All media.
Hey everybody, Robert here and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences have announced that three different Cool Zone media shows have been nominated for awards at the thirtieth annual Webby Awards. You can vote on these now if you just google the name of the podcast and the category. Behind the Bastards has been nominated in the Experimental and
Innovation Podcasts category. It Could Happen Here is in the News and Politics Podcasts category, and James Stout's mini series Migrating to America A Dream Worth Dying For has been nominated in the Podcasts Documentary category. And you can find links to vote for each of these podcasts in the episode description and in the posts on social media for episodes that It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards.
Thank you.
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards everyone. I'm Robert Evans. This is a classy podcast about the worst people in all of history, always introduced by beautiful musical accompanyment courtesy of our guests Greasy will imagine.
This, No bastards, It isn't hard to do. No code sor revol beginness, no crimes to.
Re imagine All the podcast is.
What day do you.
Imagine that no robots.
And no Sophie too, not going to him every shot steak.
Now son creeps, or you.
Imagine the old look people, nor that now the juice you you missing?
I'm a dreamer.
The bis part is basic clear. The whole lot is called the best Stards. And then short have.
Imagine that no more lords.
Or tech freaks.
From nest ge, no poison gas, dicotatoes, would libertary young.
Dreamt time robbers.
Would finally you miss I'm a dream of But if the Bestards were all.
Through and then me signs in study and there be.
None, it was beautiful.
Well, thank you, thank you.
Yes, this was an entire composition by me.
I reproduced this all because today we are going to be talking a little bit about the Beatles and about John Lennon and Phil Spector and his relationship to all of them. And so yesterday I decided I had so many things to do that I was like gonna like lose my mind, and I thought, what could be better than ignoring all your jobs, getting blackout drunk and making a tribute song for this week's second week here on Phil Spector Episode three, which I thought this was gonna be like one episode.
I can't believe we're getting two songs.
Yeah, well I had to. It was like it was you know, it was like I.
Gotta keep them, keep them, keep the fans interested.
I judge it.
So yeah, so yesterday I got you got your gavel, honorable.
It's official. Yeah, that was Beatle. And I do wonder a lot. Will I wake up scared every night like are the did people finally figured out how to stop being evil?
Like is this the day that that my job loses all meaning?
And then I wake up and someone's fmitted a horrible crime against you.
Man, breath and watch.
Like even just opening your phone, you're like, oh cool, still.
Okay, yeah they got they got. Oh man, Well this has been a cold open, and it's a musical cold open.
A very warm cold open, A very warm cold opening. We're hearing more about Phil Specter. If anyone notices that my robe is covered in hey, it's because it just fed the animals.
It's a robe. If you had not said anything, I just I'd assume that was a regular winter jacket. But no, you're wearing a robe.
It's a robe.
I got, Well, it's a robe.
I got at Caesar's Palace, they know, buying this Well, that's my favorite part.
When we last left Phil, he and Ronnie had just been married, and he went to visit his mother Bertha, literally the day of right, he went to visit his mother Bertha. Abusive as ever.
Yes, when he gets home, he's drunk as hell.
He starts screaming sure, right, and he's all mad at Ronnie and everything because he believes she's taking his money. And Ronnie and her mother spend the night locked in her bathroom hiding from Phil, scared, you know, and they sleep in her in her bathtub, right, Okay, on her wedding night. That's how she spends her wedding night. Cool, that's romantic. So the next day Phil wakes up, realizes he's a bastard and changes all his ways. That's the end of the story.
Great, Wow, you really put a lot of work into the song for a a long episode, but I appreciate it.
Well yet, well, so I'm flying knowing no not.
Went on to spend the rest of his life volunteerly get a children's hospital.
Children. He's just kind of a shitty husband at this point. You know, it's like I guess it's behind the shitty husbands. Yes, why I'm far so far well. And also he's fucked over a lot of women. He has. He has been horrible. He's in general he's a horrible person. Like. Yeah, So his relationship with his mother is strained at best. He doesn't let her come into the studio at all. He doesn't.
He doesn't like her being around at all.
She sometimes she does show up at the studio and she still calls him Harvey, which pisses him off. You know, she like refuses to ever call him philm Yeah, that's weird. And she'll like randomly show up in the studio with like like matsa ball, soup and ship and be like Phil, you need to eat And He's like, no, I know I would not either, but like, you know whatever.
Anyway, he's also probably consuming his weight in cocaine every day, right, so I'm imagining not much of an appetite.
He's not really a drug user as much. He kind of looks down on drugs mostly he looks down an artists that do drugs. Yeah, his when he does get into the vices, it's mostly it's mostly alcohol, you know, It's mostly that he's an alcoholic, but he's super jacyl and hide with it all the time. It's like he'll go and he'll go through like this is his whole life. He does this like periods of sobriety and then periods where he's just getting lit all the time.
And he's one of those guys he's pissed by people like doing doing blow. He does smoke in weed, tak an acid.
Right, Yeah, he doesn't seem to really like it's not really mentioned about weeds, So I especially assume since like the Beatles and everything, he probably was fine with weed, but like definitely didn't like cocaine being around in the studio. He's not the cool party guy.
Yeah.
Yeah. By the time he married Ronnie, right, he's barely seeing his mom. But that's when his sister. Around the same time, his sister gets committed to a psychiatric facility and she will remain there for the rest of her life.
So Shirley is gone from the story now.
Phil will never talk about her ever, He never discussed her, and because of that, she just kind of just disappears to hit. I mean, obviously she spends the rest of her life pretty much in and out of mental health care, so.
She's gone, right, okay, Phil.
At the same time, this is when he starts transforming his home into a literal fortress. He's got this huge mansion in Hollywood, and he's got gates all around it. He's got dogs, he got multiple like guard dogs. He's got a guy who's basically like his his like personal bodyguards, Slash. Also he's like regularly like he gets his like sandwiches and stuff, you know, is his dude, George Brand. He's he's around for most of this story, and a lot of the stuff that happens he's like involved in in
some way. But he seems to be just a pretty pretty decent guy. But overall, like like part of his job is to monitor Ronnie. Part of his job is to monitor the visitors that come by. If like if somebody comes in and like like a guest or whatever, he's not to leave the room while they're there and stuff like that.
Yeah, And like Rosie, I knew one son of a really famous and wealthy guy and who was otherwise normal but would periodically get really paranoid while like out hanging out doing normal person things that they were going to get kidnapped like that that was a constant even when there was nothing happening, no indication of it, And I guess that, like I think that just happens to some people when they start to hit that level of wealth and fame where they just can't stop thinking about all
of the people that all the things that might go wrong, all the people who might want to take it from them. I don't know.
A side story, and a really correlating side one that is music industry. I once worked for Balt Getty, who is the great grandson oh like those Getties, those Gettys. Yes, his dad, His dad is the Getty that was kidnapped in Europe and had his ear sliced off and everything. So it's like it's understandable to carry paranoia, you know,
like I could. And like when he talked about it, like it was always just like yeah, man, like like he did not seem very trusting of people just showing up at his place.
You know, we were going to kidnap my friend, but we just never got around to it.
He didn't have any money. Reason. It also, like with the whole Patty Hurst thing became like a very popular, right, that's such an interesting story. Yeah, all right. So, so Ronnie is restricted inside the house. She she can't really do much like she uh, she's not allowed to leave ever. The doors are always locked. Fill always locks the doors. He's big, big on that. So as she's her isolation intensifies. She began drinking heavily. Phil actually gave her the first
alcohol she ever had. She did not drink until she was well into like her relationship with Phil, and Phil gave her the first, the first sip of alcohol she ever had. But now it's becoming like one of the few emotional outlets available to her. Right, it wasn't recreational at all. It was absolutely a coping mechanism inside an environment she could not safely leave. Like Phil's behavior becomes increasingly unpredictable, alternating between affection, surveillance, and intimidation. He gets
more and more controlling. He would tell her to stop focusing on her music, you know, and like be a good wife and that's what she should do, and that's her job. And he no longer even pretends that like to be interested in taking her into the studio anymore, Like she has no career anymore being her Like the Ronettes are still doing things like touring and stuff like that. She's just not a part of it. Right. The group that's literally her namesake.
