September 16, 2020 • 28 mins
From Let It Be to Imagine to an infamous “lost weekend” in Los Angeles, no Beatle had more face time with Phil Spector than John Lennon. John reminisces on being drunkenly tied to a bed, having a gun fired at him in the studio, and lawyering up simply to get his own session tapes back. Every crazy story has the same crazy common denominator: Phil Spector.
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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. Is a special agent Paul Ramone
(00:28):
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number
double oh four Dash ten Dash seven one nine case
subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to a
period ending December eight. Interview subject with Lennon John Winston
Interview number one Dash nine seven Dash zero to six
Stash six six zero Spirit Confessional Recall number seven October nine,
(00:52):
two thousand and six. One Sunday, feel didn't want to work,
so he called me and he said, we can't record
today the studios burned down. Well, I got someone to
call the studio and lo and behold, it wasn't burned down.
The following Sunday he calls and I say, what happened?
(01:15):
He was supposed to be doing a session, and he
whispers to me, I've got the John Deane tapes. I
said what he said that John dene tapes, you know Watergate.
He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters and
they're trying to get him. None buying this garbage. You know.
(01:37):
What he was trying to tell me, in his own way,
was that he had my tapes, the tapes for the session,
not the John Dene watering it tapes. We had to
soothe through capital to get the tapes off. He knew
what he was doing by keeping those tapes close. He
was keeping the secrets curse, keeping everything close. He didn't
want anyone seeing the blood in the tracks. Yah. Chapter seven,
(02:24):
Phil Specter and John Lennon. Of course you shot at me.
Why does that surprise you? Why do you pretend to
(02:44):
be shocked by that information? Would you like me to
say something else? Is that what you're expecting, that Phil
Spector was a reasonable person, that he had no temper.
I mean, they're all crazy. The brilliant ones always are
rounded by the other doctors, and we're trying to get him.
You can't be brilliant and not fly off the handle
(03:04):
like that. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't
waved the gun on my face. Okay, perhaps that's an exaggeration,
but you get my point. I wasn't upset because he
shot at me. I was upset because he shot at
me and missed. The bumbling get you down here, blew
the hearing out of me. Fucking hear. If you're going
(03:25):
to shoot off a revolver in a recording studio, the
least you can do is fucking connect with something. You understand.
What we should really be talking about is the bullshit
that led up to this. Nobody talks about the time
that Phil and George Brand hold my drunk ass back
to lou Adla's house. Drunk exhabitle carried home doesn't sell
papers the way that crazy producers shoots gun and recording
(03:46):
studio does. Right, we were recording the rock and roll
album with Phil. It was a legal thing, that record
was right. Chuck Berry's music publisher was suing me for
come together, you know, the to come old flat out
of that own nonsense. I had no money. I was broke,
you see, al inclined had left the Beatles and Shambles.
(04:10):
I was no longer at the top of most of
the poppermost. If I had ever been, I'd say, where
are we going? Fellers and the top Johnny and I'd say,
where is that Fellows for the paper the papers, and
I'd say, right, I was in Los Angeles away from
(04:32):
Yoko May was there. I made some music with Harry
Nilson that we drank more than we worked at any rate.
We came up with this idea that instead of paying
this guy millions of dollars for copping the Chuck Berry line,
I would record a bunch of covers that this guy,
Morris Levy was his name, had the publishing rights too.
If you're trying to give rock and roll another name,
(04:52):
it might be Chuck Berry. So he'd make his money
on the royalties of the record sales. That's all it's about,
see money, So it is about money. Phil was a
natural fit for this, of course we can. These were
all old songs from the birth of rock and roll,
sort of stuff that Phil and I just loved. Be
Babba Lula, you know, Bony Moroney and Sweet Little Sixteen,
(05:17):
just like me and Nilson. Me and Phil drank a lot.
Things were bad with me and Yoko. She wanted me
to get away for a while, just go be wild
and get it out of my system, and hopefully I'd
come back ready to be domestic. With her again. Our
assistant May Pang came with me at Yoko's request, and
I was sleeping with her. It wasn't my clearest, how
(05:38):
I let alone my finest. Hey, Look, the end of
the song is just like the fucking rest of it.
We're gonna sing the harmonies, say, oh, Yoko, come on sailing.
Keeping with the spirit of the moment. On my eighties
from my wife and my life, forced to make a record,
to set a little lawsuit higher than Lucy in the
Sky on most days. On this particular night, I got
(05:59):
myself so wrong that Phil had to end the session
I supposed session. He and George Brand carried me back
to lou Adlas's place in bel Air, which was where
I was staying while I was out west. I was
in and out of it, kept on telling and Phil
that I loved him, you know, come on give us
a kiss. The next thing I know, they had me
tied to the bed the prisoner. I came out of
(06:21):
my drunken stupor in a rage. The rope of string
or whatever they had used was digging into my arms
and my ankles. Phil and George together, those two were
like loose cannons. Firing away. They enabled each other. May
heard my screaming and ran upstairs to see what was
going on. Phil and George just left me there. They
(06:42):
tried to turn her around and send her away, told
her that they were helping me sober up and not
to worry. I broke three of the shackles on Lou
Adla's bed and just went crazy. May had called someone
to help, and I attacked him as soon as he
came in the house. I was beyond drunk at this point,
you see, I saw red, My vision was blurred, just rage.
