The Phil Spector Story, Chapter Four: Phil Spector and Ike Turner

subject as Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to a period ending September thirty two to interview subject as Turner Isaiah Luster Jr. A k A I Interview number oh Dash five one dash nine six six Dash six six six Spirit Confessional Recall number five marked first two thousand five h For any black artists in America to make any tune, it has to go to the top ten on the arm Beach hots before the top forty station will touch him. And River Deep, Mountain High. It was

not a black record. Don't want to make the top ten on the arm beach hots. That's why the top forty radio station wouldn't play. The black jockey said it was too white. The white jockey said it was too black you made what Phil said about River d Now and High. This is a few years later after the record Life nine K sixty nine. Okay, he said today that song could have been a number one record today,

like a couple of years wouldn't made any difference. He said, when it came out, it was like his farewell must have been one hell of a secret and farewell okay, because he might have said nothing, none of us in the studio. And then he said, I was just saying goodbye, and I just want to go crazy, full fatness, full us on wax. That's on once time he said, I

got what I wanted out of the two. Of course he did, man, how of course he got what he wanted out of Then the proof is then and that part of Man and Old Water on the Tracks Chapter four, Phil Specter and Ike Turner m hm. Now, see, I feel like this whole thing is y'all want me to sell the man out. Do you want me to tell you all the dirty stuff, all the stuff to vilify him and all that, like he's some kind of boogeyman or some ship. Then okay, sure, maybe the guy did

some ship. Okay, maybe he made some mistakes and didn't always do right by everyone in the room. Look takes one to know one. Okay, Lord knows I made my share mistakes. I know always do right by everyone. I was reacted. I lost my temper. Then Fiel did the same. Man, I don't know that I would say we were friends. Okay, but game recognized this game. Man, it was for that bason. Phil was scared of me. He was terrified of me. Just ask Danny Davis. Go ask him, man, I'll wait

any Davis news up. Any time you were questioning, when Phil tells you about this or that, Just running by Danny Davis. Now, Phil, Phil saw me and Tina played the Big T and T Show. That thing was like the Tammy Show, right, but it was a movie and it had all kinds of people, white, black, whatever, votedly and raged halls, the birds and Donovan. This it's the greatest LA music time. The show phils to produced so or musical direct or some ship and so we close

the show. Tina was wearing that funny cat. I told her not to wear that hat. Not that she always listened to me. Phil told everybody that Tina just blew him away. He said, now, quote, I was just devastated by her. Now. I said it before and I'll say it again. Tina was okay, there were better singers and better dances. What Everttina is now couldn't hold a candle to whatever Tina was before. I listened to her now,

and I don't even recognize her. Man. I loved her, I did love her, okay, but I don't love her. I don't even like her anymore, whatever she is, man. But Phil just starts talking about Tina. Tina, Tina, Tina, okay, fine. He sees his talent in Tina and thinks her destiny is on Ed Sullivan in Las Vegas. He wants to record I can Tina Turner. He says. What that really means is that he wants Tina. Well he doesn't tell everyone is that I could turn her scares the ship

out of him. I could tell it the first time I met him. Man, here's robably scared to death when he saw me on the Big t NT show. You know, because I didn't live around wildly like Tina. I stood there straight as in the row man and play my guitar all business. Phil was saying, close he could to me, not too close, okay, he didn't dare get too close. He's standing there in his tall shoes and his big head. Most definitely a wig. Okay. Again, takes one to know one right, and I swear to God I can see

his little body tremble. So he comes to my house, tell me he wants Ike and Tina minus Ike. Okay. He says that they're gonna make this number one record. It's gonna change everything. Tina will become the biggest star. But that was always but he wanted to be in control. He wanted to tell Tina what to do. He just couldn't stand the thought of having me involved this ship. Man. At least he knew enough to say it up run.

He owned it to a certain degree, even though he would never come right out and say I turned to scares me to death, whatever, man, I told him straight up, if you think you can make this incredible record with Tina on your own without me there, go for it. Show me what you can do. Man. I don't want, but I made some demands on my own. I told Phil, I wanted my name on that record, regardless of what or now I played on it. I wanted my name before Tina's name, like it always was, and I got it.

There was two chickenship to negotiate with. That. Okay, So Tina starts going to Phil's mansion in l A. That baby went up a lot, Collina. They summer hearsing it feels playing piano and having Tina go through the motions. And he's real stracted like I was real stripped with my band. I left my review with a pistol one hand and the other hand clutched real tight. I charged ten bucks if one of the girls had a running the stockins, twenty five bucks if they laughed too damn laugh.

