September 2, 2020 • 27 mins
Leonard Cohen recalls his time with Phil Spector as a time of great confusion and soul searching. It’s also a time of bad omens, punctuated by being held against his will and being held at gunpoint. Despite cameos by Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, and trips to islands off the coast of Greece and Zen retreats in California, Leonard’s memories keep coming back to one word: guns.
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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
a so called friends. This is Special Agent Paul Ramon
(00:28):
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number
double oh four DASH ten DASH seven four one nine
case subject to Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to
a period ending November thirteen, seventy seven. Interview subject as
Cohen Leonard Norman Interview number six STAPH six six Dash
seven one nine DASH seven seven seven Recall number six
(00:49):
October thirty, two thousand and six. The state that I
found fill in was post Wagnerian. I would go as
far as to say that he was less like Wagner
more like Hitler. In The atmosphere was one of guns.
(01:12):
I mean, that's really what was going on. Guns, guns,
guns and more guns. The music was subsidiary. It was
an enterprise. People were armed at the te his friends,
his bodyguards. Everybody was drunk er, intoxicated. Otherwise I was
just holding on a dear life. My family was breaking
up at the time, and just to show up was wrong,
(01:35):
and then I'd have to go through this ninth grade
military film noir atmosphere. I remember one time with the
Viole Empire. Fill didn't like the way he was playing,
so he walked out into the studio and pulled it
down on the par guy. He didn't spill any blood
in there, thankfully. Let me tell you, you could see it,
the carnage, psychological carnage. You could see the blood on
(01:58):
the tracks. Chapter five, Phil Specter and Leonard Cohen. I
(02:36):
wouldn't say that I was terrified that first night at
Phil's mansion. Don't write that down. Don't let the record
reflect terrified. It was more like I was frustrated and
annoyed and put out. I was tired and just wanted
to go home. I was there all night, As you know,
that's a well worn tale. I think we all have
a tale like that, don't we, All of us who
(02:58):
worked with Phil. We all that one night at Phil's
mansion town. I was there with Suzanne, but we've been
together almost ten years at that point, not quite I guess,
and the kids were a few years old. By then,
this is V. Seven. Things weren't great with us. I
can't say if they were ever really great. I sang
(03:20):
about it at that time, and I tried to leave you.
I closed the book on us at least a hundred times.
When I first arrived at the place on La Colina,
I was already fragile, drinking, heavily, dipping my big toe
into Buddhism and Mount Baldi. I was moving in multiple
directions at the same time, reaching, wandering, searching. I didn't
(03:40):
really know what was going on. It was Marty Matchett
who set the whole thing up. He was my lawyer,
and turns out he was Phil's lawyer too. Both Phil
and I hadn't put anything out in a few years.
We were both a bit lost at the moment. I
suppose we were both Jews, both sons of immigrants, both
lost our father when we were nine. Murty saw it
(04:02):
as a sympatico parent, even if people on the outside
looking in so otherwise. So when you sign on to
work with Phil Specter, you go to the big house
first up the hill from the strip, very regal Hollywood,
you know, lording over it all from above, very castle
in the air. It's got this big fountain out front,
(04:23):
a pool out back, and the ominous barbed wire fencing
gives way to welcoming gardens, your typical Hollywood opulence. It
was a dinner party that we were invited to. Me
and Suzanne and a few others were there as well.
The night we're on and people left, and like I
said earlier, I was tired. It was nice to chat
with Phil, put in the time and all that, but
(04:45):
I wanted to continue another day. It was late. I
stood up from the table and thanked him for the
food and conversation, complimented him on the house. I told
him that we would be leaving. Phil had other plans.
He snapped his fingers at the people he had were
working for him, Yes, man, though some of them had
a bodyguard air to them. He snapped his fingers in
(05:06):
their general direction, like a man who had snapped many
a finger in many a general direction, and said, don't
let them leave. And these men locked the doors, and
then they stood near us at the table where I
had sat back down, with their holstered weapons in plain view.
You don't want to leave, now, do you, Leonard? They'll
ask me, why don't you sit back down and stay
(05:26):
Awhile his voice was somewhere between wounded friend and the
playground and vindictive bully plotting his revenge. He would always
strike a balance between those extremes in my mind, though
I suppose balances to forgiving. He swung emotionally into one
side or the other. He swung hard and definitively for
(05:48):
a moment, a definitive moment. In that moment, he stood
at the head of the table, his fists firmly on
the table surface. His fists were helping him steady himself.
He must have felt taller than he actually was. I
sat back down, and Suzanne was sitting down. His yes
men were standing there too, a handful of them silent,
(06:10):
yet it was obvious what they were there to do
and what they could also do if needed. Suzanne was
plenty disturbed at the situation for both of us, and
at first she thought it was a joke. What she
realized that Phil was dead serious. She panicked a little.
