There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll

by Robinson, Lisa

  Chuck Berry’s black lace shirt aside, people in Los Angeles didn’t wear black clothing then. There were no cheese shops, not even in Beverly Hills. There were no nightclubs with lists, or ropes at the door. There were no vintage clothing stores. There were some antique stores where decorators shopped, but none of this was part of the “culture.” Even in the early 1990s, when I went to Los Angeles for some interview or other and was friendly with Phil Spector and he would send me a car and driver for the week, it would be a block-long white stretch limousine. That was either Hollywood fantasia or Phil’s idea of a joke. Or both. To me, the city just was not a serious place. And, except for Sue Mengers, it was not run by agents. Or museum directors. Or cooks. At least the music business wasn’t; David Geffen ran the music business. With the exception of those who actually lived there, it was a place musicians went to play, get high, have sex, and make records. And so, it was to this Los Angeles that Yoko Ono banished John in September 1973, when they were having a rough time in their marriage. He ostensibly went to finish up the recording sessions for Mind Games, and then to record the Rock ’n’ Roll album with Phil Spector. He went, at Yoko’s direction, with the Lennons’ assistant May Pang by his side. He stayed for ten months, a period he would describe later as his “lost weekend.”

  • • •

  Despite the party line of this “lost weekend,” and how miserable John would later say he was without Yoko, on September 9, 1974, when he was back in New York City and I visited him in his penthouse apartment at 434 East 52nd Street, John was relaxed, fun, ebullient. Some who knew him well during that time felt he was happier than he ever let on. When I went to talk to him, he was living with May Pang; he was still “on leave” from Yoko and the Dakota. In Los Angeles, he had been wildly and publicly drunk. Wearing a Kotex on his head, he was thrown out of the Troubadour for heckling the Smothers Brothers. Years later, he would tell me he had wanted to “go home” to Yoko. But when we talked that day in 1974, he couldn’t have been more delightful. We talked about the Beatlefest convention that had been held the week before at the Commodore Hotel in New York City. He said he’d contemplated attending, but decided against it because, he said, “I still get nervous in crowds.” But did people in New York really bother him? “Well,” he said, “people try to be cool. They’re not quite as bad as the Parisians, who try so hard to be cool you can feel the vibe from a mile away. I’m always aware of everybody in the room. So I can feel them trying to not take notice of me. But people in New York are pretty cool.” I asked if he felt he was able to be more anonymous in New York. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s about the same everywhere. It’s been a long time since we were really hassled by people. I mean people see you and look at you, but it’s not like Beatlemania.” We discussed the Beatles memorabilia sold at the convention. I told him I had four enamel trays with photos of all four Beatles on them. He said—almost plaintively—“I haven’t got a tray.” (I now have three trays.) I told him I had a lunchbox. “I wanted a lunchbox,” he practically whined. “I told them, get me a lunchbox, something practical.” (I still have my Beatles lunchbox with matching thermos.) He said Brian Epstein had made “some mad deal,” that someone made millions on all that stuff and none of the band members ever got a dime from any of it—the dolls, the trays, the toys, the buttons. I told him that the singer in the Beatles cover band at the convention said, “We’re all going to sing along, because we know these songs, don’t we? We know them as well as we know the Lord’s Prayer.” John laughed. “Isn’t that nice,” he said. He likened it to Rudolph Valentino. But, he added, “It’s good for business, isn’t it? It goes to the family. And if we ever did anything together again, it keeps the fires burning. There they are. Waiting.” Had he been concerned that they wouldn’t be there waiting? “No,” he said, “but things like that, a convention with 3,000 people a day . . . it just reminds you. It’s a lot of people to look at pictures.”

  We talked about Los Angeles and the incident at the Troubadour. “For one period,” John said, “I was getting really manic—as you might have noticed by a few press clippings. But only half of what was reported in the papers about L.A. was true.” The Kotex on his head in the Troubadour? “Oh, that was true, but nobody took a cryin’ bit of notice of it. It was only in retrospect when I was heckling the Smothers Brothers that they noticed it. Actually, all that happened was that they dragged us out. But the Kotex thing, nobody really noticed it. It was just something I stuck on me forehead; like the way people stick pennies on and say, ‘look at that.’” Who sticks pennies on their forehead and says, “Look at that?” I asked. “Well,” he said, “I just found it in the toilet, clean as a whistle, and I stuck it on and it stayed on all night. It was rather splendid. And [gossip columnist] Rona Barrett didn’t want to mention it. An ‘unmentionable,’ she said.” I said that that made it sound even worse than it was. “Well, it may be unmentionable to her,” John said, “but they advertise them on TV. I was having my first night on Brandy Alexanders. Right? Brandy and milk, and it tasted like milkshake, and the next thing I knew I was out of me gourd. And Harry Nilsson was no help feeding me them; saying, ‘go ahead, it’s great John,’ one of those scenes, come on, give it to him. All that’s true, and I was wildly obnoxious.”

