October 7, 2020 • 32 mins
As Phil Spector faces the rest of his life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, the memories in his head swirl around in a perfect storm of confusion, resentment, misguided anger, and petty entitlement. The words of Lenny Bruce, Ronnie Spector, Keith Richards, Ike Turner, Leonard Cohen, Debbie Harry, John Lennon, Darlene Love, and the late Lana Clarkson continue to haunt him as he pieces together the moments of his life and contemplates the rest of his days.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Phil Spector was a musical genius,
one of the most successful record producers of all time.
He's now sitting behind bars, serving a nineteen years to
life sentence for murder. This is his story told by
his so called friends. This is 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 to Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to appear
at ending February two thousand nine. Interview subject to Specter
phil Interview number six Dash six six dash oh four
one dash three zero nine Recall number ten March first,
(00:51):
two thousand nine. What I want to know is, how
can somebody who gave his whole life to music, who
made such fucking great records, and you know I did,
(01:13):
You've admitted I did. How could they have hated me?
How could they still hate me? They don't understand me?
How could they have hated me? How could they hate
somebody whose records are filled with so much love and
(01:35):
not only love, but honesty and so much pure fucking talent,
But nobody wants to talk about any of that when
they talk about me. The only thing anyone thinks of
when they think about me is the blood on the tracks. Yeah.
(02:15):
Chapter ten, Phil Specter and Phil Specter. I think rage
is what comes out when you're disrespected, and rage is
(02:38):
what makes you better. I wasn't respected like Gershwin or Berlin,
and that lack of respect just build up the anger
and rage inside of me made me do better. It's
what made Miles Davis do better. Miles Davis, Charlie Parker,
Duke Ellington, all those people did better because they were disrespected.
They took that disrespect and they put it direct lee
(03:00):
into their music, into their art. That's what makes their
music art. Look at Tony Bennett. Tony Bennett was the
biggest cocaine addict in the nineteen sixties. Tony Bennett and
cocaine were like peanut butter and jelly in the nineteen sixties.
And then years later he cleans up his act and
nobody talks about his past drug addictions. Nobody treats him
(03:20):
with disrespect. But anytime someone talks about Miles Davis, they
talk about the drug problems, even if the drug problems
were long behind him. Look at Woody Allen. Woody Allen
will always be a pervert, no matter what else he's done.
He'll always be scarred because he married his daughter, even
though she's not his daughter, she's his adopted daughter. But
(03:44):
that's always on the public's mind because the public doesn't
like him, and the public doesn't like me. If they
like you, they won't talk about those things. It's just
the way it goes. If they don't like you, if
they think we've done something wrong, they'll screw you. The media,
the police. That's how the media works, that's how the
(04:06):
police work. It's a mob mentality, and you gotta put
energy into living it down. Look at the Beatles tapes,
the Let It Be tapes. They weren't cared for, they
were not guarded. I found them like someone finds trash
in a dumpster, and I made something out of those tapes.
(04:28):
I turned that pile of trash into a commercial success.
They went straight to number one. But look how they
treat me, how they talk about me, like I was
the one who sucked it all up. Now did George
Martin touch those tapes? He didn't have anything to do
(04:49):
with those tapes. He wanted to be as far from
them as possible. But look how they treat George Martin.
He was made as Sir. Paul McCartney. He was made
as Sir. Elton John was made to serve. Bob Dylan
got an honorary degree from a college. Buddy Holly was
given a stamp. Now, I love Buddy Holly, but he
(05:12):
only lived three years in rock and roll. I've been
around a lot longer than that, and I've made more
of an impact. You've got to have some perspective, But
who has time for perspective when it's so much easier
to jump to a predetermined conclusion. A conclusion where Buddy
Holly is a saint and Phil Specter is a problem.
Buddy Holly was no saint. I can tell you that
(05:36):
Elton John was no saint. I don't need a stamp necessarily,
but a little respect would go a long way. I've
done more for music than any of those people. I've
at least done as much as they have his whole life.
But see, that's what I'm talking about. And it's not
just disrespect either. It's misunderstanding. It's the plight of the
(05:59):
miss understood, the misseen. I've always been misunderstood from a
very early age. I realized early on that I was
a loner in school. I was different. We were poor.
Everyone else was middle or upper class. I wasn't popular,
wasn't part of any clique. I took that lack of respect,
(06:23):
that lack of respect that I felt from a very
young age, and I made myself better. I don't understand.
I helped the football players with their homework so that
they could pass their classes and stay on the team,
and in return, they offered me protection. I've always found
that protection comforting but also necessary, necessary because I would
(06:44):
continue to be misunderstood throughout my life, and it helped
me keep those who wanted to disrespect or mistreat me
at arm's length. Having bodyguards follow your around as a statement,
it's a statement that says I would like to be
left alone. Everyone else in school were a bunch of
losers anyway. None of them challenged society or dared to
(07:07):
be different. I was the only one who was different,
and I had to protect that. French When I first
broke into show business with the Teddy Bears in I
was still misunderstood. I should have seen it coming as
early as that first saw to know him is to
(07:28):
love him. I should have seen the writing on the wall,
because no one knew what it was about. Everyone just
thought it was some gooey love song, some puppy dog
love song that Annette sang. Of course they did. The
whole world was just like my high school class losers.