Ronettes, don't have Ronnie anymore.
Yeah, they're still touring.
And because like you know, again, like it's very like bands back then are very amorphous. You don't really know what a lot of them look like because you've never seen a picture of them, you know. Sure, so no one else knows or whatever. But because she's drinking heavily, she would she would sneak downstairs. They had a bar, right,
because Phil's a you know in the entertainment industry. People come over, they have a bar, and but he would lock it up, and she would just come down and jimmy it open and drink all the liquor that's inside. And then you know, and Phil obviously sees this or whatever. Sure, Uh, even though she's stressed and you know, isolated and going through this whole thing, they still are trying to have
a baby, you know, but they weren't able to ever conceive. Uh, And the blame was always passed to her, despite you know, Phil be in half of that situation as well, you know, Yeah, sensing that she was getting frustrated with life as a shutting. In nineteen sixty eight, for her birthday, Phil bought Ronnie a Camaro, but even in the gift came the air of control. He had the car monogrammed with VS for Veronica Specter, so everyone would know that she's his possession. Right.
It's like wow, because she's the.
Yes and she she's like, you know, musically, she's known as Ronnie, right, so for her to he starts calling her Veronica all the time, specifically as a measure of control, Like, you are not Ronnie anymore. You are Veronica Specter. You are Phil's wife, right whatever? Harvey was that his real name, Harvey? Yeah?
Wow, Yeah, just the emphasis on really forcing her to like that in front of her face is interesting. Yeah, some desperation on his part too.
It's about to get even better.
Yeah, right.
So this is a quote from Ronnie from.
Be My Baby. Quote. It might seem far fetched that anyone would put that match much energy into controlling someone else's life, but that was Phil. You've got to remember that the man was a genius and he had nothing better to do with his life after he retired from rock and roll, So turning me into the perfect wife became his major project, just as making me into a number one singer had been his goal five years earlier.
So you know, this is what he spends his time doing instead of music now is just being.
Maybe there's other things he could have done with his life, with his with his vast fortune and access to the halls of power and entertainment, maybe other things.
Okay, this next part is easily my favorite Phil Spectors story. Like, we're gonna get into all right, So there's going to be some very troubling things and also some extremely hilarious things that you will you just all right, I'm gonna tell you, all right, So so understand that when we're laughing, we're also crying. You know. I want to make sure everybody knows that this is funny in retrospect, but in at the time, I'm sure it was horrific and trigger warnings and all that shit.
These are just sing you have to laugh about afterwards, because that's how else.
Do you handle it. Crazy crazy. So when showing her the brand new Camaro, he goes to the trunk and he pulls out an inflatable mannequin dressed exactly like himself. Ronnie is completely valid about I guess and He tells her this is for when you're driving alone, so no one will ever fuck with you. She realize, God, Phil has this dummy just watch over her when she's not when he's not with her.
Yeah, he's got my dummy.
And like she talks about it extensively, like it had like his face basically like on it, you know, like he's you say, it's a blow up dummy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's an inflatable dummy. And he's got a dressed exactly like him. He's got it, and he puts it in the seat and she's like, he's got close for the dummy.
Yeah, Hey, why does the dummy have a gun?
Phil? It's so funny. Yeah, inflatable dummy with a gun.
Keeps popping himself.
I feel like he's trying to send a message. But I just can't figure out what it is.
The dummy you shot himself in the head. I've never seen anything like it.
So just ten days later, and only four months after their wedding, Ronnie hired a lawyer to file for divorce, but fair almost immediately she rescinds and says, like, Okay, I'm just I'm being silly, Like I need to chill out. I'm not this doesn't have to be this way like it definitely, you know, probably I mean a bit of early marriage jitters, because this guy's a giant asshole.
Like maybe I can fix him.
You know, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure many of my ex y.
I thought exactly the same thing.
No comment.
Well, look I can't stand me. I think you're perfect the way you are, all right.
So, Ronnie says that Phil was never physically violent, it just it wasn't his style, but his emotional and mental abuse was legendary. Yeah, when she falls and suffers a minor sprain and he has to leave town, he hires a nurse to look over her while he's gone. Sounds that sounds nice, right, He hires her a nurse while he's out of town. No, the nurse is there to forbid her from doing anything. She's forced to sit in a wheelchair and use a wheelchair while he's gone, so
she can't get around or whatever. All right, And then he's not just like controlling her with the nurse. He's also I mean, he is controlling, but he's also having the nurse give her heavy duty tranquilizers.
Oh shit.
Oh so cool, so that she.
Just has no like willpower to do anything while he's gone.
Yeah, she just put her on pause. He's putting his partner on pause as he leaves for the weekend or whatever. Yeah, she's like a TiVo. Kids don't know what TiVo is, like a vision again.
So yeah, so he's literally like she she has some friends come over and her friends are like, why you what are these pills you're taking. She's like, the nurse just makes me take them.
I don't know what they are dead inside?
Are you okay?
Man?
So Phil eventually lets her get back into the studio but and writes a song for her, but it bombs horribly and he uses it as justification for her to no longer pursue her music career. Years later, she realizes that Phil likely gave her a bad song for that exact reason, and she finally resigns to just be the housewife that Phil wants her to be. So he like, he gives her a purposely bad song, and it's like, see it it failed, You should just be a wife. Yeah, I got it. He's trying.
Great. Guess that's like gaslighting.
You really have to that's on the stag.
Yeah, yeah, it's like on the nasional state.
Literally, like I'll fuck up my career just to fuck up your career.
It's the opposite of what I want to do to like right wingers who who fail out of Hollywood or whatever and try to and go into politics is just like make fake fans and a fake and its be like, oh yeah, you can fill fake Madison Square Garden been Shapiro.
People love to hear your speakers.
Oh man.
So so yeah. So she finally resigns to just be the housewife and they adopt a baby boy named Dante. Okay, but Phil doesn't want anyone to know that this baby is adopted, so he sends out fake birth announcements being like we welcome Dante to our family, and like when people ask, he tells her, like, tell her, just tell everybody because like obviously she was not pregnant and then she has a baby, right uh and and he's like, just tell everybody that that it was it was a
premature birth. And that's why you know, we you didn't see me pregnant at all because I was barely ever pregnant. You know that's not how that works. Yeah, yeah, well you know at nineteen sixty seven or eight or some shit. You know, it's like probably you know, it's like it's not like FaceTime exists or whatever. You know, like you could go a good time without really seeing somebody and then be like.
MS pregnancy entirely.
Yeah, yes, so, uh, she gets the baby and everything, but she's not allowed to be a mother to the baby at all. So they get like a nanny and then nanny does all the work and feels.
Like that's why we hired a nanny.
What are you doing work for?
So why are you doing nanny stuff?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So she's like, you tell me to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother, and then and then you yell at me whenever I'm trying to be a mother. She completely gives up on having a career, all right, And then this is from this is from Ronnie's book. Quote. Besides, he pointed out, who's going to take care of the baby while we're in the studio. Bil knew he had me. I wasn't going to argue against anything that might get my career back, so I
accepted it. And then she goes on to say that anytime she would bring up getting back into the studio, he would either like be like, you got to take care of the baby, what are you doing? Or he would like or he'd flip out on her and be like, I've got other things to do, I've got a call to make. I can't be doing this shit right now. Yeah, So he's like so he's like gaslighting hers, like back and forth on everything that's going on in her life.
You know, it's like, you know, you can't go into the studio because you gotta be a mom, but you can't be a mom because we hired a nanny. Why would you be a mom? Like, you know, it's like she just has this profound sense of being basically nothing anymore, from going from a mega superstar on the world stage, touring the Europe and everything to like, you can't even take care of your kid. You don't even have an audience with your own child, you know, type shit. God, that's.