I took her hand in mind to steady air to
ground her. Things were so shaky with us at that
(06:33):
point in time. This whole being held hostage nonsense was
the last thing I needed, Like I said earlier. I
was just put out, and I figured, if I'm going
to be put out, I may as well be productive,
may as well be proactive. The whole room was tent,
(06:53):
so I suggested we sit down at the piano and
start to hammer out some ideas. No time like the present,
and that was the start of our collaboration. I can't
say I've ever written while being held hostage before or since.
I also can't say whether the caliber of the songs
we produced was worth it in the end. When the
(07:16):
sun rose the next morning, Phil's men unlocked the doors
at the mansion. When Susanne and I anxiously walked outside
and returned home, she made me promise I'd never go
back there again. It had been a few years since
(08:01):
my last record. I was trying to determine what I
should do next, what kind of a record I should make.
I went back to Hydra, the island off the coast
of Greece. The police wouldn't let go of me. It
doesn't let go of many people who visit. Hydro was
rooftops that looked like burnt oranges, a sea that seemed
to drift off. In the mythology, Hydro was mary Anne.
(08:24):
Once he lived on Hydra. You can't live anywhere else
including Hydro. Eventually I came back to the U S
rented a house in Brentwood, close to Sunset Boulevard, relatively
close to Phil Specter, though I wasn't completely aware of
that at the time. I went to l A because
Roshi was there, my teacher, a true zen master. He
(08:45):
was at the Zen Center on Normandy. I thought Roshi
would provide some balance to my life, that maybe he
would keep me on track, keep me out of trouble,
keep me from getting in my own way. Roshi really
wanted me to move myself to Mount Baldi, take Susanne
and the kids, and immerse myself in study. And I'll
admit the slowdown was needed and the self reflection. I
(09:12):
already had a few indulgences in my life, but true
indulgences are like habits, you know, they die hard. But
Mount Baldi would whittle the remaining few away. One indulgence
was travel. I allowed myself to go anywhere I wanted
at any time, and the trade office that I had
(09:32):
very few possessions. All I needed was a bed, a chair,
a table. Another indulgence was the Company of Women. Hydro
may have been a small island, but it was overrun.
With company. Mount Baldi would take away the indulgences, take
away the wander lust and the other lust. But the
time just wasn't right. Let me say it this way.
(09:53):
In hindsight, the time was probably right, but I wasn't
ready to admit the time was right just yet. I
figured being in close approximity to Rows, she was good enough.
I could learn from him when I felt like it.
I could reach out to him when I needed to,
But I could keep one foot in the world of
indulgence for a little bit longer. This way. While I
(10:15):
was out on the road touring behind New Skin for
the Old Ceremony, that's the record. Before my collaboration with Phil,
I played a residency at the Troubadour in West Hollywood,
True Blue l A territory. This is the place where
Tom Waits, Elton John and Joni Mitchell all began. It
was a five night run, two shows a night, and
every single show was sold out. Phil attended one of
(10:39):
the shows. He was there with Lenny Bruce's kid. We
chatted briefly between sets. He looked to me like a
man who had been constructed by a team of people
who had been asked to create a Hollywood record producer
from a backstage closet full of costumes and props. His
hair was a big, frilly puffball. It came all the
(10:59):
way near his shoulders, and it was gray, which conflicted
with the color of his drooping handlebar mustache, which was black.
The frames of his tinted glasses eclipsed his eyes. The
lapels on his shirt looked like they should be registered weapons,
they were so sharp. And this was Phil had been
in a serious car accident just the year before. He
(11:23):
was driving his Rolls Royce down Melrose and he hit
another car head on it threw him through the front window.
He had to have multiple plastic surgeries. He told me
this later. He told me he was still picking pieces
of glass from his face years later. Even during our
(11:44):
recording sessions. He would be standing there ordering around one
musician or another, and then he just paused, raised his
hand to his cheek or his chin, and pull out
a reclusive shard. They would just work themselves out, piece
by piece. He told everyone that the crash made him deaf.
In one year that Brian Wilson wasn't the only half
(12:05):
deaf genius in town anymore, but it had it. He
confided that to me in a whisper one day in
the studio, another one of his pranks. I suppose that
he orchestrated solely because it seemed to bring him joy,
some sort of grotesque joy. Phil was always messing with
people's minds, like that, the way he looked, the way
he acted. And then there were the times he wasn't
(12:29):
messing around, And those were the times that really snuck
up on people, because only in the moments when Phil
was being dead serious did anyone think he was messing around.
Take the night we were held hostage at his house.
After about ten minutes, I realized that it wasn't a prank.
(12:49):
Marty Matchett told the story about an incident at the
Beverly Hills Hotel, and this was also in nine. When
Phil was arguing with a woman outside the lobby. It
got pretty heated. She screamed something at him, something like
get away from me. The valet nearby heard the commotion
and ran over, obviously not knowing who Phil or anyone
else was not that that matters, and asked what was
(13:11):
going on. Well, you know what happened next. Phil pulled
a revolver from the holster inside his jacket and pointed
it straight at the valet's head. Get the funk away
from me, He more in the valet, and then repeated
the threat, get the funk away from me. It didn't
matter if you were some nobody valet at the Beverly
Hills Hotel or one of the many musicians working in
(13:32):
close proximity. Bill's pranks had no loyalties, and his sudden
bursts of hotheaded temper had no boundaries. Everyone was a target,
even me. I'll never forget the day Philip pulled the
gun on me in the studio. We'll be right back
(13:57):
after this word, word word. He pulled his piece on
Bobby Bruce. First. Bobby was the vital emplier. Phil kept
interrupting Bobby's playing, the toll him to play a different way.