(07:05):
I saw Phil's face in every single thing. I lashed out.
It broke windows, smashed the gold records that Lou had
hanging on the walls. Apparently I did get a punch
in on Phil before he left the next day of
the studio, He'd got some make up, kicked Oliver's face
to cover up a black eye when the sunglasses were on.
Was he always wore even in the studio. Was he angry, embarrassed, insulted?
(07:30):
I couldn't tell. We didn't say all that much to
each other. Merl Evans was there, Phil's mom was there.
It seemed odd to have so many guests hanging around
when it was so tense in there, and then Phil
pulls this gun out and he's waving it around. I
don't know if he was trying to intimidate me. Like
(07:51):
I said before, the brilliant ones are always crazy. Maybe
it's just as simple as that. Of course, the hogwash
about Phil's gun is never loaded. It's just looks well,
that was just that, wasn't it hogwash? He pulled the
trigger and shot it right through the ceiling. Mallard to
wrestle the gun from his hand. Phil's mum was petrified.
(08:12):
It looked at feel dead in the eyes and said, look, man,
if you're going to shoot me, shoot me, just don't
funk with me. Is when Spector first came to London, Paul,
(08:55):
George Ringo and I were just at the worst. We
had ended it all. We said, if you want to
work with us, go and do your audition. He'd always
wanted to work with the Beatles, and he was given
the shittiest load of badly recorded shit with a lousy
feeling towards it, ever, and he made something out of it.
He did a great job. When Phil first came to London,
(09:17):
this is nineteen seventy. He was realizing one of his dreams.
He worked like a pig on it. We were realizing
one of our dreams too. Since he was such a
legendary figure, Specter's success is derived from an understanding of
what he calls the teams sound, and we were legendary
figures as well. I suppose not to tute our own
horn loudly. He was a legendary figure who was in
(09:40):
a rough patch. Specter's success is unusual. Others, however, are
always at his heel. We were in our own rough
patch as well. George thought it could be an opportunity
for Phil to get some sort of redemption on record.
You see, But at that moment things were so shitty
between the four of us that Jesus Christ himself could
have mixed the record and no one would have been happy,
(10:02):
and rightly so what does Jesus know about mixing records? Anyway?
Phil always wanted to work with the Beatles, he adds,
since the early days when the ronets to the UK
and which your America was given the shittiest load of
badly recorded ship of lows. He feeling towards it. Ever,
and you know what, he made something out of it.
He did a great job. Paul didn't think so, of course,
(10:25):
but Paul was inclined to hit everything that I loved
at the time, and vice versa. We were both cons
to one another. You've all filled it. Even got his
hands on the lettered B tapes. I asked him to
come and record Instant Karma at Abbey Road right after
he stepped off the plane. The guys in the band
Klaus of Woman, Alan White, Billy Preston didn't know. Phil
(10:47):
shut up late wearing a shirt with p s monoground
on it. The guys were all like, who the hell
is this? It was like he was a parody of
Phil Spector, just the way he was dressed, in the
he carried himself. He said, I he want this to
sound and said nineteen fifties. Now. He said, okay, nineteen fifties.
(11:08):
Got it, Let's roll and that was that. That was
all he needed. He ran his hands over the desk
like a magician, and he got it. It sounded like
Sun Records right there on Abbey Road. I saw something
of myself and Phil, and I'm not just talking about
the music. We had both lost parents at a young age.
I think that sort of thing shaped us both more
(11:28):
than we like to admit really, So we did plastic
Ono Band and we did Imagine. We made Imagine at
Tit Nurse Park Ascot Sounds Studios. We built that studio
right in the middle of the house that was in
the middle of summer, and Phil would show up with
these three piece suits, ties, sunglasses. How he made it
through some of those hotter days with those wigs on
(11:50):
top of his head, I don't know. And then things changed.
They did get strange, and he said we can't record
to and they got strange on his turf. When we
left Berkshire and went to Los Angeles, it was almost
as if Phil was more comfortable in the UK and
was in his own town. He was like a stranger
(12:11):
in his own land. Onesome Dinghi did towards But by
the time we were making records in l a shiny
phil Specter coating had rusted away. There was something else
beneath it. He was knocking back papas all night with
swiggs of Manas Chevits. Elton John showed up one day
for a visit, and even he was shocked by the instability,
(12:32):
the insanity. This is Elton John we're talking about when
Elton John says, hey, Fellas, maybe let's take things a
bit too far. Well, perhaps you should listen up. Phil
started showing up to sessions and different outfits each day,
like it was a joke. One day he showed up
dressed as a doctor, stethoscope, big metallic circle strapped to
(12:54):
his head. Another day he showed up dressed as a priest,
giant crucifix. You responded every question with his hand making
the sign of the cross. And another day he dressed
like he was a blind man, big black glasses in
a cane. He just fumbled around the studio, and then
some days he didn't show up at all. I tried
(13:16):
to track him down to keep him on task. We
can't record today. Studios burned down. And then it got worse.
Whatever it was, his complacency, his fear, his paranoia. He
went deep down this rabbit hole of conspiracy and secrecy,
(13:37):
and it was affecting people around him. But he had
my tapes, the tapes of the sessions. He would take
them home with him every night. Didn't trust anyone, and
then he stopped taking my calls. We weren't even done
with the record yet. He just disappeared into that house
(13:59):
as frigid bleak house had a shoot and carting and
take off. He wasn't the person I've gotten to know.