I mean, And that's also got to be getting him off, just the exercise of that much power, like I can take you from this to this. I direct he's talking about that, but it feels like that's got to be part of it.
Right, yes, And it does seem to be like a common situation is like that power and like having that power, and Sophie to bring up something that you mentioned before.
It's like with his first wife.
The reason it's it's like he has to have control and he has to be in charge until being in charge no longer means anything to him, right, And then that's why with his first wife he wasn't possessive in controller. Once he had her, he was like, Oh, I don't care, I've proved everything I need to prove here. But now with like Ronnie, he continually needs to prove how in charge of her life he is and to himself, to
everyone else, and he takes joy from that. You know, Okay, but Ronnie's memoir is full of the most hilarious stories ever heard, Like, uh, so, so Ronnie is mixed race, she's black and white and uh and Cherokee, I believe, and and Phil is obviously white Jewish uh and the Dante is a mixed race baby. So this makes sense for everything. But shortly after they adopt Dante, Ronnie's mom comes to stay with him and Phil sends her out
to Watts to buy him an Afro wig. Oh god, no, no he doesn't, Oh he doesn't know he doesn't know. That's no Watts, that's not real. You're in like you're fucking late sixties early seventies to Watts.
Watts was I don't know that's where you would buy a wig. Sure it is where you get an afrowig and listeners. Watts was calmless, calmly, the famously the calmest place in Los Angeles. That's part of the sixties. Nothing nothing happened in Watts during this part of the sixties.
No, no, no, okay.
So she has to go all over Watts looking for one, and she finally finds it and she brings it back for Phil and he loves it and he starts wearing it all the time, dude.
Including awesome, awesome.
Including to a black church in Watts that he forces them to go to. He's like, we're gonna go to this black church and Watts his own Watts riot. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I misinterpreted what you were saying, And now it's even funnier because I thought you were saying he forced her to get that for the kid to wear. No, but no, Phil to welm the picture. Yeah, Afrone says, she's like kind of bored.
But Phil is loving it.
He's you know, hall no, Yeah, he's dancing around and he's gone, and he's wearing a gun at the time. Everybody can see he's wearing a gun and being the only white person in like a very black church in Watts dancing around and clapping and singing Hallowejah and doing all this chef row wig with a peace. Oh my god, I mean, can you can you even imagine this happening? Like he survived through like the grace of people just being like, oh, that guy's crazy as fuck. There's something
wrong with Yeah, it's so funny man. So so Ronnie of course continues to abuse alcohol, because who wouldn't in this situation, right, I don't even call that abusing.
I would just call that that's that's medicating.
Yeah, just.
So, she blacks out while driving her car and she wrecks her her Camaro and she doesn't get any trouble. But Phil's that like, all right, well, you got to see a psychiatrist, and which she does right up until the psychiatrist says, also, hey, Phil, you should come in because clearly there's some other things going on that are that are.
Causing this stuff. There might be more to yeah, and and he's like and he's like, no.
I ain't doing that. He's like, and you ain't either, you ain't going to a psychiatrist and so uh and he tells her specifically, you're the one with the problems. Why would I go?
Wow, wow wow, what a perfectly shitty response, though, that is beautiful Phil well crafted.
Yeah. Uh. He tries locking the liquor cabinet, but she just pries it open. He eventually he forces her into rehab, which she actually loves. She's like, rehab.
Is the ship.
To rehab, and it was great. It helps her a lot. And she and she because it's like, oh, I get to be away from Phil. I don't have to be around him anymore. So now any time she starts this cycle right where anytime she just gets sick of Phil, she just drinks a shipload and gets put into rehab, and then she's a cool two week vacation from Phil, right and then pops right back.
Okay, fine, I'll come back. I can deal with him again, you know.
So she doesn't have an alcohol problem as much as she has a Phil Spector problem.
Yes, completely, just atcha gotcha.
Speaking of things that will make you go to rehab. I have to go to rehab every time we do an advertisement because I'm addicted to our advertisements.
I should probably go to rehab. But rehab these her quitters, says the two shirt I saw at the state fair when I was eleven. Yeah, exactly, that state fair taught you a lot. Thank you, Carney. Parents.
Come back and we'll learn some things. You can't learn how a state fair unless it's the Texas one. And we're back, all right.
So she's drinking, she's a drunk, she's going to rehab.
She's a specter, she's addicted to Phil Specter. Yeah, and she's going to rehab.
One night, Phil takes Ronnie down to the basement of their house. Don't like sure, are ready? Don't like this? Wait, this is starting. I don't love that.
I don't love that.
He takes it down to their basement and he shows her a golden glass casket and he says, this is where you will be if you ever leave me. Oh. Oh. The level of commitment to this intimidation, I cannot begin to stress. He had a gold custom made casket, right, he had them bring it into his house like he presumably left it there for years.
Yeah, only waiting wait until he knew he needed the big guns to pull out.
Like this is this is high level mental abuse. Yeah, this this is like what an unlimited budget? Like this is why I would never date a millionaire right or a billionaire? Oh, because they can do crazy shit to you. Yeah, Like they're gonna be able to like pay somebody to just follow you around for an entire year when you when you leave them, you know, Yeah, it's dark.
It's like protecting that casket. Like he's not pissed. And she wants to go downstairs, and he's like, wait, no, no, no, I gotta take care of that.
You can't go down there. You can't go down I don't want you to see it.
A Christmas gift, yeah, something like that.
She's like, I'm just gonna go get a jar spaghetti.
He's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no no, make George get it.
All right. So she would claim that the doors of the house were always locked and she was only allowed to leave during their anniversary. Phil kept her shoes so she could never leave the house without his approval. For her twenty sixth birthday, She's twenty six years old. For twenty sixth birthday, Phil takes her to Las Vegas to see Elvis Presley and presumably so they could do karate in the fucking back roof.
Yeah, would imagine they're doing karate, maybe showing off the guns they always carry.
Yeah, So she's stoked because you know, she always wanted to meet Elvis and they're a big time people or whatever. Yeah, And basically Phil like abandons her in the crowd and it's like, I'm going to hang out with Elvis, go to the hotel room.
Such a man, I'll see you later.
He's such a good night.
That didn't make it into the new Elvis movie.
That's tragic. Him and Phil Specter just in the back just yeah, karate crazy. In nineteen sixty nine, in the midst of the beatles well documented decline, Side Side bastard Alan Klein asked Phil to come to London to help assemble the disaster of the Let It Be recordings. So for people who are the dumbest human beings alive and don't know everything about the Beatles.
Sure, fair enough.
The the Let It Be album was actually recorded before Abby.
Road, Right, it was recorded, They didn't know that.
Yeah, it was recorded before Abby Road, but it was a mess, right they like they were fighting. John is on Heroin hardcore. By the way, of course, side story, do you know who got who I heard got John addicted to Heroin was James Taylor. Oh okay, I can see that. James Taylor Fire and Rain is the guy who got him addicted to heroin.
Because if James Taylor offered me a Heroin I would I would do it.
Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Literally, if like my brother offered me Heroin, I'd probably do it there, but certainly James Taylor. But yeah, so so they're a mess, right, they're falling apart, and Phil is brought into save these recordings, right while uh and and there are I believe they're already done with with abbey Road having recorded abbey Road and Let it Be definitely comes after, you know, like it was, but it was assembled by Phil essentially he
he he flies in literally just for this job. They're like, here's a bunch of tapes, just do something with it. And it's why that album is generally is generally like kind of it's it's kind of wild. Right, There's like these huge orchestrations, but also like these like slap dash little like weird interlude sections and talking and jokes and all that they just needed to fill out space and it was part of the creativity of the whole thing, right right.
Phil hates flying, which uh.
I read a story somewhere and I wish I tried to find it so hard, But I read a story one time about Phil freaking out on a private plane that they had to turn around and come back like almost immediately after taking off because he's terrified of flying all the time, but he has to fly back and forth.
