Part One: The Phil Spector Episodes

Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, Ladies, gentlemen, gentle bems, h and all points in between. This is a podcast about the very worst people in all of history, and normally it's a podcast where I, the host, Robert Evans, read a story about the very worst people in all of history to a guest who generally comes in cold, not always. Yeah. Yeah, I've been doing this eight years. You know, you know the drill, thunk.

You've figured it out by now. Even I know the drill by now.

And regular listeners will recognize the voice of my dear friend Greasy Will, the Grammy Award winning Greasy Will.

Hey, fuddy, what's up?

How's it going. I'm very excited to be here and.

Today if you we are going to flip the rolls right, and I'm gonna tell you about about somebody who's very near and dear to my a bastard of the music industry.

And I'm very excited about this.

Yeah, I have a question first, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Greasy, Well, who I love my buddy. Uh do you know where this is being streamed right now?

Oh?

We are we well on Netflix?

Yeah, our good buddy Greasy Will here. The second we announced that we were going to be streaming video episodes on Netflix, commented sellouts, So what does that make you?

That's what I my friend of fifteen years.

When I was a.

Kid, being a sellout was an insult. But now, as an adult the world that we're in, being a sellout just means you successful.

You know, it's exciting for me.

Just means you get to buy the good produce.

Are there other ways I made money in the path that I might have preferred more? Are there different ways to you know? This is the this is the future we've been given.

Look, look you're talking to a guy who All right, So I have a course, a recording course that I made, and recently I posted this ad that I had made with a high quality camera like the one you're viewing me on right now.

If you are in fact viewing.

Me, I high quality camera and all the comments where people like greasy and high death is weird.

I don't like it, So welcome.

To our lives.

Specifically, like I do not do high quality in anything I do in music, I mean in anything.

It's perfect well, because I've reached the peak of my success as a professional in an audio medium. And you also reached the peak of your success as a professional in an audio medium. Yes, and the powers that be, in their wisdom, decided we got to put these guys on TV. People need to see their faces. For some reason,

Damn region specific broadcasts. Yeah.

Now our show is available on most of the places that Netflix serves.

Worldwide, baby Vietnam and Korea for reasons I don't know.

So the Aussie's out there, you can you can watch now if you've got Netflix. I don't know. Again of the audience listens because it's a fucking podcast. So hopefully none of this should be changing for most of you. Who are we hearing about today? Will who? What piece of shit are you going to tell me about? I know?

But so let me ask you this. Let me ask you this first.

Uh, if you had a mount rushmore of horrible music people right like whoever you.

Could think of? Who? Who's Who's your George Washington.

It's it's gotta be Michael Jackson, because Michael's the perfect mix of that man's music. You simply can't cut his music out of popular culture and have it make sense. There's too big a gap like his he he made, the impact he made is there, and a bunch of his music is immortal and also definitely raped a bunch of kids.

Ton of Yes, just like my bas bastard.

Maybe yeah, I can give I can give my four?

Yeah, go ahead, Sophie.

My four, Michael Jackson, R Kelly P. Diddy and the subject of this episode.

That's all right.

So I'm gonna tell y'all, I don't think the subject of my episode makes it on on the Bastard's uh a mount rushmore iry And here's.

And here's why. Here's why.

Because you you want to hear because number one is Ian Watkins. Do you guys know who Ian Watkins is? No, Ian Watkins was recently just actually I was going to bring this up even before, but Ian Watkins was recently murdered in prison. Because they don't like those those types of people who do those things to infants.

Infants.

He was the singer Lost, Yeah, he was the singer of Lost Prophets and.

This guy.

Yes, So it was interesting that you might because I do have a question in my overall thesis in discussing this person is when is it bad enough to cut somebody out?

And when does their music overshadow.

The big the big picture, right, because we so often in the music industry, we we will give people weird passes. Weird people get weird passes just because they're good at something. You know, they're good at making noise. That's kind of ridiculous to me. I do not I do not think that makes a lot of sense.

But people, really, you're allowed to molest fifteen years, yes, yes, or younger.

So our subject today is somebody who I think is.

Horrible, and you will hear a lot of evidence to uh to that effect, back that up. Yes, But but our subject today is Phil Spector, Phil Spector.

Do you know about Phil Spector at all? Like? What do you know about?

Here's here's how much I know about Phil Spector. In order to even listen to this podcast, I had to make make sure I had a gun on me like that Christ, because I know Phil's bringing one.

Yes, yeah, Phil is definitely bringing a gun to the party for sure.

Okay, all right, let's do it.

This will be our episode today.

We're we're we're gonna talk about Phil Spector.

Boom, cold open. Done. We did it.

We're done, We're opened.

Look at you, prettiest girl at the party. I love it?

All right, are you guys ready to hear about Phil Spector?

I was born ready, well, actually I was born bloody with the cord wrapped around my neck, but also ready.

What were you? Were you in fact a cord baby? That explains a lot.

I think I don't remember.

I was in labor for like seventy hours. Something was wrong with me.

Oh my god, I think I was.

Yeah, she had a chip on her shoulder about that. It might have just been forty eight hours. It was like a long time.

And and and in perfect comparison of our relationship. My mom was in labor with me for less than an hour.

I think my mom had me inside of the back of a pickup truck, but I don't know, like a camper.

Maybe I think, yeah, yeah, you can.

You are one of my friends most likely to be born inside of a pickup truck. My god, Yes, it was an honor.

