Double Elvis. 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
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It's car buying reimagined. CarMax Spring it on with forty to off almost everything at gap Factory and gap factory dot Com. Matching styles for the family are on sale to shop at all through April twelve. 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 a so called friends. This is special Agent power moment the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working case number double oh four dash one zero DAP seven case subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to the period end in December fifteenth, nine four. Interview subject to Specter of Veronica Vette Interview number seven DAST zero five Dash three six dash six three Recall number one, February fourteenth, two thousand five. As time went on, they
started writing about him being a genius. He'd said, yeah, I am a genius, and then they'd say he's the mad genius. So he became the mad genius. Anything they wrote about him became he's a recluse, So he became a recluse. I think if Phil hadn't read anything about himself, he'd still be the same. But that's the story that he became a replicat of everything he read about himself.
I wouldn't say he's mad. I think a lot of times he's pretending to be because I've seen him straight, and I've seen him act with that way of his A lot of it may be mad, but a lot of it is certainly intentional to let people wonder what is this guy all about. I think he's always wanted attention. He's always wanted to be an artist on his own. He just didn't have the talent or or the voice. I think he's afraid to go back in the studio, afraid that it won't be a hit and that people
would start saying he's not such a genius. He wants to keep that title, and you can't keep that title without leaving a little blood on the tracks. M Chapter two, Phil Specter and Ronnie Specter. HM, oh, honey, I knew them all The Rolling Stones opened for us. Keith Richard put his eyes on me, honey. He wished his hands were on me too. When the Beatles came to America for the first time, Ringo called me from their hotel room. They were so green. Can you picture it? Ringo Star
calling Veronica? Been it? A girl from Spanish Harlem calling Ronnie for a hot tip. From the first time Me and the girls put our hair up and beehives. From the first time we walked down West forty with thick eyeliner, dressed to the nines, we floated on air. We glided real smooth, you see. From the first time, honey, it was go time. It was We stood in line at the Peppermint Lounge, walked that walk. That walk got us the nod. The bouncer thought we were the entertainment. We
took the Expressway to the front of that line. From that first time, doors opened behind one door, Keith Richards, behind another door, John Lennon behind door number three, a hit record like you wouldn't believe you couldn't walk half a block in New York City in the summer of nineteen sixty three and not here be my baby coming out of some tenement window or a car stereo. So, of course I thought that a life with Phil would
lead to more of the same. We'd be cut into the front of every line, calling up the stars on the phone, webbing elbows all that. Baby. But life with Phil closed more doors than it opened, Honey. The only door that Phil opened for me was the closet door, and he shoved me in there. I am serious, Honey. The closets at the house Unlock Colina were big, but they weren't that big. He kept me in that house like a prisoner. I have said it before and I'll
say it again. I was his prisoner. If I wanted to leave, if I wanted to go anywhere, or a walk, for a drive, go shopping, go see my friends, I had to ask George brand to let me out of my own damn house. You see, I was treated like a child. I was a prisoner. George lived in the basement George and his gun permit. Phil hired him as his latest bodyguard. This was after Big Red, after a mil Farcus bodyguard. Though George was just another way of Phil justifying all the ship he did made him feel
like a big man. Phil. I could tell you to fuck right off, and if you didn't like it, George would appear from behind Phil's shoulders to make sure there were no problems. Back to this closet, though, he locked me in the damn closet upstairs, honey. He liked to shoot me away to the bedroom when company came over, make myself scarce like I was some kept prize. Except he never wanted to show anyone his prize. He wanted the prize so he could say he had the prize,
that he and no one else had it. He had me, and there I was that night, locked in the closet upstairs. He forced me inside, closed the door, locked it with a pad lock or some ship. He had even put a lock on our liquor cabinet around this time. He said, I had been drinking too much. But honey, I took a screwdriver to that lock and busted it wide open. Wasn't my first rodeo. He put a bigger lock on it, and I found a bigger screw driver. There wasn't much
I could do from inside that closet. I screamed, Oh I did, I yelled. I banged my fist against the doors. This wasn't no live from the Peppermint Lounge, Honey. I wasn't floating my way out from between that rock and a hard place. With a beehive and a smile, Phil went downstairs to shoot pool with Don Krishner. They probably reminisced about the past, which Phil was obsessed with, his past hits, his past success, his past fame, all of