You do with I mean, do you think any of his fears related to I mean, like the day the music died, right the famous plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the big.
Big Bob Ritchie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, very very likely. I mean, like, I think there was a lot of musicians that died around this time in plane crashes. Otis Redding dies in a plane crash right around this time, you know, like, and Phil feels every one of those deaths into me. I think it's also a bit of like a control thing. I think Phil is a control freak in the truth term of a control freak. So I definitely think that that was a bit of what was going on. But I think also too he just
just has a natural like fear of flying. Uh So he arrives in London and he immediately starts spectroizing the Beatles recording. He added strings to it, dense production to McCartney's Long and Winding Road, which, if you know now, like McCartney hates that McCartney released his own version of Let It Be that was like despecterized, basically like he took all of his production out and released that individual project is like his own thing because he hated what Phil Spector did to it.
In fact, you're so enraged.
He sent a letter to side bastard Alan Klein, demanding that the arrangement be minimized. Sophie, can you show the letter this is This is probably the angriest letter that Paul McCartney has ever written. He says, dear sir, this is to Alan Klein, Dear sir, in the future, no one will be allowed to add or subtract from recording of any of one of my songs without my permission. I had considered orchestrating the Long and Winding Road, but I decided against it. Therefore I want it altered to
these specifications. Gives a list of some stuff. One is strings and horns, voices, all noises to be reduced, vocal and beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume. Three is hard to be removed completely at the end of the song, and four is don't ever do it again, signed Paul McCartney. Don't do it again.
And this has to be like an unstoppable force and movable object thing, because, like Paul McCartney, very rarely would anyone I imagine at this time it's pretty rare for people to tell Paul McCartney other than other Beatles, other than other Beatles, what you do. And it has to be true of Spector.
It does speak very highly of who's Phil Spector is that he managed to get away with all of this. Yeah, that he could do this to the Beatles, arguably the biggest band. It's nineteen sixty nine, they're the biggest band in the world. Yeah, this is their last album to be released collectively. And and Paul would never work with Phil again. But both Lennon and Harrison loved him. Lennon and Harrison both loved him thought he did wonderful job.
Not good there you go. Yeah, makes sense. He's mad, Paul is so mad, but uh and and a lot of people claim that he ruined the Beatles, right, But Let it Be sold one point two million in the first two days as a single, and it was the Beatles' final number one in America, earning them a Grammy.
So, hm, you know, there's certainly. I honestly, I listened to Paul's.
I listened to Paul's version of the Long and Winding Road versus Phil's the Maybe it's nostalgia that I just always feel that way, but Phil's just feels more more correct for what's going on.
It feels still very George Martini.
It doesn't feel like they stripped the soul of the original like or the mid decade Beatles albums.
Like the sixty six to sixty seven stuff.
It feels it feels real, right, right, So I get what Phil was on and I can respect that. I think it was still a really great album. There's some really cool stuff about it. So they finished work on Let It Be and Specter set to work on another Beatles project, this time the solo effort of George Harrison.
This is when Phil starts actually drinking again. Normally he's the perfectionist in the studio, but George matched his perfectionist attitude, and he, you know, he's scared he's not going to be able to compete with the other Beatles, right, like Paul will release a record or John and it will overshadow him. So he makes his first record the record like he he wasn't worried about Ringo.
But yeah, yeah, no one I mentioned John and I mentioned Paul. That's what I said, very clearly mentioned just John and Paul. Nobody's worried about.
Old Otill come to the sea.
Bullshit.
Look everyone, I figured out how to make a dimmest switch.
I don't know why. That's my ringo. Uh So, so this starts a jecky and hide personality with him. He would endlessly abuse studio personnel for his own humor. One night, he gets so drunk he falls off his chair and hurts his arm, and then he can't go to sessions for like a few days. Last Also, who hasn't right, Who hasn't who has had a miswork for a day or two because he's got drunk and fell I've got he's.
Suddenly ill and had to delay podcast recordings with Sophie.
Of course, for sure, absolutely, because we're adult and that's what. Eventually he returns to America, he leaves George to finish the album. He kind of is like, you know, and George complains that he's being inattentive and but and he doesn't. He doesn't like that Phil is doing this, but he does regardless, finished his record and All Things Must Pass was released and spent seven weeks at number one, and he's the first Beatle to chart post breakup, right he is.
I mean, All Things with Pass is a banger of a record. It is. It is top to bottom, it's it's a no skip album. It's amazing, and it's nothing like the Beatles, which is the most interesting thing about it, is like the fact that he put out a record that was not reminiscent of any of his work really with the Beatles in any way.
He was very Ravi Shankar influenced. At this point in his life.
He's into spiritual He's literally doing Hari Krishna songs and stuff, you know. So so yeah, for that to be seven weeks at number one, pretty impressive. You know. It's a Great Album. In September of the same year, John Lennon returned from America. He was staying in America. He returns from America and he brought Phil into Abbey Road's studios to record what would become the Plastic Oh No Band album. In contrast to Phil's previous work, he listened to John's
direction and made a record of sparse arrangements. It perfectly maxed John's words and the tone of the lyrics and everything. So in John, Phil found a kindred spirit and the same for John. Right. John had this belief that torture geniuses, right, are always the tortured part of that right they have. There's something that makes a person a genius, and it's usually incredible strategy.
And of course John had his own mother died.
John was a victim of tragedy himself, oftentimes in the Beatles. Yeah, you know, he had a hard life as well, and so he kind of thought both sides of this, him and Phil kind of kindred spirits, right.
Right, you know, Yeah, we're both kind of giant assholes to the women in our lives. This probably helps us.
Bond, yes exactly, Yeah, yeah, I get you, bro.
I to him a piece of shit sometimes.
So Klaus Bormann played bass on the George Harrison record and the John Lennon record, and he he said, there's a stark contrast of tone between Phil for George Harrison and Phil for John Lennon, you know. Interesting. And also Mick Mick Brown, who wrote the book Breaking Down the Wall of Sound that I referenced for a lot of this, he mentions that Phil got along with Yoko Ono really
well as well. And he relates this a lot to the same thing as the way Ike Turner gave Phil his face to work when he was working with Tina. You know, he was like he was so respected that even the controlling member of their lives was like, yeah, yeah, let Phil do his thing, you know.
Yeah, yeah, that does say a lot.
That says a lot a lot, you know, like that's that's those people are famously controlling of the other's careers. You know.
So in the meantime, Ronnie is in New York.
She thinks her career is over, and Phil flies her out to Loneon and says, hey, actually George wrote a song for you. He wants you to sing it. And so she flies out there and and she gets into it and and unfortunately, uh it flops again and she's like, all right, yeah, I'm done, I'm done. I'm done, right Yeah.
John Lennon's album did not flop, but only managed to reach number six in America number eleven in the UK, which is a pale comparison to George's success, and with John seeing what he perceived as the weaker writer success over his over his right, he pulled back on releasing music and starts supporting Yoko's career more at the time h they reunite to work on Imagine, which we we listened to an exact copy of today.
Uh and and just being a legendary piece of work.
It wasn't really well received and Phil retreated again into semi retirement and did not record any music for over a year. On Christmas nineteen seventy one, Phil surprised Ronnie with the said of five year old twin boys, who he had adopted without her knowledge. He went through.
Awesome, awesome surprise adoption. It's better than surprise knocking someone up and having two surprise kids.
Yeah, I don't know, or is it worse?
Actual a lot more thought to adopt secrets.
You got sign so much paperwork to adopt.
It might be you're right, it might be worse. It might be worse.
She's coming back. She thinks they're adorable, but she doesn't really want anything to do with them, because, you know, his his behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. He's worse and worse all the time. She's just She's like, her whole life is just story after story of horrible things. Like right, you could do an entire episode just on Ronnie Spector
and the horrible things that happened to her. Yeah, cool Phil's behavior and January of nineteen seventy two, he's arrested at the Daisy Club in Beverly Hills after a woman called the police to report that a small man in a karate jacket pointed a gun at her. That sounds like our fell, that's the description. A small man in a karate jacket. That's like the most insulting thing I can possibly imagine being called. I love it.
