The Phil Spector Story, Chapter Seven: Phil Spector and John Lennon

subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information pertains to a period ending December eight. Interview subject with Lennon John Winston Interview number one Dash nine seven Dash zero to six Stash six six zero Spirit Confessional Recall number seven October nine, two thousand and six. One Sunday, feel didn't want to work, so he called me and he said, we can't record today the studios burned down. Well, I got someone to call the studio and lo and behold, it wasn't burned down.

The following Sunday he calls and I say, what happened? He was supposed to be doing a session, and he whispers to me, I've got the John Deane tapes. I said what he said that John dene tapes, you know Watergate. He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters and they're trying to get him. None buying this garbage. You know. What he was trying to tell me, in his own way, was that he had my tapes, the tapes for the session, not the John Dene watering it tapes. We had to

soothe through capital to get the tapes off. He knew what he was doing by keeping those tapes close. He was keeping the secrets curse, keeping everything close. He didn't want anyone seeing the blood in the tracks. Yah. Chapter seven, Phil Specter and John Lennon. Of course you shot at me. Why does that surprise you? Why do you pretend to be shocked by that information? Would you like me to

say something else? Is that what you're expecting, that Phil Spector was a reasonable person, that he had no temper. I mean, they're all crazy. The brilliant ones always are rounded by the other doctors, and we're trying to get him. You can't be brilliant and not fly off the handle like that. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't waved the gun on my face. Okay, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but you get my point. I wasn't upset because he shot at me. I was upset because he shot at

me and missed. The bumbling get you down here, blew the hearing out of me. Fucking hear. If you're going to shoot off a revolver in a recording studio, the least you can do is fucking connect with something. You understand. What we should really be talking about is the bullshit that led up to this. Nobody talks about the time that Phil and George Brand hold my drunk ass back

to lou Adla's house. Drunk exhabitle carried home doesn't sell papers the way that crazy producers shoots gun and recording studio does. Right, we were recording the rock and roll album with Phil. It was a legal thing, that record was right. Chuck Berry's music publisher was suing me for come together, you know, the to come old flat out of that own nonsense. I had no money. I was broke, you see, al inclined had left the Beatles and Shambles. I was no longer at the top of most of

the poppermost. If I had ever been, I'd say, where are we going? Fellers and the top Johnny and I'd say, where is that Fellows for the paper the papers, and I'd say, right, I was in Los Angeles away from Yoko May was there. I made some music with Harry Nilson that we drank more than we worked at any rate.

We came up with this idea that instead of paying this guy millions of dollars for copping the Chuck Berry line, I would record a bunch of covers that this guy, Morris Levy was his name, had the publishing rights too. If you're trying to give rock and roll another name, it might be Chuck Berry. So he'd make his money on the royalties of the record sales. That's all it's about, see money, So it is about money. Phil was a

natural fit for this, of course we can. These were all old songs from the birth of rock and roll, sort of stuff that Phil and I just loved. Be Babba Lula, you know, Bony Moroney and Sweet Little Sixteen, just like me and Nilson. Me and Phil drank a lot. Things were bad with me and Yoko. She wanted me to get away for a while, just go be wild and get it out of my system, and hopefully I'd come back ready to be domestic. With her again. Our assistant May Pang came with me at Yoko's request, and

I was sleeping with her. It wasn't my clearest, how I let alone my finest. Hey, Look, the end of the song is just like the fucking rest of it. We're gonna sing the harmonies, say, oh, Yoko, come on sailing. Keeping with the spirit of the moment. On my eighties from my wife and my life, forced to make a record, to set a little lawsuit higher than Lucy in the Sky on most days. On this particular night, I got myself so wrong that Phil had to end the session

I supposed session. He and George Brand carried me back to lou Adlas's place in bel Air, which was where I was staying while I was out west. I was in and out of it, kept on telling and Phil that I loved him, you know, come on give us a kiss. The next thing I know, they had me tied to the bed the prisoner. I came out of my drunken stupor in a rage. The rope of string or whatever they had used was digging into my arms and my ankles. Phil and George together, those two were

like loose cannons. Firing away. They enabled each other. May heard my screaming and ran upstairs to see what was going on. Phil and George just left me there. They tried to turn her around and send her away, told her that they were helping me sober up and not to worry. I broke three of the shackles on Lou Adla's bed and just went crazy. May had called someone to help, and I attacked him as soon as he

came in the house. I was beyond drunk at this point, you see, I saw red, My vision was blurred, just rage. I saw Phil's face in every single thing. I lashed out. It broke windows, smashed the gold records that Lou had hanging on the walls. Apparently I did get a punch in on Phil before he left the next day of the studio, He'd got some make up, kicked Oliver's face to cover up a black eye when the sunglasses were on. Was he always wore even in the studio. Was he angry, embarrassed, insulted?