But as tough as I was with the band members, I also let Tina do her own thing, taking the way she's saying. Man off stage may have been another story behind closed doors is always different. Man on the stage. I controlled the players. At least even if I couldn't control Tina, nobody could control Tina. Plus I stood behind Tina, washed her, shake her ass, and those tight many skirts

I bought for her. I convinced to the war those they got tighter and short as the years went on, I convinced to the start wearing the brawl to see I control of Tina until she hit that stage and then she let loose. Now Phil Spector comes in and he wants to control Tina. She would come back from those rehearsals at his manch to tell me that she can't sing the song the way she wants to sing the song. She has to sing it the way Phil tells her to sing. If she deviates, he stops and

they start over again. No improvisation, no Tina being Tina for better or for worse. You understand, they'll wanted Tina to be what Phil wanted Tina to be, and he'd get it too. I knew what he was doing. I knew how he did it. Like I said, man, game,

recognize his game. Phil sabotage his own damn record. I swear to god he Toltina back when we started this whole River Deep, Mountain High business, that it was gonna be the biggest song in the world, that she was gonna be the biggest star in the world because of the record. Right, she would be the biggest because he made her the biggest seat. And it was great. Man. I think River Deep Mountain High is as much a

work of art as good Vibrations. Okay, the two should be talked about as the two best songs of nineteen sixty six, no doubt. But Phil was the first accepton and drive to find him els in his coffin, at least here in the States. He took these full page ads out in the trades, you know, and billboard and cash box that just said River Deep Mountain High number one in England. Benedict Arnold was right. He did that sort of thing when he felt that his ego had

been disrespected, when in fact it was really crushed. I mean, his ego was just crushed. He did it again when Lenny Bruce, did you know, took out that full page add that said Lenny Bruce was killed by an overdose of police. He just couldn't let ship slide and move on. This was his way of last. Now, now, the song was huge in the UK. They loved it over there because they loved Black American music. That's all the bands

were playing over there, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles. And because they didn't put every song in the box, they didn't have to categorize it on compartmentalize it the way they do here. Black Talking to One was too blood the hierarchy of the charts here is it Saint shoot the talk to the hardy charge for talk. The song was caught between a rock and hard place and not even feel Specter with all his power and his people and his ego could dislodge that fucker wanted place. You know.

He was riding high off all that stuff with the righteous Place. You've lost that love and feeling and unchained melody. You've lost that love and feeling is what the most played song of all time. So his ego was pretty well. With Ladd and Appli Just Want and then River Deep, Mountain High doesn't even make it past eight on the US charts. Phil got depressed. He thought he had it, had the golden touch, and he lost it again. He

went back to his mansion, back into his bedroom. Dude didn't do all that when with failure, you know, and maybe I should have seen it coming. When we first set foot in that studio and gold Star, that little studio in Hollywood, when we first walked through that door off the alleyway, Tina nearly had a heart attack. She walked in. The door in the media was just like helda It was March ninety six. We walked in and there was like twenty or thirty people in there. It

wasn't just a bad man. It was a fucking symphony. Two guitarists, two drummers, a damn choir, singers, white players, black players, Earl Palmer and Carol Kay and Leon Russell and Barney Kestle, the whole wrecking crew. That's what they call those casts ship. Phil cut them all in line just about as well as me. I said, just about Man, because I could look at him Man, and he changed the way he was playing in a second. Phil had to tell them repeatedly, what do you wanted? A big hit? There?

Ba ba ba ba bla baka. Anyway, it wasn't just the Wrecking Crew musicians hanging around. Brian Wilson was there with Rodney Bergen High McJagger was there with Jack Nici, and uh Dennis Hopper was there too. Tina was completely unprepared for the people and the pressure. I mean, we both were, but she just rose up. She looked at me and told me she couldn't do it. She couldn't performed with all these people. She wasn't confident enough to deliver in front of all these people. Well that's when