Police arrived promptly and found inspect Beverly Hills.
You know, they arrived promptly, fine inspector with a handgun in his waistband, and he was charged with the misdemeanor and received a two hundred dollars. Fine. Wow, we'll see the good old days of brandishing a weapon and getting a simple misdemeanor fine. Just a few months later, in the middle of the night, Ronnie escaped with the help of her mother. She was forced to escape barefoot because Phil didn't let her have shoes, and she had to
leave behind her kids and all of her possessions. Wow, but, Robert, do you know who won't force you to have been your home in the middle of the night, barefoot with nothing to your name.
Well, hopefully not the sponsors of this podcast, because they're hell I got my home. Yeah, they could give it and taketh away, I.
Said, and we're back. I'm taking control of this whole situation, all right. I love it. When we last left our hero, his wife Ronnie had escaped into the night with no shoes and fear for her life. She filed for divorce, and surprisingly Phil walked away completely amicably and gave her everything that she asked for.
Weirds, okay, okay, okay, for a second, you did.
No, he's a weird enough guy. I don't know. No, he was an absolute asshole about every single aspect of the divorce.
Just days after she fled. During a telephone call, Phil.
Informed her that all her clothes were in a trash can on Los Sienaga Boulevard. Been there. She files for custody of Dante but not the twins for obvious reasons, and cited the dangerous nature of the mansion and Phil's collection of guns and temper for the reason. At the time, Phil kept numerous guns around the house and had up to five guard dogs. As I mentioned, the mansion was surrounded by tall fans, barbed wires, signs everywhere.
He's super paranoid, obviously, yeah.
Yeah. So Phil retaliated by claiming that Ronnie was unstable. And what did he use as evidence of her instability? Why those frequent trips to rehab.
That she Oh my god, and she barely is even covered in guns all the time, So she's clearly not thinking about those kids' safety.
I've got right now, and I hit one of the kids. So the court uh orders failed to pay for Rodney's temporary lodging and provider with support. He wrote a check for the first month, but the second month he had three armed guards deliver one two hundred and fifty dollars payments in nickels to her lawyer's office. What, oh, go to be a dick, just be aick?
Sure?
Yeah, the record twenty five thousand. That's twenty five thousand nickels. Twenty five thousand nickels, and it weighed two hundred and seventy five point six pounds. I did the math. He sucks three petty three armed guards, two of them with shotguns, to deliver twelve hundred and fifty dollars in nickels.
Now, look, have I been petty before? Have I, for example, been treated badly at a at a at a at a private gym that I went to and mailed them a box that exploded into glitter?
Sure? Sure?
And I mailed anime shit when I had a bad experience at a small business that I hated the owner. Perhaps would I do this? Well maybe maybe?
Yeah, I might actually do this again.
You know, it's like this sounds pretty fun.
Yeah, I did you that much money?
Yeah, But here's the fun.
To me, this is the funniest thing, right right, because like I mean, I didn't do the math on what the quarters or pennies situation was. But he chose Nichols, right, He could have chosen doves he could have chosen pennies. Pennies would have been way more. I assumed that he was like, Okay, well that's a lot of pennies, right, and he was like maybe too much. And they were like, actually, if you do that, we're gonna have to have four armed guards.
And he was like, that's a waste of money.
Yeah.
At the beginning of August, at the behest of her lawyers, Ronnie checked herself into psychiatric care and spent several weeks there. Then, on September fourteenth, her lawyers were called to the Beverly Clarette Crest Hotel to deal with her in an intoxicated condition, heavily with the finger quotes here, right, intoxicated condition she was. She said she drank a lot and she was just screaming in the lobby.
Right.
Yeah. A few days later they're called again when Ronnie nearly killed herself after passing out with a lit cigarette and setting the bed on fire. Oh my god, she drank a full fifth of vodka by herself. Oh, and then said she was getting a little nap, Yeah, nap with a cigarette. She was unharmed, fortunately, you know, for the most part. But she didn't have to go to the hospital and everything.
That's good that that did kill a lot of people back then.
Yeah, you know, but obviously she's she's going through this is this is taking this toll on her for sure.
I note that's part of why they made They changed how they made both beds and like couches. There's new fabrics they use on all of those because of how many people burnt to death smoking and bedding on the couch.
What do you mean, Robert, You mean that all those spontaneous combustions that just stopped recently might have been a manufacturer's issue.
The eternal mystery what caused the human combustion?
Smoke?
Smoker smoking?
Is it smoking next to cocktails that were just pure liquor? Yeah?
Weird, crazy how that happens.
Yeah, So, right after this, she tries to fire her lawyers right and end her divorce proceedings, right, But in one of the rarest moments of lawyers being amazing people, they refuse to be fired.
They say, we don't think that you are making sound decisions.
This is not what you want. Our conversations with you have said that this is not what you want. You are under mental distress right now, and we want to make sure that you continue with this, with this divorce proceeding, because this person is bad for you, and she does and she she rehires them or whatever the hell they move on. OK. She your reverse course again continues with the doors. It takes another eighteen months to finalize the divorce.
She received a twenty five thousand dollars payment in addition to twenty five hundred dollars a month under the condition that she never disparaged Phil in public. She also would Phil would receive control over her master recordings and most of the publishing leverage, and the ability to limit Ronnie's access to her own hits.
That's fuck. Fuck, that's fucked. Yeah, I mean it has been great before, but that's that's really bad.
He takes away her ability to make money, making her dependent on his money. Yeah, right. And and then also she has no control, so he can do whatever he wants.
It kind of robs her too, like not just of her money, but of like her future the things probably well and also just like probably some of the stuff she's proudest of, like this, this stuff that she made that was hugely successful and influential, has no control like that also has as a creative. That's like a knife another knife. Ye, he's got a lot of knives in it.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So he has to send her a check every single month. Uh, and every single month. Oh, she doesn't get custody of the children. And he has to send her a check every month. And every single month he sends her a check and he writes fuck off on the back. So so she has to write her name underneath, so it says fuck off Ronnie Bennett every single time. She this man, this man could yeah.
Like fucking smallest man in the world I have I have never ever heard of this, this level of pettiness in a relation.
Super petty, super petty. But Ronnie's free, you know.
And she she looks back on this, you know, it's like she uh, she says, she escaped their divorce and she was happy to escape it with her life like she was.
She was happy to be done.
Yeah. So shortly after the divorce, Specter was brought in again to work with John Lennon. Things had been extremely rough for John Lennon in the years following the Beatles breakup. He's fighting the government for his right to stay in America. He's fighting his bandmates he's fighting his wife for money. Like there's everybody is fighting for his money, right. Yeah.
In one of the strangest situations ever, Yoko sense that John was working towards cheating on her, and rather than lose him completely, she opted to pawn him off on one of her friends. Make any of this, Yes, So it's basically a sanctioned affair, right, It's like, you're gonna do this anyways, let's just may will you just like be his little fling for a while or whatever. He's he's living outside of his means, but he convinced the label to give him ten thousand dollars to record an
album of standards, and he enlists Phil to produce. Okay, so he when he worked with John previously, he's on their turf and he's and he's got to do their things right. But now they're in Los Angeles and he's he's doing his thing right. So he brings in his favorite musicians, including the sons of his idol, Barney Kessel. Remember Barney Kessel, His mom embarrassed him in front of Yeah, he brings in his kids, right, they come in and play on this record.
We're gonna talk about them in a minute.
Uh. He developed a joy for animal night trates. Robert, you're a big fan of mamel.
Yeah, who doesn't love a good animal night trade?
Every now and.
Again and again and again.
May May Pang remembers that he just smelled like old socks all the time.
Is it because he's hoffing out of socks?
