Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert here and the International Academy of Digital
Speaker 2: Arts and Sciences have announced that three different Cool Zone
Speaker 2: media shows have been nominated for awards at the thirtieth
Speaker 2: annual Webby Awards. You can vote on these now if
Speaker 2: you just google the name of the podcast and the category.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards has been nominated in the Experimental and
Speaker 2: Innovation Podcasts category. It Could Happen Here is in the
Speaker 2: News and Politics Podcasts category, and James Stout's mini series
Speaker 2: Migrating to America A Dream Worth Dying For has been
Speaker 2: nominated in the Podcasts Documentary category. And you can find
Speaker 2: links to vote for each of these podcasts in the
Speaker 2: episode description and in the posts on social media for
Speaker 2: episodes that It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards everyone. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: This is a classy podcast about the worst people in
Speaker 2: all of history, always introduced by beautiful musical accompanyment courtesy
Speaker 2: of our guests Greasy will imagine.
Speaker 4: This, No bastards, It isn't hard to do. No code
Speaker 4: sor revol beginness, no crimes to.
Speaker 5: Re imagine All the podcast is.
Speaker 4: What day do you.
Speaker 5: Imagine that no robots.
Speaker 3: And no Sophie too, not going to him every shot steak.
Speaker 5: Now son creeps, or you.
Speaker 4: Imagine the old look people, nor that now the juice
Speaker 4: you you missing?
Speaker 5: I'm a dreamer.
Speaker 4: The bis part is basic clear. The whole lot is
Speaker 4: called the best Stards. And then short have.
Speaker 5: Imagine that no more lords.
Speaker 3: Or tech freaks.
Speaker 6: From nest ge, no poison gas, dicotatoes, would libertary young.
Speaker 4: Dreamt time robbers.
Speaker 7: Would finally you miss I'm a dream of But if
Speaker 7: the Bestards were all.
Speaker 4: Through and then me signs in study and there be.
Speaker 3: None, it was beautiful.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Yes, this was an entire composition by me.
Speaker 3: I reproduced this all because today we are going to
Speaker 3: be talking a little bit about the Beatles and about
Speaker 3: John Lennon and Phil Spector and his relationship to all
Speaker 3: of them. And so yesterday I decided I had so
Speaker 3: many things to do that I was like gonna like
Speaker 3: lose my mind, and I thought, what could be better
Speaker 3: than ignoring all your jobs, getting blackout drunk and making
Speaker 3: a tribute song for this week's second week here on
Speaker 3: Phil Spector Episode three, which I thought this was gonna
Speaker 3: be like one episode.
Speaker 2: I can't believe we're getting two songs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well I had to. It was like it was
Speaker 5: you know, it was like I.
Speaker 3: Gotta keep them, keep them, keep the fans interested.
Speaker 2: I judge it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so yesterday I got you got your gavel, honorable.
Speaker 2: It's official. Yeah, that was Beatle. And I do wonder
Speaker 2: a lot. Will I wake up scared every night like
Speaker 2: are the did people finally figured out how to stop
Speaker 2: being evil?
Speaker 3: Like is this the day that that my job loses
Speaker 3: all meaning?
Speaker 2: And then I wake up and someone's fmitted a horrible
Speaker 2: crime against you.
Speaker 3: Man, breath and watch.
Speaker 5: Like even just opening your phone, you're like, oh cool, still.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah they got they got. Oh man, Well this
Speaker 3: has been a cold open, and it's a musical cold open.
Speaker 2: A very warm cold open, A very warm cold opening.
Speaker 2: We're hearing more about Phil Specter. If anyone notices that
Speaker 2: my robe is covered in hey, it's because it just
Speaker 2: fed the animals.
Speaker 3: It's a robe. If you had not said anything, I
Speaker 3: just I'd assume that was a regular winter jacket. But no,
Speaker 3: you're wearing a robe.
Speaker 2: It's a robe.
Speaker 3: I got, Well, it's a robe.
Speaker 2: I got at Caesar's Palace, they know, buying this Well,
Speaker 2: that's my favorite part.
Speaker 3: When we last left Phil, he and Ronnie had just
Speaker 3: been married, and he went to visit his mother Bertha,
Speaker 3: literally the day of right, he went to visit his
Speaker 3: mother Bertha. Abusive as ever.
Speaker 5: Yes, when he gets home, he's drunk as hell.
Speaker 3: He starts screaming sure, right, and he's all mad at
Speaker 3: Ronnie and everything because he believes she's taking his money.
Speaker 3: And Ronnie and her mother spend the night locked in
Speaker 3: her bathroom hiding from Phil, scared, you know, and they
Speaker 3: sleep in her in her bathtub, right, Okay, on her
Speaker 3: wedding night. That's how she spends her wedding night. Cool,
Speaker 3: that's romantic. So the next day Phil wakes up, realizes
Speaker 3: he's a bastard and changes all his ways. That's the
Speaker 3: end of the story.
Speaker 2: Great, Wow, you really put a lot of work into
Speaker 2: the song for a a long episode, but I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Well yet, well, so I'm flying knowing no not.
Speaker 2: Went on to spend the rest of his life volunteerly
Speaker 2: get a children's hospital.
Speaker 3: Children. He's just kind of a shitty husband at this point.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like I guess it's behind the shitty husbands. Yes,
Speaker 3: why I'm far so far well. And also he's fucked
Speaker 3: over a lot of women. He has. He has been horrible.
Speaker 3: He's in general he's a horrible person. Like. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: his relationship with his mother is strained at best. He
Speaker 3: doesn't let her come into the studio at all. He doesn't.
Speaker 5: He doesn't like her being around at all.
Speaker 3: She sometimes she does show up at the studio and
Speaker 3: she still calls him Harvey, which pisses him off. You know,
Speaker 3: she like refuses to ever call him philm Yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 3: And she'll like randomly show up in the studio with
Speaker 3: like like matsa ball, soup and ship and be like Phil,
Speaker 3: you need to eat And He's like, no, I know
Speaker 3: I would not either, but like, you know whatever.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he's also probably consuming his weight in cocaine every day, right,
Speaker 2: so I'm imagining not much of an appetite.
Speaker 3: He's not really a drug user as much. He kind
Speaker 3: of looks down on drugs mostly he looks down an
Speaker 3: artists that do drugs. Yeah, his when he does get
Speaker 3: into the vices, it's mostly it's mostly alcohol, you know,
Speaker 3: It's mostly that he's an alcoholic, but he's super jacyl
Speaker 3: and hide with it all the time. It's like he'll
Speaker 3: go and he'll go through like this is his whole life.
Speaker 3: He does this like periods of sobriety and then periods
Speaker 3: where he's just getting lit all the time.
Speaker 2: And he's one of those guys he's pissed by people
Speaker 2: like doing doing blow. He does smoke in weed, tak
Speaker 2: an acid.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, he doesn't seem to really like it's not
Speaker 3: really mentioned about weeds, So I especially assume since like
Speaker 3: the Beatles and everything, he probably was fine with weed,
Speaker 3: but like definitely didn't like cocaine being around in the studio.
Speaker 3: He's not the cool party guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. By the time he married Ronnie, right, he's barely
Speaker 3: seeing his mom. But that's when his sister. Around the
Speaker 3: same time, his sister gets committed to a psychiatric facility
Speaker 3: and she will remain there for the rest of her life.
Speaker 5: So Shirley is gone from the story now.
Speaker 3: Phil will never talk about her ever, He never discussed her,
Speaker 3: and because of that, she just kind of just disappears
Speaker 3: to hit. I mean, obviously she spends the rest of
Speaker 3: her life pretty much in and out of mental health care, so.
Speaker 2: She's gone, right, okay, Phil.
Speaker 3: At the same time, this is when he starts transforming
Speaker 3: his home into a literal fortress. He's got this huge
Speaker 3: mansion in Hollywood, and he's got gates all around it.
Speaker 3: He's got dogs, he got multiple like guard dogs. He's
Speaker 3: got a guy who's basically like his his like personal bodyguards, Slash.
Speaker 3: Also he's like regularly like he gets his like sandwiches
Speaker 3: and stuff, you know, is his dude, George Brand. He's
Speaker 3: he's around for most of this story, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff that happens he's like involved in in
Speaker 3: some way. But he seems to be just a pretty
Speaker 3: pretty decent guy. But overall, like like part of his
Speaker 3: job is to monitor Ronnie. Part of his job is
Speaker 3: to monitor the visitors that come by. If like if
Speaker 3: somebody comes in and like like a guest or whatever,
Speaker 3: he's not to leave the room while they're there and
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like Rosie, I knew one son of a
Speaker 2: really famous and wealthy guy and who was otherwise normal
Speaker 2: but would periodically get really paranoid while like out hanging
Speaker 2: out doing normal person things that they were going to
Speaker 2: get kidnapped like that that was a constant even when
Speaker 2: there was nothing happening, no indication of it, And I
Speaker 2: guess that, like I think that just happens to some
Speaker 2: people when they start to hit that level of wealth
Speaker 2: and fame where they just can't stop thinking about all
Speaker 2: of the people that all the things that might go wrong,
Speaker 2: all the people who might want to take it from them.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: A side story, and a really correlating side one that
Speaker 3: is music industry. I once worked for Balt Getty, who
Speaker 3: is the great grandson oh like those Getties, those Gettys. Yes,
Speaker 3: his dad, His dad is the Getty that was kidnapped
Speaker 3: in Europe and had his ear sliced off and everything.
Speaker 3: So it's like it's understandable to carry paranoia, you know,
Speaker 3: like I could. And like when he talked about it,
Speaker 3: like it was always just like yeah, man, like like
Speaker 3: he did not seem very trusting of people just showing
Speaker 3: up at his place.
Speaker 2: You know, we were going to kidnap my friend, but
Speaker 2: we just never got around to it.
Speaker 3: He didn't have any money. Reason. It also, like with
Speaker 3: the whole Patty Hurst thing became like a very popular, right,
Speaker 3: that's such an interesting story. Yeah, all right. So, so
Speaker 3: Ronnie is restricted inside the house. She she can't really
Speaker 3: do much like she uh, she's not allowed to leave ever.
Speaker 3: The doors are always locked. Fill always locks the doors.
Speaker 3: He's big, big on that. So as she's her isolation intensifies.
Speaker 3: She began drinking heavily. Phil actually gave her the first
Speaker 3: alcohol she ever had. She did not drink until she
Speaker 3: was well into like her relationship with Phil, and Phil
Speaker 3: gave her the first, the first sip of alcohol she
Speaker 3: ever had. But now it's becoming like one of the
Speaker 3: few emotional outlets available to her. Right, it wasn't recreational
Speaker 3: at all. It was absolutely a coping mechanism inside an
Speaker 3: environment she could not safely leave. Like Phil's behavior becomes
Speaker 3: increasingly unpredictable, alternating between affection, surveillance, and intimidation. He gets
Speaker 3: more and more controlling. He would tell her to stop
Speaker 3: focusing on her music, you know, and like be a
Speaker 3: good wife and that's what she should do, and that's
Speaker 3: her job. And he no longer even pretends that like
Speaker 3: to be interested in taking her into the studio anymore,
Speaker 3: Like she has no career anymore being her Like the
Speaker 3: Ronettes are still doing things like touring and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: She's just not a part of it. Right. The group
Speaker 3: that's literally her namesake.