Nobody's they didn't get it. They don't understand. Nobody knew
(07:53):
that that song was about my father, that it was
about death, that it was a love song to someone
in the Great yawned. That kind of tragedy leaves a scar.
When your father blows his head open, that's not funny.
I was just nine when he took his own life.
He sat in the front seat of his car back
(08:14):
in Brooklyn, connected a tube to the exhaust, put the
tube in the window, and just swam in it. And
that's what was on his tombstone. To know him is
to love him. The pain is always there. It's a constant.
(08:35):
To hurt is a natural phenomenon, especially for an artist.
Da Vinci felt pain. Wagner felt pain. I feel pain,
but I don't get depressed. I don't allow myself to
get depressed. It's a waste of emotion. I envy the
little old lady who sits in front of the TV
(08:56):
set and believes who praise and believe She'll go to
he event and says, Amen, just believes it all. I'd
like to believe I resent her and I'm jealous of her.
I wish I believed the way that George Harrison believed.
I recorded My Sweet Lord with him, and I convinced
myself in that moment that I believed you have to
(09:19):
you have to to make it authentic. That's why I
was different from other producers special Most producers just interpret.
I would create. It was like what Da Vinci did
when he approached a canvas, he would turn himself over
to it. Now on the flip side, I also recorded
(09:41):
God with John Lennon, which was about not believing, not
believing in anything other than yourself. You see, it was
the complete opposite of George's record, and I approached that
the same way I approached My Sweet Lord. I was
there to create, to make something that people would be
in awe for years to come, and it didn't matter
(10:01):
what I believe. I wish I believe that God would
look after me the way I've been disrespected misunderstood in
my life. I think it's obvious that if there is
a God, he's not looking out for me at all.
And like John, I only believe in myself. That doesn't
bring me much comfort. In fact, it scares me to death.
(10:25):
It scares me to death because I may not believe
in God, but I know there's a devil. You want
(10:59):
to talk about lack of respect, Let's talk about the police.
Let's talk about the Los Angeles Police Department, the Alhambra
Police Department. I said it before with Lenny Bruce, and
I'll say it again with me. The police are too
much an overdose of police. They walk the s S walk.
(11:25):
They rule with an iron fucking fist. That's how they
treat people like me and people like Lenny, people who
are different, people who stand up and say what they
think and what they believe. They take it too far.
They take it too far with people who have never
given any indication that they believe themselves to be above
(11:46):
the law, people who put their money where their mouth is.
The last time I checked, this was a free country,
is it not. I can say what I want and
print what I want. I'm not breaking the laws. I
didn't make any friends with the police over the years,
(12:08):
going back all the way to when Lenny died and
I paid for all those full page ads in Billboard
and cash box, and then I had a few run
ins with them over the years, the Beverly Hills Hotel
and the Daisy Club and all that, all misunderstandings again,
and I had a license to carry the gun. But see,
(12:28):
that's how they decide, How they preemptively decide that they
don't like you, that you are one of the bad ones,
and then they disrespect you. They beat Miles Davis in
the head until he bled while he was smoking a
cigarette outside bird Land between sets at his own gig.
They had already decided that they didn't like him because
(12:50):
he was black, because he was a musician, because he
was in their way on the sidewalk, just smoking a cigarette.
The cops who came to my home would as a castle.
By the way, the cops who came to my home
on the morning of February third, two thousand three, were
the same way. Sixteen cops, sixteen al Hambra cops showed
(13:11):
up on my doorstep. We had called for a paramedic.
We had a lady who was injured in the foyer
of my home and needed a paramedic. But did they
send a paramedic. No, they sent sixteen cops who wanted
to interrogate me on the stairs outside my home. And meanwhile,
this girl has slumped lifeless across the chair and my foyer.
(13:32):
Was she alive? Was she dead? I didn't know, and
they didn't know either, because they were wasting time arguing
with me outside. I'm not a paramedic. They argued with
me for forty five minutes before they came inside. And
when they did come inside, they came inside like animals.
(13:55):
They were drunken animals. How do I know that they
weren't drunk? No, I never read the cops the Riot
Act that day the way they read it to me.
They came in barnstorming. There were stormtroopers. They were fucking gestapo.
I'm five ft five, barely forty pounds. They knocked me down,
(14:16):
They broke my nose, they gave me two black eyes,
they cracked my spine, and then they tasered me with
fifty volts of electricity. They knocked me down on the
floor of my own home, and we were still waiting
for the paramedics. They could have saved her, obviously, a
terrible mistakes, but it's not terribly supposing that he could
(14:40):
make such a mistake. Mist And what about her. I
had just met her that night. She didn't even know
who I was. At first. I barely knew anything about her.
All I knew was what she had told me during
the few hours we were together that night. I knew
she was an actress, though I don't think I had
ever seen any of her movies. But I don't know
(15:00):
if she was depressed. Like I said before, I don't
let myself get depressed, so I don't know that I
would know if I saw it. And again, to hurt
is a natural phenomenon, so maybe she was hurting in
that moment. I don't know if she meant to take
her own life or if it was an accident. She
was intoxicated when I first met her. She took an
(15:23):
open bottle of tequila with her from the House of
Blues to the car. She was taking vicodin. She must
have hurt. I know her. People have said the opposite
about me, that I don't have any sympathy or empathy.