which eluded him. Now and when was this nineteen sixty nine. Probably. I mean, he's got the singer of one of the biggest hits of the sixties stuck in a closet on the second floor of his twenty one room mansion in Beverly Hills. Is it any wonder that Fame Aloud did him? Fame is a fickle bitch. Honey Manson had him paranoid and anxious wired. Why do you think George was sleeping in the basement with loaded weapons. We came home from a trip to Vegas that August. Right after it happened,
Phil went into a crisis mode. Hollywood went into crisis mode. He installed a chain link fence, barbed wire. He had some warning signs put around in the place, you know, no trespassing, that kind of thing. And then you got a couple of dogs, attack dogs. I hated those dogs. At this point, the point when I'm stuck in this huge closet, I had already tried to start the divorce process once we were not living the life I had envisioned, And now I wondered why I had dropped it. He
had me caged like an animal. On heard my screaming and my bang, and he came running from downstairs. Pool could wait. Whatever story they were batting around could wait. They could tell something was wrong, that someone was in need of his help. Phil. Phil wouldn't help nobody unless it helped him. Don through the closet door open and pulled me out by my arm. He led me all the way down the stairs, and then he kept going.
We walked fast, right past Phil, past the antique French furniture, past the nineteenth century oil paintings, passed the photos of me that he had plastered all over the walls, next his Picasso, the Matador, past the Steinway grand piano. Don kept walking until we were out of that house, and then he asked me where I wanted to go. He would take me anywhere but there, and I let him. I don't remember where we wound up going, but I do remember that it wasn't long before I was back
at that mansion and back with Phil. It started real sweet, real innocent. I started with guitars tuning up and drum sets pounding out a determined rhythm. I started with the promise of two and a half minute song, short but life changing. It started down an alley off Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine Gold Star Recording studios. You'll be amazed just how much can be done with sound. Nineteen sixty three. I was twenty, Phil was three. I didn't even know
he was married. He would bring me by his apartment and I'd ask him about all the women's clothes that were on his floor, on the edge of the bed, and he told me they belonged to his sister. It was Darlene who told me that he was married. He was with a girl named Annette. They were newly weds, actually, but at gold Star, at that tiny hole in the wall studio that he loved. For whatever reason, it was all me. He definitely favored me over a Stella Nedra. He focused on me, doated on me, and I ain't
gonna lie, honey. I liked the attention. Pretty Soon he had me come sit with him in the control room, a smaller room within a small room, being a circle inside a small circle. I felt bad leaving a Stella Nedra behind, But what can I say? I thought I could step on that pedestal he was offering without it change in me. What was that Tina song? A fool in love? He's got me smiling when I should be ashamed, got me laughing when my heart is in pain. Phil
started throwing his weight around. He would put himself between me and other men. Didn't want anyone else making eye contact with me, didn't want anyone talking to me. He was marking his territory, staking his claim. And though it may have seemed so at first, it wasn't a fairy tale. First off, he was married, newly married, you know the type. And second he was unreasonable for a guy who was stepping out on his brand new wife, he could be
awfully entitled. Before we were even official. He was pulling power moves whenever I left golds Are without telling Phil, even if I just walked out the door and into the alley. Phil went from my lovable genius to he got possessive, controlling, maniacal, even if it was just to grab burgers down the street with Sonny Bono. Sonny was a jack of all trades for Phil. Tell that Prisonnnny Banger's Kangari drive that car. Phil's cravings were routine, expected
a dog from Pinks Burger from stands drive in. He'd send Sunny to grab burgers and bring them back to gold Star. So one day Sunny runs out for burgers, not because Phil asked him to, but because he wants a burger. L A burgers ain't nothing like them. They come wrapped in these paper sleeves, self contained bliss with a thick tomato slice in the middle. Sunny tells me he's going to stands. I grabbed Nedra to run out with them. Keep him company, get some fresh air. That
old Star air that got stale. Honey got stale real quick. Phil must have flown off the handle when he realized I had left. When we got back to gold Star with the burgers, it looked like a bomb had gone off. Ship was knocked around, a chair upside down, Mike stands on the ground, Papers scattered everywhere, Tape unspooled from the reels. Phil was out of breath, His face was red. His hair the rug he had started wearing to add some depth to his hair he was losing, was must up.