So first off, I want to say, uh, this is why I picked Phil Spector, and because I am in personally a very big fan of his work. It is it has informed a lot of my work as a musician, as a producer, as an engineer. I I love Phil Spector's work. To me, it was it was so groundbreaking for the time for many reasons. And there's a lot of like future of music that came from where he

And Brian Wilson loved Phil Spector.

Right, And so it's like, if you are a Beatles fan, you not only have heard Phil Spector's work, you've also uh, you've also like been influenced by him indirectly through them loving you know, the chain of command that it was right or chain of Cutso yeah, yes, yes, so Harvey Phillips Spector. His name was not phil original Harvey.

Harvey was his name.

Harvey Phillip Spector was born on December twenty sixth, nineteen thirty nine, in the Bronx, New York. That's at least what the birth record say. His mom claimed that he was born on Christmas Day because she honestly and truly I think maybe believe that he was the second coming of Christ.

That was actually like she was just really really like indo.

So okay.

He he had an older sister, Shirley, and an older brother who died just days after being born, who was born just before him, which is a bit why he got the ultimate Jewish mother protection system going on over him for his whole childhood.

Yeah, so he is. He is wrapped up. There's a wall between him and the real world.

Yes, absolutely absolutely.

There are unconfirmed theories regarding Specter's extended family structures. Some biographical accounts suggests his parents may have been closely related, possible even first cousins, though this has never been definitively proven, but he said it all the time.

He would tell people this. He'd be like, my parents were cousins.

It was like, all right, like I guess randomly at like lunch on a Tuesday or something, he's bringing this stuff up. Oh yeah, yeah. What is well documented is that both sides of his family were Jewish immigrants whose families fled. Let's take a break real quick, Robert, Uh, you want to playing guess the country his Jewish relatives had to escape in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen ones.

I'm gonna go with Poland.

Oh so close, very close, very close. Uh pot, probably we don't know exactly, but probably Belarus or oh yeah yeah, or or Ukraine to Ukraine to possible.

So, yeah, you're you're in the right the right area.

A lot of people who are like, I don't know exactly what country they were in, and part because it was several years over the period of time they lived there.

That's literally the description that's most often given is Eastern Europe.

They fled Eastern Europe.

Yeah, he lived under three or four governments.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So you know, this is a very classic early nineteen hundred's American tale of you know, Jewish immigrant families leaving their country because of the anti Semitic programs going on, and then coming to America, settling in New York in a very Jewish neighborhood, or being surrounded by other Jews who had.

Escaped these same situations.

So obviously some generational trauma going on for sure to start off, and also family trauma and also some questionable things going on with his mother already, you know.

As far as her mental stability is.

So. As a child, Specter was described as overweight and physically fragile. He struggled with recurring health problems and was often encouraged to stay indoors rather than participate in sports or outdoor activities. Developed a strong dislike for beaches, athletics and physical competition, and any environment where he felt exposed and inadequate. Over time, his body changed. Yeah, yeah, he hates beaches.

Yes, that's my favorite bit of that old thing. He's like, yeah, you know what, I hate beach. You are not Ken, Phil Spector. Your job is not beach.

Okay, no joke.

Like multiple times throughout any of the biographies that you read about him, it's brought up that he doesn't like beaches, specifically beaches. He's like, oh yeah, Phil wouldn't go to Venice because there was a beach close by.

Like he was like mad about it, all right, brouh.

As he entered adolescent, he lost weight dramatically, and he became notably small and slight in stature. Instead of solving his insecurities, this transformation reinforced them. He remained physically unimposing, ill suited for sports, and deeply self conscious about his appearance and masculinity. As an adult, he would always joke that, like when they were picking sports teams that he was he.

Wanted to be the manager.

I'm the manager of the team today, you know, like right from because he's like, I'm not gonna I'm gonna play sports.

Is ridiculous.

What a weird little guy.

When Phil was nine years old, his father, Benjamin Specter, died by suicide. Oh yeah, we are going to have some classic bastard style empathy to start off our show today.

He's having a difficult start of things.

Yes, he's had it, he's had it rough.

I'm sure this won't make him a monster.

Spoiler alert.

Uh, his dad killed himself, So basically the stories.

His dad left, left the factory.

He was like a metal worker, and he left the factory and started driving home and just parked a couple of blocks away, put a hose in his tailpipe and started sucking on some carbon monoxide fumes in his uh, in his car. Yeah, and they don't know, they don't really even know why he did it, Like he had financial stress, but you know he was done.

Yeah, yeah, it was.

It was the right time for that to be a normal thing, you know, uh, financial stress, business failures, depression, they've all been cited possible mental illness as well, Like there seems to be a very strong prevalence of that in Phil's life. Whatever the cause, the event shattered the whole family, right, so Bertha Specter becomes the central force in Phil's life, tightening a grip on her son's emotional

Him, and the best thing for kids, right, giving you that sense of agency, and you killed your dad, and you anything you put your mind to, including kill your parents, which you already did, right.

Yeah, very impressive, bro, I couldn't kill my parents, all right. So she treated his father's death as a source of family shame as well too, So it was like she never told the truth about it to anybody, Like if she met somebody and they're like, oh, oh, he's off in Europe on business, or he died in the war. Like she's always like just making up other things and not saying, oh, yeah, he, you know, killed himself for whatever, which I mean, I guess I kind of.

Understand, you know.

It's not like I'm like, yeah, dude, mom, step mom killed herself, which is facts, you know.