They've said horrible things about me about how I treated them,
How did I treat Ronnie so poorly. I loved Ronnie.
(15:46):
I gave her everything away. I welcomed these people into
my house. Debbie Harry, Leonard Cohne, the Ramons, Tina Turner.
I had them all to the Big House on La Collina,
Mikasa Sukasa. I saved the Beatles. I got John and
(16:08):
George back on their feet when the Beatles broke up.
You're just shooting talking. How could they have hated me?
How can they still hate me? How could they hate
somebody whose records were filled with so much love before?
All these people were confused. I think Adriana was confused
(16:30):
that morning, the morning of February three, I think he
was confused, and he was in shock. It's hard to
understand what he says half the time. The kids from Brazil,
you know, and he still has a ways to go
before he masters the English language. He saw me come
out of the house and I was visibly upset. Sure
I was holding the revolver. There was blood. There had
(16:56):
been a terrible accident. We were in the foyer, me
and Lana. I held the gun, she held the gun.
At some point the gun went off. What else is
there to tell you? I'm sure I wasn't making any sense.
When I walked outside to talk to Adriano. The regular
guy Dylan. Now, maybe he would have understood what I
(17:19):
was saying better if he had been there, Maybe he
would have told the cops something different than all of
this would have been different. But whatever I said to Adriana,
I can't even remember what I said. I think he
just misheard what I said and had a hard time
communicating that to the authorities. You just aren't in your
(17:39):
right mind in that kind of situation. None of us are.
It's a shock to the system. You can't think straight.
I can't talk straight. It was my word against everyone
else's words. It had always been my word against everyone else's.
(18:02):
Maybe that's where the word genius comes from, the gene
in us. What can I say? I wasn't like everybody else.
We'll be right back after this word word word. You
(18:28):
know somebody wants. Asked me a question. I said, Philip,
aren't you lonely in this big house? All those rooms
to roam around in? Damn must be lonely. And you
(18:48):
know what I said, I said, you ever live in
one room very lonely? Just you in the bathroom, man,
you in the sink you in the toilet. Loneliness is
(19:09):
a state of mind. You know what's lonely? Feeling like
you're the only one on your side. Lonely is having
no control over your fate. My fate is in the
hands of twelve people who voted for George Bush. What
kind of justice is that the jurors filled out this
(19:32):
questionnaire of them said I was guilty from the get go,
from said I'm insane, and the judge hates me. How
is that justice? It's rigged. The whole system is rigged.
The cops had their mind made up before they even
(19:54):
walked into my house the castle that morning. The jury
had their minds it up, the judge, the press, the media.
How could they hate somebody whose records are filled so
much love and so much pure fucking talent. You probably
(20:16):
have your mind made up, but you don't even know.
You haven't even tried to know. They don't understand. I
lost my father when I was nine, man, I learned
about true loneliness before anyone should. I lost my father,
I lost Philip Jr. Wife after wife left me, I
(20:39):
lost John to that lunatic. What about my loss? Doesn't
that count for something? And the friends that I thought
I had, were they even friends to begin with? I
mean ship Man, When I Turner was down on his luck,
when they put him in prison in Coke, who visited
(21:00):
him in prison? Who did? I did? Motherfucker shore? And
when he got out, who helped him get on his
feet financially? And he's going to talk about me not
paying for his cab to come to a party. When
Darlene Love was cleaning houses and trying to make ends meet,
when she was desperate and had no one to go to,
(21:22):
no one to help, who helped her? Who helped her
pay her rent for a year? Man? That was me?
That was me? And now this poor woman's life has
ended accidentally or on purpose, we'll never know. It ended
in the foyer of my castle. And all the fingers
(21:45):
of all these people, these people that I helped, your Lord,
all these fingers are pointed at me. It's convenient for
them to forget about everything else. They all need someone
to be the pats here. I'm there, Patsy. Apparently I'm
the guide. And so they spread these rumors, and that's
(22:07):
what they are. Rumors, Rumors about my character, rumors about
my actions and my impulses. They spread these rumors to
make themselves feel better and to drag my name through
the mud. They're all rewriting history, that's what they're doing.
They're rewriting history so that years down the road, when
(22:29):
people talk about Phil Specter, people are only going to
talk about this awful thing that happened in my home,
about how I'm a bully. How can somebody whose records
are so They aren't going to talk about you've lost
that love and feeling, or imagine, or about he's a rebel.
(22:52):
They're not honesty. They're not going to talk about how
I pioneered a revolution in pop music. I was the
bridge between Elvis and the beatles Man. That's what John said.
Pure talent. I was twenty when I made my first
(23:12):
number one record. I created a new sound, a new
way to make records. That kind of person doesn't just
come along every day because they don't know that kind
of person. You see the police, the district attorney, the judge,
(23:35):
even the jury man. They've never been around that kind
of person before. They wouldn't know a musical genius from Adam.
They don't understand. Most of them are so young that
the whole era is lost on them. They don't recognize
the songs. But you know what kind of person these
people all know, an evil person, murderers, the eves, monsters,
(24:03):
the district attorney and the judge and the police. They're
all around those kinds of people all day, every day.