He looked three seconds away from exploding. He called Sunny Sunny Bozo. After that, Sunny's girl Share took me dancing one night at the Purple Onion on the Strip, a jazz joint that had dance contest nights. We went on one of those dance nights, cut loose through the twist and all that, and here comes Phil, a bat out of hell, straight in through the front door, across the dance floor. He pulled my ass out of there so
fast made the twist seem like a slow waltz. We kept our relationship secret for many years, even though it was obvious to those who are around us the most. I was a little embarrassed, not just that he was still married, but for the way he treated me. But I held out, held out for the promise that the better days would outweigh the bad ones, that he would be less unreasonable, less volatile. Once he split from a net, we would hold court with the princess and queens of
pop music and really be somebody. He got a Mexican divorce in the mid sixties, around the time he moved to la for good. He hated l A, the soun, the drugs, the people who would turned their noses up at him when he was a kid kicking around the Fairfax District. He was the least likely l A person to be in l A. But he felt he could bend the l A musicians to his will in a way that New Yorkers never would. He had to be here. We got married in April nineteen. They shot Dr King
a few days before the wedding. Dr Martin Luther King, he apostle of non violence civil rights, has been a shot to death dynasty. I thought my wedding was over. We were all in shock over the news. Phil Phil went somewhere dark, somewhere alone at him, the King. He locked himself in the bedroom for days, brought in a reel to reel with them spools of Doctor King's speeches that he just listened to Dr King talk for days
on end. People. He told me that I just married him for his money, for his fame, and you know what baby moments like those, when he piled on the anger and the insults, moments like those. Sure, maybe I did it for the money and the fame and the attention. I'd say I didn't like what he had become, but it's fairly obvious that he had always been that way. I wasn't going back down my Spanish Harlem broots would
snap back if they got bent. I yelled back at him, told him he was washed up, that he hadn't made a good record in years. Then he came after me. I spent my wedding night, locked in the bathroom at the mansion on Lack Colina with my mother still banged on the door and he made some heartfelt plea did he bang on the door again? I didn't let him in all night. We'll be right back after this world. World World. Technically, car Max 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? Third 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 CarMax dot com for details launch greeting the Lens.
I'm Emily Stefan and I'm Jeminy Hernandez. Where your resident weirdos, artists of all trades and multicultural couple and we have a classified secret to share with you. We're aliens, Okay, just kidding. We're human unfortunately, but sometimes when we look around, we really do feel like we came from a different time or galaxy. So we created a space for all of us who wonder if we're in the right place, in the form of a podcast called In Our Own World.
And this is your official invitation to join us on our new planet, I mean podcast. Strap in for the ride. Warning it might get bumpy. We'll voyage through conversations about every everything under the stars and maybe even pick up a few passengers along the way. Listen to In Our Own World starting April as part of the Michael Douta podcast network, available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look, honey, I'll be
the first to admit it. I was drinking too much. I was drinking so much that I crashed the Camaro. This was the the White Camaro, the one Phil got me for my twenty five birthday. My initials in silver on the glove box. I'll remember the day I got it, August t n a white ribbon rafted around it. That first sight, I was in love. But there was a caveat with that gift. There was always a caveat with Phil.
He bought an inflatable man doll that I had to leave in the passenger seat anytime I drove around town on my own. His paranoia and his need to control me were reaching a fever pitch and in tandem. God forbid, someone saw me driving around l A on my own, What were they gonna do? Flag me down, hopping the car with me, make violent love to me right there on the leather. So I had too many drinks one day. The more I thought about Phil, the more irritated I became.
He wasn't making new music with me. He was barely making any music at all. I hadn't sung on a record of years, I had no social life. Film made sure that I could barely think for myself at home without asking Phil for mission. First, so I had another drink and another. Then I got behind the wheel of the Camaro, stuck an unlit cigarette and the mouth and the blow up doll and put it in drive. New
safety features are standing hours. The last thing I remember was swerving to avoid noncoming tree and then I was out. The Camaro was hanging off the side of a cliff. How I didn't fall off the side of the cliff to plummet to my death as anyone's guests. Maybe God was looking out for me that day, or maybe he wasn't He He did send me right back into the arms of Phil Specter after all. My next birthday, my twenty six birthday, we were in Vaguas to see Elvis Presley.
