The Phil Spector Story, Chapter Three: Phil Spector and Keith Richards

case subject of Specter Philip Harvey. This information for ten to the period ending September interview subject to Richards Keith interviewed number zero dash one one dash five one nine dash six four zero recall number four data's March thousand and six. I fell in love with Ronnie Bennett, and Ronnie Bennett fell in love with me, but we had to keep it under wraps because their old man, Phil Spector was a man of prodigious jealousy. She had to be in her room all the time after the gigs.

In case Phil called still Ronnie and I got after him. Mick Cotton to her sister, who wasn't so tightly chaperoned. The Rownetts would be my baby days. Phil was on top of the world. So was Ronnie. Mick and I were just getting our first bite in the world, and ye had to bite back. Ronnie told me later how insecure Phil was, of his height, was receiving hairline, How jealousy wasn't of my terrible things, How jealousy was of most people who had anything he didn't have or could

take away. And I think he did have that insecurity, was so chronicked that he would go to terrible lengths to allay his fears. Well, you know, terrible lengths are the exact sorts of things that brief blood Hucks Chapter three, Phil Spector and Keith Richards. We were told that we couldn't talk to the girls. We couldn't even look at them, you know, shoot a little glance in their direction. Hey there, baby,

how are you doing. We were polite boys, you know, but we fancied a little fun every now and then. It's like an edict outlying fun before the fun even started, and the girls became like forbidden fruit for us. For me in particular, it was all about Ronnie. I took one look at her, heard one note from her angelic voice, you know, and it was it was over. I knew I was gonna break somebody's role. I was gonna look at her. I was going to talk to her. You know.

I was a polite boy, mind, but I wasn't that polite. Phil issued the no fun edict. You know. He was a man of prodigious jealousy. He telegraphed Andrew and Andrew log Goldham. You know, Andrew was our manager and our producer at the time, and this was the nine four or something. Andrew got the boot from Brian Epstein, you know, and he helped put the beals together, got them in their suits after the rough and tumble Hamburg days and all.

He was just a hustler back then, still a kid. Anyway, Andrew got into some punch up with Brian, and Brian cut him loose. Andrew didn't give a ship. It only made him stronger. He made us out of that punch up. He made the rolling stones. And this is what I was calling myself. Keith Richard dropped the s. It was all calculation and that was Andrew's bag. Andrew fancied himself

the London version of Phil Specter. He dressed like a dandy, wore sunglasses inside, carried the attitude of a scorn genius, like a big chip on his shoulder. You know, he thought rock and roll could be art. We weren't long for the tailored suits. We were polite boys. Again. Yeah, I know, I keep saying that we were polite, but we weren't that polite. We didn't want to be the Beetles. We wanted to be whatever. The opposite of Beetles was the black hat. All that I got an off track.

I was talking about Andrew and Phil, So wait, I gotta back up a little more. And the Ronettes came over to England for a bit of a tour, and Be My Baby was still a big hit. So the Ronettes come to England and Phil taps us to open the shows the actually and before they even get there, before the plane from New York even touches down, and he throw, Phil sends his telegram to Andrew. All it says is keep the stones away from my girls, his girls. You know that should tell you a lot right there,

teach like he owned them or something. He certainly thought he did. I'm sure what he meant by that telegram was more like, keep the stones away from Ronnie. He could give two ships about a spell and Nedrew, they arrived in London before Phil, and that's why he sent the warning. Phil came a little later. Wanted to make sure you didn't have to worry until they got there, you know. And so Andrew was very conserved, very aware of this demand the Phils, and because he thinks so

highly of Phil, wants to impress Phil. Wants Phil to think he's cool. The girls arrived from the States, and Andrew keeps coming around to me and Mick, Hello, boys, are you behaving yourself? And all that. But from the moment I saw Ronnie, and you hope that's for all? Phil who right? And she was a sight to behold, and her voice, her voice was just this is magic.