Speaker 2: Ronettes, don't have Ronnie anymore.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're still touring.
Speaker 3: And because like you know, again, like it's very like
Speaker 3: bands back then are very amorphous. You don't really know
Speaker 3: what a lot of them look like because you've never
Speaker 3: seen a picture of them, you know. Sure, so no
Speaker 3: one else knows or whatever. But because she's drinking heavily,
Speaker 3: she would she would sneak downstairs. They had a bar, right,
Speaker 3: because Phil's a you know in the entertainment industry. People
Speaker 3: come over, they have a bar, and but he would
Speaker 3: lock it up, and she would just come down and
Speaker 3: jimmy it open and drink all the liquor that's inside.
Speaker 3: And then you know, and Phil obviously sees this or whatever. Sure, Uh,
Speaker 3: even though she's stressed and you know, isolated and going
Speaker 3: through this whole thing, they still are trying to have
Speaker 3: a baby, you know, but they weren't able to ever conceive. Uh,
Speaker 3: And the blame was always passed to her, despite you know,
Speaker 3: Phil be in half of that situation as well, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: sensing that she was getting frustrated with life as a shutting.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty eight, for her birthday, Phil bought Ronnie
Speaker 3: a Camaro, but even in the gift came the air
Speaker 3: of control. He had the car monogrammed with VS for
Speaker 3: Veronica Specter, so everyone would know that she's his possession. Right.
Speaker 5: It's like wow, because she's the.
Speaker 3: Yes and she she's like, you know, musically, she's known
Speaker 3: as Ronnie, right, so for her to he starts calling
Speaker 3: her Veronica all the time, specifically as a measure of control, Like,
Speaker 3: you are not Ronnie anymore. You are Veronica Specter. You
Speaker 3: are Phil's wife, right whatever? Harvey was that his real name, Harvey? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, just the emphasis on really forcing her to
Speaker 2: like that in front of her face is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some desperation on his part too.
Speaker 3: It's about to get even better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
Speaker 5: So this is a quote from Ronnie from.
Speaker 3: Be My Baby. Quote. It might seem far fetched that
Speaker 3: anyone would put that match much energy into controlling someone
Speaker 3: else's life, but that was Phil. You've got to remember
Speaker 3: that the man was a genius and he had nothing
Speaker 3: better to do with his life after he retired from
Speaker 3: rock and roll, So turning me into the perfect wife
Speaker 3: became his major project, just as making me into a
Speaker 3: number one singer had been his goal five years earlier.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is what he spends his time
Speaker 3: doing instead of music now is just being.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's other things he could have done with his life,
Speaker 2: with his with his vast fortune and access to the
Speaker 2: halls of power and entertainment, maybe other things.
Speaker 3: Okay, this next part is easily my favorite Phil Spectors story. Like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna get into all right, So there's going to
Speaker 3: be some very troubling things and also some extremely hilarious
Speaker 3: things that you will you just all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you, all right, So so understand that when we're laughing,
Speaker 3: we're also crying. You know. I want to make sure
Speaker 3: everybody knows that this is funny in retrospect, but in
Speaker 3: at the time, I'm sure it was horrific and trigger
Speaker 3: warnings and all that shit.
Speaker 2: These are just sing you have to laugh about afterwards,
Speaker 2: because that's how else.
Speaker 3: Do you handle it. Crazy crazy. So when showing her
Speaker 3: the brand new Camaro, he goes to the trunk and
Speaker 3: he pulls out an inflatable mannequin dressed exactly like himself.
Speaker 3: Ronnie is completely valid about I guess and He tells
Speaker 3: her this is for when you're driving alone, so no
Speaker 3: one will ever fuck with you. She realize, God, Phil
Speaker 3: has this dummy just watch over her when she's not
Speaker 3: when he's not with her.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's got my dummy.
Speaker 3: And like she talks about it extensively, like it had
Speaker 3: like his face basically like on it, you know, like
Speaker 3: he's you say, it's a blow up dummy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's an inflatable dummy. And he's got a dressed exactly
Speaker 3: like him. He's got it, and he puts it in
Speaker 3: the seat and she's like, he's got close for the dummy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hey, why does the dummy have a gun?
Speaker 3: Phil? It's so funny. Yeah, inflatable dummy with a gun.
Speaker 2: Keeps popping himself.
Speaker 5: I feel like he's trying to send a message. But
Speaker 5: I just can't figure out what it is.
Speaker 2: The dummy you shot himself in the head. I've never
Speaker 2: seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: So just ten days later, and only four months after
Speaker 3: their wedding, Ronnie hired a lawyer to file for divorce,
Speaker 3: but fair almost immediately she rescinds and says, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm being silly, Like I need to chill out.
Speaker 3: I'm not this doesn't have to be this way like
Speaker 3: it definitely, you know, probably I mean a bit of
Speaker 3: early marriage jitters, because this guy's a giant asshole.
Speaker 5: Like maybe I can fix him.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure many of my
Speaker 3: ex y.
Speaker 5: I thought exactly the same thing.
Speaker 3: No comment.
Speaker 1: Well, look I can't stand me. I think you're perfect
Speaker 1: the way you are, all right.
Speaker 3: So, Ronnie says that Phil was never physically violent, it
Speaker 3: just it wasn't his style, but his emotional and mental
Speaker 3: abuse was legendary. Yeah, when she falls and suffers a
Speaker 3: minor sprain and he has to leave town, he hires
Speaker 3: a nurse to look over her while he's gone. Sounds
Speaker 3: that sounds nice, right, He hires her a nurse while
Speaker 3: he's out of town. No, the nurse is there to
Speaker 3: forbid her from doing anything. She's forced to sit in
Speaker 3: a wheelchair and use a wheelchair while he's gone, so
Speaker 3: she can't get around or whatever. All right, And then
Speaker 3: he's not just like controlling her with the nurse. He's
Speaker 3: also I mean, he is controlling, but he's also having
Speaker 3: the nurse give her heavy duty tranquilizers.
Speaker 4: Oh shit.
Speaker 2: Oh so cool, so that she.
Speaker 3: Just has no like willpower to do anything while he's gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she just put her on pause. He's putting his
Speaker 2: partner on pause as he leaves for the weekend or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she's like a TiVo. Kids don't know what TiVo is,
Speaker 2: like a vision again.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so he's literally like she she has some
Speaker 3: friends come over and her friends are like, why you
Speaker 3: what are these pills you're taking. She's like, the nurse
Speaker 3: just makes me take them.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they are dead inside?
Speaker 3: Are you okay?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: So Phil eventually lets her get back into the studio
Speaker 3: but and writes a song for her, but it bombs
Speaker 3: horribly and he uses it as justification for her to
Speaker 3: no longer pursue her music career. Years later, she realizes
Speaker 3: that Phil likely gave her a bad song for that
Speaker 3: exact reason, and she finally resigns to just be the
Speaker 3: housewife that Phil wants her to be. So he like,
Speaker 3: he gives her a purposely bad song, and it's like,
Speaker 3: see it it failed, You should just be a wife. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I got it. He's trying.
Speaker 2: Great. Guess that's like gaslighting.
Speaker 3: You really have to that's on the stag.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's like on the nasional state.
Speaker 3: Literally, like I'll fuck up my career just to fuck
Speaker 3: up your career.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite of what I want to do to
Speaker 2: like right wingers who who fail out of Hollywood or
Speaker 2: whatever and try to and go into politics is just
Speaker 2: like make fake fans and a fake and its be like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, you can fill fake Madison Square Garden been Shapiro.
Speaker 3: People love to hear your speakers.
Speaker 4: Oh man.
Speaker 3: So so yeah. So she finally resigns to just be
Speaker 3: the housewife and they adopt a baby boy named Dante. Okay,
Speaker 3: but Phil doesn't want anyone to know that this baby
Speaker 3: is adopted, so he sends out fake birth announcements being
Speaker 3: like we welcome Dante to our family, and like when
Speaker 3: people ask, he tells her, like, tell her, just tell
Speaker 3: everybody because like obviously she was not pregnant and then
Speaker 3: she has a baby, right uh and and he's like,
Speaker 3: just tell everybody that that it was it was a
Speaker 3: premature birth. And that's why you know, we you didn't
Speaker 3: see me pregnant at all because I was barely ever pregnant.
Speaker 3: You know that's not how that works. Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 3: you know at nineteen sixty seven or eight or some shit.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like probably you know, it's like it's
Speaker 3: not like FaceTime exists or whatever. You know, like you
Speaker 3: could go a good time without really seeing somebody and
Speaker 3: then be like.
Speaker 2: MS pregnancy entirely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, so, uh, she gets the baby and everything,
Speaker 3: but she's not allowed to be a mother to the
Speaker 3: baby at all. So they get like a nanny and
Speaker 3: then nanny does all the work and feels.
Speaker 5: Like that's why we hired a nanny.
Speaker 3: What are you doing work for?
Speaker 2: So why are you doing nanny stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So she's like, you tell me to
Speaker 3: be the perfect wife and the perfect mother, and then
Speaker 3: and then you yell at me whenever I'm trying to
Speaker 3: be a mother. She completely gives up on having a career,
Speaker 3: all right, And then this is from this is from
Speaker 3: Ronnie's book. Quote. Besides, he pointed out, who's going to
Speaker 3: take care of the baby while we're in the studio.
Speaker 3: Bil knew he had me. I wasn't going to argue
Speaker 3: against anything that might get my career back, so I
Speaker 3: accepted it. And then she goes on to say that
Speaker 3: anytime she would bring up getting back into the studio,
Speaker 3: he would either like be like, you got to take
Speaker 3: care of the baby, what are you doing? Or he
Speaker 3: would like or he'd flip out on her and be like,
Speaker 3: I've got other things to do, I've got a call
Speaker 3: to make. I can't be doing this shit right now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So he's like so he's like gaslighting hers, like back
Speaker 3: and forth on everything that's going on in her life.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, you know, you can't go into
Speaker 3: the studio because you gotta be a mom, but you
Speaker 3: can't be a mom because we hired a nanny. Why
Speaker 3: would you be a mom? Like, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: she just has this profound sense of being basically nothing anymore,
Speaker 3: from going from a mega superstar on the world stage,
Speaker 3: touring the Europe and everything to like, you can't even
Speaker 3: take care of your kid. You don't even have an
Speaker 3: audience with your own child, you know, type shit. God, that's.
Speaker 2: I mean, And that's also got to be getting him off,
Speaker 2: just the exercise of that much power, like I can
Speaker 2: take you from this to this. I direct he's talking
Speaker 2: about that, but it feels like that's got to be
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, And it does seem to be like a
Speaker 3: common situation is like that power and like having that power,
Speaker 3: and Sophie to bring up something that you mentioned before.