Immediately after the show, Phil couldn't wait to ditch me for the King on my birthday, Honey. He barely said one word to me and pushed his way through the crowd to get up close and personal with Elvis. I went back to the hotel and got hammered. It would be birthday to me, so let'sten. I adopted Dante to Phil a hole. I thought being a mother would give me something to focus on and not go over the edge, like like I had driven over the edge in the Camaro.
But Phil wanted people to think I had actually given birth. See, he told me to stuff a pillow under my shirt when we had company, and then he doubled down. On children, he tripled down. He adopted the twins, Gary and Lewis without even telling me. He didn't even tell me. We drove home one day and there they were, blonde hair flowing in the wind as they ran around the mansion. Merry Christmas, That's what he said to me. The kids didn't stop me from thinking about performing again. Seeing Elvis
gave me the bug and I couldn't shake it. I deserved to be on the same stage as Elvis. I told Phil we needed to do something. It was time, it was beyond time. Phil had just worked with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass, and George told him, I think, oh boy, a Beatle has a song for me. The next thing I know, I'm signed up to Apple Records and phillis telling everybody about my comeback album and we fly out to Lundon to Abbey Road Studios to
cut a record with a beatle. So George gives me this song, try something, buy some and I think, what is this shit? I had no idea what that song was about, and it was out of my range. Too. It was too high. I just couldn't believe that this was a song to bring my career back from the dead. It was mid tempo, plotting and feel as usual, drenched it with an orchestra. I just didn't get it, Honey, Maybe I was just getting lost with the times. Well, the song was a flop. Phil was depressed, how I
was depressed. The comeback album never happened. I never came back, so I continued to hit the bottom whatever bottle I could find. Ye drinking gave me an escape when I had nowhere to escape to. I was sent to doctors, to institutions. Eventually, Phil had me join a A. So I played that game. Didn't play it very well. It was a game I didn't feel like playing. When I came back from a A, the mansion was locked every door. There wasn't a soul inside. Philip kept me in, and
now he was keeping me out. I couldn't keep up. My mother was inside and heard my screams to open the goddamn door. She left me in the side entrance that the housekeeper and cook used, and then Phil was there in my face. He was drunk. He had sent me to psychiatrists into sanitariums into a a for being drunk, And now he was drunk. I mean, hello, pot meat kettle. He was yelling like he always did, told me I was a drunk, told me I must be having an affair,
told me the lawyer up. He put his hands on me, in my face, tackled me to the ground, told me he would have me killed if I left the house, that he had already bought a coffin for my funeral. It was solid gold. The next morning I made my escape. I walked out the front door, the same door he had locked on me, so I couldn't get back in the same door I hadn't been able to walk through on my own for years. Later, he tracked me down and called me on the phone. Told me he threw
out all my ship. That's what he said. He said, it was all stuft into a garbage can on last Siennago. He wouldn't tell me the cross street. That was it, honey. That was the last time I spoke to phill Us. His wife took a few more years before we were legally divorced, but from that moment on, I was done. If I ever saw him again after that moment, I've already forgotten. February two, New York City, Ronnie Spector cashed
another alimony check. She flipped it over to endorse it and saw the same stamped message that she had come to expect and faded black ink it read fuck you. Phil was still demeaning her through his corri ordered monthly payments, still jockeying for the upper hand the last word, still imagining he could lord over her from a top, high heeled shoes that ignored his Napoleonic frame. The stamp that he put on the back of every check gaslighted Ronnie in the same way. It said that she had been
the problem, not him. How could a genius be the source of the problem. After all, before the checks with the funk you stamps, there are even more passive aggressive payouts. The second alimony payment he ever made consisted entirely of Nichols, all fifty dollars. It was delivered by armed guards with shotguns. Phil had it all, the mansion, the children, the camaro, the career. Ronnie got a monthly payment from her ex husband, but she didn't have much more than that. She had
no label, she had no producer. She didn't even hear her songs coming out of car stereos on the streets of Spanish Harlem. Anymore, when Ronnie thought of the things that gave her comfort and joy, she noted that they had all been taken away from her, her children, her freedom,
her career, her dignity, her sanity. When she thought of the things that had seemed so easy seems second nature, things like waltzing to the front of the line at the Peppermint Lounge, or hearing the opening thundercrack on a way back, of walking in the rain with Phil in the control room, those things seemed like a lifetime away. It had all been so easy, and then it got unbelievably hard. She wanted it to be easy again. But if she couldn't go back in time, the least she
could do was forget about the present. She poured herself a glass of cognac in bed and reclined. When she woke up, her pillow was wet, and so was her signature beehive hair to the bottle of cognac had fallen over when she fell asleep, her bed was soaked. Frustrated that she was now out of cognac and in a wet bed, she lit a cigarette. She took a long, slow drag, started to think about how she could make
it easy again, and then she drifted off. When she woke up for the second time, there was smoke coming from her head, flames on the pillow. She reached up to touch her beehive, and it was gone. Everything was gone. Seventy five was a long way from nineteen sixty four. In nineteen sixty four, when Ronnie, Estelle and Nadre stepped off a plane in London, the talk of the town on two continents, their entire lives and careers ahead of them, the girl group to begin and end all girl groups.