I guess I just did announce it to the world. Nevermind.

So yeah, obviously not a great start to life. He's fall he's frail, he's his dad kills himself. His mom and his sister are both super possessive and controlling over him. Pretty bastard'sy start to the story. Not long After Benjamin's death, Bertha relocated the family across the country to Los Angeles. This is where Phil decides he absolutely hates being called Harvey and he starts going.

By his middle name Phil Cool.

All right.

The move placed them in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Fairfax, which this is just a stupid little aside, but all the kids called it, like in the neighborhoods called it fairy facts because it was like like.

The weakest school around.

They were like, so he's like the he's like the weakest kid at the weakest school.

Right, Yeah, they're.

Calling his school. They're basically calling his school gay, and like the parlance of the times.

She was absolutely not true when I was in high school because Fairfax beat our ass at basketball.

It's good to hear the thing.

I don't know if it's turns out money does something long term shocking. So Phil struggled to make friends outside a small circle of family and school acquaintances, and he remains socially awkward and intensely sensitive and deeply dependent on maternal approval, obviously on account of his mom and the way she is.

Yeah, the mommy is his only.

Advancement into social normalcy came as a result of his musicianship. He was said to be able to play any song that you heard on the hear it on the radio and could play it immediately like he could just drew start, like playing along before the song even finished.

Right.

During this time, Phil found himself his first real girlfriend, a girl named Donna Cass Donna believed. Donna recalled Phil being very intelligent but intensely possessive. He would call to places he believed she was and question the people there about her whereabouts, and when he found her, he would grill her about what she'd been doing. Right, She said she believes this was his nature because it was what

It's really really good.

We'll touch on some stuff about it later, but that and Ronnie Spector's book, which was Be My Baby, which is amazing. I highly recommend reading the audio or hearing the audio book of that because it's narrated by Rosie Perez. Which is, oh my god. Yeah, it's amazing to listen to Rosie Perez narrate this whole story because she's like, you know, she's like, you know, she's got that whole thing.

It's amazing. It's really good.

Yeah.

From breaking down the Wall of Sound quote to Donna, it was as if Bertha and Shirley saw her as a rival for Phil's affections, who was trying to steal him away from them. She says, I always felt they were in love with him or something. They treated him like he was a god. They protected him, and they

Right, It's like there's a certain thing that goes along.

With being a weirdo and being like that kind of musical genius that people can like that you can hear a song and you know, and play it the first time you heard it, right, there's something that's like kind of hand in hand with the two personalities that kind of seem to go together a lot of times. So it's not weird to be weird, right, It's not weird

They were the band you heard in the back of it.

So Phil respected in both for his mastery of jazz and his seamless transition to other genres. At one point, Specter was given the opportunity to meet his idol. The meeting did not unfold as he had imagined. Bertha his mother insisted on accompanying him during the conversation with his idol.

Yeah, Bertha, she does it.

Man.

During the conversation, she begins questioning Kessel about career prospects, financial stability, practical viability, like a career in music, all this stuff. It's like like yeah, He's like he's there. He's like, yeah, dude, I get to meet this guitarist, this legend. And she's like, well, what's the money like in the job? You know, Like she's just taking over control of this whole conversation, and Phil's just so embarrassed.

That's yeah, Okay, I did not realize, like knowing about like the later stage of Phil Spector's life, somewhat I did not realize he started out dominated by his mom to such an extent that.

Yes, that does. It ain't a scan, it does kind of scan.

Yeah, you know, I mean it's not always true, right, It's like a lot of times, a lot of times people are just shitty people, right, But a lot of times, if you look into it, it is kind of like when your dad when you're little, like, oh, he's just beating you up because he's got a shitty home life and he's trying to So a lot of sometimes that is true.

Sometimes they're just bullies, you know.

But sometimes they just they got a shitty home life and they're dealing with something that you can't possibly understand. So by the mid nineteen fifties, Specter began forming musical groups with classmates and neighborhood friends. Eventually, he helped create a vocal trio called the Teddy Bears, consisting of Phil and That Climbard and Marshall leab Teddy. The group formed the Teddy Bears, Yeah and that's such a nineteen fifties name too, Yeah, you know, yeah it is.

So the group formed through teenage friendships.

They all went to the same school or whatever, and like they knew each other and so it was like just a very high school organic situation, right. But then Phil's sister Shirley forced her way into the.

Band as a manager.

Right, She like immediately is like, as soon as they start having any success whatsoever, she forces her way into into the whole situation as the manager. And then when Phil's like, no, I don't want you to be in a managery, Mom's like, let him be the manager, pel, you know, like immediately, yeah, immediately like takes his sister's side. So and she has no idea what she's doing, of course, so like she makes horrible decisions all over the place. She's doing dumb stuff. But Phil is still He's the

Yep, Okay, I'm saying it. Yeah. Ben Spector April twentieth, nineteen forty nine, father husband, Yeah, hell yeah, brilliant. To know him was to love him?

What was that? The name of Phil's song there was To know him is to love him?

Philo.

Phil wrote, he doesn't have daddy issues. He's doing good. He's fine.

Phil. Phil wrote a song and he talks later. He says, this is this song is about death. You know, this is a song about death, and nobody noticed because it's framed in the nineteen fifties kind of you know.

To no, no.

Yes, very silly, but he had you know, nobody else gets it. But if you listen to it, it's like, oh, okay, yeah.

You were kind of like a huge fucking hit.

