Phil Spector and the Death of Madness Chic
Phil Spector was immortalized by Tom Wolfe as the "tycoon of teen" when he was 25. He'll turn 70 this year as a convicted murderer. Time, the great equalizer, has done more than bring Phil Spector down. It has sent him straight to hell.
Mick Brown described meeting Spector, who was wearing a talking wristwatch, in his biography Tearing Down the Wall of Sound:
Now, he said, he was trying to make his life "reasonable."There was a time when that sort of dialog, resonant with undertones of meaning that aren't really there, was considered a mark of brilliance and not of incoherence. We know better now: The watch is making more sense than Phil. But back then insanity was considered dramatic, charismatic, and hip. Jim Morrison reigned, Brian Jones died, and college students in black leather repeated William Blake's line from The Proverbs of Heaven and Hell: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
"I'm not ever going to be happy. Happiness isn't on. Because happiness is temporary. Unhappiness is temporary. Ecstasy is temporary. But being reasonable is an approach. And being with yourself. It's very difficult, very difficult to be reasonable." The wristwatch spoke: "It's six o'clock."
Except that it doesn't usually lead anywhere near the Palace of Wisdom. It leads to Palace of Bloated and Incoherent Rock Stars, or to pointless self-indulgence. Or to death. And the line is from the hell portion of Blake's proverbs. It's time to end the era of Madness Chic.
Show of hands: Who wants to trade places with Amy Winehouse right now?
Phil Spector started his career in 1958 with a song whose title was lifted from a tombstone: "To Know Him Is To Love Him." Somehow he managed to become the leading (and maybe only) exemplar of the auteur theory of pop music production, where he - not the singer or songwriters - was the Artist. Ever alert to the Next Opportunity, he managed to survive the rise of self-contained acts by attaching himself to the biggest one of them all: The Beatles.
He produced some of the great rock records of all time. In response, the world was ready to indulge him in excesses of behavior that in anyone but a Star would have been recognized for what they were: symptoms of severe mental illness and some profoundly dangerous tendencies. But in that warped conflation of madness and hipness, people rolled the juicy stories around on their tongues: He pulled a gun on the Ramones! He attacked John Lennon!
He also produced those artists' worst albums - no surprise, since he was already on the downward slope to Hell. Leonard Cohen's worst album was a Spector production, too, and Spector's assault on Cohen also appears in the Brown biography:
Cohen would later recall how on one occasion in the studio Spector approached him with a bottle of Manischewitz in one hand and a pistol in the other, placed his arm around Cohen's shoulder, shoved the gun in his neck and said "Leonard, I love you." Cohen, with admirable aplomb, simply moved the barrel away, saying "I hope you do, Phil."
Great anecdote, as told by Cohen. But not such a great reality, especially in light of later events. While Cohen enjoys a triumphal return to the stage, his career apparently recovered from Spector collaborations like "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On," Spector has reached the last stop on the road to excess.
Spector had the money and the fame to resist medical and legal interventions when they might have saved Lana Clarkson and kept him from his unfolding fate. And, since he seemed so glamorously fucked-up, he also had swarms of admirers who appreciated his sickness for the stories it allowed them to repeat and savor. I've been guilty of that myself. We were all, in the language of the day, his enablers.
But maybe we can make an agreement: No more glamorization of mental illness. Brian Wilson was a genius, but he also suffered terribly. Let's not use that for good copy anymore. Pete Doherty? A talented guy, but he's ruining his own life and probably others too. That Byronic thing of yours, Pete? It's been done. Get some help, friend. Warren Zevon turned back from that road when he saw that "it's not that pretty at all." You can, too.
These guys aren't killers in the making, but they ain't exactly well.
Besides, where did Madness Chic ever do for its fashion victims except enslave them to the unstoppable cruelty of time and decay? The jury rendered its verdict some time after 5 pm yesterday. Was Phil Spector wearing that talking watch in court? If so, it spoke some of the first words he would hear as a convicted killer facing his own kind of Hell:
"It's six o'clock."
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RJ Eskow blogs when he can at:
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Perhaps Blake's famous line should be better understood as "The road of excess CAN lead to the Palace of Wisdom." Because it can, provided you absorb the right lessons along the way. There are plenty of survivors who were contemporary with Spector that did, in fact, learn those lessons: Jerry Lee Lewis, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristoferson, Paul McCartney. Of course, for every success story, this road is paved in at least three tragic casualties, maybe more: Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Mama Cass and, as mentioned, Brian Jones and Jim Morrison. As one dear friend of Mama Cass put it, they weren't so much victims of society as victims of themselves. Now Phil Spector, at this late date, gets to join their ranks in a manner that speaks to nothing less than the dangers of letting your personal demons run loose in your backyard. If there is any justice, he will serve as this road's most prominent warning sign from now on.
Phil Spector was a genius of invention and self-promotion. His work from 1961 to 1966 filled a creative gap between the Elvis and the Beatles. In between, he filled the air waves with some of the best rock ever. This is also the era that chemical substances, i.e., drugs, became widespread not only among the poor, but also among the rich ---- drugs became Democratic. And Phil fell under the spell not only of the Wall of Sound, but regular infusions of mind altering drugs. That drugs would take him eventually to Hell can be gleaned by an A -Side he cut under his own label in '61 or '62; recorded under the Crystals' name it was entitled: "He Hit Me and it Felt Like a Kiss". Released to the DJs, no one would dare play it on the air waves. "He Hit Me..." was a harbinger of things to come.