I couldn't tell. We didn't say all that much to each other. Merl Evans was there, Phil's mom was there. It seemed odd to have so many guests hanging around when it was so tense in there, and then Phil pulls this gun out and he's waving it around. I don't know if he was trying to intimidate me. Like I said before, the brilliant ones are always crazy. Maybe it's just as simple as that. Of course, the hogwash about Phil's gun is never loaded. It's just looks well,

that was just that, wasn't it hogwash? He pulled the trigger and shot it right through the ceiling. Mallard to wrestle the gun from his hand. Phil's mum was petrified. It looked at feel dead in the eyes and said, look, man, if you're going to shoot me, shoot me, just don't funk with me. Is when Spector first came to London, Paul, George Ringo and I were just at the worst. We had ended it all. We said, if you want to

work with us, go and do your audition. He'd always wanted to work with the Beatles, and he was given the shittiest load of badly recorded shit with a lousy feeling towards it, ever, and he made something out of it. He did a great job. When Phil first came to London, this is nineteen seventy. He was realizing one of his dreams. He worked like a pig on it. We were realizing

one of our dreams too. Since he was such a legendary figure, Specter's success is derived from an understanding of what he calls the teams sound, and we were legendary figures as well. I suppose not to tute our own horn loudly. He was a legendary figure who was in a rough patch. Specter's success is unusual. Others, however, are always at his heel. We were in our own rough patch as well. George thought it could be an opportunity for Phil to get some sort of redemption on record.

You see, But at that moment things were so shitty between the four of us that Jesus Christ himself could have mixed the record and no one would have been happy, and rightly so what does Jesus know about mixing records? Anyway? Phil always wanted to work with the Beatles, he adds, since the early days when the ronets to the UK and which your America was given the shittiest load of badly recorded ship of lows. He feeling towards it. Ever, and you know what, he made something out of it.

He did a great job. Paul didn't think so, of course, but Paul was inclined to hit everything that I loved at the time, and vice versa. We were both cons to one another. You've all filled it. Even got his hands on the lettered B tapes. I asked him to come and record Instant Karma at Abbey Road right after he stepped off the plane. The guys in the band Klaus of Woman, Alan White, Billy Preston didn't know. Phil shut up late wearing a shirt with p s monoground

on it. The guys were all like, who the hell is this? It was like he was a parody of Phil Spector, just the way he was dressed, in the he carried himself. He said, I he want this to sound and said nineteen fifties. Now. He said, okay, nineteen fifties. Got it, Let's roll and that was that. That was all he needed. He ran his hands over the desk like a magician, and he got it. It sounded like Sun Records right there on Abbey Road. I saw something of myself and Phil, and I'm not just talking about

the music. We had both lost parents at a young age. I think that sort of thing shaped us both more than we like to admit really, So we did plastic Ono Band and we did Imagine. We made Imagine at Tit Nurse Park Ascot Sounds Studios. We built that studio right in the middle of the house that was in the middle of summer, and Phil would show up with these three piece suits, ties, sunglasses. How he made it through some of those hotter days with those wigs on

top of his head, I don't know. And then things changed. They did get strange, and he said we can't record to and they got strange on his turf. When we left Berkshire and went to Los Angeles, it was almost as if Phil was more comfortable in the UK and was in his own town. He was like a stranger in his own land. Onesome Dinghi did towards But by the time we were making records in l a shiny phil Specter coating had rusted away. There was something else

beneath it. He was knocking back papas all night with swiggs of Manas Chevits. Elton John showed up one day for a visit, and even he was shocked by the instability, the insanity. This is Elton John we're talking about when Elton John says, hey, Fellas, maybe let's take things a bit too far. Well, perhaps you should listen up. Phil started showing up to sessions and different outfits each day,

like it was a joke. One day he showed up dressed as a doctor, stethoscope, big metallic circle strapped to his head. Another day he showed up dressed as a priest, giant crucifix. You responded every question with his hand making the sign of the cross. And another day he dressed like he was a blind man, big black glasses in a cane. He just fumbled around the studio, and then some days he didn't show up at all. I tried to track him down to keep him on task. We

can't record today. Studios burned down. And then it got worse. Whatever it was, his complacency, his fear, his paranoia. He went deep down this rabbit hole of conspiracy and secrecy, and it was affecting people around him. But he had my tapes, the tapes of the sessions. He would take them home with him every night. Didn't trust anyone, and then he stopped taking my calls. We weren't even done