Yeah, it was a huge hit. It was a huge hit. It's very big deal.

It became a massive national hit, reaching number one on Billboard charts. Part of its success came from side Bastard's appearance. Dick Clark American Bandstand. Yes, that's right. Dick Clark is a side bastard today. I'm not going to get deep

Yeah.

Uh so the success was astonishing, right given the band's youth. Phil is only seventeen at this time. He's a he's a baby, right, So it's it's massive. Like Sophy said, it was a number one hit across the country. It was a huge song. Even today, it's still like a kind of a big song like that. I looked up and had like a couple hundred million streams or something. It was insane. This experience kind of cemented because he was the architect of this whole thing. He was the

But before you do that, as the boss and the producer of this podcast, you know what time it is.

Oh shit is advertised or some advertisse and you.

Know what none of our sponsors did is raise Phil Spector. I feel confident saying that none of our advertisers helped helped raise Phil Spector fairly certain I believe it.

I was really.

Curious where you were going with that.

Yeah, and we're back. Ah boy. I sure love those ads from I don't know, probably the Portland Police Bureau and then some AI company.

I wish you'd get sponsored by a whiskey company. That would be nice.

No, I wish I'll take your whiskey. I'll tell people to drink it. I have no problem telling people, you know, to to drink. There's no health consequences to that. You know, it's a lot healthier than gambling.

I actually tried it, like I was doing social media for a little while where I was doing cocktails with greasy like as like a thing, hoping like some company would be like, hey, this guy's do an alcoholic content.

Work though that was the only reason to do it.

I literally just was like some free booze, you know, like, let's subsidize this control.

You're just you're just throwing out like a fishing line and hoping a brand picks up so you can drink for free.

That's all I've ever wanted.

That's how the internet works. Now, all right, where are we?

All right? So, while on tour, Specter was allegedly cornered by hostile individuals who mocked and humiliated him about being short, being a nerd, being being short and nerdy, I mean.

Just being short and having glasses will cause you some serious shit.

Yeah, so keep in mind too, like this is important.

He at adulthood was probably only like.

Five three, Like he did not I say he was little, geez, he was real little, right, So, like, we don't know if this story is true. It's very mythological bullshit type stuff. But we don't know if this story is true, but it absolutely if it is true, it makes a lot of sense about who he would later become he was physically restrained and urinated on during the encounter. The precise details vary depending on the source, and it's like kind of multiple biographies reference it.

He said it. He told this story later on.

He's like ganged up on by a bunch of guys outside of a show who are making fun of him because he's a short, little nerd, and they like hold him down and piss on him.

It sounds like I think he's in the bathroom when it happens. You like, like he goes in to go to the bathroom after a show and they like attack him in the bathroom or whatever. It's very like nineties like teen high school movie type situation.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a hairy type deal. If heathers or something like that's intense bullying. Yeah, they're pissing you.

Yeah.

If the story is accurate, it appears to have deeply scarred him.

Yeah, would Yeah, that's pretty bad.

Yeah, especially when you think, like imagine where he's at in this whole situation, Like he thinks he's.

Like made it, like he's on top of the world.

He's got a number one hit in and he's got money, he's got success. People all over the country are seeing him, come to see him play shows, and he just goes to the bathroom, like walking off stage, probably one night, and he gets jumped in the bathroom and pissed on, Like that's.

Yike, Yeah, number on you. I think it's gonna make him a better guy.

Yeah, definitely, definitely not gonna make him a nice person. All right. So, despite the group's success, fractures quickly appeared within the Teddy Bears, and that Klimbard used her earnings from the hit record to purchase a car, and not long afterwards, she was involved in a serious accident that left her hospitalized for an extended period. So she gets a bunch of money, she gets a nice car.

She got one of those six fifty sixties cars. That's just it's steel. There's no seat belts the car. All of the force of the impact is transferred to you.

Yeah, probably pre dating like like the National Traffic Safety Board like requiring seatbelts by like twenty years.

At this point, I feel, yeah, I don't know.

So she gets in this horrible accident, and this is kind of the nail in the coffin for the group. But you know, she's and that says that, well, she's in the hospital, she gets in this horrible accident, and Phil doesn't call her or come by or anything. He just that's it. That's just the end. She just he just leaves, He just goes away, and that's it. There's no band anymore, you know. So they're like high school friends.

Well do you think it like she could no longer provide use to him? You think it was something like that, or we really can't even speculate.

I think I think you're right on the path, Sophie. I think you will find as we continue on. Anytime somebody he stops serving their their usefulness to him, Phil is done with him.

He just wipes them from his life.

Very friends, which spoiler alert, is the next person we're going to talk about, Lester Sill Leicester sil This is right after this time or during this time, and this is when he made friends and a partnership with Lester Sill.

Lester Still was a decorated World War Two veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulch. He made his way into the music industry after that. And despite what you think, actually the nicest guy. Everybody's like, oh dude, Susie walks in the room, he's the best. I love this guy, you know, like this is like this is like if.

You lived through the Battle of the Bulge, it's hard to get like bent out of shape about the little things.

One would assume.

But also I met a lot of very disgruntled war veterans in my time, and I've been like, why are you guys so mad? Bro, just like I don't know, get an addiction that helps out or something.

Get an addiction. That's always my advice to be.

So Lester took a liking to Phil and assumed a fatherly role in his life. So uh, he like really does step into Phil's life. Him and Bertha and Phil start having problems at home. He lets Phil move in with him. You know.

