The spectre of sound: Phil Spector with The Ronettes. Credit: GAB Archive / Redferns.
What does it sound like, to be in love? I knew before I was old enough to have the feeling for myself: it sounded like swooping strings, it sounded like huge booming drums, it sounded like close harmonies, it sounded like a pure and pristine teenage girl’s voice catching at the edge of desperation, the innocent centre of a universe of wanting. It sounded, in fact, like producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. When I felt love for the first time, I was at least in some degree reciting from the songs I’d learned by heart, listening to the tapes my parents played in the car.
Spector — who died in prison at the weekend — was a king of rock ’n’ roll, beloved by all the men who mattered. He worked with the Beatles, on Let It Be, and on Lennon and Harrison’s solo projects; he worked with Leonard Cohen and the Ramones. A real-life Spector production was a badge of validation for any artist who bore his influence, and he influenced pop music more than most. Spector fitted the pattern of a genius. Eccentric. Erratic. A man, of course. He luxuriated in his myth: Tom Wolfe called him the “tycoon of teen”.
This masculine authority made it OK, even respectable, to applaud the music Spector made by and for girls. Throughout the sixties, Spector turned out a run of hits that defined teenagerdom, and the best of them were the ones by female acts — the Crystals, the Ronettes, Darlene Love. The triumphant girlishness of songs like “Baby I Love You” and “Then He Kissed Me” isn’t just a male fabrication, either. Spector’s songwriting team leaned heavily on women, Elaine Greenwich and Carole King especially.
Part of the reason these songs sounded so intensely teenage was that the writers actually listened to girls when they were writing them. Which is the story behind the darkest, most disturbing production in Spector’s catalogue (not the darkest, most disturbing bit of his life, but we’ll get to that). Carole King and her partner and co-writer Jerry Goffin hired teenage singer Little Eva (they had written “The Locomotion” for her) as their babysitter. One day, Eva showed up covered in bruises; when they asked what had happened, she explained that her boyfriend had beaten her because he loved her.
That explanation became a song for the Crystals, released in 1962: “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)”. If there was ever any irony in the lyric, it’s obliterated in Spector’s arrangement and production. There’s a martial determination in the song’s slow, stately build-up, as instruments accumulate around lead vocalist Barbara Alston. “He hit me,” she sings, precise, affectless, alone in all that noise, “and it felt like a kiss / He hit me, and I knew he loved me.”
The song allows no escape from this world of masochism. At the end, Alston declares: “And then he kissed me / He made me his.” The strings surge to a heavenly resolution, the backing singers chirrup angelically, and there is no doubt that all is right with a world where a girl takes a boy’s fists as proof of devotion. It is a grotesque piece of pop music, a hymn to domestic abuse.
The public was repulsed. Radio stations got complaints when they played it, and sales were poor. Spector pulled it after a few weeks. King later repudiated it. The Crystals described the recording as an unhappy one. “He Hit Me” was an embarrassment, something best forgotten. When a major boxset of Spector’s sixties work was released in 1991 — called Back to Mono, in recognition of its fidelity to his original recording intentions — I remember there was a bit of a thing in the music press about the inclusion of “He Hit Me”.
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SubscribeIt must surely be made easier to divorce music, art, literature, even some political consequences, from the sins of their creators. Wagner’s music, Dahl’s stories, Spacey’s movies, some of Bill Clinton’s legacy – they all exist, irrespective of the actions of those ‘behind’ them.
We’re impoverished by the moral childishness that seems to pervade contemporary criticism.
Given that the content of Spector’d work was related to sex, power and control, it would be a bit bizarre to pretend that his actions were unrelated.
(edited for spelling)
“” A man, of course “” … and there we stopped reading. The parental duo play every few months “He’s a Rebel” so loudly – extase, extase – that the walls quake & also “”And then he kissed me”” & anything by the Crystals … the Wall of Sound Improves with Age, it seems.
What a great, well written article. Nuff said.
Tangential but related:
Not just in the Arts, but in the Sciences – eminent Physicists (for example) have always expressed political/cultural opinions, from those whose opinions our current society considers welcome (e.g. Stephen Hawking) to those whose opinions would be considered completely shocking and unacceptable (e.g. William Shockley). The thing is, notwithstanding those political or cultural opinions, in the long term they fade into insignificance and what endures is the science. Ultimately, you can’t argue with a bunch of equations (unless you are one of the rare few who can come up with another bunch of equations to overthrow the older ones).
Does (or indeed should) the same dynamic of the work enduring when the originator is gone apply equally to the Arts? To all domains? The question really goes to the heart of the roil of the last few years: BLM protests, repudiate the past, history revisionism, superimposing irrelevant figures on seminal times and events as a sop to the standards and values today, as if these will hold water tomorrow when it’s patent they won’t.
Would it not be healthier and a lot more sane instead, to grow up and embrace the past in all it’s sinister splendor, eyes wide open? Come what may out of the past?
“There was nothing like facing facts. They blew in the face hard, like a stiff, exhilarating, decidedly gritty breeze, which brought sanity with it, even though sanity might be unwelcome.” – A Dance to the Music of Time, A. Powell.
Classical music faces the same challenge with rotters like Wagner. One has to draw a line somewhere. Death is a good point; the scoundrel can no longer benefit financially from anyone listening to his music.
Ezra Pound comes to mind, among others.