Speaker 5: It's like with his first wife.
Speaker 3: The reason it's it's like he has to have control
Speaker 3: and he has to be in charge until being in
Speaker 3: charge no longer means anything to him, right, And then
Speaker 3: that's why with his first wife he wasn't possessive in controller.
Speaker 3: Once he had her, he was like, Oh, I don't care,
Speaker 3: I've proved everything I need to prove here. But now
Speaker 3: with like Ronnie, he continually needs to prove how in
Speaker 3: charge of her life he is and to himself, to
Speaker 3: everyone else, and he takes joy from that. You know, Okay,
Speaker 3: but Ronnie's memoir is full of the most hilarious stories
Speaker 3: ever heard, Like, uh, so, so Ronnie is mixed race,
Speaker 3: she's black and white and uh and Cherokee, I believe,
Speaker 3: and and Phil is obviously white Jewish uh and the
Speaker 3: Dante is a mixed race baby. So this makes sense
Speaker 3: for everything. But shortly after they adopt Dante, Ronnie's mom
Speaker 3: comes to stay with him and Phil sends her out
Speaker 3: to Watts to buy him an Afro wig. Oh god, no,
Speaker 3: no he doesn't, Oh he doesn't know he doesn't know.
Speaker 3: That's no Watts, that's not real. You're in like you're
Speaker 3: fucking late sixties early seventies to Watts.
Speaker 2: Watts was I don't know that's where you would buy
Speaker 2: a wig. Sure it is where you get an afrowig
Speaker 2: and listeners. Watts was calmless, calmly, the famously the calmest
Speaker 2: place in Los Angeles. That's part of the sixties. Nothing
Speaker 2: nothing happened in Watts during this part of the sixties.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, okay.
Speaker 3: So she has to go all over Watts looking for one,
Speaker 3: and she finally finds it and she brings it back
Speaker 3: for Phil and he loves it and he starts wearing
Speaker 3: it all the time, dude.
Speaker 2: Including awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3: Including to a black church in Watts that he forces
Speaker 3: them to go to. He's like, we're gonna go to
Speaker 3: this black church and Watts his own Watts riot. Okay,
Speaker 3: hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I misinterpreted
Speaker 3: what you were saying, And now it's even funnier because
Speaker 3: I thought you were saying he forced her to get
Speaker 3: that for the kid to wear. No, but no, Phil
Speaker 3: to welm the picture. Yeah, Afrone says, she's like kind
Speaker 3: of bored.
Speaker 5: But Phil is loving it.
Speaker 3: He's you know, hall no, Yeah, he's dancing around and
Speaker 3: he's gone, and he's wearing a gun at the time.
Speaker 3: Everybody can see he's wearing a gun and being the
Speaker 3: only white person in like a very black church in
Speaker 3: Watts dancing around and clapping and singing Hallowejah and doing
Speaker 3: all this chef row wig with a peace. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: I mean, can you can you even imagine this happening?
Speaker 3: Like he survived through like the grace of people just
Speaker 3: being like, oh, that guy's crazy as fuck. There's something
Speaker 3: wrong with Yeah, it's so funny man. So so Ronnie
Speaker 3: of course continues to abuse alcohol, because who wouldn't in
Speaker 3: this situation, right, I don't even call that abusing.
Speaker 5: I would just call that that's that's medicating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just.
Speaker 3: So, she blacks out while driving her car and she
Speaker 3: wrecks her her Camaro and she doesn't get any trouble.
Speaker 3: But Phil's that like, all right, well, you got to
Speaker 3: see a psychiatrist, and which she does right up until
Speaker 3: the psychiatrist says, also, hey, Phil, you should come in
Speaker 3: because clearly there's some other things going on that are
Speaker 3: that are.
Speaker 5: Causing this stuff. There might be more to yeah, and
Speaker 5: and he's like and he's like, no.
Speaker 3: I ain't doing that. He's like, and you ain't either,
Speaker 3: you ain't going to a psychiatrist and so uh and
Speaker 3: he tells her specifically, you're the one with the problems.
Speaker 3: Why would I go?
Speaker 2: Wow, wow wow, what a perfectly shitty response, though, that
Speaker 2: is beautiful Phil well crafted.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Uh. He tries locking the liquor cabinet, but she
Speaker 3: just pries it open. He eventually he forces her into rehab,
Speaker 3: which she actually loves. She's like, rehab.
Speaker 5: Is the ship.
Speaker 3: To rehab, and it was great. It helps her a lot.
Speaker 3: And she and she because it's like, oh, I get
Speaker 3: to be away from Phil. I don't have to be
Speaker 3: around him anymore. So now any time she starts this
Speaker 3: cycle right where anytime she just gets sick of Phil,
Speaker 3: she just drinks a shipload and gets put into rehab,
Speaker 3: and then she's a cool two week vacation from Phil,
Speaker 3: right and then pops right back.
Speaker 5: Okay, fine, I'll come back. I can deal with him again,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: So she doesn't have an alcohol problem as much as
Speaker 2: she has a Phil Spector problem.
Speaker 3: Yes, completely, just atcha gotcha.
Speaker 2: Speaking of things that will make you go to rehab.
Speaker 2: I have to go to rehab every time we do
Speaker 2: an advertisement because I'm addicted to our advertisements.
Speaker 3: I should probably go to rehab. But rehab these her quitters,
Speaker 3: says the two shirt I saw at the state fair
Speaker 3: when I was eleven. Yeah, exactly, that state fair taught
Speaker 3: you a lot. Thank you, Carney. Parents.
Speaker 2: Come back and we'll learn some things. You can't learn
Speaker 2: how a state fair unless it's the Texas one. And
Speaker 2: we're back, all right.
Speaker 3: So she's drinking, she's a drunk, she's going to rehab.
Speaker 2: She's a specter, she's addicted to Phil Specter. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: she's going to rehab.
Speaker 3: One night, Phil takes Ronnie down to the basement of
Speaker 3: their house. Don't like sure, are ready? Don't like this? Wait,
Speaker 3: this is starting. I don't love that.
Speaker 2: I don't love that.
Speaker 3: He takes it down to their basement and he shows
Speaker 3: her a golden glass casket and he says, this is
Speaker 3: where you will be if you ever leave me. Oh. Oh.
Speaker 3: The level of commitment to this intimidation, I cannot begin
Speaker 3: to stress. He had a gold custom made casket, right,
Speaker 3: he had them bring it into his house like he
Speaker 3: presumably left it there for years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, only waiting wait until he knew he needed the
Speaker 2: big guns to pull out.
Speaker 3: Like this is this is high level mental abuse. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this this is like what an unlimited budget? Like this
Speaker 3: is why I would never date a millionaire right or
Speaker 3: a billionaire? Oh, because they can do crazy shit to you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like they're gonna be able to like pay somebody to
Speaker 3: just follow you around for an entire year when you
Speaker 3: when you leave them, you know, Yeah, it's dark.
Speaker 2: It's like protecting that casket. Like he's not pissed. And
Speaker 2: she wants to go downstairs, and he's like, wait, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I gotta take care of that.
Speaker 3: You can't go down there. You can't go down I
Speaker 3: don't want you to see it.
Speaker 2: A Christmas gift, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm just gonna go get a jar spaghetti.
Speaker 5: He's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no no
Speaker 5: no no, make George get it.
Speaker 3: All right. So she would claim that the doors of
Speaker 3: the house were always locked and she was only allowed
Speaker 3: to leave during their anniversary. Phil kept her shoes so
Speaker 3: she could never leave the house without his approval. For
Speaker 3: her twenty sixth birthday, She's twenty six years old. For
Speaker 3: twenty sixth birthday, Phil takes her to Las Vegas to
Speaker 3: see Elvis Presley and presumably so they could do karate
Speaker 3: in the fucking back roof.
Speaker 2: Yeah, would imagine they're doing karate, maybe showing off the
Speaker 2: guns they always carry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So she's stoked because you know, she always wanted
Speaker 3: to meet Elvis and they're a big time people or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And basically Phil like abandons her in the crowd and
Speaker 3: it's like, I'm going to hang out with Elvis, go
Speaker 3: to the hotel room.
Speaker 4: Such a man, I'll see you later.
Speaker 3: He's such a good night.
Speaker 2: That didn't make it into the new Elvis movie.
Speaker 3: That's tragic. Him and Phil Specter just in the back
Speaker 3: just yeah, karate crazy. In nineteen sixty nine, in the
Speaker 3: midst of the beatles well documented decline, Side Side bastard
Speaker 3: Alan Klein asked Phil to come to London to help
Speaker 3: assemble the disaster of the Let It Be recordings. So
Speaker 3: for people who are the dumbest human beings alive and
Speaker 3: don't know everything about the Beatles.
Speaker 2: Sure, fair enough.
Speaker 3: The the Let It Be album was actually recorded before Abby.
Speaker 2: Road, Right, it was recorded, They didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was recorded before Abby Road, but it was
Speaker 3: a mess, right they like they were fighting. John is
Speaker 3: on Heroin hardcore. By the way, of course, side story,
Speaker 3: do you know who got who I heard got John
Speaker 3: addicted to Heroin was James Taylor. Oh okay, I can
Speaker 3: see that. James Taylor Fire and Rain is the guy
Speaker 3: who got him addicted to heroin.
Speaker 2: Because if James Taylor offered me a Heroin I would
Speaker 2: I would do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Literally, if like my
Speaker 3: brother offered me Heroin, I'd probably do it there, but
Speaker 3: certainly James Taylor. But yeah, so so they're a mess, right,
Speaker 3: they're falling apart, and Phil is brought into save these recordings,
Speaker 3: right while uh and and there are I believe they're
Speaker 3: already done with with abbey Road having recorded abbey Road
Speaker 3: and Let it Be definitely comes after, you know, like
Speaker 3: it was, but it was assembled by Phil essentially he
Speaker 3: he he flies in literally just for this job. They're like,
Speaker 3: here's a bunch of tapes, just do something with it.
Speaker 3: And it's why that album is generally is generally like
Speaker 3: kind of it's it's kind of wild. Right, There's like
Speaker 3: these huge orchestrations, but also like these like slap dash
Speaker 3: little like weird interlude sections and talking and jokes and
Speaker 3: all that they just needed to fill out space and
Speaker 3: it was part of the creativity of the whole thing,
Speaker 3: right right.
Speaker 5: Phil hates flying, which uh.
Speaker 3: I read a story somewhere and I wish I tried
Speaker 3: to find it so hard, But I read a story
Speaker 3: one time about Phil freaking out on a private plane
Speaker 3: that they had to turn around and come back like
Speaker 3: almost immediately after taking off because he's terrified of flying
Speaker 3: all the time, but he has to fly back and forth.
Speaker 2: You do with I mean, do you think any of
Speaker 2: his fears related to I mean, like the day the
Speaker 2: music died, right the famous plane crash that killed Buddy
Speaker 2: Holly and the big.