Uh. He gives them connections, he tell he introduces them to people.

He tells everybody, this is this this killer of producer Phil, Like he just like helping him out anywhere. And he even sends him to Phoenix. I believe it was to meet Lee Hazelwood. Lee Hazelwood at this time is a really successful writer. He would later go on to write, Uh, these boots are made for walking, which oh my girl, said Sinatra, She's so beautiful.

That's one of the finest achievements of our species.

Yeah, that song.

So he sends him to hang out with Lee Hazelwood, and Lee Hazelwood hates him. Hazelwood, It's like this motherfucker won't stop asking questions. He he's always like doing stuff. He's like he's weird and he's just always around me and.

I don't like him.

And and he tells him never bring him back to my studio.

I never want to see that guy again.

Wow. Okay, So so this is the kind of seems like a pattern as we'll start to like emerge here.

Is that like either you love Phil or you are like okay.

Guy, Yeah?

Yeah, like yeah, that guy's the worst. So after this, he moves on to a relationship with another girl. So he breaks up with Donna cass or whatever. He moves on to a relationship with another girl, Lynn Castle, but it was short lived, as she couldn't stand as incessant to interrogations. This quote, his behavior got too friggin crazy, too, absolutely crazy.

Where are you what are you doing? Where are you going? Controlling?

So yeah, that sounds right.

So this is clearly a pattern. He is absolutely controlling. He's like definitely trying to like, uh.

That's basically what I knew about Phil Spectra going into this is that he was like super controlling in his professional and personal relationships. Yeah, that's kind of all I know.

And that is that is exactly it.

And we'll we'll we'll get more into like this professional side of this too, but it is it is alarming early, you know, and like Sophie, we brought this up earlier. It is like it's like letting people get away with stuff, and how long can they get away with it? You know? And yeah, and it seems like, I mean, it's the fifties, so let's be fair, like this is still the time

Yeah, bang zoom straight. It's it's like an aspect of like yeah, because it's just like so common and universal at the time.

Right, I hear somebody else do an old timey voice besides Robert, because.

Robert is so good straight moon as that's good.

I love Archie Bunkers.

Shit, it's great you.

It is two different It's interesting the two different kinds of reactions to Oh, I keep like doing things I'm not supposed to be doing and I haven't gotten in trouble yet because like, the two reactions are the one the one I have had about things that I won't talk about on air, where at a certain point, more than whatever the statute of limitations as it go, I was like, I'm gonna stop doing this. Done this too many times. I'm not gonna keep taking this risk anymore.

I did. I feel the exact same way every time my registration on my car goes more than eight months out of date, when I'm like, all right, eight months, that's a long time.

To be There's three years I didn't register in my car, right, yeah, stuff like that where it's like that probably now I'm gonna were shoplifting, where it's like I've had enough money now I'm not gonna keep taking the risk. And then other people who are like, no one's called me on my shit, guess I'm gonna get even crazier. And then they become the president.

No reason to stop now, all right, So spoiler alert on Phil. He doesn't get any better. This is right, this is his pattern. He keeps going, but they do break up. Him and Land break up, and he starts expressing desire to relocate back to.

New York City.

New York offered something that he really wanted, which was proximity to a legitimacy. In New York at the time, there is a building called the Brill Building, and we're gonna tell you, well, I'll just read because it's better to read than in summarize. I think Spector quickly embedded himself in the Brill Building ecosystem, the highly competitive songwriting and production factory that produced some of the most influential pop music of the era. The environment was famously ruthless.

You definitely, you know, in the music industry, to be a cutthroat for people to be like, hey, guy is fucking ruthless? Is something? Yeah.

Multiple collaborators from this period later accused him of aggressively positioning himself for credit and financial participation in projects that were often collaborative efforts. There were recurring stories of Specter inserting himself into songwriting or production roles and minimizing the

So he's he's already just ruthless.

So there's something that I want to bring up here, which is about the way that writing works, or writing a song works, right, which is like the deal is if there is no prior agreement, all right, if two people just walk into a room and write a song together.

Right, it is, And they didn't fIF not as right and not as part of a pre existing business arrangement or.

Yes, yeah, yeah they did, not no one specified like hey, spontaneous art. Yes, if nothing is specified, it is a fifty to fifty split, doesn't matter if one person wrote one word and the other wrote the entire song and all. He was like, if you come into that create, if it's three people, it's thirty three to third. If it's for it's twenty five percent. Unless you have already agreed to something. That's what the legal split is for this

I respected a man could be that annoying that You're like, absolutely not.

I want this is not worth the job.

The job is not worth my peace of mind. Please stay away from me.

You should all have self respect.

Yeah yeah really, but you know twenty six man, it's hard man's.

Right now, all right? Uh so, uh, this is from her quote.

I was so gun shy of ever becoming vulnerable to someone who'd betrayed me like that, because Phil practically killed me emotionally. I figured I wasn't smart enough to handle the part of his personality that I understand. It was like Phil was born without a conscience and I was his victim. He could be so ruthless. Wow, so seemingly we have heard only from women that this is an issue, right, It's like this does not seem to be very much a male issue.

This is asistent.

Yeah, women around him have to feel the breath. And you know, I mean again not to like give anybody an out or any empathy for somebody who's a shitty person because like shitty acts or shitty acts and it doesn't matter.

But you can see like this is kind.

Of like an emotional and you know, reaction to his mother and his sister pushing him, controlling him.

So too, Yeah, isn't absolution.