I stepped in. I told Phil that Tina couldn't end. You know, I just placed my chest right up against his, gotten his face a little closer than he was comfortable with. I said, Tina, ain't doing it this way, Jack, you know you can't feel a different name like that. And it just threw him off. I said, listen up, Jack. He just shot up to attention. He listened. He would pick up an apple core from the ash tray in the room and either while he nodded his head. Was

that a power move? But I don't know, man, I think he's just disgusting. I told him I was taking Tina outside, and when he wanted to trim the fat and get his ship under control, we'll be back to cut the track. But when we didn't go back, Bill a dial back in the zoo, Tina sang like a motherfucker man. Take after take. She just gave it everything she had. She put so much into to that she nearly passed out. Man. The sweat was just stripping. It was on the edge of her lips, her eyelids hanging

there on the tip of her nose. Sy sorry little carried away there. That room was small and hot and stuffy, and this tune was a pressure cooker. Your dick, Well, what are we we gonna do? What that brain? She got so hot in there that she took off her damn blouse, stripped right down to her brow. In the middle of gold Star, she asked if anyone were mind it. Before she heard a reply, she had pulled it off over

her head. All the eyes in that room were simultaneously staring at her and trying to look away, you know, like should we shouldn't we? She put a lot into that performance, the rehearsals that feels, matching the session in the studio. She put her all into a man. And however I felt about being swept aside at the start of it all, it didn't matter. If the sting was gott a vault us into the stratosphere, we'd be finer

than a frog has split four ways, you see. And then it was obvious that it wasn't going to be. But Phil thought it was going to be. He just lost interest, disappeared, just like he was no longer advocate. He distanced himself. It was the same ship he pulled with the Righteous Brothers and the rownets before them. He said it was all calculating, which you know he was saying just so he could save face and not look

like a complete idiot. I don't know, man, I want to say he was a complete idiot, but he certainly swam those waters between idiotcy and genius. I've done some laughs in there, okay, then deep waters and long too. There's lots of places a man can get lost in there on this shore that he had most certainly washed up on the shore I couldn't tell you where it was. We'll be right back after this word word word. That taxi thing was years later, man, years later, Phil invited

me to come to a party. Who was throwing that a bowling alley in Montrose, just a little north of Pasadena. Quick blip up the two ten. I'm gonna guess this is around two thousand and two. He had thrown a party there for his daughter a year earlier, when she was graduating high school. I believe it was and enjoyed getting back out in the public that he decided to make it an annual ship dead. I thought, oh, man, if nothing else, maybe there would be some ass I

could chase around for an hour or too. Phil was just balls deep it regrets. I think he wished he had made this record or didn't make that one wish he had married this girl and not that one. Like I said, before I could relate. Okay, yeah, man, I was arresting something like twelve thirteen times for drugs, arrested even when the quote unquote drugs I was carrying was just baking. So man, I did time, pay debts and

repay debts. I've been married ten times at least when it came to regrets and life choices for me, and Phil was empatical, you know what I'm saying. When Tina and I first lit up in the seventies, I took up a relationship with cocaine at last for years. Someone told me that ship would make your dick hard for hours, and that's all I needed here. My dick was hard for years. Man, what can I say? I like coke? Man who doesn't like coke? So what do I know?

Maybe Phil had some old roller decks filled with other guys who had other regrets. I hadn't talked to him much in a while. No one had talked to him all that much. But he called me up and told me to come out to Montrose and we catch up. He told me he'd send a car to pick me up some nice stretched job. I waited and waited nothing, no stretched job. John called him back and I got his secret terry. She told me to take a cab and Phil will reimburse me when I got there. Okay, fine,

trying to take the cab. When we pull up at the place in Montrose and tell the driver paying tight, someone will come out to pay you. Well. Almost an hour later, I'm inside enjoying myself, okay, and I find out that the driver is still sitting outside waiting to get paid. I say, hey, Phil, I'm not trying to be ungrateful here, but the cabby is idling outside, and

you said you will for the bill, okay. I mean some days it was hard for me to string together a couple of bucks, and this was one of those days. And Phil says, yeah, yeah, yeah, man, I'll settle up with the guy. Just enjoy yourself. I'm thinking, okay, when exactly are you going to settle up with him? And he turns around and talks to someone else. I'm thinking, okay,

this guy's not getting paid by Phil Spector. Next thing I know, I'm introducing a friend of mine to Phil, someone I brought with me to the party, and Phil is just an asshole man. He doesn't give a ship, you know, like big fucking whooped. He do works. God damn man, Phil Man wanted to get out and mingle with the public again. I don't know that he was ready, for sure. He wasn't ready. He was rusty. So I'm done. I leave the party, get back in the cab that's

been sitting there for almost two hours. At this point, I get back home and make a call to ball Money to pay for the fact. I pay the driver with borrowed money. I was so out of my mind angry at this point, man, angry about it, all the money, the disrespect. Sure, So then I make another call, this time to film. I get the machine and I say, I'm going never the kind to kids ask and I never will be. You need to take a bong and look at yourself. I think you're a lonely man that

I've been really sorry for you. I took that car over there, I didn't at your request, and then I found myself in an embarrassing position. You'll never guess what happens next. I get an overturn phone called no personal visit. But the very next day there's a knock on my door. I opened it and it's a delivery two dozen roses, a check from film made out to me for two grand, and a note that just says thank you for coming me.

