find the defendant, Philip Spector, guilty
(12:20):
of the crime of second degree murder a lot of culture.
When I first met him, he didn't seem like that
kind of a person, a crazy gun person. It was
Jack Nietzsche that introduced me to Phil, recommended me. Jack
knew everybody I was singing in the Blossoms. We did
our own thing, but we did a lot of background singing.
I joined the group when I was still in high school.
(12:42):
Had to get my parents permission, so we got a reputation.
Jack told Phil that we were exactly what he was
looking for. Phil wasn't a bind. It was a bind
of his own, but a bind. Nonetheless, he was planning
for the Crystals to record this song. He's a rebel.
But he got wind that Vicky Carr was about to
(13:02):
record her own version of the song for Liberty Records.
Phil wanted his version to hit the radio waves and
the store shelves first. He wasn't gonna be one up
by another label. The problem was, the Crystals were torn
on the East Coast. Phil was in l A. He
needed to cut that record now, So that's how we
(13:24):
were brought in. I knew all thelong that we the Blossoms,
were singing on a record that was going to be
credited to someone else. I knew that from the jump. Now,
maybe the Crystals weren't aware of that fact. Maybe they
heard the song on the radio and maybe their jaws
dropped to the floor and they realized it wasn't their
voices on the track. I've been uncredited for so long
at that point, it wasn't something that shocked me, to
(13:47):
be honest, I wasn't even crazy about the song. Phil
paid me three grand flat to cut that tune, so
I was good. Phil was beside himself when our version
went to number one, but he was even more pleased
when Vicky Carr's version didn't even break the top one hundred. Now,
(14:09):
one of the next songs we've recorded, He's the boy
I love. That was supposed to be credited to me.
That was supposed to have my name on it, my
stage name, Darlene Love. Phil gave me that name, and
I figured where he went through the motions to give
me a catchy stage name. He would put it on
the record label, DJs would say my name on air,
(14:32):
kids would look at my name, maybe my picture on
the sleeve while the forty five spun. But when he
released it on his Phillies label, once again, it was
credited to the Crystals. Remember to him, it was always
a Phil Specter production. It didn't matter who sang on
it or who played on it. It was his record,
(14:53):
his show. He didn't care how anonymous any of us were.
The tower my heart sunk. I was hurt. I was angry.
It hurt that people were here in my record and
didn't know it was me. It hurt that I had
been lied to used. It hurt like hell. But I
(15:14):
made sure that it didn't bring me down. I was
determined to never give Phil Specter the satisfaction of knowing
that he broke me. We'll be right back after this
word word word. I may have had my own premonitions
(15:42):
about Sam Cooke and Phil Specter, but none of us
could have seen what was coming in late nine. That
day in November hit all of us like a brick.
We had been busy making other plans. As they said,
we had wrapped recording the Christmas album that summer. A
Christmas gift for you from Phil Specter, That's what he
(16:04):
called it again, putting his name out in front of
everyone else. We had recorded through a sweltering summer, put
our all into it, an army of musicians Hal Blaine,
Barney kessel Sonny Bono, Leon Russell, Tommy Tedesco. There was
no room to move in gold Star. Heel loved Christmas
(16:26):
music despite his Jewish background. He loved how big the
music was, how emotional and sentimental it was. It was
the Wagner lover inside of him. He also got a
big kick out of the fact that Irvin Berlin, a
fellow jew, was the one who wrote White Christmas. The
atmosphere was very playful and very joyous, and I think
(16:49):
that joy comes through on the record. It was one
of the few times I enjoyed being in a studio
with Phil. The record was packaged and set for release
and an honest Friday, November twenty second, nineteen and then
the bottom dropped out further details on an assassination attempt
(17:11):
against President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. President Kennedy was shot
as he drove from Dallas Airport to downtown Dallas. Governor
Connelly of Texas in the car with him was also shot.
It is reported that three bullets rang out. A secret
serviceman was heard to shout from the car, He's dead.
(17:36):
President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas. The record was
pulled from Shells shortly after. Phil blame poor sales on
the assassination. Phil was years old, his first t number
one records, Oh Make Anybody Think They Are And then
in early nineteen sixty four, the Beatles played Ed Sullivan.
(17:57):
The landscape of America changed Draft Stickley in so many ways,
and just a matter of months, that kind of change
was difficult for Phil to navigate. The whole thing began
a new pattern, a pattern of blame. We always had
to have something or someone to blame for his failures.
It was the singer's fault, or the label's fault, or
(18:18):
the audience has fault, or it was the fault of
an American president struck down in Dallas by God knows who.