Yeah, I think I'm going to talk about this later.

But so Phil, whenever he went to work at the Brill Building after he got his money from the Teddy Bears, right, he made a lot of money, he had to actually take.

His mother to court.

I know, Uh, he had to take his mother to court to get his money because even as like a teenager, his mom was like, no, he can't you can't, you can't be trusted, you'll leave us, you won't let us have any money, you won't take care of us. And so he's basically even like going into adulthood, he's having to fight his mom in court over his own money because of the way that you know, because the way that she is, the controlling nature of her and everything.

Yeah, yeah, I mean that. Yeah, so it's in part just kind of his revenge based on his his shitty mom.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's just taking it out on other people.

Well also just he grew up learning that, like that's what you do to people, Like you can either be controlled or controlling. Yes, I'll controlling. Yeah sure.

So so yeah, so being cutthroat, like we said, being cutthroat isn't weird in the music industry, Like, you know, there's a lot of people that are famous for their like ruthless activities inside the music industry, especially in the old days or whatever. But to be in a cutthroat environment and be the cuttiest, throatiest person of that environment is like okay, like everybody is like, no, Phil is the worst of all of them, Like, you know, everybody,

People don't like him.

So one of the most important relationship spectro form during this New York period was with legendary songwriting production Durg Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. Liber and Stoller were already giants of the early rock and rhythm and blues era, and we're responsible for shaping hits artists like Elvis Presley, the Coasters, like numerous other artists. They were architects of the modern producer model, combining songwriting and arrangement and studio

This is the first.

Time in musical history that music goes from being marketed to adults to being marketed to teenagers. Oh right, yeah, because prior to this, there has never been.

Teenagers with money, you know, like teenagers.

Yeah. Yes, as a teenager, you're like you were just working in the minds and handing money to your parents so that they buy starvation with it. Yeah, you have forward to starve to death.

So this is the first time in all of recorded history basically that teenagers become a market right, And this is really important to this whole overview of like where where the money comes from, and how they market to things and how they even write a song. Like, so it went from being like, okay, a band does all this to like a group of guys would get together in a room and start being like, okay, cool, Like I wrote this song, I was gonna give it to this person, but you know, we should give it to

Right, the performance is a minimum amount of the money. The publishing is the money.

So these guys would keep giving these songs to other people, other artists and be like, you should do this song.

And it just became normalized to do that.

So the the strength of the music industry went from being bands to being producers. Right, and this is where Phil kind of slams hard into the industry. All right, so he falls in like he falls in with these guys liber and Stoller, who are like the guys of the time. They are the Max Martin's or whatever famous producer, the Kenny Beats, or the Doctor Dre's or the whatever you love. They are that of this time, and Specter

He was very good musically talented.

Yes, and so it's like, man, you ever worked with somebody who's good at their job but a horrible person, Like we've all been there, right.

Right, yeah, and you're like, ah, specters come to the studios, Yeah we're gonna write, but yeah, we're gonna write a.

Banger, but.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Their willingness to tolerate him also reflected that, you know, uh, he represents the next step, like what I was just talking about, He's the next step in the evolutiontionary ladder of working in the music industry.

You know, it's like.

He's he is the producer model that will become the tour de force in the industry.

That's uh, yeah, that's that's that's a good note. I do want to say, you know what I'm willing to settle for will.

Uh billions of dollars. I only want to becoming for the ragor. And I'm sure I know, I actually know that you do get you get billions of dollars from these ads, right.

I do. I do billions of every every single ad.

And there's no healthcare given to any of your employees. You are just like you are Jeff Bezos. Man.

I actually bought Bezos' yacht just to sink, so that my yacht will avoid sinking the same way.

You know, I've heard about that you're doing. I went, yeah, don't sleep on that couch as well.

I'm saying, anyways.

Let's all think about what diseases you get from Jeff Bezos's yacht couch and here some mad Yeah we're back. The answer was gonna rhea.

All right, all right.

So this is where Phil starts really developing his understanding of how records are made. How I mean, this is a learning environment. This is the professional like environment of writers in New York. This is his like high school or college or whatever.

This is his moment.

He absorbs all that, and he starts really understanding like the recording studio and the process of recording is it is like the music itself, the music comes from the environment that this stuff is made in as much as anything else. And this is kind of like a new concept because you know, music is we're in the sixties

One of his many contribution.

To the world was we got a post World War two? Do you know this about Hitler? This is actually really funny.

Really because it was Huston. He famously believed and wrote about this in my comp that the best way to convince people of anything was the human voice, that the pure human voice was the best tool for influencing people.

And at the time confused at the time, exactly literally he was ahead of the curve oncaster Alf Hitler.

The world's first podcaster. Amazing, that's right.

You know, it's like the British were all baffled at the time too, because like prior to this, Like basically they had magnetic wire recording and they had wax cylinders that they could record to right, and it was basically one shot, one kill if you liked. If you messed up, it was over right. But magnetic recording actually, and.

It was cleaner.

It sounded way better, like in comparison to like the old vinyls that I had, the like, it was way cleaner, it sounded more pure. And the Brits were like, how is this guy broadcasting from like eight different cities in absolute clarity? Like they're so confused at the time, they have no idea what's going on all because Hitler's over there with the only magnetic recorder.

That's in the entire world.

Because just turns out, basf there in Germany, who's just still a company. Congratulations, you guys made it through the entire Nazi regime and all the backlash, I you know, hats off. So without Hitler and his magnetic recording, we would not have.