No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, but she just doesn't smell the old socks or or VCR cleaner. I guess, I don't know. Anyway, he'd show up wearing a holster right with a gun in it. He'd show up and he danced around with his guns off. Flip. He's thirty five at this point, right, Yeah, it's like he's he's a he's a grown ass man. He's a grown man. Yeah. Uh. John he John would drink vodka
straight from the bottle and uh because he's depressed. And Phil would drink this wine called Manischevitz, which is basically like, yeah, it's like a Jewish ceremony wine.
Right, you can get it in most grocery stores. I don't recommend it. It doesn't taste good.
Nobody says that it tastes good. I've never had it and I was gonna just get a bottle of him in the episode, but you know what, I'll just drink whiskey instead. We'll play everybody's favorite game.
It's that expensive, but it's not good. It's grape It tastes like grape juice with alcohol in it.
But also the grape juice is bad, right right, yeah, yeah, so really shitty wine. They'd explode into arguments about the direction of the music, and things were often hectic. One night, Elton John comes by and he's hanging out for like a little bit, and he's like, I gotta go, and he leaves and he tells the guy that brought and he's like, what the fuck was going on? They're like yeah, they're just like that.
Theyre just and he's like, I'm so glad we left, Like this sucks.
Yeah, Phil would. Because they're arguing all the time. Phil started dressing in ridiculous outfits. He'd show up dressed like a captain or dressed like a you know, like a pirate, or like crazy like just random outfits all the time. He show up dressed like a waiter or something, you know, just look ridiculous. But then eventually they get drunk and then they fight. One night, Chuck Berry comes by Phil's house to meet with John, and John's a big fan of Chuck Berry, like a lot of the Beatles music
came because of Chuck Berry. Yeah, yeah, obviously. And then Phil Phil is just in the other room playing music so loudly that no one can hear anything, and so Chuck just gets mad and leaves. Yeah, which, by the way, uh, presumably so that he could go watch Pepe tapes or traffic an underage girl across state lines.
Because he's a Jerry Berry is he's he was a founder.
Of rock and roll other than you know, big Mama Thwarton and you know, to found rock and roll.
He found a lot of the bad things rock and roll musicians did.
Yeah, he is. One of the reasons why the Man Act was so successful was because he actually was trafficking a fourteen year old girl across state lines for purposes and he got convicted, which is crazy.
Yes, he sentenced to three years in prison four said crime.
He was a black man, so he got convicted as opposed to being a president.
Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely, as things go, as.
Things tend to go. So Phil would always play games with John's mental you know, fragile mental state and everything.
He'd call him or.
John would call him when he was supposed to be at the studio and he'd be like, yeah, I'm on my way, and then he just wouldn't show up, you know, and John's like wasting money on this studio shit, which, by the way, we find out later that Phil has been kind of grifting the whole the whole thing.
He's paying for the.
Sessions himself so that he can maintain control of things and so that he can bill John's label.
It's a whole thing. We'll get to it in a second.
But so one night John gets blasted, right, he gets ship faced, and him and another guy is by his bodyguard take him to lou Adler's house where John was staying, and they tied him to the bed and John thinks they're gonna rape him. He thinks they're gonna sexually assault him, and he freaks out, like he loses, heill gets a black eye, like it's they they fight, they physically fight, like I don't know, John was obviously very very drunk,
like they don't. It's not it's not insinuated that that was actually that a sexual assault was actually going to happen, but for whatever reason, John thinks that that's what's gonna happen, and he freaks out and they they they tie him to the bed and oh.
Yeah, yeah, and then he eventually like gets out or whatever.
But they leave and uh and Phil as to wear makeup on his bruised eye for a couple of days and stuff. Jesus. The sessions are so crazy that A and M Studios evicts them from the studio. There like Phil's wave and a gun around during session. This is too too much shit, right.
We don't think our insurance covers whatever you're doing.
Yes, right, And so they kick them out and they head over to Record Plan, which is especially hilarious if you know the Record Plan is this famous Hollywood studio. There's a lot of Record Plants around the world, but the Record Plan in Hollywood is kind of a famous Hollywood studio, especially currently it just shut down like a year ago, but prior to that it was like the Party Studio. It was the Arizona State University of Studios.
So the fact that they got kicked out of A and M, which is now owned by John Mayer and called Chaplin Studios or something like that, which is a very professional, fancy studio to go to Record Plant that's basically like.
Yeah, we let people party.
This is where at record Plant, Phil fires his gun into the ceiling of the studio. So Record Plan's like, yeah, we'll have you. I'm like first night. He's like, what is the context?
Is he trying to emphasize a point? Is it using it like a punctuation mark?
Is it just an accident? So he gets into an argument of some type with Mal Evans, who is a famous uh like kind of Fifth Beatles situation. He's he's like their roadie, he's their fixer, he does everything. He's hanging out with John Lennon and he is very trusted by the right and uh, and he gets into an argument with Phil presumably about like hey, man, stop doing some dumb shit or whatever, and.
Man, did you unless John Lennon something like that.
Phil has like a measure of anger, pulls his gun out and he says accidentally fires his gun into the studio.
Which says something right, yeah.
John turns to him like and he's like, Phil, if you're gonna shoot me, shoot me, but don't fuck with me.
Is He's like, I need them.
Oh my god, what a great response. Honestly, you're gonna shoot me, shoot me, but like, I need my ears, bro, don't shoot guns beside my head, Dick. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I gotta give it to him. That's pretty cool. Everybody thinks Phil is just shooting blanks in these guns, right, Nope. But the next day, mal Evin shows up to John Lennon's house with the bullet from the cilly. He's like, here's the bullet from last night, and John's like, what bullet.
He's like, the bullet that he fired into the ceiling. He's like, he's got bullets in that thing. It's a real gun. Yes, it's a real gun. Right. So, shortly after that incident, John returns to New York City and one night he receives a phone call from Phil claiming that the studio had burnt down and they lost everything.
So John's like, whoa, what what was going on? He calls the studio and they're like, I don't know fire.
What are you talking about?
Man, there's no fire here?
Uh? And then so he's like what the fuck is going on? And then a week later, Phil calls again, this time ranting about helicopters surrounding the house. Right. He's like, Okay, there's a helicopter surrounding the house, right, And he says, but I don't worry, I got the tapes. I got the tapes, right, And so John eventually discovers basically Philip paid for the entire session, which means in the recording world,
if you pay for it, you own the tapes. The tapes are released to the person who pays for them.
Right.
Okay, you own all of John Lennon's work if you own those tapes, right. And so they get a bill from Phil's label for ninety thousand dollars, right, god, and they're like, what the fuck. Apparently he's like he's he's paying for all the sessions. And then he's doing the old classic rebuill it like like one hundred and seventy percent of the cost of whatever it is type.
Thing, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
So when Bob Mercer of EMI Capital went to Phil's Sunset office to retrieve the tapes, Phil chased him down a flight of stairs with an axe.
He's back against.
The album wasn't released until nineteen seventy five, with only five tracks produced by Spector and another eight that John recorded without him, so obviously a mess.
So I mentioned before Barney Kessel's two sons, Dan and David.
They start hanging out with Phil during the Lenin sessions, and this is the first time that they come to his house. And the first time they come to his house, he greeted them wearing a thirty eight, and he asked him if they like guns. Of course yes, they said.
Yes, of course, because you know who doesn't.
And he takes him into the backyard in Hollywood, remember, and they spend a few hours shooting at old records. They idolize him. They love this dude, like they think he is the epitome of the rock star mentality. Right, And to be a fair you know, he's like in his thirties, he's shooting guns, he's partying with John Lennon, like he is kind of a.
Get with all sorts of crimes.
Sure, he's kind of a rock star, right, definitely.
Yeah.