So that's all they see. If they look at a person,
and it doesn't matter how many hit records he has,
or how many mansions he's owned, how many beatles he
has in his rolodex. They look at a person and
(24:25):
they see the worst. That's what they're paid to do.
And then the jurors, they're on a steady diet of
law and order, judge, judy or whatever the cop or
courtroom TV show of the day is. They speak in
remedial legalise. They think they're all junior detectives, but they
(24:47):
don't know anything about it. They say, I was standing
close to her when the gun went off, but I
was only two feet away. That's what the forensics team said. Well,
what does the forensics team know about anything? They weren't there.
All they have is one piece of the puzzle, a
tiny little piece that they looked at under a microscope.
(25:07):
They aren't privy to the circumstances. They don't know who
was doing what or who was saying what. They don't
know anything about it, None of them do. I can't
really venture to guess some what he was thinking. They
all think they know me, but they've never tried to
know me, and they never will. M April two thousand nine,
(26:06):
Los Angeles, six years after the death of Lana Clarkson,
Bill Specter was found guilty of second degree murder. At
the time of his sentencing, he was sixty nine years old.
It was Specter's second murder trial in two years. The
first trial, in two thousand seven, was televised. Specter did
(26:27):
not testify. The jury deliberated for fifteen days, but couldn't
reach the necessary unanimous verdict. It ended in mistrial hung jury.
The second trial was the charm At the retrial, prosecutors
called Specter a very dangerous man in detail of his
history playing Russian Roulette with women. Specter's lawyers fought back
(26:49):
and went after Specter's own personal bad guys, the cops.
The judge noted that this was not an isolated incident,
the taking of innocent human life. He said, it doesn't
get any more serious than that. Specter's love of firearms,
his uncontrollable temper, and his violent and volatile history with
women came back to haunt him. Even his music, his
(27:12):
art came back to haunt him. One of the first
songs he recorded with the Crystals, he Hit Me and
It Felt Like a Kiss, certainly didn't do any favors
to his notorious reputation. After a five month trial, the
jury returned their unanimous verdict. Specter sat in the courtroom
stone faced as the judge read the verdicts nineteen years
to life. Specter stared straight ahead, stared out at his space.
(27:37):
He made no movement. All he did was blink his eyes.
He showed no emotion. He didn't indicate that he was
listening at all. In addition to the sentence, Specter was
ordered to write a check to the Clarkson family for
seventeen grand to cover funeral expenses. The judge denied Specter's
request for a third trial. Specter's lawyer promised to appeal,
(27:59):
and then man who once said I could strut sitting
down I was so brazen walked a far less confident
strut from the courtroom directly to jail. The bailiff shuffled
Specter out of the courtroom, out of his dark pinstriped
suit and red silk tie, and into his California Department
of Corrections issued costume. That moment of transition sealed the deal.
(28:23):
He was no longer Phil Specter the producer, or Phil
Specter the musical genius. He was no longer Phil Specter,
the supposed celebrity. He was now Phil Specter, the murderer,
Phil Specter the gun not Phil Specter the explosive, perfectionist.
Phil Specter the womanis or the boozer, the psycho loaner
up in the castle on the Hill who wore Batman
(28:45):
costumes and air conditioned darkness. Was back to being the
loner he was as a child, the one who was
different ostra size, misunderstood. He was no longer the bully.
He'd be bullied from now on, just like he'd been
bullied in school. Now eleven years later, Phil Specter is
eighty years old and spends his days at a prison
(29:06):
health care facility in Stockton, California, where he is ben
since October two thousand and thirteen. Is eligible for early parole.
In two thousand, Specter's musical productions remained some of the
greatest of the twentieth century. River Deep, Mountain High, You've
Lost that love and feeling in My Sweet Lord are
the songs of an autour, works of art made possible
(29:29):
by a process and a style that was as myopic
as it was universal. In later years, as musical and
social trends continued to evolve, Specter became increasingly stubborn and
refused to evolve with everyone else. But even some of
his later productions albums by Leonard Cohen and Dion, though
initially panned upon their release, have risen in critical acclaim.
(29:51):
Phil Specters identifiable stamp, whether delivered as a wall of
sound or stripped down and raw, remains a stunning time
capsule in moments frozen in amber or at least pressed
into wax. For many, it's rapturous pop music that will
never be taught. For many others, it's hard to separate
the art from the artist, and the music filled with
(30:13):
so much love was in fact the brainchild of a petty,
vindictive and abusive man. Because no matter how much love
is on the tracks, no matter how much honesty is
on the tracks, no matter how much pure fucking talent
is on the tracks. It's all tainted. All the love, honesty,
and talent are tainted by blood. It's all there, the
(30:39):
blood on the Tracks. This episode of Blood on the
Tracks is brought to you by seven Club, a podcast
that I host on musicians who died at the age
(31:00):
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 podcasts, and
of course, this episode 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,
(31:22):
Jeremy Lewis, Cardi B, The Grateful Dead, Jay 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 on the Tracks was written by
Zeth Lundie and scored in mixed by Matt Bowden, hosted
by me Jake Brennan. Additional music and score elements by
(31:45):
Ryan Spreaker and Henry Lunana. This episode featured Chris Anzelonius
Phil Specter. 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
m on the Blood on the Track series page. If
you like it here, please be sure to subscribe to
Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio
(32:07):
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(32:30):
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pod or Dad
Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Phil Spector was a musical genius,
one of the most successful record producers of all time.
