Double Elvis. Technically, CarMax is a virtual reality company. You can shop the lot virtually online, or you can see the cars in reality on the lot, or you could have the best of both worlds. We give you the freedom to shop or buy however you need. Like we said, virtual reality don't come for us tech people. It's car buying reimagined Carmacks. What were you doing thirty days ago? What did you eat? What did you listen to? Did you sing in the shower? Did you call your mom?
Did you laugh? Did you cry? Do you even remember what day it was thirty days ago? Of course not, because thirty days is a long time, which is why CarMax gives you thirty long days to make sure you love your car. And if you don't love it, you can return it and get your money back the Carmacks thirty day money back warranty. It's car buying reimagined carmacksmit see carmacks dot com for details. I'm Katherine Townsend, host
of the true crime podcast Helen Gone. On October two thousand fifteen, the Little Rock Police Department searched an abandoned car in a small residential part. The car belonged to eighteen year old Ebbie Stepic. Ebbie had vanished without a trace. I'm back in Arkansas trying to find out what really happened to Ebbie Stepa. Listen to Helen Gone on the I Heart Radio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Blood on the Tracks is a 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 with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double O four Dash ten Dash seven
four one nine case subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to the period and in August third, sixty six interview subject as Bruce Lenny Interview number one Dash thirty four DAST six five six Dash six six seven Spirit Confessional Recall number two Day jan two thousand three. People law believe is good, bad, good, and evil. Maybe he was. I don't know this music evil, free speech, evil, rock and roll, bulls music. All the First Amendment is
free to speech, the right to say it. Whatever it is you want to say, you're the right to say it. But they can't police the bat out of somebody bad, and they can't beat it out of either, because there is no beating. To them all, there is this blood all the tracks. Chapter one, Phil Specter and Lenny Bruce. Look. Other people thought I was really wild, just really far out there. Like they thought that maybe I'd lost my mind, and maybe I had. I'm not talking about the so
called obscenities and my act on stage. It wasn't even an act, Okay, I'm talking about later. I'm talking about after I've been arrested for the last time and people were bored with me. They moved on. I moved on to I moved into that house up in the hills, one off Hollywood Boulevard, just shot up the strip from Phil's place. People would visit and take one look at my study and it was a mess. And I could see that, Okay, I'd give him that it was a mess.
It made sense in my mind, it made sense outside of my mind, made sense on paper. But to them, they saw something far out. There were hundreds of pieces of legal paper, you know, that yellow line stuff all over the floor. I wrote a word in the middle of each piece, just one word, a phrase, and then I'd ripped the page out toss it on the floor. I read another word on the next one, another phrase, just one one of the straight thoughts, and then I wropped a piece of paper up and tossed it on
the floor with the others. Phil brought Mike Spencer up to the house. Mike was one of his piano guys, might get some friends with him. Phil was always bringing people by the house and say hello, Hey, come on, come meet Lenny. That's sort of thing, ladies and gentlemen. Mike stood in my study just staring at the hundreds of pieces of paper on the floor. He couldn't believe that this was how a comedian worked. What can I say? Man? At that point, it was the only way that made
sense to me. My life was all fucked. The judge finally came down on me with that narcotics thing, that junkie rat two hundred and sixty bucks one of year suspended sentence, a couple of years of probation that was after everything else, blue shirts, and put me in handcuffs from like six times during the first half of the sixties. They arrested me in San Francisco for saying cox sucker of all things. They arrested me in Los Angeles for
saying schmuck. They squeezed me in Philadelphia, and that was for the junk I think city, Brother in love you dig And then they arrested me in Chicago, New York City. Nightclubs all over the country put me on a blacklist, A list of one brother. Let me tell you that I got yank from the stage of a burlesque club of all places, because I was too dirty. And they wouldn't even let me in the United Kingdom anymore or Australia. I wouldn't want to corrupt to kangaroo. So what can
I say, man? I was drained physically emotionally. I was bankrupt too, and I couldn't keep from sticking that goddamn needle in my arm anymore. Phil was the only one who believed to me. Phil New destitute, Phil new loneliness, Phil Specter knew the face of a man who had been forsaken by his peers, by the beloved old guard establishment. I was penniless, addicted, I guess Phil so kindred spirit in me a brother. He took me to his place. I'm not Collina driving Beverly Hills. Jesus Christ, it was
a fucking mansion. He let me use his office down on the strip. Through some money at me when I needed it. I feel even one on the MERV Griffith Show defended me in front of another film. Phil Foster, That old schmuck. Foster was this standoffice old prick who just finished telling MERV that he hated new music, the kind of music Phil was making. And then they bring Phil up from the wings and bush Foster with him.