I disagree that Phil Spector is the victim of "madness chic"; Spector is the victim of an addiction to anything he could swill, gulp, snort, shoot or pop over the past 40 years. Whatever mad proclivites he may have had early on, these proclivites were pushed, prodded and fueled by hugh doses of high octaine stuff; Phil's brain was fried a long time ago; he has been among the Walking Dead for sometime.
There is nothing shiek about the ravages of substance addiction. Ask anyone in the throes of addiction --- rich or poor.
Addiction Chic and Madness Chic both exist. They are recombinant strains of the same DNA. The addict is allowed to destroy him- or herself in return for the entertainment value their self-destruction provides. I live in Southern California. I used to live in New York. It's an old story.
Is Spector's brain fried because he used, or did he use because his brain was fried? A chicken-and-egg question to which the answer is: Yes.
The second key line of "He Hit Me," a song which I've known for many years: "He hit me, and I knew that I loved him."
The climax of the song: "And then he took me in his arms, with all the tenderness there is/and then he hit me -
and I was his."
A deeply, deeply sick record - and a harbinger of horrible things to come. As you point out, that was over 40 years ago. Nobody stopped him. Why would they? After all, he might have produced another hit.
Sad and true.
I think Phil will have a good shot at an appeal based on the fact that his defense team didn't use the best and most obvious defense. That he was crazy as a loon and destructive to all who knew him for basically his whole life. Spector is the best argument for a sanity test for anyone wanting to purchase a gun.
whatever- Lana Clarkston's still dead.
right, they obviously used the wrong defense, which allowed the prosecution to get murder 2. . . spector over his life was repeatedly criminally negligent with his use of guns to assert control over others -- women or men, not just women who were spurning him . . . if his defense had been honest and not tried to blame the shooting on clarkson, he'd be facing several years for involuntary manslaughter but not a life term . . . .
FYI Warren Zevon's song is titled "Ain't That Pretty At All" Co-written by Zevon and Leroy P. Marrinell,
I'm not sure there has ever been a thing called "Madness Chic." Everyone has known for at least the last 40 years that Spector was crazier than hell and I had always hoped he would die before he did something like he just got convicted for.
I think you are confusing the "excess is a sign of success" ethos of rock stars of the 1960's, '70's and '80's, but any psychosis was treated mostly as voyeuristic stuff to titter bout in the gossip press. Nobody admired Janis for being depressed, for example. They felt sorry for her. Same with Elvis' increasing problems. Hedonism isn't psychosis.
Poets, artists, writers, musicians get a buy on their madness,megalomania, narcissism or whatever because of what they produce - which is art.
Some pull back from the precipice - others don't. But there's no doubt that, art or not, in their madness, they're fugly as human beings.
Picasso was a monster - and so was John Lennon. And clearly, so was Phil.
These people don't produce art, they are little more than court jesters, paid to entertain us. I'm sorry, but a school teacher who produces a functioning adult is more of an artist than somebody who mixes a record that I will enjoy for a few weeks before moving on to the next thing to hum while I'm driving my car.
as a schoolteacher who considers her calling a craft, THANK YOU!
"He produced some of the great rock records of all time."
The records you'll name start and end with the Beatles or their individual members. His "work" on the the Beatles recordings has been deleted. At the point phillip entered the stage (through his friendship with Klein), the Beatles didn't need a producer. To call phillip the producer of any Beatle work (including the solo records) is a mighty long stretch.
Here's his formula: Hire a songwriter, then hire a arranger, then hire a recording engineer, then get some talented singers and muscians -- add echo.
And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take. Have a good time in jail phil.
I've talked to some legendary producers and other musicians from that era who say that your description of his formula is pretty much spot-on. A lot of people that Jack Nitzsche, for one, deserves a lot of credit for those records.
Still, they were great - especially the Ronettes, Darlene Love, and the Righteous Brothers.
Yeah, Nitzsche deserves some credit. Good call there.
As for producers being auteurs, the only other ones I can think of with the anywhere near the kind of stature of Spector would be some of the disco producers of the 1970's such as Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rogers, Jacque Morali or mixmaster Tom Moulton (I think that's his name). Maybe somebody like a Rick Rubin would be close to that today.
It's a bit unfair to dismiss his later work with The Ramones and The Beatles, not to mention the solo work of George and John. He produced "Imagine" as well as "All Things Must Pass". I do agree that he's long revealed himself to be more insane than eccentric. I remember Dee Dee Ramone saying he saw him shoot a fly on the wall with his pistol. Another time, when he lost a lawsuit, he had the payment delivered in only nickles. On a certain level it's funny, but on another it reveals he was an angry little man with a kind of Napoleon complex. It's interesting to note that Spector killed Clarkson not long after the surviving Beatles announced they were de-Spectorizing "Let It Be".
I wish the Harrison estate would release an "All Things Must Pass--Naked". All of Spectors work with the Beatles were terribly over-produced. I never understood why they used him in the first place.
My friend: They were all higher 'n kites!
Hear hear. I was raised in the "madness chic" era and have witnessed firsthand the wasted lives such an attitude produces. It's not funny or pretty.
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