It made me question whether or not I even knew
the person that I thought he was. We'll be right
(14:22):
back after this word word word. Now. Some say I
should have known better, that I should have read the
writing on the wall. There was a lot on the wall.
In my defense, a lot of Phil had put there,
a lot that I had put there. But I remember
(14:45):
when we made Instant Calmer and the Plastic Ono Band record,
and imagine all that Phil came and went. He showed up,
he did the work, and he left. I didn't see
much more of him beyond his role as a record maker.
He was keeping the secret course. But things were different
in America almost immediately, and perhaps I should have made
(15:06):
closer attention. Taking him down from the pedestalide put him
on in my mind and looked at him as a flawed,
needy human being. He tells me his house is surrounded
by helicopters and we're trying to get him. It was
early two and we were making some time in New
York City with Phil. Before we started recalling in earnest
I heard a story about how he went fucking crazy
at the Daisy Club, a member's only spot on Rodeo
(15:30):
Drive and Beverly Hills on any given night, A real
who's who of ego and fame and wealth, the sort
of place that names the sandwiches after the stars, that
frequent to joint you. Now, I want a tuna sandwich?
What are the Mickey Rooney? A little fresh fruit and
cottage cheese? Try the Kirk Douglas. Even Sunny Bono want
(15:54):
of Feel's former underappreciated Lackey's. Phil called him sunny Bozo.
You know he had his own thing on the menu,
liver and onions. But you know who wasn't on the menu,
Phil Specter. I can only imagine how much that stung,
how much that got under his skin, to see name
after Hollywood name on that little Daisy's menu and nothing
(16:15):
about him. I'm sure he took it personally. Everything was
about him. I came to learn that the more I
hung around him, the very absence of his name from
a member's only club menu was about him. So what
I heard was Phil shows up to the Daisy one
night wearing a jacket with some karate um Lamont and
(16:36):
he raised his hell drunken, batshit, disoriented l He had
become obsessed with karate. His obsessions were fleeting from what
I've been told. Maybe guns were the one exception to
that rule, but at this point in his life, karate
was his consuming hobby. I took up causes, Angela Davis,
(16:56):
John Sinclair Attica, and Phil took up karate. Maybe it
was the green Hornet, maybe it was the Pink Panther
and Peter Seller's Bruce Lee. When Bruce Lee died, Phil
was convinced that he was murdered by some death touch
whatever that is. Emil Focus had taught him. That taught
(17:19):
him about the death touch. Meal and another guy that
they just called Laslow where his bodyguards in the late sixties.
But they also both happened to be black belts. Phil
higher than partly for protection, but partly so we could
learn those moves. So he's at the day zy, no
doubt enjoying himself, but also no doubt stuing over the
fact that his goddamn name is in Grace in one
(17:39):
of the menu items. And this woman walks up to
him and starts talking to him, probably something like are
you Phil Specter the Titan of teen? And what does
Phil do? He lost it? Man, He didn't ask this
woman to talk to him. Now, dare she? You know?
That sort of thing. It was probably all misplaced frustraate
(18:00):
and aggression. Peoples have gone out from his karate jacket.
He just skips over the karate pot altogether. All this
training and obsessing in our being, all of it for
the dogs in this heated moment. His gun could do
the talking better than his karate shopping ever could he
pointed that gun to this poor woman who's just standing.
They're shaking in the middle of a high end private club.
(18:22):
She probably was just a big fan of you've lost
that love and feeling or something, and wanted a moment
with the man. But now this is the kind of
shif I'm talking about. He was becoming unwound as the
time went on by, and we're trying to get him.
The next year, in ninety three, we started recording what
would become the Rock and Roll Album, and that's when
things got really strange. One Sunday Phil called me and said,
(18:47):
we can't record today. The studios burnt down. I thought
only ship the studios on fire. That was the first
wasn't it not buying the show? But I was a iscious.
The whole thing was suspicious. He had been turning up
to sessions late. He was drunk, We were drunk, and
(19:07):
the phone call just struck me as an excuse, a
cop out. So I had someone call over Day and
M Studios, and a guy answered the phone with no urgency,
no flames crackling in the background. The studio wasn't on fire.
Phil just didn't want to work. Following Sunday, Phil calls
me and I say, what happened? We was supposed to
(19:30):
be doing a session and he whispers to me. I said,
what he said, the John Deane tapes, you know, the
Watergate tapes. He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters,
and then trying to get him no buying, But he
didn't have the Watergate tapes. He was trying to tell
(19:51):
me that he had my tapes, the session tapes, everything
we had done up to that point. He would take
them home with him every night. Probably felt safe knowing
that when he put his head down on his pillow
at night, the tapes were protected inside a gated mansion
surrounded by guns and his muscle men. By keeping those
tapes close, he was keeping the secret. We had to
(20:12):
sue him through capital to eventually get the tapes back,
and I finished the album without him. And then he
got into that car crash on Melrose head on collision
in his Rolls Royce. We went right through the fucking
front windshield. The whole accident allowed him to re emerge
as another person. You see, he looked different, he sounded different,
(20:33):
he acted different, like Dylan and that motorcycle crash. But
the new Field Field that lived to tell the tale
about that crash was not the idealized version of Field
that we had created in IDs. You know, there's a
reason that they say don't meet your idols. At the
(20:54):
end of the day, Phil Spector was not the person
I thought he was. The last time I talked to him,
he was whispering on the they're into the phone about
conspiracies and secrets and it was all just a calculated
chaun to keep me squarely in the dark. Hollywood A
(21:38):
and M Studios. John Lennon was tired, worn down by excess,
perverted by vice, winded from out running scandal, his sojourn
into Los Angeles meant to be some sort of existential
palate cleanser had been an existential drag. He hoped that
today would be different. Today you could take the focus
off himself, off of those things you want it to
(22:00):
the things he desired, and simply witnessed something that would
make him happy. Imagine that he was excited to meet
Darlene Love, perhaps even more excited to watch her sing
in the studio. He had been a fan of hers
ever sincerely sixties, when she sang lead on the Crystals.