I never heard him except the blame for anything, even
the Righteous Brothers. He hit gold with the Righteous Brothers
in You've Lost That Love and feeling was his everest.
It was his peak, that was his mountain high. It
(18:39):
was almost double the length of a single at that time,
and it's still dominated the charts. It got played on
radio and TV more than any other song in the
twentieth century. The twentieth century, that song was the twentieth
century understand. As crazy as they went for that in
the United States, they crazier in the UK. Andrew law
(19:03):
Gold him, the Rolling Stones manager, took out a full
page ad in the paper simply to sing the praises
of the song and to phil He called it the
last word and Tomorrow's sound today, and said that it
was responsible for exposing the overall mediocrity in the music
industry and even that level of fame, that level of
(19:25):
success wasn't good enough for him. He weaseled his name
under the songwriting credit of There As a Woman, the
B side of the single that Bill Medley and Bob
Hatfield had written on their own. They were irritated because
it took a third of the tracks royalty money and
funneled it directly to Fill even though he didn't write
the thing. More drama followed. Of course, Bill and Bobby
(19:49):
were fighting with each other and fighting with Phil, and
then Phil released an album of the Righteous Brothers material
that the duo didn't approve. The next thing, you know,
they jumped ship and go to MGM. Phil is suing them,
and then a few years later he's talking about them
in Rolling Stone magazine, calling them untalented and saying they
(20:11):
were really non intellectual and unable to comprehend success. They
couldn't comprehend success. They were intalented. Man, leave it to Phil.
Only Phil would have a hit that huge and then
so easily mess it all up. I think those sorts
of experiences led him to be even more controlling, controlling
people like me, and that's why after I had finally
(20:38):
cut myself free from Phil and signed a contract with
Philadelphia International, with gamble and huff. He found a way
to get me back without me even knowing. It was
a power move, no doubt. I was in Philly for
a few months. They'll have the same lawyer. They sold
the contract back to him. I had a turning point
(20:59):
that day in the studio in the early seventies recording Lord,
if You're a woman. Not the turning point I had
cleaning that woman's bathroom that would be years later. This
was an opposite kind of turning point, the moment when
I said to hell with it all, put my headphones
on the mica sand and walked out of phil studio forever.
I didn't see him again for twenty years. At the
(21:20):
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they were given him
a damn Award when he took him another twenty two
years after his to give me mine, And despite the
fact that he never gave me proper credit, that he
bought back my contract just to get under my skin,
that I had to sue him for royalties ode despite
all of that, when I was inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand and eleven,
I thanked him. I called him a genius. At that
(21:44):
point he was in jail, but I knew a word
would get around to him. He'd hear my speech, and
I wanted him to know that, no matter what he
did to me, I was going to go out on
top January, New York City, the Waldorf Astoria. Phil Specter
(22:38):
never mentioned Darlene loved during his speech at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He could see
Darlene in the audience from his eagle eye position at
the podium on stage. His three inch Cuban heels helped
with the elevated advantage point. She applauded with the crowd,
smiled at Phil from where she sat at her table.
But Phil made sure that he kept the moment to himself.
(23:01):
Just like the songs he recorded at gold Star, his
moment on stage was a Phil Specter production. It had
been a while years even since Phil made a public
appearance like this. He had spent most of the nineteen
eighties living the life of a reclusive midas who had
lost his golden touch. In nine eighty six, he left
the Hollywood mansion where he held court and where he
(23:23):
held people hostage for two decades. He moved into another mansion,
in Pasadena, this one previously owned by Robert Reid of
the Brady Bunch. He said he was downsizing, but instinctively
went in the opposite direction. He went big bulgarian, three stories,
two acres or waterfall and a jacuzzi. The Mediterranean style
(23:43):
mansion offered him ample room to never be seen by
anyone else for as long as he wanted. Everything he
did in the eighties was done in secret. He got
married again, this time to his assistant turned girlfriend, Janezavola,
and the couple had twins in nine two. He kept
the marriage hidden from many. He really sold that image
(24:03):
out of touch, hermetic, paranoid, cartoonish part Howard Hughes and
part Howard the Duck with the three armed bodyguards that
flanked him as he made his way to the stage
at the Waldorf Historia that night. He didn't know it
as he walked, wobbling from side to side from one
too many Roman Cokes. But in less than two years
he would find himself hold up in the presidential suite
(24:24):
of the Waldorf Historia for a year as he mourned
the death of his nine year old son, Philip Jr.
From leukemia. Be my baby boomed over the house p A,
but Phil didn't want to talk about be my baby.