Whatever words of encouragement or disapprove of that Phil was offering,
Bobby wasn't listening. He was doing it the way he
(14:19):
wanted to do it, which of course was the way
Phil did it too. So it came to a head,
as things often do. Phil pulled the piece from his holster,
underneath the suit jacket, walked out of the control room
and into the studio and pointed the revolver of Bobby,
play it the way I told you to play it,
Phil screened. Now, Bobby grew up with guns. You understand.
(14:48):
Guns didn't scare Bobby the way they could scare the uninitiated.
A big shot Hollywood producer with a frizzy misshape and
wig on his head and a piece in his hand
didn't concern Bobby. What concerned Bobby was Phil's disrespect, his
disrespect for guns, which he obviously didn't know the first
thing about, and his disrespect for Bobby as a player.
(15:15):
That was it for Bobby. He probably gave Phil the
finger as he walked out of the studio. The making
of Death of a Ladies Man, that's what the record
will be called. The making of the thing was extremely
intense from the get go. Phil and I wrote something
like fifteen songs in just a few weeks, and then
we went straight to the studio, first Whitney Studios in Glendale,
(15:37):
and then eventually, or rather inevitably, to Phil his beloved
gold Star in Hollywood. And this was June. But we
were drinking a lot Phil's bottle of Menace Chevits was
om new present. He poured in a plastic cup and
drink it with a plastic straw like a child would
have his orange juice. The man wasn't just a dilettante
(16:00):
with guns. He was with booze too. His focus was
all over the place. He lost focus often. He wasted
a lot of time in the studio, which of course
conflicted with his reputation. One day, the door of the
studio flung open, and in walked Bob Dylan, now in Ginsburg,
Dylan and a woman on each arm, a half empty
bottle of whiskey in his hand. But we were recording
(16:22):
a song called Don't Go Home with Your Heart On,
and Dylan and Ginsburg wound up singing backing vocals on it.
We listened to the playback so loud that day that
one of the speakers blew up how Phil could be
so particular with a violin part so particular in the
fact that he would pull a pistol on the musician
just to get it right, and then be so lucy
goosey with random appearances by songwriters and poets. It was
(16:46):
all so confusing, But then the sessions were never really
about music. Were a day. We're about control, about impulse,
about being a drift in the moment and in that
moment picking a piece of glass from your face, or
meditating in between cans of beer. It was obvious from
(17:08):
the first night at Phil's mansion his game was about control,
and he maintained his control with the legion of guns.
I laughed a lot in order to keep myself from
being overly terrified. I suggested to Feel that perhaps I
would hire my own bodyguard and we would have a
shootout on Sunset Boulevard, Real Wild West, Real Hollywood. But
(17:30):
we were in the middle of cutting the record. I
can't recall what song we were working on. It was
either Memories or True Love Leaves No Traces. But we
were listening to the playback of the song, and despite
our drunken attempts to the contrary, the song was actually
sounding great. We were pleased. Phil was a little too pleased,
it would seem. He stumbled slowly towards me, where I
(17:52):
sat at the control board listening back. One hand clutched
the bottle of men of Chevits, and the revolver was
in his other hand. He is waving both of them around.
One of Phil's bodyguards, George, and told me that while
his gun was loaded, Phils really was. But still a
(18:12):
man wears a gun around in a cramp studio space
and you don't stop to wonder if it's loaded. So
Phil's walking towards me, humming the melody of the song
we're listening to under his breath. He takes the arm
with the bottle and wraps it around my shoulder, and
then with the other hand he pressed the butt of
the revolver into my neck. It was cold. He pressed
(18:36):
so hard that it felt like half of the gun
was lodged beneath my skin. He leaned in close and said, Leonard,
I love you, and then he cocked the revolver. Now
I'm not Bobby Bruce, so this particular moment did create
a bit of alarm on my part. Every night Phil
(18:56):
would take the tapes with him. He didn't trust anyone
else to be around them, and when he had finished recording,
he was finished with me too. He didn't allow me
to attend the mixing sessions, never let me hear the
finished album before it was sent off for mastering and release.
That moment in the studio with the gun for him.
I think it was both the moment of love in
a moment of finality. I had given him what he wanted,
(19:19):
and for that he was grateful. But I had also
lived out my usefulness, and now he was through. The
gun to my head was a big metaphor to him,
the moment he symbolically blew my brains out, blew them
out because he was in control, and also because now
that he had used me up, he didn't want anyone
else using me. I was his and he could put
a gun to it all if you wanted. I didn't
(19:42):
know it when I walked out of the studio after
the last day we tracked vocals, but it would be
the last time I saw Phil. And if I'm being candid,
which I believe I have been all along, I would
say that the idea of never seeing him again did
not displease me. Mm hmm. March, Los Angeles. Phil Spector
(20:30):
read the letter with equal parts of flattery and indignation.