He's a rebel, and he's sure the boy I love
back before he and the rest of the world even
knew who she was. John's love of American girl group
(22:24):
pop was evident by the songs that the Beatles covered
in their touring years and released on some of their
early records. And now he'd get to be a fly
on the wall and watched Darlene reunite with Phil Specter,
the producer who would put her heavenly voice to Wax
in the first place. John's time spent in Los Angeles
would come to be known as his Lost Weekend, but
(22:44):
it was far from the weekend. It lasted eighteen months,
and during that time he had an intense affair with
his assistant while strange from his wife. He got ejected
from the trooper door with Harry Nilson for heckling the
Smothers brothers. While wasted on Brandy Alexander's, he failed to
get Stevie, wondered to snort a line of blow while
jamming with Paul McCartney, and he stumbled through California nightlife
(23:06):
while desperately hanging on to a few functional brain cells.
His relationship with Phil Specter had initially resulted in some
of the most raw, stripped down records of any ex Beatle,
but Phil's instability was making things difficult. John was skeptical
if they would ever make it through the Rock and
Roll sessions alive. Darlene Love walked into A and M studio,
(23:27):
skeptical of the whole situation, skeptical mostly of Phil. This
wasn't her first rodeo. She'd been produced by Phil before,
ordered around by Phil, before, obscured by Phil, before humiliated
by Phil. Before. In fact, Phil had just bought her
contract from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. She had only
been with the Philly producers for a few months she
(23:49):
had dreamed of escaping from under phil shadow, and now
she felt that dark cloud hoverback over her head. She
was seven months pregnant and thought twice about taking the
gig when she the call. But Phil's assist in, Sandy
was a nice girl and made Darlene feel like royalty
before she even walked into A and M Studios. She'd
do it, she'd give it a shot. She smiled when
(24:11):
she walked through the studio door and saw share and
there was John Lennon. John Lennon a beatle there in
the flesh, there for no other reason than to watch
her do her thing. But this time around, Phil seemed
worse than before. Phil had his back turned to Darlene.
He didn't turn around to face her when he spoke.
(24:33):
He instructed the engineer to start a playback, and the
song Lord if You're a Woman started coming through the speakers.
Darlene sang a line. Phil stopped her halfway through, told
her to sing it again, but she started to sing
the line again, this time the way Phil asked me to.
She got through the take only to see Phil shaking
his head. He didn't like it. She needed to try again,
(24:55):
so she did it again and again. She would barely
make it through a line, and he would stop playback
again and throughout the labored process of take after take,
Phil eventually turned to face Darlene from where he stood
safely behind the production booths glass. He cut playback again,
and Darlene read Phil's lips as he spoke to the
(25:17):
others in the booth, watch me make her do it again.
Guests and the booth laughed. John Lennon was laughing. It
was a game to them, a joke to them. She
was their joke. And for Darlene Love, those memories came
flooding back, the memories of the early sixties, the crystals,
Bobby socks, and the blue jeans. She wasn't gonna be
(25:38):
anyone's joke anymore, not John Lennon's and certainly not Phil Specter's.
She took her headphones off, put her coat on, told
Phil Specter to go to hell. Phil watched as Darlene
walked out the door, and he remained safely inside the
production booth. He was keeping the secrets close, keeping everything close,
(25:59):
friends and these people in between. He didn't want anyone
getting a good look the blood on the tracks. This
episode of Blood on the Tracks is brought to you
(26:20):
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 is season one
with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribe to the twenty
seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heeart Radio app or
wherever you get your podcast, and of course, this episode
was also brought to you by Disgrace Land, the award
(26:42):
winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by Yours Truly.
Episodes on The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Cardi b The
Grateful Dead, j C. 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
(27:02):
on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundi and scored
in mixed by Matt Bode, posted by me Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spreaker and Henry Lunette.