And I got the same feeling all over my body, whether I was looking at her or listening to her singer she walked in a room, or just standing there next to me. Phil around in London and to put on the act just for Andrew's sake, you know, make sure we could keep the gig. But I was doing all I could to talk to Ronnie with my eyes all behind Phil's back. Mind you, as a shy boy, I really was, and Ronnie was a shy thing yourself. I shot her a glance if you chance, I got

she She received them pretty soon. She was shooting them back. Phil was like a stern headmaster that you have been warned not to cross, you know, heads down, lads, pencils up, quit snickering, headmasters coming. You could feel the pressure of his gaze, the weight of his presence. As soon as he was off the plane and backstage at the venues

we're playing this is our second UK tour. I think he quickly got a with me and Ronnie looking at each other the way we were, and he decided that we wouldn't see a soul and she stepped off the stage that night. I mean, you know, talk to Ronnie. She'll tell you the stories right there when I told you it was like an omen of things that were to come between those two, the lengths to which he

would go to keep people away from her. He heard a lot about Phil Spector, and we probably heard more than most, what with Andrew's obsession with him, and all heard all about his genius, about the way which he was turning pop music on it's ear. But to us, to me, he was an obstacle, a barrier. I had to find my way around over under to the side. You learned these things, you know, you learn how to

skate in unnoticed, how to work under the radar. I mean, you don't get into the kind of the trouble that the Stones got into without knowing how to play the system, if you know what I'm talking about. I knew that Ronnie would be my I just needed to figure out how to play Phil. So speak of playing Phil. We played a lot with Phil quite a bit in the studio. You know, my interactions with him weren't just limited to dodging his jealous case and inciting his jealous rage. When

I think of Phil, I think of Ronnie. Well, I think Ronnie often, so those memories are right there, man, right up front, vivid. But I forget the Phil was there with us more often than you think. He was in our four prmative years, and he wasn't producing us. You know, Andrew was producing us, and Phil was there at Andrew's behast. Phil was oddly unfilled in those moments. He wasn't trying to control anything. He wasn't trying to

put his walls sound stamp on us anything like that. Now, he was one of the boys, Fly on the wall, Fly on the wall, who was given a bass to player some moraccos to shake. That's filling based on playing with Fire. Well, it was D two guitar, you know, a guitar made to sound like a bass. That was in l A sixty five. I think our Cia studios. I played acoustic guitar and Mick played tambourine, and then

Jack MEETSI was on harpsichord. Jack MEETSI. You want to talk about a true genius, Let's talk about Jack for a minute. The true genius in Phil Spector's studio. Phil just live vicariously through Jack. You know, his arrangements, his field, his look, his whole, you know, his his jackanus. Jack had it boy and Phil wanted it. But I'll come back to Jack. I'll come back to Jack later. Now, Phil, Phil was a phils, a great player, very understated, very

very few people know this. They think he just stood there with his dark sunglasses on and his arms folded, you know, lording over the studio like some grenade that could go off at any time. Not that that wasn't true, you know, but he was a very simple, very tasteful player. That's him on playing with Fire at base Park. Don't don't don't don't do That's Phil, that's Phil specter man. He was really into the Stones. If you had known how much I wanted to sneak off into the dark

at the end of the street with Ronnie. You know. He may not liked us so much, but he liked us, He really did. He really liked us. The music here everywhere, everyone here in the flesh, Keith Richard and Brian Jones and the drumlie Wants. When he was in the UK with the ron Nats on that tour, you know, he took a meeting with the head of Deck of Records, Sir Edward lewis a proper English chap, you know, Sir Edward.

He took Andrew with him as a bot for he wanted to release the Stones music on his Phillies label in America. So he goes into the stuff you owe an English office, the walls full of all that antiquity, you know, and it makes his ass, makes his pitch, you know, really a begging session more than anything, Sir Edward Stonewall felt, even with Andrew standing there fills honorary brit to butter him up. What's this? You know? An American pilfering our lives. I won't stand for it. England

won't stand for it. That sort of thing, all very very proper, no emotion, very British. It was like David asking Goliath for a favor. If David thought that he was Goliath, right, Phil was fucking wild man, That's how he was. He was like that. So Phil and Andrew left that meeting with nothing, nothing from Sir Edward, and they were just, you know, in a state piste. Phil's angry at the stuff you old fired with the balls

to say no to him. You know, he said no to the Phil spectrum man said no right to his face. And Andrew is angry that he's made himself look like a fool in front of his hero. And neither of them are happy, the two of them. They came from that turtive meeting with Sirrett, went straight into the studio with us or we were recording that fade Away we. Phil took out some of his frustration on the pair of moracas, those moracas here in the song those to him.