Fills there with his newsboy cap, holding on for dear life on top of his bushy hair, and his sideburns had been taken on a life of their own, taken over half his face. MURV introduces Phil as the king of rock and roll records, which he knew he was, and Foster can't see it because he's somewhat Sinatra crony. Foster starts beating on Phil the way those old girl comics do. It's all these pricks know what to do. It's like the verbal equivalent of sitting on top of
someone's face. It's fucking rope man. It's lame. I record Lenny Bruce. Phil proclaimed right there on national television, and I was a mess man. Persona on Grata America knew it, and sure ship old Mr Griffin knew it too. Phil Specter didn't give one fuck that song by the Crystals that Phil wrote. He's a rebel, yeah, and I could have been written about me. I was else rebble and I yelled that rebble yelled louder than Phil Specter. Whatever dare. Okay,
Bill Specter was not hit. His reputation preceded. I'm sure the tycoon of teen on that nonsense. He said he had his finger on the pulse of young America, that he turned something disposable into art. I didn't know anything about that. That wasn't my world. Talked to me about Cannonball, Adderlie or Bill Evans, and I'm picking up when you're thrown down. Talk to me about Darlene Love and the Teddy Bears, and you've lost me. So when they say he had his finger on the pulse, I only ever
saw his fingers wrapped around cold, hard cash. He took the pulse of money pretty damn well. He knew what it felt like to touch what it smelled like you could smell the residue of Chris Bills and his Caddyman. It was all over him like an after shave. Get the kind of money that allowed him to catch a flight from l A to San Francisco last minute on a Sunday evening. You see a midnight show by yours. Truly, he was just hanging around one Sunday afternoon and felt
like getting out of the house. Threw down his bucks. United flight, this, United flight that, and he was at the Basin Street West when I took the stage at twelve sharp. Jesus, can you imagine that kind of cash? I was up to my eyeballs and dead at that point. I'd never lived comfortably again, so I thought I was, let's see maybe four grand in the hole at that point in the Basin Street West, you should have seen this place. Phil was there with some DJs from Los Angeles,
and then they were a handful of other people. A handful is generous man midnight on a Sunday. It wasn't like it used to be. I didn't even have enough cash to buy a pack of smokes that alone, goddamn fix. I felt like a schmuck. I couldn't let anyone know. I felt like a shark. So here comes Phil smells like dollar bills, crisp on sure, but crumpled ones to the ones you find at the bottom of your pockets, and you levies when you're doing laundry, bawled up, forgotten about.
He wants me to come down to l A spend some time with him. He wants to produce some of my shows. He's got an idea for a residence at the found The Theater. He wants to release my next live album. Can I say he came on strong? And what did I known't even enough not to say no, I'm playing to a handful of sorry, asked Fox at the Basin Street West, one of the only gigs I could find at the time. I was broke. I was down, I was out. Here's this guy, He's basically rolling up
the red carpet. He may have had the means, but he certainly was not hip. I mean, he may have talked the talk, he may have worn the shades about the collar of his pea coat and dangled the occasional cigaretta from his lips, but the man was the squarest of the squares. He didn't walk nor walk, but he liked how I walked the walg Phil looked at me and saw a guy with a dirty mom, the guy who said what he wanted, a guy who didn't give a fuck. He saw a drug addict. He saw a
drug addict. Within a rest record longer than the personnel sheet for one of his Wall of Sound sessions, he was close to being a has been himself. Maybe he saw a kindred spirit in me, a couple of dried up, tossed out losers. He told me about how he had made the biggest songs in the world for acts simply turned the backs on him, and about the groups that he hit big with and then struggled to hit big with again, those Ronnetts and Righteous Brothers again not my
bag man. And Phil told me that he was the true artist, the true architect, the one who allowed everyone else a few minutes of infamy on the dial and then it just all slipped from his hands. And you know what, I let him see whatever he wanted to see. Phil had the cash, and he wanted to give the cash to me, and that's all that mattered. He could put me on whatever pedestal he wanted. Sure, I hung out with him in l A, spent a lot of
time at that old Wolworth mansion. Has sat down in the back of that caddy with him while we cruised down Labraa so he could grab a couple of dogs from pinks. I always gave a ship for that. It's all lips and assholes, Phil, I told him, made him laugh, and maybe that's what he needed me. I needed bread. I needed bread to buy my daughter a birthday present. Needed money for a pack of smokes, needed money for other things that I didn't tell Phil about. He was on a need and no basis, as was I. I
suppose I went to Danny Davis for the cash. Phil's business manager. Phil told him to give me whatever I needed, no questions asked. One time I overheard Danny talking on the phone about how I was just a phase for Phil. The Phil went through people like he went through hit records. So I decided to double down, squeeze as much juice as I could get, lending my ear when Phil was looking for one to bend. Look. I knew about his past, I knew about the ship. He had a dirty asthma's
allergy to sunlight. He was a fat kid. It was teased relentlessly. He never shook that thing with his father either. Phil told everyone that this old man had a heart attack, just some normal one of the mill cover story. But he told me the real story. He told me all the real stories. I'm telling you. The guy thought he was talking to himself, and he was talking to me. I can't explain it. He told me the thing that this old man was April. It was a big deal