Speaker 3: Big Bob Ritchie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, very very likely.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, I think there was a lot of
Speaker 3: musicians that died around this time in plane crashes. Otis
Speaker 3: Redding dies in a plane crash right around this time,
Speaker 3: you know, like, and Phil feels every one of those
Speaker 3: deaths into me. I think it's also a bit of
Speaker 3: like a control thing. I think Phil is a control
Speaker 3: freak in the truth term of a control freak. So
Speaker 3: I definitely think that that was a bit of what
Speaker 3: was going on. But I think also too he just
Speaker 3: just has a natural like fear of flying. Uh So
Speaker 3: he arrives in London and he immediately starts spectroizing the
Speaker 3: Beatles recording. He added strings to it, dense production to
Speaker 3: McCartney's Long and Winding Road, which, if you know now,
Speaker 3: like McCartney hates that McCartney released his own version of
Speaker 3: Let It Be that was like despecterized, basically like he
Speaker 3: took all of his production out and released that individual
Speaker 3: project is like his own thing because he hated what
Speaker 3: Phil Spector did to it.
Speaker 5: In fact, you're so enraged.
Speaker 3: He sent a letter to side bastard Alan Klein, demanding
Speaker 3: that the arrangement be minimized. Sophie, can you show the
Speaker 3: letter this is This is probably the angriest letter that
Speaker 3: Paul McCartney has ever written. He says, dear sir, this
Speaker 3: is to Alan Klein, Dear sir, in the future, no
Speaker 3: one will be allowed to add or subtract from recording
Speaker 3: of any of one of my songs without my permission.
Speaker 3: I had considered orchestrating the Long and Winding Road, but
Speaker 3: I decided against it. Therefore I want it altered to
Speaker 3: these specifications. Gives a list of some stuff. One is
Speaker 3: strings and horns, voices, all noises to be reduced, vocal
Speaker 3: and beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume. Three
Speaker 3: is hard to be removed completely at the end of
Speaker 3: the song, and four is don't ever do it again,
Speaker 3: signed Paul McCartney. Don't do it again.
Speaker 2: And this has to be like an unstoppable force and
Speaker 2: movable object thing, because, like Paul McCartney, very rarely would
Speaker 2: anyone I imagine at this time it's pretty rare for
Speaker 2: people to tell Paul McCartney other than other Beatles, other
Speaker 2: than other Beatles, what you do. And it has to
Speaker 2: be true of Spector.
Speaker 3: It does speak very highly of who's Phil Spector is
Speaker 3: that he managed to get away with all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that he could do this to the Beatles, arguably the
Speaker 3: biggest band. It's nineteen sixty nine, they're the biggest band
Speaker 3: in the world. Yeah, this is their last album to
Speaker 3: be released collectively. And and Paul would never work with
Speaker 3: Phil again. But both Lennon and Harrison loved him. Lennon
Speaker 3: and Harrison both loved him thought he did wonderful job.
Speaker 3: Not good there you go. Yeah, makes sense. He's mad,
Speaker 3: Paul is so mad, but uh and and a lot
Speaker 3: of people claim that he ruined the Beatles, right, But
Speaker 3: Let it Be sold one point two million in the
Speaker 3: first two days as a single, and it was the Beatles'
Speaker 3: final number one in America, earning them a Grammy.
Speaker 5: So, hm, you know, there's certainly. I honestly, I listened
Speaker 5: to Paul's.
Speaker 3: I listened to Paul's version of the Long and Winding
Speaker 3: Road versus Phil's the Maybe it's nostalgia that I just
Speaker 3: always feel that way, but Phil's just feels more more
Speaker 3: correct for what's going on.
Speaker 5: It feels still very George Martini.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like they stripped the soul of the
Speaker 3: original like or the mid decade Beatles albums.
Speaker 5: Like the sixty six to sixty seven stuff.
Speaker 3: It feels it feels real, right, right, So I get
Speaker 3: what Phil was on and I can respect that. I
Speaker 3: think it was still a really great album. There's some
Speaker 3: really cool stuff about it. So they finished work on
Speaker 3: Let It Be and Specter set to work on another
Speaker 3: Beatles project, this time the solo effort of George Harrison.
Speaker 3: This is when Phil starts actually drinking again. Normally he's
Speaker 3: the perfectionist in the studio, but George matched his perfectionist attitude,
Speaker 3: and he, you know, he's scared he's not going to
Speaker 3: be able to compete with the other Beatles, right, like
Speaker 3: Paul will release a record or John and it will
Speaker 3: overshadow him. So he makes his first record the record
Speaker 3: like he he wasn't worried about Ringo.
Speaker 8: But yeah, yeah, no one I mentioned John and I
Speaker 8: mentioned Paul. That's what I said, very clearly mentioned just
Speaker 8: John and Paul. Nobody's worried about.
Speaker 5: Old Otill come to the sea.
Speaker 3: Bullshit.
Speaker 2: Look everyone, I figured out how to make a dimmest switch.
Speaker 3: I don't know why. That's my ringo. Uh So, so
Speaker 3: this starts a jecky and hide personality with him. He
Speaker 3: would endlessly abuse studio personnel for his own humor. One night,
Speaker 3: he gets so drunk he falls off his chair and
Speaker 3: hurts his arm, and then he can't go to sessions
Speaker 3: for like a few days. Last Also, who hasn't right,
Speaker 3: Who hasn't who has had a miswork for a day
Speaker 3: or two because he's got drunk and fell I've got he's.
Speaker 2: Suddenly ill and had to delay podcast recordings with Sophie.
Speaker 3: Of course, for sure, absolutely, because we're adult and that's what.
Speaker 3: Eventually he returns to America, he leaves George to finish
Speaker 3: the album. He kind of is like, you know, and
Speaker 3: George complains that he's being inattentive and but and he doesn't.
Speaker 3: He doesn't like that Phil is doing this, but he
Speaker 3: does regardless, finished his record and All Things Must Pass
Speaker 3: was released and spent seven weeks at number one, and
Speaker 3: he's the first Beatle to chart post breakup, right he is.
Speaker 3: I mean, All Things with Pass is a banger of
Speaker 3: a record. It is. It is top to bottom, it's
Speaker 3: it's a no skip album. It's amazing, and it's nothing
Speaker 3: like the Beatles, which is the most interesting thing about it,
Speaker 3: is like the fact that he put out a record
Speaker 3: that was not reminiscent of any of his work really
Speaker 3: with the Beatles in any way.
Speaker 5: He was very Ravi Shankar influenced. At this point in
Speaker 5: his life.
Speaker 3: He's into spiritual He's literally doing Hari Krishna songs and stuff,
Speaker 3: you know. So so yeah, for that to be seven
Speaker 3: weeks at number one, pretty impressive. You know. It's a
Speaker 3: Great Album. In September of the same year, John Lennon
Speaker 3: returned from America. He was staying in America. He returns
Speaker 3: from America and he brought Phil into Abbey Road's studios
Speaker 3: to record what would become the Plastic Oh No Band album.
Speaker 3: In contrast to Phil's previous work, he listened to John's
Speaker 3: direction and made a record of sparse arrangements. It perfectly
Speaker 3: maxed John's words and the tone of the lyrics and everything.
Speaker 3: So in John, Phil found a kindred spirit and the
Speaker 3: same for John. Right. John had this belief that torture geniuses, right,
Speaker 3: are always the tortured part of that right they have.
Speaker 3: There's something that makes a person a genius, and it's
Speaker 3: usually incredible strategy.
Speaker 5: And of course John had his own mother died.
Speaker 3: John was a victim of tragedy himself, oftentimes in the Beatles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, he had a hard life as well, and
Speaker 3: so he kind of thought both sides of this, him
Speaker 3: and Phil kind of kindred spirits, right.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, Yeah, we're both kind of giant assholes
Speaker 2: to the women in our lives. This probably helps us.
Speaker 3: Bond, yes exactly, Yeah, yeah, I get you, bro.
Speaker 2: I to him a piece of shit sometimes.
Speaker 3: So Klaus Bormann played bass on the George Harrison record
Speaker 3: and the John Lennon record, and he he said, there's
Speaker 3: a stark contrast of tone between Phil for George Harrison
Speaker 3: and Phil for John Lennon, you know. Interesting. And also
Speaker 3: Mick Mick Brown, who wrote the book Breaking Down the
Speaker 3: Wall of Sound that I referenced for a lot of this,
Speaker 3: he mentions that Phil got along with Yoko Ono really
Speaker 3: well as well. And he relates this a lot to
Speaker 3: the same thing as the way Ike Turner gave Phil
Speaker 3: his face to work when he was working with Tina.
Speaker 3: You know, he was like he was so respected that
Speaker 3: even the controlling member of their lives was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: let Phil do his thing, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that does say a lot.
Speaker 3: That says a lot a lot, you know, like that's
Speaker 3: that's those people are famously controlling of the other's careers.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: So in the meantime, Ronnie is in New York.
Speaker 3: She thinks her career is over, and Phil flies her
Speaker 3: out to Loneon and says, hey, actually George wrote a
Speaker 3: song for you. He wants you to sing it. And
Speaker 3: so she flies out there and and she gets into
Speaker 3: it and and unfortunately, uh it flops again and she's like,
Speaker 3: all right, yeah, I'm done, I'm done. I'm done, right Yeah.
Speaker 3: John Lennon's album did not flop, but only managed to
Speaker 3: reach number six in America number eleven in the UK,
Speaker 3: which is a pale comparison to George's success, and with
Speaker 3: John seeing what he perceived as the weaker writer success
Speaker 3: over his over his right, he pulled back on releasing
Speaker 3: music and starts supporting Yoko's career more at the time
Speaker 3: h they reunite to work on Imagine, which we we
Speaker 3: listened to an exact copy of today.
Speaker 5: Uh and and just being a legendary piece of work.
Speaker 3: It wasn't really well received and Phil retreated again into
Speaker 3: semi retirement and did not record any music for over
Speaker 3: a year. On Christmas nineteen seventy one, Phil surprised Ronnie
Speaker 3: with the said of five year old twin boys, who
Speaker 3: he had adopted without her knowledge. He went through.
Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome surprise adoption. It's better than surprise knocking someone
Speaker 2: up and having two surprise kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, or is it worse?
Speaker 2: Actual a lot more thought to adopt secrets.
Speaker 3: You got sign so much paperwork to adopt.
Speaker 2: It might be you're right, it might be worse. It
Speaker 2: might be worse.
Speaker 3: She's coming back. She thinks they're adorable, but she doesn't
Speaker 3: really want anything to do with them, because, you know,
Speaker 3: his his behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. He's worse and
Speaker 3: worse all the time. She's just She's like, her whole
Speaker 3: life is just story after story of horrible things. Like right,
Speaker 3: you could do an entire episode just on Ronnie Spector
Speaker 3: and the horrible things that happened to her. Yeah, cool
Speaker 3: Phil's behavior and January of nineteen seventy two, he's arrested
Speaker 3: at the Daisy Club in Beverly Hills after a woman
Speaker 3: called the police to report that a small man in
Speaker 3: a karate jacket pointed a gun at her. That sounds
Speaker 3: like our fell, that's the description. A small man in
Speaker 3: a karate jacket. That's like the most insulting thing I
Speaker 3: can possibly imagine being called. I love it.