  *

  We talked about his escalating deportation problems; it was turning into the U.S. vs. John Lennon. He wanted to stay, the government wanted him gone. “I’ve been through emotional stress and manic depression. And also, it costs a fortune. Just to stay here. Most expensive holiday I’ve ever had.” I asked him how he felt about the possibility of becoming a martyr. “I think it’s daft. Look, they never liked me in school, either. They didn’t like me face. They used to say ‘he’s looking at us.’ They used to call it ‘The Look.’ It really was just that I was shortsighted and I’d be glaring at the teacher. It’s exactly the same, only the school’s bigger now.” He said he was “allowed” to perform in concerts, but that he didn’t feel like doing it. “When I think of all that . . . thirty-eight bloody cities and sweating around . . . the average good fun at the end of a tour is two shows out of ten. I know it’s different now than when I was with the Beatles, but it ain’t all that different when you’re up there. I couldn’t do what George Harrison is doing, thirty-eight cities. The highs aren’t worth the lows. I have the feeling that sometimes I’d like to get up and do it, but not quite enough to get me out there.” The “One to One” concert in 1972 had been the last time he had been onstage, and, he added, another time “I staggered around the stage with Dr. John, but I wouldn’t call that a performance. I played organ and he played harmonica. Neither of us could play anything. But we stood up there.”

  I asked what it would be like to perform with the Beatles now. “It would be harder,” he said, “because no one would ever be satisfied. We’d never be good enough. Everybody’s got this . . . dream about how wonderful it was. Imagine if we went on; they’d all say, ‘not as good as they were.’ Actually, if we all got together, it would sound exactly the same, only better. Listen to all the solo records and you’ll hear the same people, the same stuff. Just that there’s too much Paul, too much George, too much Ringo. You’re not getting enough variety.” John was harsh about George Harrison’s 1970 double album All Things Must Pass. “I can’t stand double albums,” John said. “Too much mixing and listening to it and putting them in order and then who’s going to sit down and listen to forty bloody tunes?? I can’t. I can hardly bear to listen to eleven or ten or nine.”

  We talked a long time about his associations with what he referred to as “certain types”: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. “They got what they wanted from it,” he said, “and I got what I wanted.” He admitted that after just two and a half years in New York, his life was different: he got back into music. “I’ve always been interested in politics, but I’ve got to do it the poetic way. It just doesn’t work any other way. I took it too literally. Because all of us singers are m
instrels anyway, right? And we’re saying what’s going on in the world, one way or another. Rock and roll was really folk music. But I think I got too literary about it, thinking well, if that’s what I’m doing, then I’ll say it about specific issues. And when that happened, I think it limited my self-expression. So, I just went back to being me again. It’s like going through the Maharishi or something. As long as I’m going through something, I’ve got something to say. If it all gets cozy, then there’s nothing to say. If it becomes a happy life with the dog and the cat, which I can’t bear, then there’s nothing to say. I have to bang me head against the wall and then write about how good it is to stop. Otherwise, I think you die as an artist. I can’t deal with that settling down business. I’ll never settle down. I always have to keep moving or falling over just so something’s happening to me. I’ve died artistically a few times. I didn’t like it. As long as I’m writing songs, I don’t care where I am, unless I was in prison.” Was prison an imminent possibility? “Nah. Not unless I kill somebody.” He talked about his new album (Walls and Bridges) and how it would help his image with the government. “It’s all showbiz,” he said. “That’s why I never get really depressed about reviews. . . .” Reviews? He reads reviews? “I eventually read everything,” he said, “because all your best friends send you your lousy reviews.”

  • • •

  When John and I talked that day in 1974, he told me that the recording sessions he did with producer Phil Spector in L.A. were “pretty mad sessions. My sessions are usually pretty straight, but those were weird to say the least. Phil and I were at the height of eccentricity.” In Martin Scorsese’s documentary about George Harrison, Living in the Material World, there is an interview with Phil Spector about the production work he did with George on George’s double album All Things Must Pass. It was filmed after Phil’s arrest but before his trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson. In the documentary, Phil looks the way he did in court; a red pocket square in a dark blazer, a matching red shirt, a blondish, almost mop-topped wig. Behind him was the white piano that I believe was the same one John Lennon played in the video of “Imagine.” Phil may look weird, but he talks as lucidly and on point about George as he always did when I knew him and we were friends in the 1990s. It made me sad. For those who know only of his reputed violent streak, or the murder conviction, or who saw him shaking on Court TV, it’s probably hard to understand how funny and insightful he was.