with the record yet. He just disappeared into that house as frigid bleak house had a shoot and carting and take off. He wasn't the person I've gotten to know. It made me question whether or not I even knew the person that I thought he was. We'll be right back after this word word word. Now. Some say I should have known better, that I should have read the writing on the wall. There was a lot on the wall. In my defense, a lot of Phil had put there,

a lot that I had put there. But I remember when we made Instant Calmer and the Plastic Ono Band record, and imagine all that Phil came and went. He showed up, he did the work, and he left. I didn't see much more of him beyond his role as a record maker. He was keeping the secret course. But things were different in America almost immediately, and perhaps I should have made closer attention. Taking him down from the pedestalide put him on in my mind and looked at him as a flawed,

needy human being. He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters and we're trying to get him. It was early two and we were making some time in New York City with Phil. Before we started recalling in earnest I heard a story about how he went fucking crazy at the Daisy Club, a member's only spot on Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills on any given night, A real who's who of ego and fame and wealth, the sort of place that names the sandwiches after the stars, that

frequent to joint you. Now, I want a tuna sandwich? What are the Mickey Rooney? A little fresh fruit and cottage cheese? Try the Kirk Douglas. Even Sunny Bono want of Feel's former underappreciated Lackey's. Phil called him sunny Bozo. You know he had his own thing on the menu, liver and onions. But you know who wasn't on the menu, Phil Specter. I can only imagine how much that stung, how much that got under his skin, to see name after Hollywood name on that little Daisy's menu and nothing

about him. I'm sure he took it personally. Everything was about him. I came to learn that the more I hung around him, the very absence of his name from a member's only club menu was about him. So what I heard was Phil shows up to the Daisy one night wearing a jacket with some karate um Lamont and he raised his hell drunken, batshit, disoriented l He had become obsessed with karate. His obsessions were fleeting from what

I've been told. Maybe guns were the one exception to that rule, but at this point in his life, karate was his consuming hobby. I took up causes, Angela Davis, John Sinclair Attica, and Phil took up karate. Maybe it was the green Hornet, maybe it was the Pink Panther and Peter Seller's Bruce Lee. When Bruce Lee died, Phil was convinced that he was murdered by some death touch whatever that is. Emil Focus had taught him. That taught

him about the death touch. Meal and another guy that they just called Laslow where his bodyguards in the late sixties. But they also both happened to be black belts. Phil higher than partly for protection, but partly so we could learn those moves. So he's at the day zy, no doubt enjoying himself, but also no doubt stuing over the fact that his goddamn name is in Grace in one of the menu items. And this woman walks up to him and starts talking to him, probably something like are

you Phil Specter the Titan of teen? And what does Phil do? He lost it? Man, He didn't ask this woman to talk to him. Now, dare she? You know? That sort of thing. It was probably all misplaced frustraate and aggression. Peoples have gone out from his karate jacket. He just skips over the karate pot altogether. All this training and obsessing in our being, all of it for

the dogs in this heated moment. His gun could do the talking better than his karate shopping ever could he pointed that gun to this poor woman who's just standing. They're shaking in the middle of a high end private club. She probably was just a big fan of you've lost that love and feeling or something, and wanted a moment with the man. But now this is the kind of shif I'm talking about. He was becoming unwound as the time went on by, and we're trying to get him.

The next year, in ninety three, we started recording what would become the Rock and Roll Album, and that's when things got really strange. One Sunday Phil called me and said, we can't record today. The studios burnt down. I thought only ship the studios on fire. That was the first wasn't it not buying the show? But I was a iscious. The whole thing was suspicious. He had been turning up to sessions late. He was drunk, We were drunk, and the phone call just struck me as an excuse, a

cop out. So I had someone call over Day and M Studios, and a guy answered the phone with no urgency, no flames crackling in the background. The studio wasn't on fire. Phil just didn't want to work. Following Sunday, Phil calls me and I say, what happened? We was supposed to be doing a session and he whispers to me. I said, what he said, the John Deane tapes, you know, the Watergate tapes. He tells me his house is surrounded by helicopters, and then trying to get him no buying, But he

didn't have the Watergate tapes. He was trying to tell me that he had my tapes, the session tapes, everything we had done up to that point. He would take them home with him every night. Probably felt safe knowing that when he put his head down on his pillow at night, the tapes were protected inside a gated mansion surrounded by guns and his muscle men. By keeping those tapes close, he was keeping the secret. We had to sue him through capital to eventually get the tapes back,