He was able to take his mind off things for a few moments, and Mick dragged him into the other room to write to the b side a little by little, but you could tell that the meeting was just bristling under his skin. He had been rebuffed and he was told no, when he was used to being in control, you know, to having the last say. He told people how to sing and how to play, when to sing it, when to play. So I know it's stungle. We had drank as much as the drink in the studio that

we could that night, and the atmosphere got loose. Called it real gone back then when we get to that place, you know, real gone. Brother Phil wasn't taking part of the drink, but he was more than ready to let loose. He's a little man pent up with all sorts of big time anchor, ready to unleash, get revenge, that type of thing. We started riffing on this blue shuffle, very up tempo. Do doom doom DoD DoD doo doo kink, that sort of thing. You know, a boy from New

York City. Phil starts ad living on the track, starts singing about Andrew and how he focks all night. It sucks all night, you know. He sings taste that pussy in taste just right, and the band is just rollicking along right, the well oiled locomotive. You know, we're there. We're there every even with the pints, even with the booze, you know, and Mix starts his calm response with Phil, we had it, man, it was firing. It goes yes, Andrew, and Phil responds, suck it, Andrew, and Mix shots go

on Andrew and Phil responds, fucking Andrew. And then Phil takes it to the next level, you know. He sings something like, come and get it, little Andrew, before Sir Edward comes and takes it away. Phil starts doing this impression of blubbering Sir Edward, just this atrocious English accent, almost incomprehensible, you know, and he's going on about himself and the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones are a great

fucking group. What a low balls. And you know what, man, Phil would pulled the same ship if Sir Edward himself had been sitting right there in front of him. It wasn't drunk, it wasn't high, but he didn't give a damn. You know, the man did not care. And if you found yourself on his bad side because well, you know, you said no to his request to bring the Rolling Stones to America or you may come funck me eyes at his girls. Well, ship man, you better watch your back.

We'll be right back after this word, word word. I found myself in Ronnie's room one day on that UK to her Strand Palace hotel, and she was packing the head off to the next stop. I don't even remember how I did it. You know, I got into her room. It was a bit of magic, you know, a slight in the hand, and Phil looked away, and Phil walked away. Something Phil made like a tree, and I made my move. I was only twenty, you know, my turtle, next shirt, all the way up to my chin, my hair down

over my ears. Ronnie was twenty, also a couple of kids. Every move she made shot electricity through my bones. The way she smelled, the way she smiled, the way she packed her shirt and a suitcase on the bed, and the hotel them. I loved her. You know, listen, man, a gentleman never tells you know what I mean. But I will say we got around to do more than just looking at each other. When we find ourselves alone without the watchful eye Phil Specter bearing down on us.

I was a bit afraid of his wrath. Was jealousy, afraid of what he could do to me, to my career, you know, if he found out, because he was a music industry into himself at that time. You know what I mean. I guess the part of me that didn't give a funk beat out the part of me that was concerned. You know, we went to anti beetles for nothing. We did the opposite of what was expected. The world wanted smooth and we were shop The world wanted clean

and we were dirty. Phil Specter expected that the world would obey his orders and leave Ronnie alone. But I'm not the world, am I not? And it wasn't just his girl that he was all prickly about, right, Phil wanted my hair too. Man. It was probably more conscious of the fact that my hair was better than me is, and the fact that I wanted to get close in personal with a singer with his girlfriend. The man was wearing rugs at that point, even back then, not fooling anyone.

You know, he got off the planet heath throw his hands, shot right to the top of his head and all that wind. No wonder he had such control issues, you know what I mean? Ronnie told me later, Caroline jealous wasn't. Later that year, the Stones finally get across the Pond for a first tour of America. Who do we call Ronnie? Of course I made sure I found a number for her. The philm wasn't watching. It was her mother's number. I think. We went up to Spanish Charlem the places Ronnie had

told me about, places I had read about making. I crashed on her mother's living room floor. She made us bacon and eggs in the morning. We were on our best behavior. Of course, I was defaulted to my better behavior around Ronnie. We piled into a red Cadillac with the girls and went to Jones Beach out on Long Island, America. Man, it ripped through my hair. America did I've been listening to American music for so long that I felt like a new the place already. But it was different being there.

America wasn't all like New York. We weren't received with open arms just anywhere compact. Brian and me nearly pissing ourselves in Omaha. Well, we were pissing in the men's room with the auditorium, holding paper cups of hooch when he drew his piece on us and told us we couldn't be drinking in a public building. That's when I bought my first out on that tour at a truck stop. Back in those days, the cops were always coming for musicians on this charge or that. You had to be ready,

ready to defend yourself and ship. You know, I never knew if I was about to turn a corner with Ronnie's hand in mine and come face to face with Phil. Can you imagine? Because I did. I imagined it all the time with the scenarios play through my head. Phil Specter so jealous. He had people, he had bodyguards and

aaron men, and yes, man, he had deep pockets. He had some guy on stage standing right there, so when the ronnets were done and they began their exit, this guy could swoop in and take Ronnie by the arm and keep her away from any and all swinging dicks in the general vicinity. Phil had power, felt that he felt it when he was around, and you felt it when he wasn't around. And I didn't have power, men.