Speaker 5: Police arrived promptly and found inspect Beverly Hills.
Speaker 3: You know, they arrived promptly, fine inspector with a handgun
Speaker 3: in his waistband, and he was charged with the misdemeanor
Speaker 3: and received a two hundred dollars. Fine. Wow, we'll see
Speaker 3: the good old days of brandishing a weapon and getting
Speaker 3: a simple misdemeanor fine. Just a few months later, in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night, Ronnie escaped with the help
Speaker 3: of her mother. She was forced to escape barefoot because
Speaker 3: Phil didn't let her have shoes, and she had to
Speaker 3: leave behind her kids and all of her possessions. Wow, but, Robert,
Speaker 3: do you know who won't force you to have been
Speaker 3: your home in the middle of the night, barefoot with
Speaker 3: nothing to your name.
Speaker 2: Well, hopefully not the sponsors of this podcast, because they're
Speaker 2: hell I got my home. Yeah, they could give it
Speaker 2: and taketh away, I.
Speaker 3: Said, and we're back. I'm taking control of this whole situation,
Speaker 3: all right. I love it. When we last left our hero,
Speaker 3: his wife Ronnie had escaped into the night with no
Speaker 3: shoes and fear for her life. She filed for divorce,
Speaker 3: and surprisingly Phil walked away completely amicably and gave her
Speaker 3: everything that she asked for.
Speaker 2: Weirds, okay, okay, okay, for a second, you did.
Speaker 3: No, he's a weird enough guy. I don't know. No,
Speaker 3: he was an absolute asshole about every single aspect of
Speaker 3: the divorce.
Speaker 5: Just days after she fled. During a telephone call, Phil.
Speaker 3: Informed her that all her clothes were in a trash
Speaker 3: can on Los Sienaga Boulevard. Been there. She files for
Speaker 3: custody of Dante but not the twins for obvious reasons,
Speaker 3: and cited the dangerous nature of the mansion and Phil's
Speaker 3: collection of guns and temper for the reason. At the time,
Speaker 3: Phil kept numerous guns around the house and had up
Speaker 3: to five guard dogs. As I mentioned, the mansion was
Speaker 3: surrounded by tall fans, barbed wires, signs everywhere.
Speaker 5: He's super paranoid, obviously, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Phil retaliated by claiming that Ronnie was unstable.
Speaker 3: And what did he use as evidence of her instability?
Speaker 3: Why those frequent trips to rehab.
Speaker 2: That she Oh my god, and she barely is even
Speaker 2: covered in guns all the time, So she's clearly not
Speaker 2: thinking about those kids' safety.
Speaker 3: I've got right now, and I hit one of the kids.
Speaker 3: So the court uh orders failed to pay for Rodney's
Speaker 3: temporary lodging and provider with support. He wrote a check
Speaker 3: for the first month, but the second month he had
Speaker 3: three armed guards deliver one two hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 3: payments in nickels to her lawyer's office. What, oh, go
Speaker 3: to be a dick, just be aick?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the record twenty five thousand. That's twenty five thousand nickels.
Speaker 3: Twenty five thousand nickels, and it weighed two hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five point six pounds. I did the math. He
Speaker 3: sucks three petty three armed guards, two of them with shotguns,
Speaker 3: to deliver twelve hundred and fifty dollars in nickels.
Speaker 2: Now, look, have I been petty before? Have I, for example,
Speaker 2: been treated badly at a at a at a at
Speaker 2: a private gym that I went to and mailed them
Speaker 2: a box that exploded into glitter?
Speaker 3: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 2: And I mailed anime shit when I had a bad
Speaker 2: experience at a small business that I hated the owner.
Speaker 2: Perhaps would I do this? Well maybe maybe?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I might actually do this again.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like this sounds pretty fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did you that much money?
Speaker 5: Yeah, But here's the fun.
Speaker 3: To me, this is the funniest thing, right right, because
Speaker 3: like I mean, I didn't do the math on what
Speaker 3: the quarters or pennies situation was. But he chose Nichols, right,
Speaker 3: He could have chosen doves he could have chosen pennies.
Speaker 3: Pennies would have been way more. I assumed that he
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, well that's a lot of pennies, right,
Speaker 3: and he was like maybe too much. And they were like, actually,
Speaker 3: if you do that, we're gonna have to have four
Speaker 3: armed guards.
Speaker 5: And he was like, that's a waste of money.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: At the beginning of August, at the behest of her lawyers,
Speaker 3: Ronnie checked herself into psychiatric care and spent several weeks there. Then,
Speaker 3: on September fourteenth, her lawyers were called to the Beverly
Speaker 3: Clarette Crest Hotel to deal with her in an intoxicated condition,
Speaker 3: heavily with the finger quotes here, right, intoxicated condition she was.
Speaker 3: She said she drank a lot and she was just
Speaker 3: screaming in the lobby.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. A few days later they're called again when Ronnie
Speaker 3: nearly killed herself after passing out with a lit cigarette
Speaker 3: and setting the bed on fire. Oh my god, she
Speaker 3: drank a full fifth of vodka by herself. Oh, and
Speaker 3: then said she was getting a little nap, Yeah, nap
Speaker 3: with a cigarette. She was unharmed, fortunately, you know, for
Speaker 3: the most part. But she didn't have to go to
Speaker 3: the hospital and everything.
Speaker 2: That's good that that did kill a lot of people
Speaker 2: back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, but obviously she's she's going through this
Speaker 3: is this is taking this toll on her for sure.
Speaker 2: I note that's part of why they made They changed
Speaker 2: how they made both beds and like couches. There's new
Speaker 2: fabrics they use on all of those because of how
Speaker 2: many people burnt to death smoking and bedding on the couch.
Speaker 3: What do you mean, Robert, You mean that all those
Speaker 3: spontaneous combustions that just stopped recently might have been a
Speaker 3: manufacturer's issue.
Speaker 2: The eternal mystery what caused the human combustion?
Speaker 3: Smoke?
Speaker 5: Smoker smoking?
Speaker 2: Is it smoking next to cocktails that were just pure liquor? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Weird, crazy how that happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, right after this, she tries to fire her
Speaker 3: lawyers right and end her divorce proceedings, right, But in
Speaker 3: one of the rarest moments of lawyers being amazing people,
Speaker 3: they refuse to be fired.
Speaker 5: They say, we don't think that you are making sound decisions.
Speaker 3: This is not what you want. Our conversations with you
Speaker 3: have said that this is not what you want. You
Speaker 3: are under mental distress right now, and we want to
Speaker 3: make sure that you continue with this, with this divorce proceeding,
Speaker 3: because this person is bad for you, and she does
Speaker 3: and she she rehires them or whatever the hell they
Speaker 3: move on. OK. She your reverse course again continues with
Speaker 3: the doors. It takes another eighteen months to finalize the divorce.
Speaker 3: She received a twenty five thousand dollars payment in addition
Speaker 3: to twenty five hundred dollars a month under the condition
Speaker 3: that she never disparaged Phil in public. She also would
Speaker 3: Phil would receive control over her master recordings and most
Speaker 3: of the publishing leverage, and the ability to limit Ronnie's
Speaker 3: access to her own hits.
Speaker 2: That's fuck. Fuck, that's fucked. Yeah, I mean it has
Speaker 2: been great before, but that's that's really bad.
Speaker 3: He takes away her ability to make money, making her
Speaker 3: dependent on his money. Yeah, right. And and then also
Speaker 3: she has no control, so he can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 2: It kind of robs her too, like not just of
Speaker 2: her money, but of like her future the things probably
Speaker 2: well and also just like probably some of the stuff
Speaker 2: she's proudest of, like this, this stuff that she made
Speaker 2: that was hugely successful and influential, has no control like
Speaker 2: that also has as a creative. That's like a knife
Speaker 2: another knife. Ye, he's got a lot of knives in it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he has to send her a check every single month. Uh,
Speaker 3: and every single month. Oh, she doesn't get custody of
Speaker 3: the children. And he has to send her a check
Speaker 3: every month. And every single month he sends her a
Speaker 3: check and he writes fuck off on the back. So
Speaker 3: so she has to write her name underneath, so it
Speaker 3: says fuck off Ronnie Bennett every single time. She this man,
Speaker 3: this man could yeah.
Speaker 2: Like fucking smallest man in the world I have I
Speaker 2: have never ever heard of this, this level of pettiness
Speaker 2: in a relation.
Speaker 5: Super petty, super petty. But Ronnie's free, you know.
Speaker 3: And she she looks back on this, you know, it's
Speaker 3: like she uh, she says, she escaped their divorce and
Speaker 3: she was happy to escape it with her life like
Speaker 3: she was.
Speaker 5: She was happy to be done.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So shortly after the divorce, Specter was brought in
Speaker 3: again to work with John Lennon. Things had been extremely
Speaker 3: rough for John Lennon in the years following the Beatles breakup.
Speaker 3: He's fighting the government for his right to stay in America.
Speaker 3: He's fighting his bandmates he's fighting his wife for money.
Speaker 3: Like there's everybody is fighting for his money, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In one of the strangest situations ever, Yoko sense that
Speaker 3: John was working towards cheating on her, and rather than
Speaker 3: lose him completely, she opted to pawn him off on
Speaker 3: one of her friends. Make any of this, Yes, So
Speaker 3: it's basically a sanctioned affair, right, It's like, you're gonna
Speaker 3: do this anyways, let's just may will you just like
Speaker 3: be his little fling for a while or whatever. He's
Speaker 3: he's living outside of his means, but he convinced the
Speaker 3: label to give him ten thousand dollars to record an
Speaker 3: album of standards, and he enlists Phil to produce. Okay,
Speaker 3: so he when he worked with John previously, he's on
Speaker 3: their turf and he's and he's got to do their
Speaker 3: things right. But now they're in Los Angeles and he's
Speaker 3: he's doing his thing right. So he brings in his
Speaker 3: favorite musicians, including the sons of his idol, Barney Kessel.
Speaker 3: Remember Barney Kessel, His mom embarrassed him in front of Yeah,
Speaker 3: he brings in his kids, right, they come in and
Speaker 3: play on this record.
Speaker 5: We're gonna talk about them in a minute.
Speaker 3: Uh. He developed a joy for animal night trates. Robert,
Speaker 3: you're a big fan of mamel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who doesn't love a good animal night trade?
Speaker 3: Every now and.
Speaker 2: Again and again and again.
Speaker 3: May May Pang remembers that he just smelled like old
Speaker 3: socks all the time.
Speaker 2: Is it because he's hoffing out of socks?
Speaker 3: No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but she just doesn't smell the old socks or or
Speaker 3: VCR cleaner. I guess, I don't know. Anyway, he'd show
Speaker 3: up wearing a holster right with a gun in it.
