He's a Rebel

by Mark Ribowsky

  For this, he would need Tina Turner, but only if Ike stayed away from the studio. Phil was prepared to buy this condition with a promise of Ike producing songs on some future Ike and Tina album on Philles, but it turned out that he need not have worried. The chance of getting into rock mainstream excited Ike. After Phil obtained permission from Ike’s current label, Loma Records, an R&B branch of Warner Brothers, to lease them for $20,000, Phil and Danny Davis went to Ike and Tina’s Baldwin Hills house to close the deal. “I didn’t know what to expect, Ike had a mean reputation,” Davis said, “but he was thrilled at the time that no less than Phil Spector was interested in them.” Although Ike had no objection to keeping out of the studio with Phil, “he did think he would be involved somehow in what came out and so forth. I remember there was a lot of talk about it because Phil wanted to keep him happy. He was scared to death of Ike.”

  Sizing up his Waterloo, Phil thought he had to invoke the magical symbiosis of the past; specifically, 1963, when nothing ever went wrong. To do so, he wanted to enlist the handcrafters of his great run of 1963 and 1964—Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. That was no simple wish. Divorced in 1965, Jeff and Ellie continued collaborating but their paths had taken them far afield from Spector; Red Bird Records had folded, and they were working as staff writers at Bang Records—a branch company of Atlantic Records co-owned by Ahmet Ertegun, his brother Nesuhi, Jerry Wexler, and Bert Berns—where they were producing a young singer named Neil Diamond. There was also the ugly business about “Chapel of Love.” Phil, always the charmer, came at them as if nothing had ever gone sour. “That’s the way this business is,” Vinnie Poncia remarked. “Phil may have hated you personally, but as long as he had respect for you as a writer or a musician he’d work with you again.” Besides, Spector was still power and money, and it did not take long for Jeff and Ellie to capitulate. “There might have even been some kind of deal made at the time of ‘Chapel of Love,’ ” Poncia said. “Leiber and Stoller may have smoothed some feathers, given Phil some money for an agreement that he’d use Jeff and Ellie again. This might have been the calling in of old favors.”

  The song that would become Phil Spector’s watershed—“River Deep—Mountain High”—was written during an intensive week of collaboration after Jeff and Ellie joined Phil in L.A. The lyric was a pained and somewhat self-conscious attempt by Jeff to break out of his prosaic kiddie anthem mold; his florid imagery of love’s pain, angst, and joy unfurled with an odd-sounding poetic and grammatical license from the opening line about a young girl and her rag doll. But the melody was actually a fusing of three different song ideas—each of the three writers had completely diverse riffs, and Phil was not averse to jamming them all together in a metrical hydra. He was after something striking: not quite R&B, not quite pop, amenable to both but on a higher plane. Though the song teetered and fought itself in spots—verse out of synch with melody, melody jumping too abruptly off the lyric line—Phil believed this was all to the good. It would be the Wall and Tina that would iron out and color the oddities, with pyrotechnical madness. In the end, it would be an eccentric and commercially viable entity—essentially a logarithm of Phil Spector himself.

  “River Deep—Mountain High” needed five long sessions to cut. The first two came in late February, as Phil attacked the basic rhythm track. If Spector sessions had been large before, now they were gargantuan. Up to two dozen musicians were stuffed inside Studio A at a time, straining its capacity. Phil did run-throughs at the first two sessions, taking the tapes home and playing them again and again and always finding some imperfection that would require hours to fix. The third and final session for the rhythm track was on March 7, when twenty-one musicians and Jack Nitzsche occupied the studio floor. The cacophony included four guitars—Barney Kessel, Don Peake, John Ewing, Robert Gerslauer—and four basses—Jim Bond, Carol Kaye, Ray Pohlman, Lyle Ritz. The rhythm sweeteners included keyboard players Harold Battiste, Larry Knechtal, and Michael Rubini; percussionists Frank Capp and Larry Estes; and a monster brass section—Plas Johnson and Jay Migliori on sax, Oliver Mitchell and Roy Caton on trumpet, Jim Horn and Lew McCreary on trombone. And for the first time, Phil went with two drummers, Earl Palmer and Jim Gordon. Running almost all day and night, Danny Davis would be paying bills for the session for the next year, at which time the tab came to over $22,000, which would have been an unthinkable cost for several albums.