He's now sitting behind bars, serving a nineteen years to
life sentence for murder. This is his story told by
his so called friends. This is 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 to Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to appear
at ending February two thousand nine. Interview subject to Specter
phil Interview number six Dash six six dash oh four
one dash three zero nine Recall number ten March first,
(00:51):
two thousand nine. What I want to know is, how
can somebody who gave his whole life to music, who
made such fucking great records, and you know I did,
(01:13):
You've admitted I did. How could they have hated me?
How could they still hate me? They don't understand me?
How could they have hated me? How could they hate
somebody whose records are filled with so much love and
(01:35):
not only love, but honesty and so much pure fucking talent,
But nobody wants to talk about any of that when
they talk about me. The only thing anyone thinks of
when they think about me is the blood on the tracks. Yeah.
(02:15):
Chapter ten, Phil Specter and Phil Specter. I think rage
is what comes out when you're disrespected, and rage is
(02:38):
what makes you better. I wasn't respected like Gershwin or Berlin,
and that lack of respect just build up the anger
and rage inside of me made me do better. It's
what made Miles Davis do better. Miles Davis, Charlie Parker,
Duke Ellington, all those people did better because they were disrespected.
They took that disrespect and they put it direct lee
(03:00):
into their music, into their art. That's what makes their
music art. Look at Tony Bennett. Tony Bennett was the
biggest cocaine addict in the nineteen sixties. Tony Bennett and
cocaine were like peanut butter and jelly in the nineteen sixties.
And then years later he cleans up his act and
nobody talks about his past drug addictions. Nobody treats him
(03:20):
with disrespect. But anytime someone talks about Miles Davis, they
talk about the drug problems, even if the drug problems
were long behind him. Look at Woody Allen. Woody Allen
will always be a pervert, no matter what else he's done.
He'll always be scarred because he married his daughter, even
though she's not his daughter, she's his adopted daughter. But
(03:44):
that's always on the public's mind because the public doesn't
like him, and the public doesn't like me. If they
like you, they won't talk about those things. It's just
the way it goes. If they don't like you, if
they think we've done something wrong, they'll screw you. The media,
the police. That's how the media works, that's how the
(04:06):
police work. It's a mob mentality, and you gotta put
energy into living it down. Look at the Beatles tapes,
the Let It Be tapes. They weren't cared for, they
were not guarded. I found them like someone finds trash
in a dumpster, and I made something out of those tapes.
(04:28):
I turned that pile of trash into a commercial success.
They went straight to number one. But look how they
treat me, how they talk about me, like I was
the one who sucked it all up. Now did George
Martin touch those tapes? He didn't have anything to do
(04:49):
with those tapes. He wanted to be as far from
them as possible. But look how they treat George Martin.
He was made as Sir. Paul McCartney. He was made
as Sir. Elton John was made to serve. Bob Dylan
got an honorary degree from a college. Buddy Holly was
given a stamp. Now, I love Buddy Holly, but he
(05:12):
only lived three years in rock and roll. I've been
around a lot longer than that, and I've made more
of an impact. You've got to have some perspective, But
who has time for perspective when it's so much easier
to jump to a predetermined conclusion. A conclusion where Buddy
Holly is a saint and Phil Specter is a problem.
Buddy Holly was no saint. I can tell you that
(05:36):
Elton John was no saint. I don't need a stamp necessarily,
but a little respect would go a long way. I've
done more for music than any of those people. I've
at least done as much as they have his whole life.
But see, that's what I'm talking about. And it's not
just disrespect either. It's misunderstanding. It's the plight of the
(05:59):
miss understood, the misseen. I've always been misunderstood from a
very early age. I realized early on that I was
a loner in school. I was different. We were poor.
Everyone else was middle or upper class. I wasn't popular,
wasn't part of any clique. I took that lack of respect,
(06:23):
that lack of respect that I felt from a very
young age, and I made myself better. I don't understand.
I helped the football players with their homework so that
they could pass their classes and stay on the team,
and in return, they offered me protection. I've always found
that protection comforting but also necessary, necessary because I would
(06:44):
continue to be misunderstood throughout my life, and it helped
me keep those who wanted to disrespect or mistreat me
at arm's length. Having bodyguards follow your around as a statement,
it's a statement that says I would like to be
left alone. Everyone else in school were a bunch of
losers anyway. None of them challenged society or dared to
(07:07):
be different. I was the only one who was different,
and I had to protect that. French When I first
broke into show business with the Teddy Bears in I
was still misunderstood. I should have seen it coming as
early as that first saw to know him is to
(07:28):
love him. I should have seen the writing on the wall,
because no one knew what it was about. Everyone just
thought it was some gooey love song, some puppy dog
love song that Annette sang. Of course they did. The
whole world was just like my high school class losers.
Nobody's they didn't get it. They don't understand. Nobody knew
(07:53):
that that song was about my father, that it was
about death, that it was a love song to someone
in the Great yawned. That kind of tragedy leaves a scar.
When your father blows his head open, that's not funny.
I was just nine when he took his own life.
He sat in the front seat of his car back
(08:14):
in Brooklyn, connected a tube to the exhaust, put the
tube in the window, and just swam in it. And
that's what was on his tombstone. To know him is
to love him. The pain is always there. It's a constant.