This episode featured Scott Jano bit says John Lennon. Blood
on the Tracks is produced by myself for Double Elvis
and partnership with I heart Rate. Sources for this episode
(27:22):
are available at double Elvis dot com on the Blood
on the Tracks series page and if you like it
you here. Please be sure to subscribe the Blood on
the Tracks on Apple podcast I Heart Radio Apple wherever
you get your podcasts, And if you'd like to win
a free Blood on the Tracks poster designed by Nate
Gonzalez and leave a review for Blood on the Tracks
on Apple Podcast, you can hashtag Blood on the Tracks
(27:43):
on social media. 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
down to follow alright. As always, you can find me
blabbing about other crazy rock stars on Disgrace Land and
twenty seven Club, and you can talk me per usual
on Instagram and Twitter at Disgrace lam Rockaby that Crazy
(28:17):
R Day 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. Is a special agent Paul Ramone
(00:28):
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number
double oh four Dash ten Dash seven one nine case
subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to a
period ending December eight. Interview subject with Lennon John Winston
Interview number one Dash nine seven Dash zero to six
Stash six six zero Spirit Confessional Recall number seven October nine,
(00:52):
two thousand and six. One Sunday, feel didn't want to work,
so he called me and he said, we can't record
today the studios burned down. Well, I got someone to
call the studio and lo and behold, it wasn't burned down.
The following Sunday he calls and I say, what happened?
(01:15):
He was supposed to be doing a session, and he
whispers to me, I've got the John Deane tapes. I
said what he said that John dene tapes, you know Watergate.
He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters and
they're trying to get him. None buying this garbage. You know.
(01:37):
What he was trying to tell me, in his own way,
was that he had my tapes, the tapes for the session,
not the John Dene watering it tapes. We had to
soothe through capital to get the tapes off. He knew
what he was doing by keeping those tapes close. He
was keeping the secrets curse, keeping everything close. He didn't
want anyone seeing the blood in the tracks. Yah. Chapter seven,
(02:24):
Phil Specter and John Lennon. Of course you shot at me.
Why does that surprise you? Why do you pretend to
(02:44):
be shocked by that information? Would you like me to
say something else? Is that what you're expecting, that Phil
Spector was a reasonable person, that he had no temper.
I mean, they're all crazy. The brilliant ones always are
rounded by the other doctors, and we're trying to get him.
You can't be brilliant and not fly off the handle
(03:04):
like that. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't
waved the gun on my face. Okay, perhaps that's an exaggeration,
but you get my point. I wasn't upset because he
shot at me. I was upset because he shot at
me and missed. The bumbling get you down here, blew
the hearing out of me. Fucking hear. If you're going
(03:25):
to shoot off a revolver in a recording studio, the
least you can do is fucking connect with something. You understand.
What we should really be talking about is the bullshit
that led up to this. Nobody talks about the time
that Phil and George Brand hold my drunk ass back
to lou Adla's house. Drunk exhabitle carried home doesn't sell
papers the way that crazy producers shoots gun and recording
(03:46):
studio does. Right, we were recording the rock and roll
album with Phil. It was a legal thing, that record
was right. Chuck Berry's music publisher was suing me for
come together, you know, the to come old flat out
of that own nonsense. I had no money. I was broke,
you see, al inclined had left the Beatles and Shambles.
(04:10):
I was no longer at the top of most of
the poppermost. If I had ever been, I'd say, where
are we going? Fellers and the top Johnny and I'd say,
where is that Fellows for the paper the papers, and
I'd say, right, I was in Los Angeles away from
(04:32):
Yoko May was there. I made some music with Harry
Nilson that we drank more than we worked at any rate.
We came up with this idea that instead of paying
this guy millions of dollars for copping the Chuck Berry line,
I would record a bunch of covers that this guy,
Morris Levy was his name, had the publishing rights too.
If you're trying to give rock and roll another name,
(04:52):
it might be Chuck Berry. So he'd make his money
on the royalties of the record sales. That's all it's about,
see money, So it is about money. Phil was a
natural fit for this, of course we can. These were
all old songs from the birth of rock and roll,
sort of stuff that Phil and I just loved. Be
Babba Lula, you know, Bony Moroney and Sweet Little Sixteen,
(05:17):
just like me and Nilson. Me and Phil drank a lot.
Things were bad with me and Yoko. She wanted me
to get away for a while, just go be wild
and get it out of my system, and hopefully I'd
come back ready to be domestic. With her again. Our
assistant May Pang came with me at Yoko's request, and
I was sleeping with her. It wasn't my clearest, how
(05:38):
I let alone my finest. Hey, Look, the end of
the song is just like the fucking rest of it.
We're gonna sing the harmonies, say, oh, Yoko, come on sailing.
Keeping with the spirit of the moment. On my eighties
from my wife and my life, forced to make a record,
to set a little lawsuit higher than Lucy in the
Sky on most days. On this particular night, I got
(05:59):
myself so wrong that Phil had to end the session
I supposed session. He and George Brand carried me back
to lou Adlas's place in bel Air, which was where
I was staying while I was out west. I was
in and out of it, kept on telling and Phil
that I loved him, you know, come on give us
a kiss. The next thing I know, they had me
tied to the bed the prisoner. I came out of
(06:21):
my drunken stupor in a rage. The rope of string
or whatever they had used was digging into my arms
and my ankles. Phil and George together, those two were
like loose cannons. Firing away. They enabled each other. May
heard my screaming and ran upstairs to see what was
going on. Phil and George just left me there. They
(06:42):
tried to turn her around and send her away, told
her that they were helping me sober up and not
to worry. I broke three of the shackles on Lou
Adla's bed and just went crazy. May had called someone
to help, and I attacked him as soon as he
came in the house. I was beyond drunk at this point,
you see, I saw red, My vision was blurred, just rage.
(07:05):
I saw Phil's face in every single thing. I lashed out.