He he starts treating him like his kids, right, which is fucked because he has kids and he is currently locking them in their rooms and they're under the the they're under the supervision of a governess who doesn't let them do shit right. Meanwhile, he take the Kessels to Muhammad ah Li fights and even took them to Vegas to see Elvis and brought them backstage after the show to hang out, which is super fun because he just didn't take Ronnie back to the peace right right, not
his wife. Of course, in their eyes, Phil can do no wrong. They love him, dude. They to this day they always like, hey, Phil is the best, right, you know, I mean, he's a legend at this point. You know, he's a legitimate legend. So he's veering out of control with his drink and his relationships. At one point, this writer Roy carr Is brought to la from from London
with the task of writing a book about him. One night, in between telling fantastical stories like Bruce Lee was my bodyguard once and how he had worked as an undercover agent in Paris, sure Specter announced that he needed to pee and he gets up and walks out, only to come back wearing no shirt and a revolver in his waistband and playing the accordion.
So one that we've learned about him is that no matter what he is or isn't wearing, he will have a gun.
On him.
He's got a gun on him, always.
Got a gun on him. And he's always doing something wild.
He said Frank from Always Sonny.
Yes, yes, very much. Picture him as skinny Frank. A very little man with a gun.
He's always little man with always So I started blasting him.
I'm just ready to shoot.
So so Car says he couldn't tell what was factor fiction when it came to Phil, but he does know that, like without a doubt, Phil has intense loneliness issues, like he would get on anytime Carr would prepare to leave, like he'd be working all day taking notes, and he'd be okay, all right, well, time to go, and and no, no, no, stay for a little bit longa he don't leave, don't leave. So he believes that Phil is even following him around town.
One night, Phil's assistant was sent to pick him up and they get in the car and she looks in the rearview mirror and she sees Phil and the Kessel brothers in a Cadillac with shotguns and they just chase them, chase them all over Hollywood until they escape, right and then and then they just there's no explanation given for why they did this. Like the next day, They're like, Phil, why did you guys chase this around shotguns last year?
And He's just like, what are you talking about?
What do you mean? I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Like me, I always have a little gun. Another time, Phil picks up car and the Kessel boys with some mysterious people in the car and they fill the car with pump shotguns and rifles, and then they go to this Cantonese restaurant where they ate dinner by themselves, all roped off in this little section, and then after dinner they just go back to Phil's house and Phil shot at a tree with a pistol for like an hour, right.
H yeah, okay sure.
So he just sounds like Phil just he's just living Levina, look bro bullets with him.
Yes, he absolutely did.
When Carr returns to England, Phil tries to give him a pistol and he's like, I can't take a pistol through customs every country?
Does it?
Just let you take guns there? Phil? So funny. In nineteen seventy four, Phil is brought in to produce for Share. You know, Share is in his life, but Share is no longer with Sonny Bono now she's with David Geffen, and David Geffen had become her manager as well as like her label head, as well as her boyfriend, as well as like every he's everywhere, right, does he like even have any connection to the music industry or no? Uh David Geffen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean but here's so,
here's the thing. Phil hates him because he's like he's a kind of a NEPO baby in the situation, Like he doesn't know music. He doesn't he's not a musician. He didn't come up that way. He came up through like the business side of the industry. And he gets lucky, starts dating Share, basically becomes her manager, becomes a label head, starts getting all these positions of like authority and shit,
and Phil hates him. Phil despises him right, and one night David Geffen tells Phil, hey man, maybe you should try this with with SHARE's song, and Phil punched him in the face and told him to get out of here, you fucking f slur. Great, Okay, Share is like, Phil,
what are you doing? Chill the fuck out? And Phil does, right, and then just go back to work, right, And that's like the type of way Phil is he'll just haul off and punch somebody in the face in the studio, call him a slur, and then get right back to work, you know, all in a day's work, you know, yeah work.
Look, he puts his gun on, one gun at a time, the same that you dial.
Yeah, same as all of us. Phil dated after Ronnie left. One of those women is a woman named Devora Robati. She starts as his assistant, then becomes his lover. Right. She was married when she starts working with him, but Phil's crazy hours and like constantly having to like answer ruins her marriage. And then one night after after their you know, uh kind of flirting office flirtation or whatever, Phil walks into her car gives her a kiss, and now you know, now they're dating her, but he's always
mistreating her. He'd be super sweet and loving and then all of a sudden begins screaming and calling her name. One night, during an argument at dinner, he dumps a bowl of noodles on her head. So they go through this cycle where it's like, yeah, he's just a shit noodles. They're at dinner and he's just like yeah, yeah, and so she so he get mad.
Jokes uck. She'd get mad and quit, and then.
He'd send her like a dozen roses and she'd you know, forgive him and come back. And it just keeps kind of doing this. Right, It's this like constant like revolving door of Phil Spector where he does something shitty and then he gets super mad and they have a big argument, and then he apologizes the next day or makes no mention of it whatsoever. Like sometimes she'd like, he'd do horrible things and then just the next day he'd be like, what are you talking about. I didn't do that. Yeah,
ladies take back shitty little men. Yeah. Yeah. One night, tempers flared and he grabbed a shotgun and put it to her temple, telling her he would kill her if she left. She calmed him by telling him he's being silly and that he should open the door and let her leave.
But as soon as he does calm down, she bolts.
Out of there. Right. But she does say she never thought Phil would actually kill her, but she did think he might by accident.
Okay, yeah, much better.
Yeah.
In November of nineteen seventy five, a parking attendant claimed that Phil pulled a gun on him and told him to get the fuck away from me before driving away. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor brandishing a firearm and two years of probation provided he not own any more firearms. Robert, can you guess who kept owning firearms?
I'm gonna guess it's Phil Spector, and I want to work remind everybody we talk about him carrying a gun everywhere. In this period of time, there weren't really concealed carry laws in most places. Like there were some ways if you were like a bodyguard for the ways people could legally carry concealed guns and cities and stuff, but it wasn't like it is today. My point is that Phil was committing a felony basically every time he walked out the door.
Yes, from this day on, he is absolutely commanding a felony because he's not supposed to be carrying any more guns, supposed to have any of them.
He's not supposed to have any guns. Yeah, so Phil Specter.
Then in the mid nineteen seventies he starts working with Leonard Cohen, right, and this is crazy for everybody in the world, right, Yeah, this is like, this is like, uh, what's the what's the Jesse Wells, the little folk kid that sings in the field. This is like him working with Max Martin, right, It's like it's like it's you know, it's like what why.
Would he be with like a pop producer. This doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, So everybody's like already thinks it's kind of strange, right, But but Spector thinks like, hey, maybe this will be like a really crazy inspired thing. So they make the nineteen seventy seven album Death of a Ladies Man. The sessions quickly deteriorated into chaos, fueled by Specter's alcohol abuse,
erratic behavior, and obsession with dominance inside the studio. Cohen later described Specter as volatile and deeply intimidating, recounting an incident in which Specter allegedly pressed a loaded gun against Cohen's head during a recording session and declared, Leonard, I love you.
Cohen responded, I hope you do.
All these rock stars have the coolest responses to Phil Spector putting a gun.
To their head funny, yeah, I And honestly, of all the rock stars I expected to be cool with a pistol pointed at their fucking skull. List of the list, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. In another incident, Spector pulled a gun on the violin player Bobby Bruce. Uh, which, by the way, the violin player like, yeah, I pulled I pulled.
A gun on the guy. Yeah I was.
I was pulling a gun on.
A daycare teacher.
Man. Like you're like the most innocent person you can find. It's like, there's extra bad that you're this guy went to school man.
It's like a gang enhancement thing on your sentence saying well, no, you pulled a gun on a violinist.
That's an extra five years.
Yes, yes, absolutely so.
Uh. Spector took control of the final mixes and didn't even allow Leonard Cohen to hear them. He didn't allow him to be present.
He uh.
He layers all of his sounds into it and over Cohen's stripped down songwriting, which is what he is known for, and they made a record that Cohen doesn't even stand on himself. He doesn't think that that it's very good. But Coen said of this of his time with Phil quote in that state he found himself, which was post wagonarian, I would say hit Lariyan.
The atmosphere was one of guns. I mean, that's really what was going on?