  When Tina came to that March 7 session, she was shocked at the assemblage in the studio. By the time Phil was ready for vocals, more than twenty background singers had entered the room. Tina, who never expected to sing in Grand Central Station, was not comfortable. She tried to do the lead vocal, but the song befuddled her. Phil excused her and set another week of rehearsal. Tina related so little to the bizarre song that she could not even sing it for Ike at home. When she went back to Gold Star, no one was in the studio except Phil and Larry Levine. Trying to sing it again while the immense rhythm track gorged her ears through headphones, she was constantly interrupted by Phil. “That’s close,” he would say. “Let’s try it again.” She had to inch up on the vocal, until, long after midnight, she was dripping with sweat and had to take off her blouse. Standing in a pitch-dark room in her bra, her head and her ears pounding, she took a deep breath and ripped it again, the veins in her neck bulging and her lower stomach in stabbing pain.

  When she left the studio, Tina still did not know if she did it the way Phil wanted it, and neither did Phil. It took another week of mixing and dubbing strings before he had industry people listen to it. To his face, these people told him it was very likely a No. 1 record that would break Tina into the big time. Behind his back, some of the same people had doubts. As with the Righteous Brothers’ records, the Gold Star echo chambers were used full crank, but where open space was kneaded into a mood before, now the echoes met an eddy of sheer noise. At some moments, the force was so monumental and eerie that it seemed to suck the listener into its core. At other moments, it was . . . noise. Then, even with Tina twisted into a knot, it was a flat emotional pancake. Ike Turner, hearing the track of Tina’s vocal, loved it; when he heard the final mix, he told friends the record was overproduced and submerged Tina’s voice. Jeff Barry thought it was muddy and sloppy, a botched job. That judgment was not uncommon, but in Jeffs case it only proved that he never comprehended Spector’s music.

  “There were always things that Phil looked for, because I know how he does it,” Marshall Lieb said. “I know where the color lines are and I know his depth perception. Nothing is an accident. When you hear muddle from a Phil Spector record, he plants that.

  “Phil was very crafty at getting as much power out of his records as he could. In the seventies producers were trying to get those kinds of levels and could not. Today, when you hear ‘River Deep’ it’s still very powerful. I think it’s wonderful, a stunning production.”

  What “River Deep” was, Phil Spector wanted it to be.

  And in 1966, almost no one in America could deal with it.

  As a synthesis of past rituals applied to a future formula, the outward impracticalities of “River Deep—Mountain High” doomed its subliminal brilliance. Even Vinnie Poncia, who thought he was tapped into Phil’s genius, was torn. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with the record. It was at the wrong time,” Poncia said. “See, Phil didn’t care about the times. For him to work with an artist like Tina Turner, to fulfill what he set out to do in the studio, that was the heights. Phil was the general, but when it came to who put the final vocal on, he really sought something in the delivery, and that was the one thing he could not direct. It was something he could find, a Bill Medley, a Darlene Love, a Ronnie. So for him to get Tina in front of his microphone, that was a big thrill for him. Because now he had the crowning piece, the jewel that went on top of the whole thing.

  “But at the time, those kinds of records were falling out of favor with the public. ‘River Deep’ was no different than ‘Lovin’ Feelin’,’ except that after
that record they just weren’t buying it any more. I also think the structure of the song hurt it. If you broke down the song—and it’s a great song—the verse was so incredible. It’s about the little girl and the rag doll, and that’s what Phil loved. It was like Gene Pitney. Then the chorus was a different tempo, it takes you away from the verse.

  “Phil knew that, because it happens all the time. Sometimes you do things and they don’t come out great, sometimes you miss by a mile. As long as you don’t take it personally, you’re okay. He took it personally.”