It broke windows, smashed the gold records that Lou had
hanging on the walls. Apparently I did get a punch
in on Phil before he left the next day of
the studio, He'd got some make up, kicked Oliver's face
to cover up a black eye when the sunglasses were on.
Was he always wore even in the studio. Was he angry, embarrassed, insulted?
(07:30):
I couldn't tell. We didn't say all that much to
each other. Merl Evans was there, Phil's mom was there.
It seemed odd to have so many guests hanging around
when it was so tense in there, and then Phil
pulls this gun out and he's waving it around. I
don't know if he was trying to intimidate me. Like
(07:51):
I said before, the brilliant ones are always crazy. Maybe
it's just as simple as that. Of course, the hogwash
about Phil's gun is never loaded. It's just looks well,
that was just that, wasn't it hogwash? He pulled the
trigger and shot it right through the ceiling. Mallard to
wrestle the gun from his hand. Phil's mum was petrified.
(08:12):
It looked at feel dead in the eyes and said, look, man,
if you're going to shoot me, shoot me, just don't
funk with me. Is when Spector first came to London, Paul,
(08:55):
George Ringo and I were just at the worst. We
had ended it all. We said, if you want to
work with us, go and do your audition. He'd always
wanted to work with the Beatles, and he was given
the shittiest load of badly recorded shit with a lousy
feeling towards it, ever, and he made something out of it.
He did a great job. When Phil first came to London,
(09:17):
this is nineteen seventy. He was realizing one of his dreams.
He worked like a pig on it. We were realizing
one of our dreams too. Since he was such a
legendary figure, Specter's success is derived from an understanding of
what he calls the teams sound, and we were legendary
figures as well. I suppose not to tute our own
horn loudly. He was a legendary figure who was in
(09:40):
a rough patch. Specter's success is unusual. Others, however, are
always at his heel. We were in our own rough
patch as well. George thought it could be an opportunity
for Phil to get some sort of redemption on record.
You see, But at that moment things were so shitty
between the four of us that Jesus Christ himself could
have mixed the record and no one would have been happy,
(10:02):
and rightly so what does Jesus know about mixing records? Anyway?
Phil always wanted to work with the Beatles, he adds,
since the early days when the ronets to the UK
and which your America was given the shittiest load of
badly recorded ship of lows. He feeling towards it. Ever,
and you know what, he made something out of it.
He did a great job. Paul didn't think so, of course,
(10:25):
but Paul was inclined to hit everything that I loved
at the time, and vice versa. We were both cons
to one another. You've all filled it. Even got his
hands on the lettered B tapes. I asked him to
come and record Instant Karma at Abbey Road right after
he stepped off the plane. The guys in the band
Klaus of Woman, Alan White, Billy Preston didn't know. Phil
(10:47):
shut up late wearing a shirt with p s monoground
on it. The guys were all like, who the hell
is this? It was like he was a parody of
Phil Spector, just the way he was dressed, in the
he carried himself. He said, I he want this to
sound and said nineteen fifties. Now. He said, okay, nineteen fifties.
(11:08):
Got it, Let's roll and that was that. That was
all he needed. He ran his hands over the desk
like a magician, and he got it. It sounded like
Sun Records right there on Abbey Road. I saw something
of myself and Phil, and I'm not just talking about
the music. We had both lost parents at a young age.
I think that sort of thing shaped us both more
(11:28):
than we like to admit really, So we did plastic
Ono Band and we did Imagine. We made Imagine at
Tit Nurse Park Ascot Sounds Studios. We built that studio
right in the middle of the house that was in
the middle of summer, and Phil would show up with
these three piece suits, ties, sunglasses. How he made it
through some of those hotter days with those wigs on
(11:50):
top of his head, I don't know. And then things changed.
They did get strange, and he said we can't record
to and they got strange on his turf. When we
left Berkshire and went to Los Angeles, it was almost
as if Phil was more comfortable in the UK and
was in his own town. He was like a stranger
(12:11):
in his own land. Onesome Dinghi did towards But by
the time we were making records in l a shiny
phil Specter coating had rusted away. There was something else
beneath it. He was knocking back papas all night with
swiggs of Manas Chevits. Elton John showed up one day
for a visit, and even he was shocked by the instability,
(12:32):
the insanity. This is Elton John we're talking about when
Elton John says, hey, Fellas, maybe let's take things a
bit too far. Well, perhaps you should listen up. Phil
started showing up to sessions and different outfits each day,
like it was a joke. One day he showed up
dressed as a doctor, stethoscope, big metallic circle strapped to
(12:54):
his head. Another day he showed up dressed as a priest,
giant crucifix. You responded every question with his hand making
the sign of the cross. And another day he dressed
like he was a blind man, big black glasses in
a cane. He just fumbled around the studio, and then
some days he didn't show up at all. I tried
(13:16):
to track him down to keep him on task. We
can't record today. Studios burned down. And then it got worse.
Whatever it was, his complacency, his fear, his paranoia. He
went deep down this rabbit hole of conspiracy and secrecy,
(13:37):
and it was affecting people around him. But he had
my tapes, the tapes of the sessions. He would take
them home with him every night. Didn't trust anyone, and
then he stopped taking my calls. We weren't even done
with the record yet. He just disappeared into that house
(13:59):
as frigid bleak house had a shoot and carting and
take off. He wasn't the person I've gotten to know.
