Is that a gun in your pocket...?

February 10th – Q. Wall of sound…?

Who? 
Correct. Well done!

Q. Do you want one answer to be the only thing that comes to people’s minds whenever your name is mentioned?

Ans. Nor me.

Phil Spector, who suffered a near-death experience on this day in 1974, certainly has a C.V. that reads like a popular music ‘Who’s Who’. He’s worked with them all and, it would seem, at one time and another they all wanted to work with him. It’s this talisman thing that permeates most if not all branches of the arts. In music, you see a contemporary doing better than you in the album or singles charts and the first two things you’ll ask are:

“Who produced?”

and

“Where did they record it?”

If the name crops up again you then ask:

“Can I get him/her for my next album?”

and

“Is the same studio free?”

It’s this ‘my lucky jock-strap’ kinda thing and there were certainly enough folk wanting to wear the Mr. Spector jock-strap.

As in most cases of stars circulating round the sun of the next best thing, ‘the next best thing’ has to keep coming up with the goods. We all know it is particularly apt in the arts that you’re only as good as your last piece of work. One easy way of elongating that level of success is to keep repeating the same thing. Hence, in the film industry, we have the franchise series (Bond, Bourne, Halloween, Friday 13th etc). That’s because no one wants to be responsible for a flop so, the best ting to do is produce safe stuff. I well remember being told by someone (who STILL has charge of a theatre)

“Peter, from now on I only want you book shows that sell out.”

Don’t know where to start the explanations with someone who has SO little knowledge of how theatre works, do you? No wonder the arts in this country are going to the dogs.

Anyhow, Mr. Spector. He built his career on his technique of a multi instrumental, multi-tracked, reverb-streaked recording style and may be seen as guilty of being just a one-trick, if very successful, pony… almost a one-trick pony. Trouble was, everyone who used him (George Harrison, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, The Beatles – collectively – the Ramones, Ike and Tina Turner…the list, just like the beat, goes on) was a quality performer in their own right and when you’re working with artists of this calibre you have to understand that they might just have an opinion on how their work is treated. Back to Mr. Spector and his ‘one-trick attitude. Everyone who used him in a producing category had, it turned out, the ‘wall of sound’ foisted on their work whether they wanted it or not. It was when the likes of Cohen or Lennon objected to his treatment of their work that Mr. Spector’s other 'trick' came into use; his predilection of threatening folk who disagreed with him with a gun.

It seems this may have kinda backfired on him...