The in sound from Spanish Harlemtown. Ronnie was hounded by everyone, wanted by everyone, desired by everyone. There wasn't one man who crossed her path who didn't want to be her baby, not least of all was Keith Richards, who, despite Phil Specter's warning to the Stones manager Andrew lock Oldham, developed a lump in the throat, pain in the heart crush on Ronnie that wasn't easily shaken. Ronnie shook Keith to the core, shook him right out of his bad boy
pose and into one of a love struck puppy. Oldham would tell him to knock at all, and Phil Specter would tell him to watch himself. But Keith didn't easily knock off. Keith wasn't easily watched. Keith and Ronnie and Phil will be twisted up together in nineteen sixty four and beyond, and Keith would have his own secrets to keep in stories to tell, see grits and stories from a time back before things soured with Ronnie and Phil, back before Phil borrowed deeper into a life of solitude,
paranoia and murder. All to keep that title, that genius title, because you can't keep that title without leaving a little 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 seven. Season two, featuring Jim Morrison, is now available, as is season one with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix.
Subscribe to The seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, this episode was also brought to you by disgrace Land, the award winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by Yours Truly. Episodes on the Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Hardy Be, The Grateful Dead, j Z Prince and many many more are all waiting for you right now. Just search Disgrace Land on Apple Podcast, the I Heart Radio app,
or wherever you get your podcast all right. This episode of Blood on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundi and scored in mixed by Matt Boden, Posted by me Jake Brennan. Additional music and score elements by Ryan's Breaker and Henry Juneta. This episode featured Lindsay cox Is Ronnie Specton. Blood on the Tracks is produced by myself for Double Elness and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
Blood on the Track series page. If you like when you hear, please be sure to subscribe the Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio app, wherever you get your podcasts, and if you'd like to win a free Blood on the Tracks poster designed by Nate 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 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 farm alright. As always, you can find me blabbing about other crazy rock stars on disgrace Land and seven Club, and you can talk to me per usual on Instagram and Twitter at Disgrace Land Park Rock Again. History is littered with tragic stories from which we could all learn lessons. The spectacular Broadway show that flopped, the autopilot that helped crash a plane. The heat wave that
killed some city residents but not their neighbors. I'm Tim Harford, host of Cautionary Tales, the podcast that looks for the valuable lessons in the greatest mistakes, disasters, and fiascos of the past. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where if you get your podcasts. 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 ask 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. Sir, we got your test results back and give it to me straight doc. You have to listen to the podcast Ridiculous News, hosted by comedians Bill Whorley and Mark Kendall. I know them. They talk about the news, but not like in a depressing way, you know what I mean. Like they did an episode about April Fools. Great, well, you need to listen to it. Where can I listen?
We'll get it wherever you find podcasts, Oh, like in a cereal box. Well, no, that's not where you find a podcast. Instead, listen to Ridiculous News on my heart radio app. Have a podcast? You know where we find podcasts, like in the middle of a tree? Absolutely mad? Are you sure? Yes,