  Danny Davis’s problem was that “River Deep” was too radical to call rock and roll. Even as an advance in black music it was out of step; Atlantic and Stax-Volt Records were reshaping soul with the Memphis pop-R&B of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam and Dave. “River Deep” could not be called anything but a Phil Spector record. In 1966 that did not necessarily move vinyl. The trade papers, which once fawned on Spector records, reviewed this one with mild approbation. Cash Box tabbed it as a “Best Bet,” a designation that generally meant let’s wait and see. When “River Deep,” backed with a Spector song called “I’ll Keep You Happy,” was released in late April, the L.A. radio station KRLA—to which Danny had given the bauble of breaking the record—put it right on the air, to a lukewarm response. Across the country, it was a hard sell. “In the office, we all loved that song, we thought it was a classic . . . and it was one of the toughest fuckin’ records I can ever remember trying to get played,” Davis recalled. “I’ll never forget it. Bertha Potter, who was the music director at WDRC in Hartford, told me that it was ‘a bunch of noise.’ That was echoed by WMCA in New York. Everyone viewed it as a bunch of noise. I was tryin’ like hell with that record. I flew out, I did big dinners, sent perfume to the wives. I was and am the best around and I could not get it played, man. It was one of the great losses of my life. But it was not my fault. Something was goin’ on out there. Nobody wanted to be the first to budge on it.”

  The nadir of the crusade, and the epitome of how cursed it was, came when Danny went with Ike and Tina, who played a gig in St. Louis. Intending to promote “River Deep” there, Danny instead had to bail Ike out of jail. “He got arrested on a gun charge and I had to spend the whole time getting him out. Phil sent the money.”

  Trying to work with the volatile Ike as a comrade was like a bad dream. When “River Deep” didn’t take off, Ike complained to Danny that the follow-up sessions Phil was doing with Tina were keeping the Revue off the road and that the record led to no new dates because blacks didn’t like the song. Trying to rectify the situation, Ike began to release his own records, further undercutting “River Deep” among his fans. “Ike would say, ‘This record ain’t doin’ anything and I got records all over. I got ’em on my mantel, I got ’em in my coat, and I got ’em in my closet. If nothin’ happens I just put another one out on whatever label I can get,’ ” Davis said. “And Phil, of course, just got crazy when he heard that, but there wasn’t much you could do. Ike was a little cokey to begin with, and you could say anything you want, he doesn’t give a goddamn.”

  No other major record in pop music history was resisted for as many different reasons as “River Deep—Mountain High” was. It was a conundrum of discontent, with no one really knowing why it failed. Depending on who was the expert, it was too noisy, too black for white-oriented stations to play a Tina Turner soul record, or too white for black stations that played Tina Turner records. But the only plausible answer was that it was too Phil Spector.

  “They didn’t reject ‘River Deep’ because it was a bad record,” Marshall Lieb said. “They rejected it because they had a vendetta for Phil. I remember it was very tough for him to get it played because of the way he had treated a lot of the program directors. Pop stations who were not used to playing a loud R&B act used that as an excuse not to play it, and that was a terrible shame because the music was very good and the artist was very good.”

  But “River Deep” could be resisted, for whatever reason. And when it became obvious that the record was in serious trouble, it was as if this one event was a mass catharsis of vengeance. Those whom Phil had wronged, directly or indirectly, banded together to jgore the crippled beast by piling indignity on top of insult. On May 29, “River Deep” found the chart, at No. 88. The next week, as if swatted by a gigantic unseen hand, it fell off! No. 88! When “Walking in the Rain” went to No. 23, it was a letdown. What to make of this? “And it wasn’t just an 88, it was a tough 88,” Danny Davis said. This was so exaggerated a failure that it could only be considered a stoning.

  Phil knew he was living on the edge of the blade. As he’d staked so much on this one record, he’d left no room to escape from failure. He was prepared to live with that, because he was too tired and too hostile to compromise any more. Still, the vicious personal backlash kicked him in the groin. That he should stand in the way of his record was not an irony to him; it was an injustice he could not live with. Angry at first, his insecurities made him think that maybe it was a bad and useless record. Paralyzed by the notion, he didn’t just walk away from the business. He ran and hid. “He just couldn’t bear the shame,” Davis said. “He was absolutely, thoroughly crushed by the rejection.”