that it was April. For some reason, that fact really stuck in his brain for some time. Around then, he made some passing reference to debts, the organized crime, distress, and depression. That was the fuzzy part the party was clear about. It was the part where his old man parked his car on the curve of Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, took a two and put one end in the exhaust p put the other end in the front window, rolled the window uptight, and turned the car on. What a
way to go? All right? I means ship. I don't know what do I know about taking it along full of carbon monoxide? It seems like a hell of a way to go. We'll be right back after this word word were what were you doing? Thirty days ago? What did you eat? What did you listen to? Did you sing in the shower? Did you call your mom? Did you laugh? Did you cry? Do you even remember what
day it was thirty days ago? Of course not, because thirty days is a long time, which is why CarMax gives you thirty long days to make sure you love your car. And if you don't love it, you can return it and get your money back the Carmacks thirty day money Back Guarantee. It's car buying reimagined carmacksmit. See carmacks dot com for details. Technically, CarMax is a virtual reality company. You can shop the lot virtually online, or you can see the cars in reality on the lot,
or you could have the best of both worlds. We give you the freedom to shop or buy however you need. Like we said, virtual reality don't come for us tech people. It's car buying reimagined Carmacks. Hi. I'm Katie Lows. You might also know me as Quinn Perkins from Scandal or Rachel from Inventing Anna. I'm also a mother to my son Albi and my daughter Vera. I wanted to create a space for open and honest conversations about all things parted, and I thought a podcast was the best way to
do just that. Check out season five of my podcast, Katie's Crib. It is super raw, vulnerable, and hilarious. Katie's Crib in no way shape form is judgmental or telling you exactly how to parent or exactly how you should be. I think it really just makes you feel less alone and gives you a community. We're going deep with guests like inventing Anna's Anna club Ski, how to Get Away with Murders Asian Naomi King, and yes, sometimes my fun Albi when he burst into my studio. So that's cool.
Listen to Hatis Cram every Thursday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. One night, Bill wouldn't let me leave his car. I'm talking about that caddy a limo, right. The thing was a beast ship. A couple of guys like us could have lived in that thing for a few days. And this night I really thought that was gonna happen, that we live in the thing. He just didn't want me to leave him, not that, not yet. It was so late and the sun was almost up again. It was
late it was early. What was the difference? Phil and I were both living the kind of lives that didn't pay attention to the day of the week, let alone what hour it was. He sat in the back of that caddy together, one across from the other. He just kept talking to me. I would make a movement, motioned towards the door. He put a hand up, asked me another question and asked me where I was going? Tell me another story? Hey, Lenny, did I tell you about
the time? Give me a reason to stay the caddie i'le We sat talked until we ran out of things to talk about. When he had nothing else to talk about, we listened to the engine harming per He didn't want to go back to his place all alone. The guy was the biggest pot producer on the planet did but he was always alone. Charles Foster came going back to Xantitude for another lonely night. We had just driven back from Cancers out on Fairfax Joint Coacher scene and be
seen the whole scene, the whole night. You are the knock worst, the knock worst that cancers have. You had it out of sight. It was late, so late, nighthawks at the Diaming League. Probably two am. Doesn't matter how late it gets in l A. The lights are always on the neon hums above the storefront. Sounds like steak sizzling on the grill. And it's bright too, manh It's sometimes l A at night. It feels more alive than
it does during the day. Is that big electric hum before nineteen North Fairfax Cantors, Fairfax open twenty four hours Bakery Delicatessen. You can tell what time it was by the crowd of cancers. You didn't need to watch. If the joint was full of a bunch of octogenarians taking long slopes of suit, it was midmorning. The place was jumping with a bunch of wire kids, kicking out from the last party and looking for the next one. It was two am. Phil took me with him to meet
with Frank Sappa that night. Phil, one of the company, wanted a familiar face with him in case Frank bored him to tears. Of course, he brought one of his bodyguards with The two might have a big red. Phil thought he was the most important person in the world, and the bodyguard helps sell that image. Was the ultimate hustle Frank was doing a little hustling himself. I'm sure the big labels were a bit skeptical of him. Everyone
was skeptical of whom in his band. The Mother's are invention, long hairs, beards, looked like a bunch of acts murderers, he did. Frank needed a label to release his first record. He thought, maybe Phil get involved, put it out on his Phillies label. I think Frank saw fellow outcast, a fellow member of the French Frank thought he had found his meal ticket. Sure, and of course there was Frank's idea of Fringe, and then there was Phil's idea of Fringe,
and the two were light years apart. Frank brought this cat with him, Danny Bruce. Danny Bruce, no ship, I said, are you shooting me? Who the fuck is this guy? He had to be working with me, right, am I? Right, Danny fucking Bruce. I looked this guy straight in his eyes and I said, are you working with me? Man?