Speaker 3: He'd show up and he danced around with his guns off. Flip.
Speaker 3: He's thirty five at this point, right, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: he's he's a he's a grown ass man. He's a
Speaker 3: grown man. Yeah. Uh. John he John would drink vodka
Speaker 3: straight from the bottle and uh because he's depressed. And
Speaker 3: Phil would drink this wine called Manischevitz, which is basically like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like a Jewish ceremony wine.
Speaker 2: Right, you can get it in most grocery stores. I
Speaker 2: don't recommend it. It doesn't taste good.
Speaker 3: Nobody says that it tastes good. I've never had it
Speaker 3: and I was gonna just get a bottle of him
Speaker 3: in the episode, but you know what, I'll just drink
Speaker 3: whiskey instead. We'll play everybody's favorite game.
Speaker 2: It's that expensive, but it's not good. It's grape It
Speaker 2: tastes like grape juice with alcohol in it.
Speaker 3: But also the grape juice is bad, right right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so really shitty wine. They'd explode into arguments about the
Speaker 3: direction of the music, and things were often hectic. One night,
Speaker 3: Elton John comes by and he's hanging out for like
Speaker 3: a little bit, and he's like, I gotta go, and
Speaker 3: he leaves and he tells the guy that brought and
Speaker 3: he's like, what the fuck was going on? They're like yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just like that.
Speaker 5: Theyre just and he's like, I'm so glad we left,
Speaker 5: Like this sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Phil would. Because they're arguing all the time. Phil
Speaker 3: started dressing in ridiculous outfits. He'd show up dressed like
Speaker 3: a captain or dressed like a you know, like a pirate,
Speaker 3: or like crazy like just random outfits all the time.
Speaker 3: He show up dressed like a waiter or something, you know,
Speaker 3: just look ridiculous. But then eventually they get drunk and
Speaker 3: then they fight. One night, Chuck Berry comes by Phil's
Speaker 3: house to meet with John, and John's a big fan
Speaker 3: of Chuck Berry, like a lot of the Beatles music
Speaker 3: came because of Chuck Berry. Yeah, yeah, obviously. And then
Speaker 3: Phil Phil is just in the other room playing music
Speaker 3: so loudly that no one can hear anything, and so
Speaker 3: Chuck just gets mad and leaves. Yeah, which, by the way, uh,
Speaker 3: presumably so that he could go watch Pepe tapes or
Speaker 3: traffic an underage girl across state lines.
Speaker 5: Because he's a Jerry Berry is he's he was a founder.
Speaker 3: Of rock and roll other than you know, big Mama
Speaker 3: Thwarton and you know, to found rock and roll.
Speaker 2: He found a lot of the bad things rock and
Speaker 2: roll musicians did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is. One of the reasons why the Man
Speaker 3: Act was so successful was because he actually was trafficking
Speaker 3: a fourteen year old girl across state lines for purposes
Speaker 3: and he got convicted, which is crazy.
Speaker 5: Yes, he sentenced to three years in prison four said crime.
Speaker 2: He was a black man, so he got convicted as
Speaker 2: opposed to being a president.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely, as things go, as.
Speaker 3: Things tend to go. So Phil would always play games
Speaker 3: with John's mental you know, fragile mental state and everything.
Speaker 5: He'd call him or.
Speaker 3: John would call him when he was supposed to be
Speaker 3: at the studio and he'd be like, yeah, I'm on
Speaker 3: my way, and then he just wouldn't show up, you know,
Speaker 3: and John's like wasting money on this studio shit, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, we find out later that Phil has
Speaker 3: been kind of grifting the whole the whole thing.
Speaker 5: He's paying for the.
Speaker 3: Sessions himself so that he can maintain control of things
Speaker 3: and so that he can bill John's label.
Speaker 5: It's a whole thing. We'll get to it in a second.
Speaker 3: But so one night John gets blasted, right, he gets
Speaker 3: ship faced, and him and another guy is by his
Speaker 3: bodyguard take him to lou Adler's house where John was staying,
Speaker 3: and they tied him to the bed and John thinks
Speaker 3: they're gonna rape him. He thinks they're gonna sexually assault him,
Speaker 3: and he freaks out, like he loses, heill gets a
Speaker 3: black eye, like it's they they fight, they physically fight,
Speaker 3: like I don't know, John was obviously very very drunk,
Speaker 3: like they don't. It's not it's not insinuated that that
Speaker 3: was actually that a sexual assault was actually going to happen,
Speaker 3: but for whatever reason, John thinks that that's what's gonna happen,
Speaker 3: and he freaks out and they they they tie him
Speaker 3: to the bed and oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and then he eventually like gets out or whatever.
Speaker 3: But they leave and uh and Phil as to wear
Speaker 3: makeup on his bruised eye for a couple of days
Speaker 3: and stuff. Jesus. The sessions are so crazy that A
Speaker 3: and M Studios evicts them from the studio. There like
Speaker 3: Phil's wave and a gun around during session. This is
Speaker 3: too too much shit, right.
Speaker 2: We don't think our insurance covers whatever you're doing.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, And so they kick them out and they
Speaker 3: head over to Record Plan, which is especially hilarious if
Speaker 3: you know the Record Plan is this famous Hollywood studio.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of Record Plants around the world, but
Speaker 3: the Record Plan in Hollywood is kind of a famous
Speaker 3: Hollywood studio, especially currently it just shut down like a
Speaker 3: year ago, but prior to that it was like the
Speaker 3: Party Studio. It was the Arizona State University of Studios.
Speaker 3: So the fact that they got kicked out of A
Speaker 3: and M, which is now owned by John Mayer and
Speaker 3: called Chaplin Studios or something like that, which is a
Speaker 3: very professional, fancy studio to go to Record Plant that's
Speaker 3: basically like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we let people party.
Speaker 3: This is where at record Plant, Phil fires his gun
Speaker 3: into the ceiling of the studio. So Record Plan's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll have you. I'm like first night. He's like, what
Speaker 3: is the context?
Speaker 2: Is he trying to emphasize a point? Is it using
Speaker 2: it like a punctuation mark?
Speaker 3: Is it just an accident? So he gets into an
Speaker 3: argument of some type with Mal Evans, who is a
Speaker 3: famous uh like kind of Fifth Beatles situation. He's he's
Speaker 3: like their roadie, he's their fixer, he does everything. He's
Speaker 3: hanging out with John Lennon and he is very trusted
Speaker 3: by the right and uh, and he gets into an
Speaker 3: argument with Phil presumably about like hey, man, stop doing
Speaker 3: some dumb shit or whatever, and.
Speaker 2: Man, did you unless John Lennon something like that.
Speaker 3: Phil has like a measure of anger, pulls his gun
Speaker 3: out and he says accidentally fires his gun into the studio.
Speaker 5: Which says something right, yeah.
Speaker 3: John turns to him like and he's like, Phil, if
Speaker 3: you're gonna shoot me, shoot me, but don't fuck with me.
Speaker 5: Is He's like, I need them.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, what a great response. Honestly, you're gonna
Speaker 3: shoot me, shoot me, but like, I need my ears, bro,
Speaker 3: don't shoot guns beside my head, Dick. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: I gotta give it to him. That's pretty cool. Everybody
Speaker 3: thinks Phil is just shooting blanks in these guns, right, Nope.
Speaker 3: But the next day, mal Evin shows up to John
Speaker 3: Lennon's house with the bullet from the cilly. He's like,
Speaker 3: here's the bullet from last night, and John's like, what bullet.
Speaker 3: He's like, the bullet that he fired into the ceiling.
Speaker 3: He's like, he's got bullets in that thing. It's a
Speaker 3: real gun. Yes, it's a real gun. Right. So, shortly
Speaker 3: after that incident, John returns to New York City and
Speaker 3: one night he receives a phone call from Phil claiming
Speaker 3: that the studio had burnt down and they lost everything.
Speaker 5: So John's like, whoa, what what was going on? He
Speaker 5: calls the studio and they're like, I don't know fire.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
Speaker 5: Man, there's no fire here?
Speaker 3: Uh? And then so he's like what the fuck is
Speaker 3: going on? And then a week later, Phil calls again,
Speaker 3: this time ranting about helicopters surrounding the house. Right. He's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's a helicopter surrounding the house, right, And he says,
Speaker 3: but I don't worry, I got the tapes. I got
Speaker 3: the tapes, right, And so John eventually discovers basically Philip
Speaker 3: paid for the entire session, which means in the recording world,
Speaker 3: if you pay for it, you own the tapes. The
Speaker 3: tapes are released to the person who pays for them.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: Okay, you own all of John Lennon's work if you
Speaker 3: own those tapes, right. And so they get a bill
Speaker 3: from Phil's label for ninety thousand dollars, right, god, and
Speaker 3: they're like, what the fuck. Apparently he's like he's he's
Speaker 3: paying for all the sessions. And then he's doing the
Speaker 3: old classic rebuill it like like one hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: percent of the cost of whatever it is type.
Speaker 2: Thing, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So when Bob Mercer of EMI Capital went to Phil's
Speaker 3: Sunset office to retrieve the tapes, Phil chased him down
Speaker 3: a flight of stairs with an axe.
Speaker 2: He's back against.
Speaker 3: The album wasn't released until nineteen seventy five, with only
Speaker 3: five tracks produced by Spector and another eight that John
Speaker 3: recorded without him, so obviously a mess.
Speaker 5: So I mentioned before Barney Kessel's two sons, Dan and David.
Speaker 3: They start hanging out with Phil during the Lenin sessions,
Speaker 3: and this is the first time that they come to
Speaker 3: his house. And the first time they come to his house,
Speaker 3: he greeted them wearing a thirty eight, and he asked
Speaker 3: him if they like guns. Of course yes, they said.
Speaker 5: Yes, of course, because you know who doesn't.
Speaker 3: And he takes him into the backyard in Hollywood, remember,
Speaker 3: and they spend a few hours shooting at old records.
Speaker 3: They idolize him. They love this dude, like they think
Speaker 3: he is the epitome of the rock star mentality. Right,
Speaker 3: And to be a fair you know, he's like in
Speaker 3: his thirties, he's shooting guns, he's partying with John Lennon,
Speaker 3: like he is kind of a.
Speaker 2: Get with all sorts of crimes.