  If there was salvation, it came from his friends in England. Tony Hall knew “River Deep” would be radical for the BBC and took the record to the ring of “pirate” radio stations that broadcast illegally from boats offshore in the channel. Begun as a protest against the conservative BBC playlists, these stations were run by young people with a sense of daring, and many of them were Spector buffs. “They were fantastic,” Hall said. “I got them to love the record, and without any help from the BBC I think we took four weeks to get that to No. 1.” Actually, “River Deep” went to No. 3 in Britain in mid-July. Sitting on his other Tina records up to then, Phil readied her cover of the old Motown song “A Love Like Yours (Don’t Come Knockin’ Every Day)” for British release. He did not think about releasing it in the U.S. That “River Deep” was a smash abroad only tied his stomach in knots. Speaking with Tony Hall about the fiasco at home, he was inconsolable. “It fucked his head completely,” Hall said. “I could hear it in his voice over the phone. He was angry and hurt. He knew it was a fantastic bloody record. He thought, and rightly so, that it was the best record he ever made.”

  Cushioning himself, Phil did not wait for the “River Deep” verdict. Having caught the same bug that bit Don Kirshner, he was already looking to movies as a logical and estimable career turn. Phil had become friendly with actor Dennis Hopper, a coarse, hard-drinking man who offended almost every producer and director in Hollywood—and, as such, was yet another hip pariah with whom Phil could walk in step. When Hopper could not find movie work, Phil hired him as a photographer, and a Hopper collage was the front cover of the 1967 River Deep—Mountain High album that was released in England. But their big plan was to make an independent movie starring Dennis and his friend Peter Fonda—directed by Dennis, produced and financed by Phil—that they could sell to a studio. Poring over treatments, Hopper liked one by writer Steven Stern. Titled The Last Movie, it was an abstract parable as seen through the eyes of an American film crew shooting a Western movie in a Mexican village. On May 18, 1966, Phil made an oral agreement with Stern to option the treatment for $71,000 and to have Stern write the screenplay. The arrangement was for Stern to receive $10,000 on completion of a script, $36,000 by December 31, and $25,000 or percent from the proceeds of the movie. Phil and Dennis began to scout Mexican locations and eventually settled on the rock-strewn landscape of Mazatlán. Phil guaranteed monies to Cherabusco Studios to use their facilities. Sets were built, crews assembled, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler hired as chief cameraman.

  While they occupied themselves with this project, and “River Deep” became Spector’s sacrificial lamb, Philles Records was dormant. “He told me after ‘River Deep’ that he was gonna close up the whole place,” Danny Davis recalled. “He said: �
��We’re gonna go out of the business, we’re gonna do other things.’ It was comparable to what Kirshner told me on the ride to Penn Station; he was gonna go into the movie business. So I went through another crisis in that regard, waiting for the end to come.”

  But Phil did not close up. Instead, he sat around the office most days with Hopper and Fonda. The music hustings of Philles Records degenerated into a farcical amateur hour. “We had some beauts comin’ in to see him, boy.” Davis shuddered. “Oh, God, we had some guys who would walk in off the street and want to do a record. Phil would go to record studios or the clubs around town and people would give him records, and then they would follow up and he had no intention of doin’ anything with anybody. But he would give ’em the sign that everything was good and the next day you would get these guys calling and it would fall to me to bob and weave and tell ’em no, because I’m good at that.

  “Sometimes it looked like he was ready to go. He’d say, ‘I want you to go in tomorrow and fire so-and-so,’ whether it was the comptroller or whoever he had on the payroll at the time. But then he’d say, ‘Oh, we still got product out, we’re still waitin’. We’ll keep him.’ He was so fuckin’ indecisive.”

  If Phil was getting off on his self-imposed asylum of idleness and loathing, he was given a fresh motive to wallow on August 2. That was the day that Lenny Bruce died.

  The terrible irony was that things seemed to be looking up for Lenny. In the past months he had won all of his remaining obscenity cases and he waltzed through his lone outstanding narcotics charge with a small fine and probation. With the winds of change catching up to the laws of free expression, he could have gone back to work. And yet, stripped of the crutch of persecution, Lenny saw no reason to live. Now $400,000 in debt, he gained an alarming amount of weight and shot more heroin. As another token of solidarity with Lenny, Phil released an album of his stand-up material, Lenny Bruce Is Out Again. But Lenny went unrevived.