PHIL SPECTOR RANTS ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BEATLES AHEAD OF HIS MURDER RETRIALmirror.co.uk
By Mark Jefferies
25/10/2008
Hands trembling and eyes watering like a broken main, bonkers record producer Phil Spector lashes out left, right and centre in a bizarre interview.
He is a man with much to say – and a hell of a lot on his mind.
Spector – a legend in the music industry for creating the so-called “wall of sound” – is awaiting retrial in America for the killing of nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson.
Last year a jury failed to reach a decision and a new one has just been selected in LA.
Spector is on a million dollar-bail and could be banged up for life – but that doesn’t seem to be troubling him too much today.
Instead, he seems more concerned with settling old musical scores. Sir Paul McCartney, for one, is unlikely to be high up on his Christmas card list.
Spector was brought to London in 1970 by the Beatles’ manager Allen Klein and was given the task of turning abandoned
Get Back sessions into the
Let It Be album.
But while he had the backing of John Lennon and George Harrison, McCartney was in two minds – and Spector is scathing about one of Macca’s most famous ballads.
“
The Long and Winding Road was a terrible recording when I first heard it,” he says.
“John was playing bass on it with all the wrong notes. There was no snare drum on it – I had to get Ringo in to play.
“It was really awful.”
Tell us what you really feel Phil.
He went on: “Paul was singing like he didn’t believe it, he was kinda mocking it. And John didn’t like the song. That’s why he played bass on it, and he didn’t know the chord changes so he was guessing.
“It was a farce and I had to do everything I could to cover up the mistakes.”
Warming up, Spector says producing the album was the recording job from hell.
“I worked with strangers in a hostile environment, hostile press, hostile people, all Beatle lovers who thought I was taking their Beatles away,” he says. “It was not an enviable task.”
“But I wanted
Let It Be to be a great farewell album. I knew they were breaking up, I knew there wouldn’t be a reunion – the public didn’t.
“I was there to make a commercial album because I wanted to sell 12 million albums.
“And the public ended up buying it because I was Mr. Commerciality. I wondered how I was going to put it together but I knew I could and I knew there was an album there.
“I don’t think McCartney is very secure that I went there in a few months and did what they couldn’t do in two years with those tapes.
The Long and Winding Road, Phil Spector version (3:37 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cUaO1P2mfo“John was thrilled with what I did and George was thrilled with what I did, and Paul said he loved
The Long and Winding Road when it was done.”
But in 2003, Macca brought out
Let It Be... Naked which stripped the songs of Spector’s input – and this seems to have stung the producer big time.
He says: “I don’t know, what else could it be, except that it is a bug up his a**e? He waited 35 years to do it, I don’t know why, I don’t care why.
“Whatever the grievance, he has got me mixed up with somebody that gives a s**t.”
His hands shaking, Spector clearly does care – and the man who gave the world classic tunes like
Be My Baby and
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ believes he is given far less respect than he deserves.
The Ronettes singing, "Be My Baby." (2:07 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ONH3hIjO3c
The Righteous Brothers sing, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling." (3:45 minutes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTnUpzLLkCA“I don’t get depressed cos I don’t let myself get depressed,” he says.
“It is a wasted emotion. But I’m concerned with the fact that I haven’t been made a doctorate at a college and Bill Cosby has, even Bob Dylan has.
“I think I have offered more to American culture and music than they have, or as much. George Martin, Paul McCartney are made sirs, Buddy Holly had a stamp, I love him, but he only lived three years in rock’n’roll.”
In the documentary, made by Oscar-winning director Vikram Jayanti, Spector reckons his influence extends way beyond music, and makes the bizarre claim that Hollywood legends Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro owe him their careers.
He says that Scorsese used
Be My Baby without his permission in one of his earliest films,
Mean Streets.“I had never heard of this Scorsese guy and I called my attorney to get it pulled and he said it was a school project and an unknown director and to just let it go,” says Spector.
“So they told me not to get an injunction because everyone’s career is at stake – so I said they could work it out later. Fast forward to later and Scorsese is giving me the rights to other films and I am in
Godfather and
Taxi Driver.
“But the bottom line is that day I held Scorsese and De Niro’s career in my hand.”
As for the upcoming retrial for the death of Lana Clarkson, Spector insists people are out to get him.
He describes the judge of the first trial as a “mean son of a bitch” and admits: “I have been ostracised from the industry with this indictment hanging over me. Innocent until proven guilty is no longer a factor.”
The weird Afro-style hairdo which he sported during the trial may have done him few favours – but Spector insists it was (almost) deliberate.
He says: “It took me four-and-a-half hours to get it like that, I woke up at four o’clock in the morning and had to perm it and do everything to it. It was a tribute to Einstein and Beethoven.
“Jay Leno said it looked like I had already been electrocuted. But I didn’t mean to be that comical. We went beyond the extreme and no one pointed it out to me.”
When he is asked how he will cope if he does get sent down for murder, he mumbles: “I’ll be in a jail with Bubba, 6 ft. 8 Bubba and he’ll be my husband.”
Whatever you say Phil.
- Arena:
The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector, BBC2, 9.40pm, tonight
Phil Spector Gets 19 Years To Life for Murder of Actress, Fri May 29, 2009
www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/29/spector.sentencing/www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/latest/2008/10/25/phil-spector-rants-about-his-relationship-with-the-beatles-ahead-of-his-murder-retrial-115875-20836885/