Speaker 3: Sure, he's kind of a rock star, right, definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He he starts treating him like his kids, right, which
Speaker 3: is fucked because he has kids and he is currently
Speaker 3: locking them in their rooms and they're under the the
Speaker 3: they're under the supervision of a governess who doesn't let
Speaker 3: them do shit right. Meanwhile, he take the Kessels to
Speaker 3: Muhammad ah Li fights and even took them to Vegas
Speaker 3: to see Elvis and brought them backstage after the show
Speaker 3: to hang out, which is super fun because he just
Speaker 3: didn't take Ronnie back to the peace right right, not
Speaker 3: his wife. Of course, in their eyes, Phil can do
Speaker 3: no wrong. They love him, dude. They to this day
Speaker 3: they always like, hey, Phil is the best, right, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, he's a legend at this point. You know,
Speaker 3: he's a legitimate legend. So he's veering out of control
Speaker 3: with his drink and his relationships. At one point, this
Speaker 3: writer Roy carr Is brought to la from from London
Speaker 3: with the task of writing a book about him. One night,
Speaker 3: in between telling fantastical stories like Bruce Lee was my
Speaker 3: bodyguard once and how he had worked as an undercover
Speaker 3: agent in Paris, sure Specter announced that he needed to
Speaker 3: pee and he gets up and walks out, only to
Speaker 3: come back wearing no shirt and a revolver in his
Speaker 3: waistband and playing the accordion.
Speaker 2: So one that we've learned about him is that no
Speaker 2: matter what he is or isn't wearing, he will have
Speaker 2: a gun.
Speaker 3: On him.
Speaker 2: He's got a gun on him, always.
Speaker 3: Got a gun on him. And he's always doing something wild.
Speaker 2: He said Frank from Always Sonny.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, very much. Picture him as skinny Frank. A
Speaker 3: very little man with a gun.
Speaker 5: He's always little man with always So I started blasting him.
Speaker 2: I'm just ready to shoot.
Speaker 3: So so Car says he couldn't tell what was factor
Speaker 3: fiction when it came to Phil, but he does know that,
Speaker 3: like without a doubt, Phil has intense loneliness issues, like
Speaker 3: he would get on anytime Carr would prepare to leave,
Speaker 3: like he'd be working all day taking notes, and he'd
Speaker 3: be okay, all right, well, time to go, and and no, no, no,
Speaker 3: stay for a little bit longa he don't leave, don't leave.
Speaker 3: So he believes that Phil is even following him around town.
Speaker 3: One night, Phil's assistant was sent to pick him up
Speaker 3: and they get in the car and she looks in
Speaker 3: the rearview mirror and she sees Phil and the Kessel
Speaker 3: brothers in a Cadillac with shotguns and they just chase them,
Speaker 3: chase them all over Hollywood until they escape, right and
Speaker 3: then and then they just there's no explanation given for
Speaker 3: why they did this. Like the next day, They're like, Phil,
Speaker 3: why did you guys chase this around shotguns last year?
Speaker 5: And He's just like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: What do you mean? I didn't do that. I didn't
Speaker 3: do that. Like me, I always have a little gun.
Speaker 3: Another time, Phil picks up car and the Kessel boys
Speaker 3: with some mysterious people in the car and they fill
Speaker 3: the car with pump shotguns and rifles, and then they
Speaker 3: go to this Cantonese restaurant where they ate dinner by themselves,
Speaker 3: all roped off in this little section, and then after
Speaker 3: dinner they just go back to Phil's house and Phil
Speaker 3: shot at a tree with a pistol for like an hour, right.
Speaker 2: H yeah, okay sure.
Speaker 3: So he just sounds like Phil just he's just living Levina,
Speaker 3: look bro bullets with him.
Speaker 5: Yes, he absolutely did.
Speaker 3: When Carr returns to England, Phil tries to give him
Speaker 3: a pistol and he's like, I can't take a pistol
Speaker 3: through customs every country?
Speaker 8: Does it?
Speaker 3: Just let you take guns there? Phil? So funny. In
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four, Phil is brought in to produce for Share.
Speaker 3: You know, Share is in his life, but Share is
Speaker 3: no longer with Sonny Bono now she's with David Geffen,
Speaker 3: and David Geffen had become her manager as well as
Speaker 3: like her label head, as well as her boyfriend, as
Speaker 3: well as like every he's everywhere, right, does he like
Speaker 3: even have any connection to the music industry or no?
Speaker 3: Uh David Geffen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean but here's so,
Speaker 3: here's the thing. Phil hates him because he's like he's
Speaker 3: a kind of a NEPO baby in the situation, Like
Speaker 3: he doesn't know music. He doesn't he's not a musician.
Speaker 3: He didn't come up that way. He came up through
Speaker 3: like the business side of the industry. And he gets lucky,
Speaker 3: starts dating Share, basically becomes her manager, becomes a label head,
Speaker 3: starts getting all these positions of like authority and shit,
Speaker 3: and Phil hates him. Phil despises him right, and one
Speaker 3: night David Geffen tells Phil, hey man, maybe you should
Speaker 3: try this with with SHARE's song, and Phil punched him
Speaker 3: in the face and told him to get out of here,
Speaker 3: you fucking f slur. Great, Okay, Share is like, Phil,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? Chill the fuck out? And Phil does, right,
Speaker 3: and then just go back to work, right, And that's
Speaker 3: like the type of way Phil is he'll just haul
Speaker 3: off and punch somebody in the face in the studio,
Speaker 3: call him a slur, and then get right back to work,
Speaker 3: you know, all in a day's work, you know, yeah work.
Speaker 2: Look, he puts his gun on, one gun at a time,
Speaker 2: the same that you dial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same as all of us. Phil dated after Ronnie left.
Speaker 3: One of those women is a woman named Devora Robati.
Speaker 3: She starts as his assistant, then becomes his lover. Right.
Speaker 3: She was married when she starts working with him, but
Speaker 3: Phil's crazy hours and like constantly having to like answer
Speaker 3: ruins her marriage. And then one night after after their
Speaker 3: you know, uh kind of flirting office flirtation or whatever,
Speaker 3: Phil walks into her car gives her a kiss, and
Speaker 3: now you know, now they're dating her, but he's always
Speaker 3: mistreating her. He'd be super sweet and loving and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden begins screaming and calling her name.
Speaker 3: One night, during an argument at dinner, he dumps a
Speaker 3: bowl of noodles on her head. So they go through
Speaker 3: this cycle where it's like, yeah, he's just a shit noodles.
Speaker 3: They're at dinner and he's just like yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 3: so she so he get mad.
Speaker 5: Jokes uck. She'd get mad and quit, and then.
Speaker 3: He'd send her like a dozen roses and she'd you know,
Speaker 3: forgive him and come back. And it just keeps kind
Speaker 3: of doing this. Right, It's this like constant like revolving
Speaker 3: door of Phil Spector where he does something shitty and
Speaker 3: then he gets super mad and they have a big argument,
Speaker 3: and then he apologizes the next day or makes no
Speaker 3: mention of it whatsoever. Like sometimes she'd like, he'd do
Speaker 3: horrible things and then just the next day he'd be like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about. I didn't do that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: ladies take back shitty little men. Yeah. Yeah. One night,
Speaker 3: tempers flared and he grabbed a shotgun and put it
Speaker 3: to her temple, telling her he would kill her if
Speaker 3: she left. She calmed him by telling him he's being
Speaker 3: silly and that he should open the door and let
Speaker 3: her leave.
Speaker 5: But as soon as he does calm down, she bolts.
Speaker 3: Out of there. Right. But she does say she never
Speaker 3: thought Phil would actually kill her, but she did think
Speaker 3: he might by accident.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, much better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In November of nineteen seventy five, a parking attendant claimed
Speaker 3: that Phil pulled a gun on him and told him
Speaker 3: to get the fuck away from me before driving away.
Speaker 3: He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor brandishing a firearm and
Speaker 3: two years of probation provided he not own any more firearms. Robert,
Speaker 3: can you guess who kept owning firearms?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess it's Phil Spector, and I want to
Speaker 2: work remind everybody we talk about him carrying a gun everywhere.
Speaker 2: In this period of time, there weren't really concealed carry
Speaker 2: laws in most places. Like there were some ways if
Speaker 2: you were like a bodyguard for the ways people could
Speaker 2: legally carry concealed guns and cities and stuff, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't like it is today. My point is that Phil
Speaker 2: was committing a felony basically every time he walked out
Speaker 2: the door.
Speaker 3: Yes, from this day on, he is absolutely commanding a
Speaker 3: felony because he's not supposed to be carrying any more guns,
Speaker 3: supposed to have any of them.
Speaker 5: He's not supposed to have any guns. Yeah, so Phil Specter.
Speaker 3: Then in the mid nineteen seventies he starts working with
Speaker 3: Leonard Cohen, right, and this is crazy for everybody in
Speaker 3: the world, right, Yeah, this is like, this is like, uh,
Speaker 3: what's the what's the Jesse Wells, the little folk kid
Speaker 3: that sings in the field. This is like him working
Speaker 3: with Max Martin, right, It's like it's like it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's like what why.
Speaker 5: Would he be with like a pop producer. This doesn't
Speaker 5: make any sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So everybody's like already thinks it's kind of strange, right,
Speaker 3: But but Spector thinks like, hey, maybe this will be
Speaker 3: like a really crazy inspired thing. So they make the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven album Death of a Ladies Man. The
Speaker 3: sessions quickly deteriorated into chaos, fueled by Specter's alcohol abuse,
Speaker 3: erratic behavior, and obsession with dominance inside the studio. Cohen
Speaker 3: later described Specter as volatile and deeply intimidating, recounting an
Speaker 3: incident in which Specter allegedly pressed a loaded gun against
Speaker 3: Cohen's head during a recording session and declared, Leonard, I
Speaker 3: love you.
Speaker 5: Cohen responded, I hope you do.
Speaker 3: All these rock stars have the coolest responses to Phil
Speaker 3: Spector putting a gun.
Speaker 2: To their head funny, yeah, I And honestly, of all
Speaker 2: the rock stars I expected to be cool with a
Speaker 2: pistol pointed at their fucking skull. List of the list, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In another incident, Spector pulled a gun on the
Speaker 3: violin player Bobby Bruce. Uh, which, by the way, the
Speaker 3: violin player like, yeah, I pulled I pulled.
Speaker 5: A gun on the guy. Yeah I was.
Speaker 3: I was pulling a gun on.
Speaker 5: A daycare teacher.
Speaker 3: Man. Like you're like the most innocent person you can find.
Speaker 3: It's like, there's extra bad that you're this guy went
Speaker 3: to school man.
Speaker 2: It's like a gang enhancement thing on your sentence saying well, no,
Speaker 2: you pulled a gun on a violinist.
Speaker 3: That's an extra five years.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: Uh. Spector took control of the final mixes and didn't
Speaker 3: even allow Leonard Cohen to hear them. He didn't allow
Speaker 3: him to be present.
Speaker 4: He uh.
Speaker 3: He layers all of his sounds into it and over
Speaker 3: Cohen's stripped down songwriting, which is what he is known for,
Speaker 3: and they made a record that Cohen doesn't even stand
Speaker 3: on himself. He doesn't think that that it's very good.
Speaker 3: But Coen said of this of his time with Phil
Speaker 3: quote in that state he found himself, which was post wagonarian,
Speaker 3: I would say hit Lariyan.
Speaker 5: The atmosphere was one of guns. I mean, that's really
Speaker 5: what was going on?