Phil was drunk on the moment, drunk on the attention,
and drunk on whatever the mind eraser of choice was
(24:45):
that day. He rambled on about George Bush, about the
presidential inauguration that was only two days away. The audience
shot each other confused, if not mildly entertained glances, and
when he got around to talking about music, he skipped
over all the people who helped get him to the place.
He found himself that day, standing at the podium addressing
(25:06):
a room full of industry giants, he didn't ring out
the names of the singers and the musicians who had
layered the bricks in the wall of sound. Instead, he
pointed fingers. He pointed a finger at Bruce Springsteen, and
then another at Eric Carmen, and yet another at Abba.
Accused them of ripping him off. They all ripped him off.
He played the stereotype to a t. His bodyguards had
(25:29):
to cut him short and peel him away from the podium.
Phil went home and got lost in his Pasadena mansion again.
Down the road from Pasadena, twenty six year old actress
Lana Clarkson wasn't paying any attention to the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that night. The name phil
Specter meant nothing to her. Instead, she looked at a
(25:52):
poster mock up for her latest movie, Wizards of the
Lost Kingdom Too. There was a castle in the distance.
It lay at the end of a craggy cliff that
was shaped like a lightning bolb. Two foreboding heads hung
in the clouds. The dramatic tagline at the top of
the poster read, Across the Sea of Dreams, behind the
curtain of time lies the land of ultimate fantasy. Lana
(26:15):
got lost for a moment looking at the image, got
lost in the other worldliness of it. It was a
place she had never seen before, the kind of place
she would probably never see beyond the make believe of
a Hollywood sound stage, a castle, a mansion, high in
the clouds, at the end of a long and winding road.
It really was a fantasy. She'd been eating out the
(26:37):
actress thing for years now. She was tall, blonde, classically beautiful.
Her parents had named her after Hollywood legend Lana Turner,
and like Laana Turner, Lana Clarkson was the embodiment of
tinseltown elegance. She brought a level of halcyon class to
every minor role she could snagged. She had walked on
On Three's Company in The Jefferson's On Night Writer, and
(27:00):
Who's the Boss on the A Team in The Love Boat,
but her movie career wasn't progressing beyond the B list
or even the C list. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom
Too was set for release in March, and she was
worried how many theaters in town would even show it.
At the poster would get hung up, she prepared herself
for another straight to video co classic the right people
(27:23):
would never see. Laana wasn't paying any attention to what
was happening at the Waldorf Historia that night. She stared
at the poster wondered if this would be the role
that was different, the one that got her one step
closer to something she never thought was attainable, the fabled
mansion in the Clouds. It will be fourteen years later,
(27:44):
almost to the day that Lana Clarkson approached that unattainable fantasy.
She walked the craggy cliff walk to the door of
a hilltop castle in Alhambra, Her host was Phil Specter.
Even fourteen years later, she still knew nothing about it.
The invitation was sudden, unexpected, and the castle was magical
(28:04):
but also eerie. Something about it all didn't feel quite right.
She was driven up the quarter mile driveway, but then
she thought, what was he gonna do? What was he
going to do to his bread and butter? Why would
he do anything? It would leave so much blood on
the tracks. This episode of Blood on the Tracks is
(28:36):
brought to you by twenty seven Club, a podcast that
I host on musicians who died at the age of seven.
Season two, featuring Jim Morrison is now available as the
season one with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribed to
The seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heart radio, app
or wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, this
episode was also brought to you by disgrace Land, the
(28:57):
award winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by
Yours Truly. Episodes on The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Cardi b,
The Grateful Dead, j Z Prince, and many many more
are all waiting for you right now. Just search disgrace
Land on Apple podcast, I Heeart radio app or wherever
you get your podcast all right. This episode of Blood
(29:18):
on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundi and scored
in mixed by Matt Boden, Posted by me Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan's Breaker and Henry Juneta.
This episode featured Lindsay cox Is Darlene Love. Blood on
the Tracks is produced by myself for Double Elvis and
partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are
(29:38):
available at Double Elvis dot com on the Blood on
the Tracks series page. If you like it, you hear,
please be sure to subscribe the Blood on the Tracks
on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app wherever you get
your podcasts. And if you'd like to win a free
Blood on the Tracks poster designed by Nike Gonzalez and
leave a review for Blood on the Tracks on Apple Podcast,
you can hashtag blood on the Tracks on social media
(30:00):
you leave your review there. We'll pick two winners each
week and announced them on the Double Elvis Instagram page
that's at Double Elvis. Go ahead and get that a fall,
all right. As always, you can find me blabbing about
other crazy rock stars on Disgrace Land and Club and
you can talk to me per Usual on Instagram and
Twitter at Disgrace, lad Rock Alozy Dad
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