They wanted some words, an essay, perhaps a statement, at
least something they could include in a book that would
be published next year to celebrate Leonard Cohen's sixtieth birthday.
Phil would be lying if you said it still didn't
sting a little. It's stun a lot, actually, and the
years that have passed had done a bit to dull
(20:51):
some of the pain, but we're still there, the sting
of the pain, the possibility that despite all of his
work and success and strokes of brilliance, Phil Specter was
a failure. And the source of that sting, the reason
he could possibly be a failure, was because of so
called artists like Leonard Cohen. Leonard never understood what Phil
(21:13):
was trying to do. He just didn't get it. He
just didn't listen. If only he could have listened to
what Phil was trying to do back in the cramped
confines of gold Star in nineteen seventy seven, then perhaps
they both wouldn't have the stain on their legacies. And
that's what Death of the Ladies Man was. Phil thought
it was a stain. It should have worked, It could
(21:33):
have worked. But Leonard was more the two bit backstabbing
con type than Phil assumed he was. Philip read all
the things Leonard had said about him after the album
was originally released. He read them all from the comfort
of his hermetically sealed ice box of a home I
don't think he can tolerate any other shadows in his darkness,
And that was the line Phil couldn't shake from his head.
He'd never forgive Leonard, and he never let him forget
(21:56):
it either. Philip made the worst selling album of Leonard
Cohen's care here, and he would never let anyone forget
that it was Leonard's fault. So he grabbed a pen
and paper and composed the requested piano. Montreal's finest poet
of love and loss. Phil wrote all about Leonard Cohen's
closet love of the Partridge Family. That Leonard maintained this
(22:16):
image of a female conquering meaning of life, monastic, intellectual,
but the deep down, for real and for true. Come on,
Leonard just wanted to get happy. Underneath that brooding, moody,
depressed soul which Leonard possesses lies an out and out
Partridge Family freak, Phil wrote. Phil folded the letter into
(22:37):
an envelope, licked the flap to seal it, and smiled,
Fuck you, Leonard, He thought, fuck you and the dour
fucking horse you rode in on. Back in seven, during
the death of a ladies man, Sessions Specter had described
the music he was making with Cohen as the polar
opposite of Partridge Family pop. This this punk rock, He
(23:01):
yelled the Cohen, the two of them standing in the
control room listening to the playback and ear shattering volume.
Letter didn't know punk rock from a hole in the wall,
so he just smiled politely and nodded along. He wasn't
exactly sure what he was listening to. Phil had assembled
upwards of forty musicians for the record, multiple drummers, guitarist,
keyboard players, percussionists, and a veritable army of backing singers.
(23:24):
The sound enveloped or suffocated, depending on your take, Cohen's
narrative vocals in a way that was unorthodox and challenging.
As the record floundered on store shelves and took a
beating from critics, Phil walked away with the blame firmly
placed on anyone but himself punk rock. Nothing about Phili
Spector was punk, and neither was the record. It was
(23:44):
another go around for Phil schmaltzy predilections. He was a
man out of time, a man stuck in time, and
he was repeating the same folly over and over again.
He made the mistake with John Lennon, and then again
with Dion and now with Leonard Cohen, all within this
band of a few short years. He needed to get hit,
get with it. He needed to take a few giant
(24:05):
strides into the future if he wanted to make anything
of note ever again. He remembered that Barney Kessel's boys
Dan and David had been going on and on about
a band from New York that they said was on
the cutting edge. They were reminiscent of the past, but
sounded like the present, and they looked like the future.
Some of their songs even sounded like the Rownets on speed,
and their songs who played a peak volume and at
(24:27):
peak speed, most of them barely lasted a few minutes.
It sounded like just the thing. Phil Specter was looking for,
the project that can make him relevant again, and as
luck would have it, the Kessel Boys told him the
band was scheduled to play a residency at the Whiskey
in a few weeks. It was right down the street
from Phil's place. It was like it was meant to be,
and the future was waiting for him, just down the
(24:50):
hill where the Neon homed into the wee hours on
the Sunset Strip, if he squinted his eyes, he could
see it. The future, a carnage, the future, psychological car hitch.
You can see the Blood on the Tracks. This episode
(25:15):
of Blood on the Tracks is brought to you by
twenty seven Club, a podcast that I host on musicians
who died at the age of twenty seven. Season two,
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(25:36):
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(25:59):
on the Tracks wasten 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 Junetta.
Blood on the Tracks is produced by myself for Double
Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this
episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
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(26:21):
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(26:43):
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(27:14):
our dand
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
a so called friends. This is Special Agent Paul Ramon
(00:28):
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number
double oh four DASH ten DASH seven four one nine
case subject to Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to
a period ending November thirteen, seventy seven. Interview subject as
Cohen Leonard Norman Interview number six STAPH six six Dash
seven one nine DASH seven seven seven Recall number six
(00:49):
October thirty, two thousand and six. The state that I
found fill in was post Wagnerian. I would go as
far as to say that he was less like Wagner
more like Hitler. In The atmosphere was one of guns.