(08:35):
To hurt is a natural phenomenon, especially for an artist.
Da Vinci felt pain. Wagner felt pain. I feel pain,
but I don't get depressed. I don't allow myself to
get depressed. It's a waste of emotion. I envy the
little old lady who sits in front of the TV
(08:56):
set and believes who praise and believe She'll go to
he event and says, Amen, just believes it all. I'd
like to believe I resent her and I'm jealous of her.
I wish I believed the way that George Harrison believed.
I recorded My Sweet Lord with him, and I convinced
myself in that moment that I believed you have to
(09:19):
you have to to make it authentic. That's why I
was different from other producers special Most producers just interpret.
I would create. It was like what Da Vinci did
when he approached a canvas, he would turn himself over
to it. Now on the flip side, I also recorded
(09:41):
God with John Lennon, which was about not believing, not
believing in anything other than yourself. You see, it was
the complete opposite of George's record, and I approached that
the same way I approached My Sweet Lord. I was
there to create, to make something that people would be
in awe for years to come, and it didn't matter
(10:01):
what I believe. I wish I believe that God would
look after me the way I've been disrespected misunderstood in
my life. I think it's obvious that if there is
a God, he's not looking out for me at all.
And like John, I only believe in myself. That doesn't
bring me much comfort. In fact, it scares me to death.
(10:25):
It scares me to death because I may not believe
in God, but I know there's a devil. You want
(10:59):
to talk about lack of respect, Let's talk about the police.
Let's talk about the Los Angeles Police Department, the Alhambra
Police Department. I said it before with Lenny Bruce, and
I'll say it again with me. The police are too
much an overdose of police. They walk the s S walk.
(11:25):
They rule with an iron fucking fist. That's how they
treat people like me and people like Lenny, people who
are different, people who stand up and say what they
think and what they believe. They take it too far.
They take it too far with people who have never
given any indication that they believe themselves to be above
(11:46):
the law, people who put their money where their mouth is.
The last time I checked, this was a free country,
is it not. I can say what I want and
print what I want. I'm not breaking the laws. I
didn't make any friends with the police over the years,
(12:08):
going back all the way to when Lenny died and
I paid for all those full page ads in Billboard
and cash box, and then I had a few run
ins with them over the years, the Beverly Hills Hotel
and the Daisy Club and all that, all misunderstandings again,
and I had a license to carry the gun. But see,
(12:28):
that's how they decide, How they preemptively decide that they
don't like you, that you are one of the bad ones,
and then they disrespect you. They beat Miles Davis in
the head until he bled while he was smoking a
cigarette outside bird Land between sets at his own gig.
They had already decided that they didn't like him because
(12:50):
he was black, because he was a musician, because he
was in their way on the sidewalk, just smoking a cigarette.
The cops who came to my home would as a castle.
By the way, the cops who came to my home
on the morning of February third, two thousand three, were
the same way. Sixteen cops, sixteen al Hambra cops showed
(13:11):
up on my doorstep. We had called for a paramedic.
We had a lady who was injured in the foyer
of my home and needed a paramedic. But did they
send a paramedic. No, they sent sixteen cops who wanted
to interrogate me on the stairs outside my home. And meanwhile,
this girl has slumped lifeless across the chair and my foyer.
(13:32):
Was she alive? Was she dead? I didn't know, and
they didn't know either, because they were wasting time arguing
with me outside. I'm not a paramedic. They argued with
me for forty five minutes before they came inside. And
when they did come inside, they came inside like animals.
(13:55):
They were drunken animals. How do I know that they
weren't drunk? No, I never read the cops the Riot
Act that day the way they read it to me.
They came in barnstorming. There were stormtroopers. They were fucking gestapo.
I'm five ft five, barely forty pounds. They knocked me down,
(14:16):
They broke my nose, they gave me two black eyes,
they cracked my spine, and then they tasered me with
fifty volts of electricity. They knocked me down on the
floor of my own home, and we were still waiting
for the paramedics. They could have saved her, obviously, a
terrible mistakes, but it's not terribly supposing that he could
(14:40):
make such a mistake. Mist And what about her. I
had just met her that night. She didn't even know
who I was. At first. I barely knew anything about her.
All I knew was what she had told me during
the few hours we were together that night. I knew
she was an actress, though I don't think I had
ever seen any of her movies. But I don't know
(15:00):
if she was depressed. Like I said before, I don't
let myself get depressed, so I don't know that I
would know if I saw it. And again, to hurt
is a natural phenomenon, so maybe she was hurting in
that moment. I don't know if she meant to take
her own life or if it was an accident. She
was intoxicated when I first met her. She took an
(15:23):
open bottle of tequila with her from the House of
Blues to the car. She was taking vicodin. She must
have hurt. I know her. People have said the opposite
about me, that I don't have any sympathy or empathy.
They've said horrible things about me about how I treated them,
How did I treat Ronnie so poorly. I loved Ronnie.
(15:46):
I gave her everything away. I welcomed these people into
my house. Debbie Harry, Leonard Cohne, the Ramons, Tina Turner.
I had them all to the Big House on La Collina,
Mikasa Sukasa. I saved the Beatles. I got John and
(16:08):
George back on their feet when the Beatles broke up.