I swear I thought it was some cosmic joke, some cosmic two am joke on Junkie Jones and for something sharp and hot at the Kosher Delhi on Fairfax, And Denny Bruce said no, man, I'm Danny Bruce, no relation, no ship. Frank starts talking about how he changed his name as a tribute to me, so Danny corrects him. The name has nothing to do with me. His room name was Leonard Schneider, and he needs something a little less jew and a little more going for show biz.
I get that, me and Frank who got into it. He looked at me and saw a kindred spirit. Frank thought I was some besiah, no joke. All Frank wonder was the question authority against authority, And here he had the guy who took that anti authority chat all the wags of the bitter end. I couldn't have cared less Jack, Jack, Frank, whatever the fucking name is. I just needed to get through the social engagement so that I could feel okay. But I hit and Phil up for some more cash,
which of course meant more junk. And then we were back home, the Caddy limo rolling up to my place out on West Hollywood Boulevard, way up there in the weeds of Tinseltown. I just needed to fix That's all I could think about. It's all I thought about all night. They filled any idea. He didn't care. He wouldn't know a needle if it jumped from the ground and poked him in their ass. I kept my secrets pretty close to the vest. Phil's secrets weren't kept at all, at
least not around me. They tumbled out, they spewed forth, they were blurted. There was no embargo on the kinds of things that came out of his mouth. He used the stories to keep me hanging around after he doled out the money, like to think about his old man. And now in the car outside my place, way out in the Willie Wags of Hollywood Boulevard, he was telling me more secrets, secrets that would buy him a few more minutes with me, a few more minutes before he
had to be alone again. He was telling me about the time he got pissed on by a couple of kids have followed him into a bathroom after he just played a show, The Teddy Bears, that's what they were called, which I mean, in all fairness, sounds like the name of a band that wants to get piste on in a men's bathroom, if you know what I'm saying. Here's Phil and his flat top and embroidered sweater. He's the manifestation of a mark a square. And this is back
when he couldn't hide be in the square. It's so lay fifties. I think he said it was in New York, but it doesn't matter. These kids he feel performed. And then when he heads into the men's room there on his tail, he has no clue. A couple of them whole fill down on the floor. Another one keeps watching at the door, and another one on zips his khakis
and just pisces all over him. Humiliates. Phil is like twenty years old, breaking into show biss and he's being held down against the cold, wet tile of a nondescript men's room while pisces raining down on him. Maybe that's why I felt a connection with me. He was humiliated on the floor of the bathroom by some holier than that. Thus I was humiliated on the stage by some holier than the cops. Phil Specter was absolutely fucking nothing like me, but he thought he was man. What else he thought?
I'd never know? And that was last night I ever saw. August thirty six to five West Hollywood Boulevard, not the iconic Hollywood Boulevard that runs parallel to Sunset Bulevard. But the Hollywood Boulevard that passes over Laurel Canyon, The Hollywood Boulevard that retreats up the hill, the one that hides him on the oaks and sycamores and eucalyptus trees, the one that gets squirrelly, twisted, winding, shady, obscured. That's the
Hollywood Boulevard. The sirens raced up that night. A little to the west, the phone rang in Phil Specter's house. Were traveled fast. Phil answered the phone, listen to the voice on the other line, didn't say a word. Within seconds, he slammed the receiver down so hard it made the bell ring on the base of the rotary. Phil grabbed Danny Davis by the shirt collar, pulled him quickly from the house, and they ran outside. They tore ass to
the white caddy. Phil yelled at Danny, told him to get in the car and told him to drive fast. They needed to get over to Lenny's place as quickly as fucking possible. They needed to be there ten minutes ago. They avoided the strip and went the back roads. They hit to he Neat Too, Sunset Hills, right onto Oriole and then thrash her app rising Glen Road, Sunset Plaza Drive, and finally banged a hard right on the Hollywood Boulevard.