(01:12):
I mean, that's really what was going on. Guns, guns,
guns and more guns. The music was subsidiary. It was
an enterprise. People were armed at the te his friends,
his bodyguards. Everybody was drunk er, intoxicated. Otherwise I was
just holding on a dear life. My family was breaking
up at the time, and just to show up was wrong,
(01:35):
and then I'd have to go through this ninth grade
military film noir atmosphere. I remember one time with the
Viole Empire. Fill didn't like the way he was playing,
so he walked out into the studio and pulled it
down on the par guy. He didn't spill any blood
in there, thankfully. Let me tell you, you could see it,
the carnage, psychological carnage. You could see the blood on
(01:58):
the tracks. Chapter five, Phil Specter and Leonard Cohen. I
(02:36):
wouldn't say that I was terrified that first night at
Phil's mansion. Don't write that down. Don't let the record
reflect terrified. It was more like I was frustrated and
annoyed and put out. I was tired and just wanted
to go home. I was there all night, As you know,
that's a well worn tale. I think we all have
a tale like that, don't we, All of us who
(02:58):
worked with Phil. We all that one night at Phil's
mansion town. I was there with Suzanne, but we've been
together almost ten years at that point, not quite I guess,
and the kids were a few years old. By then,
this is V. Seven. Things weren't great with us. I
can't say if they were ever really great. I sang
(03:20):
about it at that time, and I tried to leave you.
I closed the book on us at least a hundred times.
When I first arrived at the place on La Colina,
I was already fragile, drinking, heavily, dipping my big toe
into Buddhism and Mount Baldi. I was moving in multiple
directions at the same time, reaching, wandering, searching. I didn't
(03:40):
really know what was going on. It was Marty Matchett
who set the whole thing up. He was my lawyer,
and turns out he was Phil's lawyer too. Both Phil
and I hadn't put anything out in a few years.
We were both a bit lost at the moment. I
suppose we were both Jews, both sons of immigrants, both
lost our father when we were nine. Murty saw it
(04:02):
as a sympatico parent, even if people on the outside
looking in so otherwise. So when you sign on to
work with Phil Specter, you go to the big house
first up the hill from the strip, very regal Hollywood,
you know, lording over it all from above, very castle
in the air. It's got this big fountain out front,
(04:23):
a pool out back, and the ominous barbed wire fencing
gives way to welcoming gardens, your typical Hollywood opulence. It
was a dinner party that we were invited to. Me
and Suzanne and a few others were there as well.
The night we're on and people left, and like I
said earlier, I was tired. It was nice to chat
with Phil, put in the time and all that, but
(04:45):
I wanted to continue another day. It was late. I
stood up from the table and thanked him for the
food and conversation, complimented him on the house. I told
him that we would be leaving. Phil had other plans.
He snapped his fingers at the people he had were
working for him, Yes, man, though some of them had
a bodyguard air to them. He snapped his fingers in
(05:06):
their general direction, like a man who had snapped many
a finger in many a general direction, and said, don't
let them leave. And these men locked the doors, and
then they stood near us at the table where I
had sat back down, with their holstered weapons in plain view.
You don't want to leave, now, do you, Leonard? They'll
ask me, why don't you sit back down and stay
(05:26):
Awhile his voice was somewhere between wounded friend and the
playground and vindictive bully plotting his revenge. He would always
strike a balance between those extremes in my mind, though
I suppose balances to forgiving. He swung emotionally into one
side or the other. He swung hard and definitively for
(05:48):
a moment, a definitive moment. In that moment, he stood
at the head of the table, his fists firmly on
the table surface. His fists were helping him steady himself.
He must have felt taller than he actually was. I
sat back down, and Suzanne was sitting down. His yes
men were standing there too, a handful of them silent,
(06:10):
yet it was obvious what they were there to do
and what they could also do if needed. Suzanne was
plenty disturbed at the situation for both of us, and
at first she thought it was a joke. What she
realized that Phil was dead serious. She panicked a little.
I took her hand in mind to steady air to
ground her. Things were so shaky with us at that
(06:33):
point in time. This whole being held hostage nonsense was
the last thing I needed, Like I said earlier. I
was just put out, and I figured, if I'm going
to be put out, I may as well be productive,
may as well be proactive. The whole room was tent,
(06:53):
so I suggested we sit down at the piano and
start to hammer out some ideas. No time like the present,
and that was the start of our collaboration. I can't
say I've ever written while being held hostage before or since.
I also can't say whether the caliber of the songs
we produced was worth it in the end. When the
(07:16):
sun rose the next morning, Phil's men unlocked the doors
at the mansion. When Susanne and I anxiously walked outside
and returned home, she made me promise I'd never go
back there again. It had been a few years since
(08:01):
my last record. I was trying to determine what I
should do next, what kind of a record I should make.