All I have was a bit of a chip on my shoulder back then, a heart that was bursting for Ronnie Bennett, and you know, fuck you attitude toward authority. I've always had that. And you know why, I Phil Specter at power, right, because he's so damn and secure. Man. I didn't see Phil at all in New York, but I felt Ronnie took me amidst C. James Brown at the Apollo, and I spent a little too much time with the Phil's face in the audience. I think it was an absent presence that a lot of people felt

possibility to feel, you know, what could be. So maybe it wasn't meant to be with me and Ronnie. Maybe I should have stuck my neck out a little more, worried about things a little less. And there was also the entire body of the Atlantic Ocean between us most times too, that made things impossible. It's the kind of regret that men write books about, right, And so Ronnie got a little too close to Phil, believed him a little too much, believed in him a little too much.

I thought he would continue to champion her as an artist. You know, she let herself feel love, though I don't know if love was really what she was feeling. Last time I ever saw feel spect I just felt a deep longing for what could have been, what could have been for me sure, but what could have been for Ronnie too, that maybe we all would have just been better off if I had swept a run off her feet,

told Phil Specter that she didn't belong to anybody. September nine, London, I Can Tina Turn her album River Deep Mountain Highs, released by London Records in the UK. The album was scheduled for releasing the States on Philly's Phil Specter's label, but it was pulled at the last minute when the title track, also produced by Specter, bombed. Phili Specter's latest Wagnerian pop Opus took Tina out of her comfort zone

and took Ike out of the picture completely. In the US, it was a thunderous dud that could be heard from coast to coast, and it wasn't just because the thing was drenched in an echo chamber. Across the pond, though it was a different story. The single River Deep Mountain

high peaked at number three on the UK charts. London loved it, and so the full length LP with the same name was soon released by the very man who had turned down Phil Specter's offer to bring The Rolling Stones to America just a few years prior, London Records, an offshoot of the Mighty Decca Records, released Phil Specter's new single by Kent Tina. Sir Edward Lewis succumbed to Phil's eight after all. Keith Richards picked up his copy of the album after being blown away by the single.

Listening to Tina's hurricane vocal, he was struck by the same feeling he had when he first heard Ronnie Bennett, who would go on to become Ronnie Specter. He held the LP jacket his hands, noting the dreamlike images of Icanina and full Power couple pose on the front. He turned it over and there on the back cover, standing in between Varcanina with his hands greedily grasping for control bobs in the studio was the man who had stood

between him, Keith and a girl. He deeply loved. Ronnie Specter's face there on the LP made the bad memories bubble up, the memory Stunned, they curled at the top, the thoughts of what was or what would never be. But Keith Richards, with an ass didn't live in the past. Keith Richards barreled forward. He could barrow forward without Phil Specter just fine. He didn't need the bad memories. He did need Kentina, Turner, England love them, Keith love them,

Nick loved them. The Stones wanted them on their stage, maybe more than Phil Specter wanted them in the studio. The Stones reached out and found Argentina irritated and stuck following their ill fated pairing with the fame Phil Specter, and they needed a change. They needed a direction, They needed an audience. Keith making the rest of the Boys could offer them all three. The Stones invited them to travel Abron filled the opening slot on their UK tour.

You get the audience they deserved, bask and the applause, escape from under Phil Specter's thomb, and they answered the call, opened the tour, and then in nineteen sixty nine they opened for the Stones again in America and the tour that included the infamous show it out to Mount Speedway in California, the one that ended with chaos and death.

Keith traded war stories with Argentina, war stories involving their encounters with Phil Specter, war stories told in secret because Phil Specter remained powerful, and Phil Specter remained a man of prodigious jealousy and There were times when Keith learned more than he wanted to know, times when he delve deeper into the mind of Ike Turner, deeper than he had thought possible. I talked in that mind just opened up.

Its recesses were dark, its desires were darker. Sometimes their conversations went too far, like the time Ike pulled the gun from his pocket and ordered Keith to show him how to play an open tuning Show me that five streak ship. Motherfucker. He's jaw dropped when he watched I take the same gun and pissed the whip one of

his band members. And the more Keith listen to I talk, he realized that the guitarists, the producer, the man who maybe invented rock and roll, had a lot more in common with Phil Specter than he thought, and he now cut from the same sort of stock that could only lead to 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've died at

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