There were cops outside Lenny's place. When they arrived, bright coplights. Phil was out of the caddy and pacing furiously towards the front door. The cops were standing around, talking low, mumbling under their breath, smoking cigarette butts with red hot ends flicked to the ground, filled it and stopped to ask questions or announce his presence. Phil was inside now. He followed the cops, made his way into the living room,
passed the kitchen, more cops towards the bathroom. Even more cops, and they were like a trail of breadcrumbs, those cops. And they led Phil Specter right to what he'd been told he would find Lenny Bruce dead on the floor next to the john, his pants around his ankles, a needle at his arm, gloated, half naked, exposed, humiliated. Lenny was gone, daddy O. Phil looked around at the bathroom
full of cops, These goddamn cops. They persecuted Lenny, harassed him, told him what he could and couldn't say, told him which jaks he could tell, told him what words he could say, pulled him from the stage, put him in handcuffs, chewed him up, spat him out, left him for dead. Lenny wasn't the only one exposed and humiliated on a bathroom floor. Phil also thought back to his own bad memory in a bathroom. Bathrooms were a bad scene, man, and this scene was the worst. His heart pounded. He
felt himself losing control of his better judgment. He was on his knees now, and the cops tried to haul him away, but he stood his ground. You did this, he shouted at every batch in the room. You killed him. An overdose of morphine. Fucking ponderous. It was an overdose of police, plain and simple. Phil couldn't shake the police. They came by his office soon after Lenny's stat fist full of photos from the scene in Lenny's bathroom. The raw shots of Lenny Lang prone in the bathroom tile
looked like something from Luigi's portfolio. The cops joke that maybe Phil wanted to buy them for one of his album covers. It was a sick joke, but Phil took it as a serious offer. How much he asked five grand sold it was a small price to pay to keep them out of someone else's hands, and it was the last piece of Lenny that he could hold on to. Phil couldn't shake Lenny. He paid for the funeral, delivered the eulogy. He hung a giant poster of money directly
above his bed, larger than life. In it, Lenny's gaze was tired but foreboding, the look of a man far past his prime, bloated, worn out, scatter rained on junk. Phil would climb into bed, find comfort in Lenny's gaze wearing down on him, But his wife, Ronnie Specter, would lay next to him, Unable to close her eyes. She'd turn on her side, her stomach, but she always felt
Lenny's eyes following her, burning into her, judging her. She would roll onto her back, look up at the overbearing image of the man her husband briefly idolized his Socrates, he would say, and she felt that something was terribly wrong. She felt it was an omen a warning from on the grave and above her bed, something evil. There is no good, and there is no evil. There's only blood
on the tracks. This episode of Blood on the Tracks is brought to you by twenty seven Club, a podcast that I host on Musicians who Died at the Age of Season two, featuring Jim Morrison is now available, as is season one, with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribed to The Seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast, 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, 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, I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast, All right. This episode of Blood on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundi and scored in mixed by Matt Boden, posted by me Jake Brennan. Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spreaker
and Henry Lunetta. Blood on the Tracks is produced by myself for Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the Blood on the Tracks serious page. If you like what you here, please be sure to subscribe to Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app wherever you get your podcasts, and if you'd like to win a free Blood on the Tracks poster designed by Nate Gonzalez, and leave a review for Blood
on the Tracks on the Apple podcast. You can hashtag Blood on the Tracks on social media. Leave a review there and 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 phone alright. As always, you can find me blabbing about other crazy rock stars on Disgrace Land and twenty seven Club, and you can talk to me per usual on Instagram and Twitter at Disgrace slam Rockable. Protect your vehicle's engine with Syntech and
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Syntac today exclusively at O'Reilly Auto Parts Alright Auto Parts. Hi. I'm Elliott Kalin, comedian, author, history buff and host of the Who Was Podcast, a history quiz show based on the best selling Penguin book series where kid contestants go toe to toe for a chance to win fantastic prizes from Alexander the Great to Aretha Franklin. We asked only important history questions like would Genghis Khan shop at hot topic? And did frieda callo like soup? Buckle up your brain?
Listen to the Who Was Podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From Cavalry Audio, the studio that brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls, comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Murders. The local sheriff believes there may be more than one killery. They were afraid he is facing out in that area. The family was targeted, most of them targeted while they were sleeping. Who could commit
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