Guns? The music was subsidiary an enterprise. People were armed to the teeth and everybody was drunk or intoxicated on other items. So you were slipping over bullets and biting into revolvers in your hamburger. There were guns everywhere.
Right, That's one of those things where I have to assume that's like a joke for flavor, but also.
A hamburger.
Somebody was like, hey, hey.
Revolvers and some big hamburgers.
Hey, hey, Leonard, I I.
Got you a hamburger? Oh cool, thanks man? What what what is going on here? When it was released in nineteen seventy eight, it was critically panned. Everybody hated it. Spector claimed, and this is one thing I love about Phil Spector is anytime you ship talk Phil Spector, he will ship talk back and say like, yeah, I got I got hate mail from all eight of your fans. It's just so so disrespectful. Yeah oh yeah, yeah, you guys really love it, all eight of them.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
So well, he's cultivating this brilliant and eccentric producer. His in his family home is is horrible. He treats his kids horrible. Uh he uh oh real quick. When I was mentioning the Barney Kessel kids, Dan and Dan and David, how old did you get the sense that they were you know, they're hanging out.
They're driving around shooting shotguns out of cat like.
Yeah, late teens, early twenties, eleven and thirteen. Oh no, why is he hanging out? When I was reading this, I was like, this is wild man, Like, this is crazy.
Like he's hanging out with these like teenagers.
I got them like same thing, like seventeen eighteen, something like that, maybe even early twenties. The way they're referencing the things that they're doing, the drive around, shooting guns, they're going they're.
Hanging out together, right Yeah?
No, I looked it up and his kids were born in like in like the late sixties and they were like eleven and twelve years old. That's go crazy. Meanwhile, he's treating his own kids horribly. They have the Governess is always on them. They don't they're not allowed to do anything. Uh, And he's very rarely involved in any actual parenting except for when he is forcing them to simulate sexual acts on women so that they learn.
How to be men.
Yike, one of those kinds huh, yikes. He's doing the classic like no, get over there and do it, brings a girl home from the strip or whatever, and it's like lay down and like takes control of the whole thing, and like is making them simulate. They all report having gone through this.
And is that I wonder is that more out of like a him wanting power, him getting off on it, or just him being such a narcissist that like, if my kids are bad at sex, it reflects badly on me.
So I'm gonna make goddamn sure they know what they're doing, you know. Very fairly. His kids kind of stayed out of the line, and they don't talk about a lot of this stuff. And I did see a few interviews with them, like they resurface in later years, and one of them tries to write like a book, I think, but it never gets off the ground. But it basically whenever like the dirt comes out, it's He's horrible to them.
He treats them the same way as he treated Ronnie's threatening them all the time, He's making them do crazy stuff. They all developed lifelong issues with trust, identity, and emotional stability. It's just it's not there's no guidance. It's all performance and it's all possession.
Right.
When John Lennon was murdered in cold blood in front of the Dakota Building in New York City on December eighth, nineteen eighty, Phil was once again thrown into a world of depression. But this time he took it as a sign. He always said that John moved too easy, John was too careless with how he acted, and it would be his downfall one day, and this just reaffirms it for him, like he's going to get killed if he doesn't travel
with bodyguards and guns and all that stuff. So right, by the nineteen eighties, he starts withdrawing from public life. He moves out of his Hollywood mansion and bought a house in the suburb of Alhambra he dubbed the Pyrenees Castle. Okay, it's a huge French style mansion. Is enormous, Like it's out in Alhambra, you know, it's out of the city of Los Angeles. He he you know, as was his style.
He surrounds himself with guard dogs and armed guards and fills the house with guns, guns that he's not allowed to have legal guns. Sure, so for a brief period specter attempted sobriety and acquaintance describe him as calmer and more reflective. The stability, though, is temporary. He every time he relaps, he gets crazy again. And I think a large part of this stability was due to his relationship
with Janie Savala. Phil first met her in the sixties when she was a teenager and eventually hired her to work for his label after his split with Ronnie. He would date her on and off again for the next like fifteen twenty years, and eventually he would give birth. He would She would give birth to two twins, Nicole and Phillip Junior, and contrary to his relationships with his other kids, who.
Are now adults at this point, Phil treated him wonderfully.
His daughter Nicole says that you know, he was a doting father, that he loves spending time with him, that he was always around for his kids. But in nineteen ninety one, this is now well removed from his music career. In the In the late fifties, early sixties and into the seventies, Philip Junior dies from leukemia and Phil phil goes back into deep depression insanity. Yeah, well, of course, Nicole remains devoted to her father throughout the rest of
her life, always claiming that he was her hero. He never raised her voice to her, she says he was amazing. Yeah. Phil rarely grants any interviews. He remains a recluse, rarely leaving the house and never without a bodyguard. He hired Hal Blaine, who's the drummer from the wrecking crew that he had employed. He hired his daughter to be his day to day you know, manager or whatever, and was
generally pretty kind to her. And everything set for Phil to just ride off into the sunset and be forgotten as as nobody's right, until Mick Brown shows up in his life. Mick Brown is the author of the book that I was describing that I got the primary source from all of this. Mick Brown's book is one of the most authoritive biographies on Phil Spector. It is brilliant, it has everything. It's a very good book. I highly recommend.
He's the primary source of my research, and he's probably one of them besides me, probably one of the most knowledgeable people on Phil Spector in the world. And he managed to get an interview with Spector in December of two thousand and two. He recorded the entire interview on tapes, and they painted a picture of a deeply troubled and
eccentric man who was likely suffering from mental illness. His article was titled the Mad Genius of Phil Spector and questioning whether the madness was part of the genius or just something that had gone unchecked because of his genius. It was a deeply intelligent and honest look at Phil's life, which angered Phil. He broke what many said was a decade of sobriety and began drinking and acting erradically again.
On February second, two thousand and three, just a week two weeks after the article came out, Phil Spector began his evening at dantanna As, a long standing Hollywood restaurant and bar known for attracting entertainment industry regulars. He took a high school friend out for dinner and began drinking heavily before taking her home and then returning to Dantanna's and starting to drink with his waitress from the night.
Oh boy, he was heavily intoxicated by the time he left for the House of Blues.
When you when you leave with your friend and then come back to keep drinking with the waitress. That's that's that implies a level of drunk that is.
Yeah, but if but if you're gonna do it, hit the Troubadoor for a little bit. Yeah, it's a good night baby.
So uh.
It was then that he would begin his fateful interaction with the hostess of the Foundation Room in the House of Blues, Lana Clarkson. And this is the end of this episode. We we are about to get in to one of the most storied and important nights in musical history. But for now, we are gonna plug our plugables, which I have a podcast. It's about music stuff. It's the
most poorly produced podcast in the entire world. We need a Sophie so bad, like we would crush with a Sophie, but we are incapable of doing things ourselves, so we just forget to do it. But I do have a podcast, it's called that Sounds About right. I have a recording course that teaches you the principles recording. And I have a label And by the time this song comes out, our very first artist on the label, we'll release her single,
So please check that shit out. Her name is Violet Lux de Link will be in my bio, greasy will on Instagram, It'll be all over the place. But I am a rebel of the music industry and I need your support, so love and care for me. And also you are on all sorts of the internets as I write, okay, and you also sell merch at places some probably we're both. We're both googleble just be an adult and use Google man get those. Do you know what I think is interesting?
Everybody keeps discussing about how uh you know, chatch ept uses like a tablespoon or a teaspoon of water every time you search. Nobody is mentioning that Google is automatically using AI to search your answers. So Googling now is also using that same amount of water. Let's be mad about everything.
Type in minus AI with your Google searches and it'll cut that part of it out. I don't know if it actually reduces the energy usage, but at least you don't have to see the summary.
And keep your yeah, and it knows everything you're doing.
So that's why I say, that's right, that's right. I still use Netscape Navigator. It does not work.
Well, That's what I'm relying on is my technology being too outdated to spy on me. That's right, the secret old Mozilla fires the end of the This is the end of the episode. Guys, We're Doug. Goodbye.
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