I went back to Hydra, the island off the coast
of Greece. The police wouldn't let go of me. It
doesn't let go of many people who visit. Hydro was
rooftops that looked like burnt oranges, a sea that seemed
to drift off. In the mythology, Hydro was mary Anne.
(08:24):
Once he lived on Hydra. You can't live anywhere else
including Hydro. Eventually I came back to the U S
rented a house in Brentwood, close to Sunset Boulevard, relatively
close to Phil Specter, though I wasn't completely aware of
that at the time. I went to l A because
Roshi was there, my teacher, a true zen master. He
(08:45):
was at the Zen Center on Normandy. I thought Roshi
would provide some balance to my life, that maybe he
would keep me on track, keep me out of trouble,
keep me from getting in my own way. Roshi really
wanted me to move myself to Mount Baldi, take Susanne
and the kids, and immerse myself in study. And I'll
admit the slowdown was needed and the self reflection. I
(09:12):
already had a few indulgences in my life, but true
indulgences are like habits, you know, they die hard. But
Mount Baldi would whittle the remaining few away. One indulgence
was travel. I allowed myself to go anywhere I wanted
at any time, and the trade office that I had
(09:32):
very few possessions. All I needed was a bed, a chair,
a table. Another indulgence was the Company of Women. Hydro
may have been a small island, but it was overrun.
With company. Mount Baldi would take away the indulgences, take
away the wander lust and the other lust. But the
time just wasn't right. Let me say it this way.
(09:53):
In hindsight, the time was probably right, but I wasn't
ready to admit the time was right just yet. I
figured being in close approximity to Rows, she was good enough.
I could learn from him when I felt like it.
I could reach out to him when I needed to,
But I could keep one foot in the world of
indulgence for a little bit longer. This way. While I
(10:15):
was out on the road touring behind New Skin for
the Old Ceremony, that's the record. Before my collaboration with Phil,
I played a residency at the Troubadour in West Hollywood,
True Blue l A territory. This is the place where
Tom Waits, Elton John and Joni Mitchell all began. It
was a five night run, two shows a night, and
every single show was sold out. Phil attended one of
(10:39):
the shows. He was there with Lenny Bruce's kid. We
chatted briefly between sets. He looked to me like a
man who had been constructed by a team of people
who had been asked to create a Hollywood record producer
from a backstage closet full of costumes and props. His
hair was a big, frilly puffball. It came all the
(10:59):
way near his shoulders, and it was gray, which conflicted
with the color of his drooping handlebar mustache, which was black.
The frames of his tinted glasses eclipsed his eyes. The
lapels on his shirt looked like they should be registered weapons,
they were so sharp. And this was Phil had been
in a serious car accident just the year before. He
(11:23):
was driving his Rolls Royce down Melrose and he hit
another car head on it threw him through the front window.
He had to have multiple plastic surgeries. He told me
this later. He told me he was still picking pieces
of glass from his face years later. Even during our
(11:44):
recording sessions. He would be standing there ordering around one
musician or another, and then he just paused, raised his
hand to his cheek or his chin, and pull out
a reclusive shard. They would just work themselves out, piece
by piece. He told everyone that the crash made him deaf.
In one year that Brian Wilson wasn't the only half
(12:05):
deaf genius in town anymore, but it had it. He
confided that to me in a whisper one day in
the studio, another one of his pranks. I suppose that
he orchestrated solely because it seemed to bring him joy,
some sort of grotesque joy. Phil was always messing with
people's minds, like that, the way he looked, the way
he acted. And then there were the times he wasn't
(12:29):
messing around, And those were the times that really snuck
up on people, because only in the moments when Phil
was being dead serious did anyone think he was messing around.
Take the night we were held hostage at his house.
After about ten minutes, I realized that it wasn't a prank.
(12:49):
Marty Matchett told the story about an incident at the
Beverly Hills Hotel, and this was also in nine. When
Phil was arguing with a woman outside the lobby. It
got pretty heated. She screamed something at him, something like
get away from me. The valet nearby heard the commotion
and ran over, obviously not knowing who Phil or anyone
else was not that that matters, and asked what was
(13:11):
going on. Well, you know what happened next. Phil pulled
a revolver from the holster inside his jacket and pointed
it straight at the valet's head. Get the funk away
from me, He more in the valet, and then repeated
the threat, get the funk away from me. It didn't
matter if you were some nobody valet at the Beverly
Hills Hotel or one of the many musicians working in
(13:32):
close proximity. Bill's pranks had no loyalties, and his sudden
bursts of hotheaded temper had no boundaries. Everyone was a target,
even me. I'll never forget the day Philip pulled the
gun on me in the studio. We'll be right back
(13:57):
after this word, word word. He pulled his piece on
Bobby Bruce. First. Bobby was the vital emplier. Phil kept
interrupting Bobby's playing, the toll him to play a different way.