and I finished the album without him. And then he got into that car crash on Melrose head on collision in his Rolls Royce. We went right through the fucking front windshield. The whole accident allowed him to re emerge as another person. You see, he looked different, he sounded different, he acted different, like Dylan and that motorcycle crash. But the new Field Field that lived to tell the tale about that crash was not the idealized version of Field

that we had created in IDs. You know, there's a reason that they say don't meet your idols. At the end of the day, Phil Spector was not the person I thought he was. The last time I talked to him, he was whispering on the they're into the phone about conspiracies and secrets and it was all just a calculated chaun to keep me squarely in the dark. Hollywood A

and M Studios. John Lennon was tired, worn down by excess, perverted by vice, winded from out running scandal, his sojourn into Los Angeles meant to be some sort of existential palate cleanser had been an existential drag. He hoped that today would be different. Today you could take the focus off himself, off of those things you want it to the things he desired, and simply witnessed something that would

make him happy. Imagine that he was excited to meet Darlene Love, perhaps even more excited to watch her sing in the studio. He had been a fan of hers ever sincerely sixties, when she sang lead on the Crystals. He's a rebel, and he's sure the boy I love back before he and the rest of the world even knew who she was. John's love of American girl group pop was evident by the songs that the Beatles covered in their touring years and released on some of their

early records. And now he'd get to be a fly on the wall and watched Darlene reunite with Phil Specter, the producer who would put her heavenly voice to Wax in the first place. John's time spent in Los Angeles would come to be known as his Lost Weekend, but it was far from the weekend. It lasted eighteen months, and during that time he had an intense affair with his assistant while strange from his wife. He got ejected from the trooper door with Harry Nilson for heckling the

Smothers brothers. While wasted on Brandy Alexander's, he failed to get Stevie, wondered to snort a line of blow while jamming with Paul McCartney, and he stumbled through California nightlife while desperately hanging on to a few functional brain cells. His relationship with Phil Specter had initially resulted in some of the most raw, stripped down records of any ex Beatle, but Phil's instability was making things difficult. John was skeptical if they would ever make it through the Rock and

Roll sessions alive. Darlene Love walked into A and M studio, skeptical of the whole situation, skeptical mostly of Phil. This wasn't her first rodeo. She'd been produced by Phil before, ordered around by Phil, before, obscured by Phil, before humiliated by Phil. Before. In fact, Phil had just bought her contract from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. She had only been with the Philly producers for a few months she had dreamed of escaping from under phil shadow, and now

she felt that dark cloud hoverback over her head. She was seven months pregnant and thought twice about taking the gig when she the call. But Phil's assist in, Sandy was a nice girl and made Darlene feel like royalty before she even walked into A and M Studios. She'd do it, she'd give it a shot. She smiled when she walked through the studio door and saw share and there was John Lennon. John Lennon a beatle there in the flesh, there for no other reason than to watch

her do her thing. But this time around, Phil seemed worse than before. Phil had his back turned to Darlene. He didn't turn around to face her when he spoke. He instructed the engineer to start a playback, and the song Lord if You're a Woman started coming through the speakers. Darlene sang a line. Phil stopped her halfway through, told her to sing it again, but she started to sing the line again, this time the way Phil asked me to. She got through the take only to see Phil shaking

his head. He didn't like it. She needed to try again, so she did it again and again. She would barely make it through a line, and he would stop playback again and throughout the labored process of take after take, Phil eventually turned to face Darlene from where he stood safely behind the production booths glass. He cut playback again, and Darlene read Phil's lips as he spoke to the others in the booth, watch me make her do it again. Guests and the booth laughed. John Lennon was laughing. It

was a game to them, a joke to them. She was their joke. And for Darlene Love, those memories came flooding back, the memories of the early sixties, the crystals, Bobby socks, and the blue jeans. She wasn't gonna be anyone's joke anymore, not John Lennon's and certainly not Phil Specter's. She took her headphones off, put her coat on, told Phil Specter to go to hell. Phil watched as Darlene walked out the door, and he remained safely inside the

production booth. He was keeping the secrets close, keeping everything close, friends and these people in between. He didn't want anyone getting a good look the blood on the tracks. This episode of Blood on the Tracks is brought to you by twenty seven Club, a podcast that I host on musicians who died at the age of seven. Season two, featuring Jim Morrison, is now available, as is season one

with twelve episodes featuring Jimmy Hendrix. Subscribe to the twenty seven Club on Apple podcast, I Heeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast, and of course, this episode was also brought to you by Disgrace Land, the award winning music and true crime podcast also hosted by Yours Truly. Episodes on The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lewis, Cardi b The Grateful Dead, j C. Prince and many many more are

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