It made me question whether or not I even knew
the person that I thought he was. We'll be right
(14:22):
back after this word word word. Now. Some say I
should have known better, that I should have read the
writing on the wall. There was a lot on the wall.
In my defense, a lot of Phil had put there,
a lot that I had put there. But I remember
(14:45):
when we made Instant Calmer and the Plastic Ono Band record,
and imagine all that Phil came and went. He showed up,
he did the work, and he left. I didn't see
much more of him beyond his role as a record maker.
He was keeping the secret course. But things were different
in America almost immediately, and perhaps I should have made
(15:06):
closer attention. Taking him down from the pedestalide put him
on in my mind and looked at him as a flawed,
needy human being. He tells me his house is surrounded
by helicopters and we're trying to get him. It was
early two and we were making some time in New
York City with Phil. Before we started recalling in earnest
I heard a story about how he went fucking crazy
at the Daisy Club, a member's only spot on Rodeo
(15:30):
Drive and Beverly Hills on any given night, A real
who's who of ego and fame and wealth, the sort
of place that names the sandwiches after the stars, that
frequent to joint you. Now, I want a tuna sandwich?
What are the Mickey Rooney? A little fresh fruit and
cottage cheese? Try the Kirk Douglas. Even Sunny Bono want
(15:54):
of Feel's former underappreciated Lackey's. Phil called him sunny Bozo.
You know he had his own thing on the menu,
liver and onions. But you know who wasn't on the menu,
Phil Specter. I can only imagine how much that stung,
how much that got under his skin, to see name
after Hollywood name on that little Daisy's menu and nothing
(16:15):
about him. I'm sure he took it personally. Everything was
about him. I came to learn that the more I
hung around him, the very absence of his name from
a member's only club menu was about him. So what
I heard was Phil shows up to the Daisy one
night wearing a jacket with some karate um Lamont and
(16:36):
he raised his hell drunken, batshit, disoriented l He had
become obsessed with karate. His obsessions were fleeting from what
I've been told. Maybe guns were the one exception to
that rule, but at this point in his life, karate
was his consuming hobby. I took up causes, Angela Davis,
(16:56):
John Sinclair Attica, and Phil took up karate. Maybe it
was the green Hornet, maybe it was the Pink Panther
and Peter Seller's Bruce Lee. When Bruce Lee died, Phil
was convinced that he was murdered by some death touch
whatever that is. Emil Focus had taught him. That taught
(17:19):
him about the death touch. Meal and another guy that
they just called Laslow where his bodyguards in the late sixties.
But they also both happened to be black belts. Phil
higher than partly for protection, but partly so we could
learn those moves. So he's at the day zy, no
doubt enjoying himself, but also no doubt stuing over the
fact that his goddamn name is in Grace in one
(17:39):
of the menu items. And this woman walks up to
him and starts talking to him, probably something like are
you Phil Specter the Titan of teen? And what does
Phil do? He lost it? Man, He didn't ask this
woman to talk to him. Now, dare she? You know?
That sort of thing. It was probably all misplaced frustraate
(18:00):
and aggression. Peoples have gone out from his karate jacket.
He just skips over the karate pot altogether. All this
training and obsessing in our being, all of it for
the dogs in this heated moment. His gun could do
the talking better than his karate shopping ever could he
pointed that gun to this poor woman who's just standing.
They're shaking in the middle of a high end private club.
(18:22):
She probably was just a big fan of you've lost
that love and feeling or something, and wanted a moment
with the man. But now this is the kind of
shif I'm talking about. He was becoming unwound as the
time went on by, and we're trying to get him.
The next year, in ninety three, we started recording what
would become the Rock and Roll Album, and that's when
things got really strange. One Sunday Phil called me and said,
(18:47):
we can't record today. The studios burnt down. I thought
only ship the studios on fire. That was the first
wasn't it not buying the show? But I was a iscious.
The whole thing was suspicious. He had been turning up
to sessions late. He was drunk, We were drunk, and
(19:07):
the phone call just struck me as an excuse, a
cop out. So I had someone call over Day and
M Studios, and a guy answered the phone with no urgency,
no flames crackling in the background. The studio wasn't on fire.
Phil just didn't want to work. Following Sunday, Phil calls
me and I say, what happened? We was supposed to
(19:30):
be doing a session and he whispers to me. I said,
what he said, the John Deane tapes, you know, the
Watergate tapes. He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters,
and then trying to get him no buying, But he
didn't have the Watergate tapes. He was trying to tell
(19:51):
me that he had my tapes, the session tapes, everything
we had done up to that point. He would take
them home with him every night. Probably felt safe knowing
that when he put his head down on his pillow
at night, the tapes were protected inside a gated mansion
surrounded by guns and his muscle men. By keeping those
tapes close, he was keeping the secret. We had to
(20:12):
sue him through capital to eventually get the tapes back,
and I finished the album without him. And then he
got into that car crash on Melrose head on collision
in his Rolls Royce. We went right through the fucking
front windshield. The whole accident allowed him to re emerge
as another person. You see, he looked different, he sounded different,
(20:33):
he acted different, like Dylan and that motorcycle crash. But
the new Field Field that lived to tell the tale
about that crash was not the idealized version of Field
that we had created in IDs. You know, there's a
reason that they say don't meet your idols. At the
(20:54):
end of the day, Phil Spector was not the person
I thought he was. The last time I talked to him,
he was whispering on the they're into the phone about
conspiracies and secrets and it was all just a calculated
chaun to keep me squarely in the dark. Hollywood A
(21:38):
and M Studios. John Lennon was tired, worn down by excess,
perverted by vice, winded from out running scandal, his sojourn
into Los Angeles meant to be some sort of existential
palate cleanser had been an existential drag. He hoped that
today would be different. Today you could take the focus
off himself, off of those things you want it to
(22:00):
the things he desired, and simply witnessed something that would
make him happy. Imagine that he was excited to meet
Darlene Love, perhaps even more excited to watch her sing
in the studio. He had been a fan of hers
ever sincerely sixties, when she sang lead on the Crystals.