No apology, no explanation. All these years later, Man, his true colors are there still he's still terrified of me. He pulled that ship with the cab at the party to funk with me, to funk with me in front of a bowling alley full of friends and ask kisses. He knew he was safe there. And then he secretly sends me that care package at my house, you know, because he was too afraid to live on my bad side. I did all that for him. Man brought him Tina, let him record Tina the way he wanted to record.

Tina stepped aside to let him do his thing. He made promises that he couldn't keep. And this is what I got for it, okay, and insult some flowers, a check and one measily sentence. And that land was the last time I saw Phil Specter. March Inglewood, California. The Ellen narcotics agents called it the taj Mahal because it was grandiose, extravagant, palatial, one of Southern California's Eight Wonders,

the house that Coke built. Ike Turner called it Bollock Sound, which phonetically called to mind Anna May Bullock a k a. Tina Turner a k a. Proud Mary, the singer he discovered, partnered with, and subsequently humiliated and abused behind closed doors. But now Tina was long gone. She had bailed years ago, fleeing Ike in Dallas with nothing but the bloody clothes on her back. It was Tina gone. Ike's music suffered.

In place of music, he turned to drugs, and drugs kept him very busy, so busy that he left the trail of cocaine behind him wherever he went. The L a p. D kept an eye on Ike every time he came and went. From the taj Mahal, a guitar player with a bad reputation who recorded with Phil Specter toward with the Rolling Stones and famously had a hand in the first ever rock and roll song, using his studio complex as ground zero for drug dealing and drug doing. On this day in Mark, l A. Narks brought the

SWAT team with them. They went in through the front door. The first thing they found was a live hand grenade. The next thing they found was Ike on his knees next to the toilet, empty baggies on the floor, the toilets still running in seven grams of cocaine that he'd get the flush. I got thirty days in jail in three years probation. The following year, some port of flammable liquid down the hallways of the taj Mahal and lit a match. A few months later, shots rang out in

the middle of the day on Ike's front lawn. I claimed that the mailman had kicked his dog, and so he pulled the piece from the back of his pants and immediately shot him. Ike was cleared in cored of the assault charge, but more run ins with the police followed. Arrests for possession, conspiracy to sell, and concealed weapons were

common for Ike in the eighties. Eighty nine, Phil Specter opened his copy of the Los Angeles Times and the dark, cold comfort of his law Collina Mansion and wasn't all that surprised at the first headline that caught his eyes. Ike Turner arrested on cocaine charges. The article explained the cops of pulled Dike over in West Hollywood, where he was driving under the influence of cocaine and unloaded thirty eight revolver and a pile of rock cocaine sat on

the seat next to him. It wasn't the first time cops had busted Ike in West Hollywood. Specter knew all about Likes troubles. He knew a trouble man when he saw one. He never fully trusted Ike. He and Ike were too similar. He knew the games that Ike played, the manipulations, the way he used and abused those closest to him. Specter knew all about Ike's troubles and ikes games because they were his troubles and his games too. Phil Spector folded up the paper and placed it on

the coffee table. He focused his attention back to the stereo, which was playing I'm Your Man, the new album by Leonard Cohen. He turned the volume up. The record was full of synthesizers, and for Specter's taste, it was too sterile and modern sounding. It made a spectacle of Leonard's voice, His poetry was caught up in machines. It didn't have the warmth and the feeling that a Leonard Cohen record deserved. Specter had given Leonard what he deserved just a decade before,

at least he thought so. Even if the world didn't agree, even if the world wanted something more modern than Spector could deliver, Specter saw a kindred spirit and Leonard someone to get loose with, someone to get crazy with. At the time in seven Bill Specter was hoping that Leonard Cohen felt the same way. If he didn't, it's no worry. Phil Specter had a plan to keep Leonard Cohen loose, crazy, him by his side for as long as he wanted. The proof would be there in the pudding in the

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