You're just shooting talking. How could they have hated me?
How can they still hate me? How could they hate
somebody whose records were filled with so much love before?
All these people were confused. I think Adriana was confused
(16:30):
that morning, the morning of February three, I think he
was confused, and he was in shock. It's hard to
understand what he says half the time. The kids from Brazil,
you know, and he still has a ways to go
before he masters the English language. He saw me come
out of the house and I was visibly upset. Sure
I was holding the revolver. There was blood. There had
(16:56):
been a terrible accident. We were in the foyer, me
and Lana. I held the gun, she held the gun.
At some point the gun went off. What else is
there to tell you? I'm sure I wasn't making any sense.
When I walked outside to talk to Adriano. The regular
guy Dylan. Now, maybe he would have understood what I
(17:19):
was saying better if he had been there, Maybe he
would have told the cops something different than all of
this would have been different. But whatever I said to Adriana,
I can't even remember what I said. I think he
just misheard what I said and had a hard time
communicating that to the authorities. You just aren't in your
(17:39):
right mind in that kind of situation. None of us are.
It's a shock to the system. You can't think straight.
I can't talk straight. It was my word against everyone
else's words. It had always been my word against everyone else's.
(18:02):
Maybe that's where the word genius comes from, the gene
in us. What can I say? I wasn't like everybody else.
We'll be right back after this word word word. You
(18:28):
know somebody wants. Asked me a question. I said, Philip,
aren't you lonely in this big house? All those rooms
to roam around in? Damn must be lonely. And you
(18:48):
know what I said, I said, you ever live in
one room very lonely? Just you in the bathroom, man,
you in the sink you in the toilet. Loneliness is
(19:09):
a state of mind. You know what's lonely? Feeling like
you're the only one on your side. Lonely is having
no control over your fate. My fate is in the
hands of twelve people who voted for George Bush. What
kind of justice is that the jurors filled out this
(19:32):
questionnaire of them said I was guilty from the get go,
from said I'm insane, and the judge hates me. How
is that justice? It's rigged. The whole system is rigged.
The cops had their mind made up before they even
(19:54):
walked into my house the castle that morning. The jury
had their minds it up, the judge, the press, the media.
How could they hate somebody whose records are filled so
much love and so much pure fucking talent. You probably
(20:16):
have your mind made up, but you don't even know.
You haven't even tried to know. They don't understand. I
lost my father when I was nine, man, I learned
about true loneliness before anyone should. I lost my father,
I lost Philip Jr. Wife after wife left me, I
(20:39):
lost John to that lunatic. What about my loss? Doesn't
that count for something? And the friends that I thought
I had, were they even friends to begin with? I
mean ship Man, When I Turner was down on his luck,
when they put him in prison in Coke, who visited
(21:00):
him in prison? Who did? I did? Motherfucker shore? And
when he got out, who helped him get on his
feet financially? And he's going to talk about me not
paying for his cab to come to a party. When
Darlene Love was cleaning houses and trying to make ends meet,
when she was desperate and had no one to go to,
(21:22):
no one to help, who helped her? Who helped her
pay her rent for a year? Man? That was me?
That was me? And now this poor woman's life has
ended accidentally or on purpose, we'll never know. It ended
in the foyer of my castle. And all the fingers
(21:45):
of all these people, these people that I helped, your Lord,
all these fingers are pointed at me. It's convenient for
them to forget about everything else. They all need someone
to be the pats here. I'm there, Patsy. Apparently I'm
the guide. And so they spread these rumors, and that's
(22:07):
what they are. Rumors, Rumors about my character, rumors about
my actions and my impulses. They spread these rumors to
make themselves feel better and to drag my name through
the mud. They're all rewriting history, that's what they're doing.
They're rewriting history so that years down the road, when
(22:29):
people talk about Phil Specter, people are only going to
talk about this awful thing that happened in my home,
about how I'm a bully. How can somebody whose records
are so They aren't going to talk about you've lost
that love and feeling, or imagine, or about he's a rebel.
(22:52):
They're not honesty. They're not going to talk about how
I pioneered a revolution in pop music. I was the
bridge between Elvis and the beatles Man. That's what John said.
Pure talent. I was twenty when I made my first
(23:12):
number one record. I created a new sound, a new
way to make records. That kind of person doesn't just
come along every day because they don't know that kind
of person. You see the police, the district attorney, the judge,
(23:35):
even the jury man. They've never been around that kind
of person before. They wouldn't know a musical genius from Adam.
They don't understand. Most of them are so young that
the whole era is lost on them. They don't recognize
the songs. But you know what kind of person these
people all know, an evil person, murderers, the eves, monsters,
(24:03):
the district attorney and the judge and the police. They're
all around those kinds of people all day, every day.
So that's all they see. If they look at a person,
and it doesn't matter how many hit records he has,
or how many mansions he's owned, how many beatles he
has in his rolodex. They look at a person and
(24:25):
they see the worst. That's what they're paid to do.
And then the jurors, they're on a steady diet of
law and order, judge, judy or whatever the cop or
courtroom TV show of the day is. They speak in
remedial legalise. They think they're all junior detectives, but they
(24:47):
don't know anything about it. They say, I was standing
close to her when the gun went off, but I
was only two feet away. That's what the forensics team said. Well,
what does the forensics team know about anything? They weren't there.