Whatever words of encouragement or disapprove of that Phil was offering,
Bobby wasn't listening. He was doing it the way he
(14:19):
wanted to do it, which of course was the way
Phil did it too. So it came to a head,
as things often do. Phil pulled the piece from his holster,
underneath the suit jacket, walked out of the control room
and into the studio and pointed the revolver of Bobby,
play it the way I told you to play it,
Phil screened. Now, Bobby grew up with guns. You understand.
(14:48):
Guns didn't scare Bobby the way they could scare the uninitiated.
A big shot Hollywood producer with a frizzy misshape and
wig on his head and a piece in his hand
didn't concern Bobby. What concerned Bobby was Phil's disrespect, his
disrespect for guns, which he obviously didn't know the first
thing about, and his disrespect for Bobby as a player.
(15:15):
That was it for Bobby. He probably gave Phil the
finger as he walked out of the studio. The making
of Death of a Ladies Man, that's what the record
will be called. The making of the thing was extremely
intense from the get go. Phil and I wrote something
like fifteen songs in just a few weeks, and then
we went straight to the studio, first Whitney Studios in Glendale,
(15:37):
and then eventually, or rather inevitably, to Phil his beloved
gold Star in Hollywood. And this was June. But we
were drinking a lot Phil's bottle of Menace Chevits was
om new present. He poured in a plastic cup and
drink it with a plastic straw like a child would
have his orange juice. The man wasn't just a dilettante
(16:00):
with guns. He was with booze too. His focus was
all over the place. He lost focus often. He wasted
a lot of time in the studio, which of course
conflicted with his reputation. One day, the door of the
studio flung open, and in walked Bob Dylan, now in Ginsburg,
Dylan and a woman on each arm, a half empty
bottle of whiskey in his hand. But we were recording
(16:22):
a song called Don't Go Home with Your Heart On,
and Dylan and Ginsburg wound up singing backing vocals on it.
We listened to the playback so loud that day that
one of the speakers blew up how Phil could be
so particular with a violin part so particular in the
fact that he would pull a pistol on the musician
just to get it right, and then be so lucy
goosey with random appearances by songwriters and poets. It was
(16:46):
all so confusing, But then the sessions were never really
about music. Were a day. We're about control, about impulse,
about being a drift in the moment and in that
moment picking a piece of glass from your face, or
meditating in between cans of beer. It was obvious from
(17:08):
the first night at Phil's mansion his game was about control,
and he maintained his control with the legion of guns.
I laughed a lot in order to keep myself from
being overly terrified. I suggested to Feel that perhaps I
would hire my own bodyguard and we would have a
shootout on Sunset Boulevard, Real Wild West, Real Hollywood. But
(17:30):
we were in the middle of cutting the record. I
can't recall what song we were working on. It was
either Memories or True Love Leaves No Traces. But we
were listening to the playback of the song, and despite
our drunken attempts to the contrary, the song was actually
sounding great. We were pleased. Phil was a little too pleased,
it would seem. He stumbled slowly towards me, where I
(17:52):
sat at the control board listening back. One hand clutched
the bottle of men of Chevits, and the revolver was
in his other hand. He is waving both of them around.
One of Phil's bodyguards, George, and told me that while
his gun was loaded, Phils really was. But still a
(18:12):
man wears a gun around in a cramp studio space
and you don't stop to wonder if it's loaded. So
Phil's walking towards me, humming the melody of the song
we're listening to under his breath. He takes the arm
with the bottle and wraps it around my shoulder, and
then with the other hand he pressed the butt of
the revolver into my neck. It was cold. He pressed
(18:36):
so hard that it felt like half of the gun
was lodged beneath my skin. He leaned in close and said, Leonard,
I love you, and then he cocked the revolver. Now
I'm not Bobby Bruce, so this particular moment did create
a bit of alarm on my part. Every night Phil
(18:56):
would take the tapes with him. He didn't trust anyone
else to be around them, and when he had finished recording,
he was finished with me too. He didn't allow me
to attend the mixing sessions, never let me hear the
finished album before it was sent off for mastering and release.
That moment in the studio with the gun for him.
I think it was both the moment of love in
a moment of finality. I had given him what he wanted,
(19:19):
and for that he was grateful. But I had also
lived out my usefulness, and now he was through. The
gun to my head was a big metaphor to him,
the moment he symbolically blew my brains out, blew them
out because he was in control, and also because now
that he had used me up, he didn't want anyone
else using me. I was his and he could put
a gun to it all if you wanted. I didn't
(19:42):
know it when I walked out of the studio after
the last day we tracked vocals, but it would be
the last time I saw Phil. And if I'm being candid,
which I believe I have been all along, I would
say that the idea of never seeing him again did
not displease me. Mm hmm. March, Los Angeles. Phil Spector
(20:30):
read the letter with equal parts of flattery and indignation.
They wanted some words, an essay, perhaps a statement, at
least something they could include in a book that would
be published next year to celebrate Leonard Cohen's sixtieth birthday.