He's a rebel, and he's sure the boy I love
back before he and the rest of the world even
knew who she was. John's love of American girl group
(22:24):
pop was evident by the songs that the Beatles covered
in their touring years and released on some of their
early records. And now he'd get to be a fly
on the wall and watched Darlene reunite with Phil Specter,
the producer who would put her heavenly voice to Wax
in the first place. John's time spent in Los Angeles
would come to be known as his Lost Weekend, but
(22:44):
it was far from the weekend. It lasted eighteen months,
and during that time he had an intense affair with
his assistant while strange from his wife. He got ejected
from the trooper door with Harry Nilson for heckling the
Smothers brothers. While wasted on Brandy Alexander's, he failed to
get Stevie, wondered to snort a line of blow while
jamming with Paul McCartney, and he stumbled through California nightlife
(23:06):
while desperately hanging on to a few functional brain cells.
His relationship with Phil Specter had initially resulted in some
of the most raw, stripped down records of any ex Beatle,
but Phil's instability was making things difficult. John was skeptical
if they would ever make it through the Rock and
Roll sessions alive. Darlene Love walked into A and M studio,
(23:27):
skeptical of the whole situation, skeptical mostly of Phil. This
wasn't her first rodeo. She'd been produced by Phil before,
ordered around by Phil, before, obscured by Phil, before humiliated
by Phil. Before. In fact, Phil had just bought her
contract from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. She had only
been with the Philly producers for a few months she
(23:49):
had dreamed of escaping from under phil shadow, and now
she felt that dark cloud hoverback over her head. She
was seven months pregnant and thought twice about taking the
gig when she the call. But Phil's assist in, Sandy
was a nice girl and made Darlene feel like royalty
before she even walked into A and M Studios. She'd
do it, she'd give it a shot. She smiled when
(24:11):
she walked through the studio door and saw share and
there was John Lennon. John Lennon a beatle there in
the flesh, there for no other reason than to watch
her do her thing. But this time around, Phil seemed
worse than before. Phil had his back turned to Darlene.
He didn't turn around to face her when he spoke.
(24:33):
He instructed the engineer to start a playback, and the
song Lord if You're a Woman started coming through the speakers.
Darlene sang a line. Phil stopped her halfway through, told
her to sing it again, but she started to sing
the line again, this time the way Phil asked me to.
She got through the take only to see Phil shaking
his head. He didn't like it. She needed to try again,
(24:55):
so she did it again and again. She would barely
make it through a line, and he would stop playback
again and throughout the labored process of take after take,
Phil eventually turned to face Darlene from where he stood
safely behind the production booths glass. He cut playback again,
and Darlene read Phil's lips as he spoke to the
(25:17):
others in the booth, watch me make her do it again.
Guests and the booth laughed. John Lennon was laughing. It
was a game to them, a joke to them. She
was their joke. And for Darlene Love, those memories came
flooding back, the memories of the early sixties, the crystals,
Bobby socks, and the blue jeans. She wasn't gonna be
(25:38):
anyone's joke anymore, not John Lennon's and certainly not Phil Specter's.
She took her headphones off, put her coat on, told
Phil Specter to go to hell. Phil watched as Darlene
walked out the door, and he remained safely inside the
production booth. He was keeping the secrets close, keeping everything close,
(25:59):
friends and these people in between. He didn't want anyone
getting a good look the blood on the tracks. This
episode of Blood on the Tracks is brought to you
(26:20):
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 is season one
with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribe to the twenty
seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heeart Radio app or
wherever you get your podcast, and of course, this episode
was also brought to you by Disgrace Land, the award
(26:42):
winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by Yours Truly.
Episodes on The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Cardi b The
Grateful Dead, j C. 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
(27:02):
on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundi and scored
in mixed by Matt Bode, posted by me Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spreaker and Henry Lunette.
This episode featured Scott Jano bit says John Lennon. Blood
on the Tracks is produced by myself for Double Elvis
and partnership with I heart Rate. Sources for this episode
(27:22):
are available at double Elvis dot com on the Blood
on the Tracks series page and if you like it
you here. Please be sure to subscribe the Blood on
the Tracks on Apple podcast I Heart Radio Apple wherever
you get your podcasts, And if you'd like to win
a free Blood on the Tracks poster designed by Nate
Gonzalez and leave a review for Blood on the Tracks
on Apple Podcast, you can hashtag Blood on the Tracks
(27:43):
on social media. 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
down to follow alright. As always, you can find me
blabbing about other crazy rock stars on Disgrace Land and
twenty seven Club, and you can talk me per usual
on Instagram and Twitter at Disgrace lam Rockaby that Crazy
(28:17):
R Day Dad
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