The music industry.

They brought the GIS. The GIS brought it back in the forties, uh to America. We started tinkering with it. By late fifties. We have Les Paul and Bill Putnam basically like the gods of recording folks.

If it hadn't been for Hitler, none of us would have been able to hear the Mighty Mighty boss Tones album about George Floyd And what kind of America would that be?

I so desperately want to take the time five second story. I once went to a concert and you know, the guy that dances on stage and that's his only job.

Somebody threw a shoe and it hit him right.

In the fucking face and it took him completely out, and they stopped the concert and they're like, we're not gonna play.

And somebody goes, who cares?

Wow?

Wow, that's my favorite Mighty Mighty boss Let's story. All right, So sorry I was on a little tangent there. Hitler gave us recording, but it's very new. Recording is very new, right, So the way that they record is changing by the day, right, It's like people are discovering new things. We go from a single track to record to so now we have two tracks and you can bounce back and forth, and now we have four tracks.

And then next thing you know, they've got a.

Whole console that they've made that you know, and these guys are literally building them themselves, like Bill Putnham was like building handbuilding his own consoles and everything. And so they now have some technology. It opens up the world of recording. Prior to this, if you were a band, that was the only way to record music, right, you had to stand all around this horn and everybody like make their noise, and whoever was like the loudest in

It's it's complicated.

It's you're so concerned with just getting a recording that you don't have really time to think about the.

Artistic direction of the recording.

And so this moment in history, the late fifties, early nineteen sixties, this.

Is the moment that changes all of recorded music.

And why obviously I'm such a big fan of this as someone who considers himself to be a stereo phil specter, you know, I absorb a lot of his music and I think that this is like how I try and portray myself and a lot of this stuff without all the you know, well, actually the same number of ex wives. That's great, we have the same number of X wives at three.

We're crussing it.

But without the other crimes, without the other crimes.

Yeah, all right.

So, rather than treating musicians as equal collaborator, Specter increasingly saw them as interchangeable components and a larger sonic structure. If one player failed to achieve the desired result, another could replace them. If a vocalist lacked the emotional texture he wanted, he could manipulate arrangement, echo, orchestration, reverb, all these things to compensate and evolve.

Sorry, go ahead, No, this is like and it seems like this is in a lot of ways the birth of the end of music, transitioning away popular music, transitioning away from these are people who like make something like art that they want to share with people too. This is a product, and we can we can cut out pieces and slide in pieces wherever we need to percent.

This is absolutely the birth of that. This is the birth of like. I am pitching this song to Ariana Grande because she might sing it great, but I don't care if Beyonce takes.

Let's get bidding on this music. Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's no longer as much.

I mean, I still think people put as much love and passion into their Sure, yeah music is always but it's we're.

Saying it's nothing but bad or whatever. But it's a big change.

Yes, it is a very big change. Yeah.

So Specter closely studied records that we're experimenting with dense layering and orchestral pop arrangements, particularly productions that emphasized emotional saturation through instrumental doubling and echo chamber effects. Songs like under the Boardwalk you know that song.

If you listen to somebody.

sEH, if you listen to that, you will absolutely hear what are the early you know, phrases that that Specter would draw from. It sounds basically like a Phil Spector song. It's got you know, like the orchestration is buried in there. It's like, you know, the vocal is very upfront and everything, but everything else is kind of a mesh behind it, and it's not nearly there's a lot of reverb and everything.

There's often layers of percussion.

It was all like, uh, layers of instrumentation to be drummer on drummer and drummer, three piano.

Players, like six guitars.

And this is such a big change because, like I said, prior to this, it was like, well, you just put a band in a room and then you record the band, right, and so now it's all of a sudden, like I don't have to reproduce this on stage. It doesn't have to sound like this. I'm gonna make this. I'm gonna put ten pianos on here. I'm gonna go crazy with you, you know, like yeah, like I can do anything, Okay,

You know, it's really amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So like this is also yeah, kind of the birth of the the insane expenditures for like crazy artistical wins aspect.

It later transforms into a cocaine budget, but well a little early.

It's early for the cocaine budget, but it will eventually become a cocaine budget.

Excited.

So, despite being signed to Liber and Stoller, those two mentors that he had, he eventually becomes enamored with the co founder of Atlantic Records. I'm at Airdigun and when given the opportunity to jump ship, he wasted no time. Right, liber and Stoller are pissed. They're like, bro, what are you doing? Like, we gave you this opportune.

Tolerated your bitch ass, and you're just gonna dip.

Yes, we tolerated you.

We let you come in put up with your ass.

And he's like, actually, I was underage when I signed your contract, so it doesn't matter.

You guys can't do shit. And he just walks out right and and they're like, eh, fair, that was true.

We get, in fact, sign an underage person to a contract without having the proper legal authority, So whoopswee fucked up. So so he becomes friends with Ahmed Erdegan Erdigon recognizes his talent and he starts learning from him. Uh, it's he's just an old school record guy, right, And now so Phil's now learning the business.

Right, this is he was in the music thing, and now he's like, I'm going.

To learn the business. Phil would find some reasonable successes during this time, remaining under the tutelage of his friend Lester, still the old World War Two veteran, but he would eventually desire more freedom to work as he pleased, and so he and Lester formed phil Less Records, a portmanteau of their two names. I think that's the word portmanteau, right, yep, thanks nailed it.

Look at me with that look at I just guessed on that one. Thanks. Uh. He was slowly becoming the king of girl groups.