Phil would be lying if you said it still didn't
sting a little. It's stun a lot, actually, and the
years that have passed had done a bit to dull
(20:51):
some of the pain, but we're still there, the sting
of the pain, the possibility that despite all of his
work and success and strokes of brilliance, Phil Specter was
a failure. And the source of that sting, the reason
he could possibly be a failure, was because of so
called artists like Leonard Cohen. Leonard never understood what Phil
(21:13):
was trying to do. He just didn't get it. He
just didn't listen. If only he could have listened to
what Phil was trying to do back in the cramped
confines of gold Star in nineteen seventy seven, then perhaps
they both wouldn't have the stain on their legacies. And
that's what Death of the Ladies Man was. Phil thought
it was a stain. It should have worked, It could
(21:33):
have worked. But Leonard was more the two bit backstabbing
con type than Phil assumed he was. Philip read all
the things Leonard had said about him after the album
was originally released. He read them all from the comfort
of his hermetically sealed ice box of a home I
don't think he can tolerate any other shadows in his darkness,
And that was the line Phil couldn't shake from his head.
He'd never forgive Leonard, and he never let him forget
(21:56):
it either. Philip made the worst selling album of Leonard
Cohen's care here, and he would never let anyone forget
that it was Leonard's fault. So he grabbed a pen
and paper and composed the requested piano. Montreal's finest poet
of love and loss. Phil wrote all about Leonard Cohen's
closet love of the Partridge Family. That Leonard maintained this
(22:16):
image of a female conquering meaning of life, monastic, intellectual,
but the deep down, for real and for true. Come on,
Leonard just wanted to get happy. Underneath that brooding, moody,
depressed soul which Leonard possesses lies an out and out
Partridge Family freak, Phil wrote. Phil folded the letter into
(22:37):
an envelope, licked the flap to seal it, and smiled,
Fuck you, Leonard, He thought, fuck you and the dour
fucking horse you rode in on. Back in seven, during
the death of a ladies man, Sessions Specter had described
the music he was making with Cohen as the polar
opposite of Partridge Family pop. This this punk rock, He
(23:01):
yelled the Cohen, the two of them standing in the
control room listening to the playback and ear shattering volume.
Letter didn't know punk rock from a hole in the wall,
so he just smiled politely and nodded along. He wasn't
exactly sure what he was listening to. Phil had assembled
upwards of forty musicians for the record, multiple drummers, guitarist,
keyboard players, percussionists, and a veritable army of backing singers.
(23:24):
The sound enveloped or suffocated, depending on your take, Cohen's
narrative vocals in a way that was unorthodox and challenging.
As the record floundered on store shelves and took a
beating from critics, Phil walked away with the blame firmly
placed on anyone but himself punk rock. Nothing about Phili
Spector was punk, and neither was the record. It was
(23:44):
another go around for Phil schmaltzy predilections. He was a
man out of time, a man stuck in time, and
he was repeating the same folly over and over again.
He made the mistake with John Lennon, and then again
with Dion and now with Leonard Cohen, all within this
band of a few short years. He needed to get hit,
get with it. He needed to take a few giant
(24:05):
strides into the future if he wanted to make anything
of note ever again. He remembered that Barney Kessel's boys
Dan and David had been going on and on about
a band from New York that they said was on
the cutting edge. They were reminiscent of the past, but
sounded like the present, and they looked like the future.
Some of their songs even sounded like the Rownets on speed,
and their songs who played a peak volume and at
(24:27):
peak speed, most of them barely lasted a few minutes.
It sounded like just the thing. Phil Specter was looking for,
the project that can make him relevant again, and as
luck would have it, the Kessel Boys told him the
band was scheduled to play a residency at the Whiskey
in a few weeks. It was right down the street
from Phil's place. It was like it was meant to be,
and the future was waiting for him, just down the
(24:50):
hill where the Neon homed into the wee hours on
the Sunset Strip, if he squinted his eyes, he could
see it. The future, a carnage, the future, psychological car hitch.
You can see the Blood on the Tracks. This episode
(25:15):
of Blood on the Tracks is brought to you by
twenty seven Club, a podcast that I host on musicians
who died at the age of twenty seven. Season two,
featuring jim Morrison is now available as the season one
with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribe to The twenty
seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app or
wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, this episode
(25:36):
was also brought to you by Disgrace Land, the award
winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by Yours Truly.
Episodes on The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Cardi b, The
Grateful Dad, j Z Prince, and many many more are
all waiting for you right now. Just search disgrace Land
on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcast all right. This episode of Blood
(25:59):
on the Tracks wasten 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 Junetta.
Blood on the Tracks is produced by myself for Double
Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this
episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
Blood on the Tracks series page. If you like when here,
(26:21):
please be sure to subscribe to Blood on the Tracks
on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app wherever you get
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Leave your review there and we'll pick two winners each
week and announce them on the Double Elvis Instagram page
(26:43):
that's at double Elvis. Go ahead and give that a
phone alright. As always, you can find me blabbing about
other crazy rock stars on disgrace Land and twenty seven Club,
and you can talk to me per usual on Instagram
and Twitter at disgrace Land, pod Rock Above, Dye Graves
(27:14):
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