All they have is one piece of the puzzle, a
tiny little piece that they looked at under a microscope.
(25:07):
They aren't privy to the circumstances. They don't know who
was doing what or who was saying what. They don't
know anything about it, None of them do. I can't
really venture to guess some what he was thinking. They
all think they know me, but they've never tried to
know me, and they never will. M April two thousand nine,
(26:06):
Los Angeles, six years after the death of Lana Clarkson,
Bill Specter was found guilty of second degree murder. At
the time of his sentencing, he was sixty nine years old.
It was Specter's second murder trial in two years. The
first trial, in two thousand seven, was televised. Specter did
(26:27):
not testify. The jury deliberated for fifteen days, but couldn't
reach the necessary unanimous verdict. It ended in mistrial hung jury.
The second trial was the charm At the retrial, prosecutors
called Specter a very dangerous man in detail of his
history playing Russian Roulette with women. Specter's lawyers fought back
(26:49):
and went after Specter's own personal bad guys, the cops.
The judge noted that this was not an isolated incident,
the taking of innocent human life. He said, it doesn't
get any more serious than that. Specter's love of firearms,
his uncontrollable temper, and his violent and volatile history with
women came back to haunt him. Even his music, his
(27:12):
art came back to haunt him. One of the first
songs he recorded with the Crystals, he Hit Me and
It Felt Like a Kiss, certainly didn't do any favors
to his notorious reputation. After a five month trial, the
jury returned their unanimous verdict. Specter sat in the courtroom
stone faced as the judge read the verdicts nineteen years
to life. Specter stared straight ahead, stared out at his space.
(27:37):
He made no movement. All he did was blink his eyes.
He showed no emotion. He didn't indicate that he was
listening at all. In addition to the sentence, Specter was
ordered to write a check to the Clarkson family for
seventeen grand to cover funeral expenses. The judge denied Specter's
request for a third trial. Specter's lawyer promised to appeal,
(27:59):
and then man who once said I could strut sitting
down I was so brazen walked a far less confident
strut from the courtroom directly to jail. The bailiff shuffled
Specter out of the courtroom, out of his dark pinstriped
suit and red silk tie, and into his California Department
of Corrections issued costume. That moment of transition sealed the deal.
(28:23):
He was no longer Phil Specter the producer, or Phil
Specter the musical genius. He was no longer Phil Specter,
the supposed celebrity. He was now Phil Specter, the murderer,
Phil Specter the gun not Phil Specter the explosive, perfectionist.
Phil Specter the womanis or the boozer, the psycho loaner
up in the castle on the Hill who wore Batman
(28:45):
costumes and air conditioned darkness. Was back to being the
loner he was as a child, the one who was
different ostra size, misunderstood. He was no longer the bully.
He'd be bullied from now on, just like he'd been
bullied in school. Now eleven years later, Phil Specter is
eighty years old and spends his days at a prison
(29:06):
health care facility in Stockton, California, where he is ben
since October two thousand and thirteen. Is eligible for early parole.
In two thousand, Specter's musical productions remained some of the
greatest of the twentieth century. River Deep, Mountain High, You've
Lost that love and feeling in My Sweet Lord are
the songs of an autour, works of art made possible
(29:29):
by a process and a style that was as myopic
as it was universal. In later years, as musical and
social trends continued to evolve, Specter became increasingly stubborn and
refused to evolve with everyone else. But even some of
his later productions albums by Leonard Cohen and Dion, though
initially panned upon their release, have risen in critical acclaim.
(29:51):
Phil Specters identifiable stamp, whether delivered as a wall of
sound or stripped down and raw, remains a stunning time
capsule in moments frozen in amber or at least pressed
into wax. For many, it's rapturous pop music that will
never be taught. For many others, it's hard to separate
the art from the artist, and the music filled with
(30:13):
so much love was in fact the brainchild of a petty,
vindictive and abusive man. Because no matter how much love
is on the tracks, no matter how much honesty is
on the tracks, no matter how much pure fucking talent
is on the tracks. It's all tainted. All the love, honesty,
and talent are tainted by blood. It's all there, the
(30:39):
blood on the Tracks. This episode of Blood on the
Tracks is brought to you by seven Club, a podcast
that I host on musicians who died at the age
(31:00):
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 podcasts, and
of course, this episode 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,
(31:22):
Jeremy Lewis, Cardi B, The Grateful Dead, Jay 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 on the Tracks was written by
Zeth Lundie and scored in mixed by Matt Bowden, hosted
by me Jake Brennan. Additional music and score elements by
(31:45):
Ryan Spreaker and Henry Lunana. This episode featured Chris Anzelonius
Phil Specter. 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
m on the Blood on the Track series page. If
you like it here, please be sure to subscribe to
Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio
(32:07):
app wherever you get your podcasts, and if you'd like
to win a free Blood on the Tracks poster designed
by Nike Gonzalez and leave a review for Blood on
the Tracks on Apple Podcast, you can hashtag Blood on
the Tracks on social media. Leave your review there. We'll
pick two winners each week and announce them on the
Double Elvis Instagram page that's at double Elvis. Go ahead
and give that a followup alright. As always, you can
(32:30):
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 or Dad
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