It was actually around this time that he was dubbed the Tycoon of teen, which sounds very questionable.

I don't like I don't like that. Nope, nope, visceral reaction.

Yeah.

So, by the age of twenty one he had become an undeniable force in the industry. He had produced a string of hits, like I think he had like twenty one top ten singles in Jesus three years or something. Yeah, it was like an insane amount. His first major success was Spanish Harlem, after his own Spanish Harlem by Benny King, and then there's no one other like My Baby by the Crystals. He's a rebel by the Crystals. Bobby Socks and the Blue Jeans had a song as Zippity DooDah.

Right.

Here's a little little piece though the Crystals are sitting there. They recorded There's no one other like My Baby. He did well in the charts, and then you know, a few months later, they're sitting there listening to the radio one afternoon and they hear.

A song come on.

They're like, oh, this is cool, it's an interesting So they get done and the radio announces all and that was He's a Rebel by the Crystals.

And they're like, wait what.

Phil had begun recording songs and then releasing them as band songs without any of them having been on the song. He didn't, He didn't care. He was just like, they're all replaceable to me. You're all just you're all just singers. I don't care about you at all, especially you're all female singers. You are all female singers. I will just replace it. He never does this to a man, not in his entire career. But to women he does this.

Oh, just like two less obvious man Jesus.

I would I would have put I don't care what day. I would have punched him in this face. I would I would have looked him.

At eye level and bring that up.

Yes, I'm glad to bring that up. Good because.

Another tick in the fill is seriously like uncomfortable without his gun comes from the lead singer of the Crystals And I forget her name.

I'm sorry. I hack in a fraud just like you. So I forgot her name.

But she tells a story in this documentary to watch where she's like, yeah, I saw that, and I was like, okay. So she goes and she talks to this mobster that she knows, and this mobster goes out and just beats the dog piss out of film, and it's like, hey, like, if you ever do comrade mobs? Yeah, yeah, hey man. Sometimes organized crime has his purpose, let's be fair, you know, so.

Often more reliable than the government.

Wait, what was the name of the documentary you were just talking about.

This is from the Agony in the Ecstasy of Phil Specter. Okay, cool. So he has a bunch of successes. Zippity dudah, be my Baby with the nets. You've lost that love and feeling with the righteous brothers. He is on top of the world.

Yeah, Jesus, be my Baby. He has that one in an uber last night.

Actually, yeah, be my Baby. He's on the my I have a vinyl from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and it's on there.

It's so good, very funny story. Years later, Phil Spector he was asked by Martin Scorsese to use be My Baby for the opening of Cocaine Cowboy. I think it was the one.

Anyway, it's the opening of it. It's be my Baby.

They do a whole thing, and he's asked and he's like no, and then they do it anyway and he and he sees it.

It comes out. John Lennon shows it to him, and he sees it, and he comes out and he's like, what the hell outdn't toe him? They could do that, you know.

And so he gets all mad and then he sues him, of course, which you know is fair or whatever.

That's fair. That's fair, song of affirmation, that's fair. You suit him.

But then he goes on for the rest of his life and tells everybody I made Scorsese with that mad.

Yeah, okay, all right, that was a bit of a.

Dick for the rest of his life. Think that's why, and that at the pinnacle of Phil's success is where we will leave this episode. Robert, how do you how do you feel about Phil so far?

I mean, he's a little bit of a dick, but you know, he's hit some bangers.

He hit some bangers so far, he just sounds like an asshole, is really good at his job.

I didn't know all that shit about his mom and a.

Huge misogynist who screws over female.

Uh yeah, I would I would have punched.

I say again, it's like if this was if this was the end, right, you'd be like, I mean not really bastard worthy, Like he's sucks. But there's no shortage of those people in the music industry, right, It's like there really is. Yeah, there's no shortage of horrible people in the music industry. Like I meet them all the time and then I'm like, cool, this is why I stopped working with labels.

I'm going back to my studio. Yeah, but it is.

There's a lot of them, right, and you know it's you know, it's tough too, is for every awful person I meet in the music industry, I meet a legend that I'm like, you're the nicest person I've ever met, and like, how are you this good and this cool and this person not that good and way shitty?

Like I don't understand it.

I'll never get it. It's there's a weird proportion in that stuff. Wow, Robert, you could be founded. I right, okay, which I can't think yeah, uh you. I like to think of it more as like like you telling your parents back in like the the early two thousands why you can't move back home and why you're having success in Los Angeles, and.

You're like, I write, Okay, you.

Know, it's just.

Exhaustive explaining what I do for a living.

To be okay, yeah, just go away.

I can be found at at Greasy Will Grease at Greasy Will Music.

You can just google me. I'm like on the internet.

I have it.

I have a recording course. If you want to learn about how to record from a Grammy Award winning engineer, I have one. It can be found at greasy does it dot com or you can just google me, or you can go to my I'm on the internet, man, I'm on the Internet, Like, it can't be that hard there.

It's easy to find people.

I feel like you guys will be fine tracking it's a Z. It's not with an S. I get a lot of greasy wheels and that kind of does make me a different guy, because a guy I want to meet him.

I mean, if you told this on the podcast, who gave you the name greasy Will.

Pharrell exactly? It's very cool, very cool.

It was very cool.

It's super cool.

Yeah, you know, this is the end of the episode. Friends, We'll be back, We'll be back. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes a Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Kit remind me of Netflix, you don't miss an episode.