  I first met Phil in 1991 at one of the interminable meetings of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee—when I was the only female on the committee. He, Ahmet Ertegun and I agreed on, and argued for, many of the same people who were not yet in the Hall of Fame and, in the case of some 1950s doo-wop groups, are still not in. Or, we agreed on black blues pioneers such as Howlin’ Wolf, who, after years of arguments, finally got inducted in 1991 as an “Early Influence.” One night, following one of those lunchtime nominating committee meetings, I was at the Bottom Line to see a performance by the gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama. Phil was at another table with bandleader/musician Paul Shaffer. A bottle of champagne was sent to my table, courtesy of Phil, and thus began a friendship that lasted until a year or so before his arrest. Despite some occasional erratic behavior, I spent many entertaining nights on the town with Phil and his coterie. Among his New York friends were Paul Shaffer, other journalists, some female companion or other, and two bodyguards who, I recall, Phil introduced as the sons of jazz guitarist Barney Kessel. We went to hear jazz—at Eddie Condon’s and the Village Vanguard. We went in large groups to dinners, and Phil always picked up the check. He stood every time a woman got up to go to the restroom or returned to the table. He did spot-on impersonations of George Harrison, Ahmet Ertegun, John Lennon, and songwriter Doc (“Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Viva Las Vegas”) Pomus. Phil always used the expression “We’ll double cross that bridge when we get to it.” He was furious about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating process—saying that he just knew one day we’d be voting on Phil Collins and Billy Joel. We did. They’re both in.

  *

  On June 6, 1991, I went to a recording studio on Greene Street to watch Phil, with his longtime engineer Larry Levine, re-master the songs from his catalogue for what would become the Phil Spector boxed set. He talked about John Lennon in L.A. with the Kotex on his head. He talked about Yoko, Mama Mae Thornton, Esther Phillips, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The studio was dark, there were barely any lights on and it was freezing—the air conditioning was on full blast. I listened to “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and Phil told me that when the song was first recorded, music publisher Don Kirshner told him he couldn’t use that title, that the title was too negative. I heard “He Hit Me, and It Felt Like a Kiss” by the Crystals for the first time; Phil had never felt he could release it before. While I watched Phil and Larry re-master those songs—“River Deep—Mountain High,” “Be My Baby,” “Walking in the Rain,” “To Know Him Is to Love Him”—it was like watching Picasso re-paint his masterpieces. “I don’t care if it sells a lot of copies,” Phil said to me that day with a straight face. “As long as every man, woman and child in America buys one.”

  *

  Once, in his suite at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City, Phil had assembled a group of friends, including Paul Shaffer, the globetrotter/art collector Jean Pigozzi, and lawyer Marvin Mitchelson. Several books written about Phil were on a table next to a sofa, and a book about Meyer Lansky was on the coffee table—along with bowls of Tootsie Roll lollipops, candy bars, nuts, cookies and potato chips. There were framed photos of Phil with the Rolling Stones, with Doc Pomus. He told many stories, many of which I had heard previously—at least once. About how Charlie Chaplin wrote “I’ll Be Loving You Eternally” for the movie City Lights because Irving Berlin wouldn’t give him the rights to Berlin’s “I’ll Be Loving You [Always].” He marveled at how Berlin could write an Irish song (“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”), an Easter song, a Christmas song, then “God Bless America.” How Berlin wanted to be Cole Porter so he wrote “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Porter couldn’t do Berlin, Phil said, but he wrote the best country and western song ever written: “Don’t Fence Me In.” Phil seemed to know every song ever written (a level of knowledge that in my entire career I have seen matched only by musician-producer-composer Jon Brion). Phil talked about how, as a teenager, he had met Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern and their wives. He asked Mrs. Hammerstein, “How did your husband write ‘Ol’ Man River’? And Mrs. Kern broke in, My husband wrote ‘Ol’ Man River,’ her husband wrote—she sang—Da-da-da-da.” He told me how he and Doc Pomus went to Joe Marsh’s Spindletop restaurant when Phil was eighteen, and how they ate great big salads and steaks night after night. One night, a man came into the restaurant wearing a raincoat, pulled out a gun and shot someone sitting next to them. Phil was astounded, horrified, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Later, he said to Doc, “Can you believe this? Someone got murdered. In the restaurant. While we sat there. I never saw anything like that in my life.” Then Doc said, “Phil, they have such big steaks, such delicious salads . . .” And Phil said, “But Doc, someone got murdered. I mean, excuse me, a man came in and shot someone while we sat there.” And Doc said, “So that’s the down side of it, baby. They’ve got great steaks . . . great salads . . .”

  *

  On November 4, 1991, some of us were gathered in one of Phil’s hotel suites. Phil talked about the boxed set of his early songs and productions, the reviews it got, his reputation. He said that at first, no one ever took his work seriously. He was doing production numbers, he said. Each song was like a Broadway show. He told a story about how Ike Turner stayed at the Waldorf Astoria for one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and told Phil he needed $920 cash for “dry cleaning.” He talked about being in a restaurant with John and Yoko and how the violinists came over and played Beatles songs—“Yesterday,” “Michelle”—all the McCartney songs. John
was holding his head, mumbling that he hadn’t written any of them. I said Cole Porter couldn’t have written with Irving Berlin—one of them was the sophisticated one, the other the sappy one. Phil said that was exactly the point—John and Paul hadn’t written songs together either.