Speaker 3: Guns? The music was subsidiary an enterprise. People were armed
Speaker 3: to the teeth and everybody was drunk or intoxicated on
Speaker 3: other items. So you were slipping over bullets and biting
Speaker 3: into revolvers in your hamburger. There were guns everywhere.
Speaker 2: Right, That's one of those things where I have to
Speaker 2: assume that's like a joke for flavor, but also.
Speaker 3: A hamburger.
Speaker 5: Somebody was like, hey, hey.
Speaker 2: Revolvers and some big hamburgers.
Speaker 5: Hey, hey, Leonard, I I.
Speaker 3: Got you a hamburger? Oh cool, thanks man? What what
Speaker 3: what is going on here? When it was released in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, it was critically panned. Everybody hated it.
Speaker 3: Spector claimed, and this is one thing I love about
Speaker 3: Phil Spector is anytime you ship talk Phil Spector, he
Speaker 3: will ship talk back and say like, yeah, I got
Speaker 3: I got hate mail from all eight of your fans.
Speaker 3: It's just so so disrespectful. Yeah oh yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 3: guys really love it, all eight of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So well, he's cultivating this brilliant and eccentric producer. His
Speaker 3: in his family home is is horrible. He treats his
Speaker 3: kids horrible. Uh he uh oh real quick. When I
Speaker 3: was mentioning the Barney Kessel kids, Dan and Dan and David,
Speaker 3: how old did you get the sense that they were
Speaker 3: you know, they're hanging out.
Speaker 5: They're driving around shooting shotguns out of cat like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, late teens, early twenties, eleven and thirteen. Oh no,
Speaker 3: why is he hanging out? When I was reading this,
Speaker 3: I was like, this is wild man, Like, this is crazy.
Speaker 5: Like he's hanging out with these like teenagers.
Speaker 3: I got them like same thing, like seventeen eighteen, something
Speaker 3: like that, maybe even early twenties. The way they're referencing
Speaker 3: the things that they're doing, the drive around, shooting guns,
Speaker 3: they're going they're.
Speaker 5: Hanging out together, right Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, I looked it up and his kids were born
Speaker 3: in like in like the late sixties and they were
Speaker 3: like eleven and twelve years old. That's go crazy. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: he's treating his own kids horribly. They have the Governess
Speaker 3: is always on them. They don't they're not allowed to
Speaker 3: do anything. Uh, And he's very rarely involved in any
Speaker 3: actual parenting except for when he is forcing them to
Speaker 3: simulate sexual acts on women so that they learn.
Speaker 5: How to be men.
Speaker 3: Yike, one of those kinds huh, yikes. He's doing the
Speaker 3: classic like no, get over there and do it, brings
Speaker 3: a girl home from the strip or whatever, and it's
Speaker 3: like lay down and like takes control of the whole thing,
Speaker 3: and like is making them simulate. They all report having
Speaker 3: gone through this.
Speaker 2: And is that I wonder is that more out of
Speaker 2: like a him wanting power, him getting off on it,
Speaker 2: or just him being such a narcissist that like, if
Speaker 2: my kids are bad at sex, it reflects badly on me.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna make goddamn sure they know what they're doing,
Speaker 3: you know. Very fairly. His kids kind of stayed out
Speaker 3: of the line, and they don't talk about a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff. And I did see a few interviews
Speaker 3: with them, like they resurface in later years, and one
Speaker 3: of them tries to write like a book, I think,
Speaker 3: but it never gets off the ground. But it basically
Speaker 3: whenever like the dirt comes out, it's He's horrible to them.
Speaker 3: He treats them the same way as he treated Ronnie's
Speaker 3: threatening them all the time, He's making them do crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: They all developed lifelong issues with trust, identity, and emotional stability.
Speaker 3: It's just it's not there's no guidance. It's all performance
Speaker 3: and it's all possession.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: When John Lennon was murdered in cold blood in front
Speaker 3: of the Dakota Building in New York City on December eighth,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty, Phil was once again thrown into a world
Speaker 3: of depression. But this time he took it as a sign.
Speaker 3: He always said that John moved too easy, John was
Speaker 3: too careless with how he acted, and it would be
Speaker 3: his downfall one day, and this just reaffirms it for him,
Speaker 3: like he's going to get killed if he doesn't travel
Speaker 3: with bodyguards and guns and all that stuff. So right,
Speaker 3: by the nineteen eighties, he starts withdrawing from public life.
Speaker 3: He moves out of his Hollywood mansion and bought a
Speaker 3: house in the suburb of Alhambra he dubbed the Pyrenees Castle. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's a huge French style mansion. Is enormous, Like it's
Speaker 3: out in Alhambra, you know, it's out of the city
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles. He he you know, as was his style.
Speaker 3: He surrounds himself with guard dogs and armed guards and
Speaker 3: fills the house with guns, guns that he's not allowed
Speaker 3: to have legal guns. Sure, so for a brief period
Speaker 3: specter attempted sobriety and acquaintance describe him as calmer and
Speaker 3: more reflective. The stability, though, is temporary. He every time
Speaker 3: he relaps, he gets crazy again. And I think a
Speaker 3: large part of this stability was due to his relationship
Speaker 3: with Janie Savala. Phil first met her in the sixties
Speaker 3: when she was a teenager and eventually hired her to
Speaker 3: work for his label after his split with Ronnie. He
Speaker 3: would date her on and off again for the next
Speaker 3: like fifteen twenty years, and eventually he would give birth.
Speaker 3: He would She would give birth to two twins, Nicole
Speaker 3: and Phillip Junior, and contrary to his relationships with his
Speaker 3: other kids, who.
Speaker 5: Are now adults at this point, Phil treated him wonderfully.
Speaker 3: His daughter Nicole says that you know, he was a
Speaker 3: doting father, that he loves spending time with him, that
Speaker 3: he was always around for his kids. But in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one, this is now well removed from his music career.
Speaker 3: In the In the late fifties, early sixties and into
Speaker 3: the seventies, Philip Junior dies from leukemia and Phil phil
Speaker 3: goes back into deep depression insanity. Yeah, well, of course,
Speaker 3: Nicole remains devoted to her father throughout the rest of
Speaker 3: her life, always claiming that he was her hero. He
Speaker 3: never raised her voice to her, she says he was amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Phil rarely grants any interviews. He remains a recluse, rarely
Speaker 3: leaving the house and never without a bodyguard. He hired
Speaker 3: Hal Blaine, who's the drummer from the wrecking crew that
Speaker 3: he had employed. He hired his daughter to be his
Speaker 3: day to day you know, manager or whatever, and was
Speaker 3: generally pretty kind to her. And everything set for Phil
Speaker 3: to just ride off into the sunset and be forgotten
Speaker 3: as as nobody's right, until Mick Brown shows up in
Speaker 3: his life. Mick Brown is the author of the book
Speaker 3: that I was describing that I got the primary source
Speaker 3: from all of this. Mick Brown's book is one of
Speaker 3: the most authoritive biographies on Phil Spector. It is brilliant,
Speaker 3: it has everything. It's a very good book. I highly recommend.
Speaker 3: He's the primary source of my research, and he's probably
Speaker 3: one of them besides me, probably one of the most
Speaker 3: knowledgeable people on Phil Spector in the world. And he
Speaker 3: managed to get an interview with Spector in December of
Speaker 3: two thousand and two. He recorded the entire interview on tapes,
Speaker 3: and they painted a picture of a deeply troubled and
Speaker 3: eccentric man who was likely suffering from mental illness. His
Speaker 3: article was titled the Mad Genius of Phil Spector and
Speaker 3: questioning whether the madness was part of the genius or
Speaker 3: just something that had gone unchecked because of his genius.
Speaker 3: It was a deeply intelligent and honest look at Phil's life,
Speaker 3: which angered Phil. He broke what many said was a
Speaker 3: decade of sobriety and began drinking and acting erradically again.
Speaker 3: On February second, two thousand and three, just a week
Speaker 3: two weeks after the article came out, Phil Spector began
Speaker 3: his evening at dantanna As, a long standing Hollywood restaurant
Speaker 3: and bar known for attracting entertainment industry regulars. He took
Speaker 3: a high school friend out for dinner and began drinking
Speaker 3: heavily before taking her home and then returning to Dantanna's
Speaker 3: and starting to drink with his waitress from the night.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, he was heavily intoxicated by the time he
Speaker 3: left for the House of Blues.
Speaker 2: When you when you leave with your friend and then
Speaker 2: come back to keep drinking with the waitress. That's that's
Speaker 2: that implies a level of drunk that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if but if you're gonna do it, hit
Speaker 3: the Troubadoor for a little bit. Yeah, it's a good
Speaker 3: night baby.
Speaker 8: So uh.
Speaker 3: It was then that he would begin his fateful interaction
Speaker 3: with the hostess of the Foundation Room in the House
Speaker 3: of Blues, Lana Clarkson. And this is the end of
Speaker 3: this episode. We we are about to get in to
Speaker 3: one of the most storied and important nights in musical history.
Speaker 3: But for now, we are gonna plug our plugables, which
Speaker 3: I have a podcast. It's about music stuff. It's the
Speaker 3: most poorly produced podcast in the entire world. We need
Speaker 3: a Sophie so bad, like we would crush with a Sophie,
Speaker 3: but we are incapable of doing things ourselves, so we
Speaker 3: just forget to do it. But I do have a podcast,
Speaker 3: it's called that Sounds About right. I have a recording
Speaker 3: course that teaches you the principles recording. And I have
Speaker 3: a label And by the time this song comes out,
Speaker 3: our very first artist on the label, we'll release her single,
Speaker 3: So please check that shit out. Her name is Violet
Speaker 3: Lux de Link will be in my bio, greasy will
Speaker 3: on Instagram, It'll be all over the place. But I
Speaker 3: am a rebel of the music industry and I need
Speaker 3: your support, so love and care for me. And also
Speaker 3: you are on all sorts of the internets as I write, okay,
Speaker 3: and you also sell merch at places some probably we're both.
Speaker 3: We're both googleble just be an adult and use Google
Speaker 3: man get those. Do you know what I think is interesting?
Speaker 3: Everybody keeps discussing about how uh you know, chatch ept
Speaker 3: uses like a tablespoon or a teaspoon of water every
Speaker 3: time you search. Nobody is mentioning that Google is automatically
Speaker 3: using AI to search your answers. So Googling now is
Speaker 3: also using that same amount of water. Let's be mad
Speaker 3: about everything.
Speaker 2: Type in minus AI with your Google searches and it'll
Speaker 2: cut that part of it out. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it actually reduces the energy usage, but at least you
Speaker 2: don't have to see the summary.
Speaker 3: And keep your yeah, and it knows everything you're doing.
Speaker 2: So that's why I say, that's right, that's right. I
Speaker 2: still use Netscape Navigator. It does not work.
Speaker 3: Well, That's what I'm relying on is my technology being
Speaker 3: too outdated to spy on me. That's right, the secret
Speaker 3: old Mozilla fires the end of the This is the
Speaker 3: end of the episode. Guys, We're Doug. Goodbye.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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