When our heroes fail us it is because they are humans, not monsters. The lesson should not be that they are other. They lesson should be that they are like us, but failed in some respect in their vigilance against the weaknesses that we ourselves are not immune to. That we too are capable of varying degrees of failure in that respect if we don’t keep an eye on our own weaknesses, and correct them when they arise.
The idea that they are inherently evil (and the assumption we ironically share with them that our own self is inherently good) enables us to ignore the weaknesses that might lead us to do terrible things. Placing them in the town square for us all to throw rotten fruit at only distracts us from the fact that we are people who delight in throwing rotten fruit at people given sufficient pretext.
Fans of Gary Glitter have a while longer to wait. But Jacko’s have been free for a while. Odd way of looking at this but it takes all sorts.
I remember a Gary Glitter concert in 1985 or 1986, long before anyone outside his circle suspected anything. At one point he sat on the edge of the stage, not singing, just conducting the audience while we sang ‘D’you wanna be in my gang?’. And we did, then.
But I’m not a fan now and I find his work is tainted.
Perhaps his music just wasn’t good enough to rise above its creator? Unlike Lennon, who was a self-centered narcissistic selfish piece of work to my personal knowledge, but who wrote some really good stuff which will be played for a long time to come.
FREE Gary Glitter! Any man who is not a flaming, fulminating hypocrite will admit the poor chap simply did what any man worth so much as the weight of his own cojones would do – flee from tabloidally mad, mimetically frenzied Britain to SE Asia in search of a quiet, quality liaison.
And for that, you collectively rounded him up and lynched him
Er… With a child?
If one is capable of getting past the magic incantation of the sign “child” for more than one second, one might move beyond the vastly erotic plateau instantly created thereby into the clear-eyed day, and consider that M’sieur Gadd was the client of ambitious persons on the make just like any other vaguely venturesome schmoo..
Bidding good riddance in exchange for guilt-free enjoyment of whatever output, be that music, ideas, literature or art is fine by me. I have seen so many idols bite the dust, Gandhi, Lennon or Einstein come to mind; I draw the line at Jimmy Saville or Cyril Smith.
Phil Spector produced some Classic tracks ”Walkin’ in the Rain” ”Be My baby” ”he’s a rebel” &1963 Christmas Album,however ‘The Wall of Sound” Jackie de shannon produced &Wrote ”Wall of sound” Tracks in spring 1963 ”When You walk in the room” She is largely forgotten she also Wrote the Worldwide 1981 Smash ”Bette Davis eyes” Kim Carnes sang it
I introduced my son (27) to Gene recently. He texted a friend who knows a bit and is a big fan of emo and indie. He’d never heard of them either! But the problem CD in my collection, and it is a good CD,(if your taste stretches to alternative metal/ hard rock) is by The Lost Prophets. Their lead singer is currently doing 29 years for child and baby abuse, a crime proscribed long ago. The rest of the band disbanded. No times-were-different-then excuse for Mr Watkins. Offenders, you hope in a fair world, will be punished for their crimes, but what they have done in another field can and does stand on its own merit.
The bad artist, great art tension has never troubled me that much. In cases like this I totally accept I might feel differently were I a woman, but I’ve just always accepted that most creative geniuses – and probably men in particular – are egocentric assholes of one degree or another. I know Larkin was a racist and Henry Williamson a Nazi sympathiser and DH Lawrence a wife beater, but that doesn’t stop me from appreciating the work.
Good essay. I struggle with these feelings about so much art or music, enjoying the outcome of a persons creative work in spite of the fact they they were a pedophile, rapist, murderer or sometimes just a person who was so loathsome it’s hard to believe they could produce such compelling art.
It’s no secret that great art is born of suffering. Maybe we need to process our shadow side through mediums such as pop music just to be able to face them.
Thanks for the piece – pop music still matters to many of us and you articulate it very well.
I thought Beaumont’s article in NME was fluff, but fairly witty. Agree about Gene, though.
This is a great piece of writing, thank you.
I think it distinctly weird and off-putting that Ditum
claims these works of considerable genius “belonged to her”. It may be intended as figure-of-speech, but frankly, i still think it sucks.
Great piece and purely for the questions it brings up-for me; how has Michael Jackson avoided vilification and why?
There is no container small enough to hold how little I care about this…
What a peculiar comment. Why bother even participating, then?
I read the piece-therefore I “participated”. It is clear that you (and others) do not care about my comment-why bother responding to it?
Oh but we do care about your comment because it is somewhat intriguing that a person should feel compelled to tell the world that they don’t care for a piece of writing without saying anything about the writing or the subject matter.
By all means tell the world why you don’t care about something, giving reasons which might inform a discussion. But to simply say you don’t care about something is somewhat weird because it implies that someone, somewhere, might care that you don’t care, whereas of course nobody does. So why say it?
A interesting psychological study here.
Spot on S. Loon
… leftists can be humour free and very me, me, me …
You seem obsessed with ‘leftists’. Do you want to tell us about it?
Often people post their feelings or thoughts about the matter without going deep, but I will respond. I don’t usually care too much about “downvotes” and disagreements here-it’s a part of the conversation on this good site…but I am surprised at the vehement negative responses to my post. In these discussions I have seen much calumny expressed about: murderers, rapists, misogynists, “bullies”, etc., from all sides of the spectrum: Phil Spector was an elite, wealthy, power-mad and violent, terrifying tyrant and murderer. Yes he was a fine studio producer, but I have witnessed lives forever ruined for far less than what he for so long perpetrated, and I wonder at this…
“Interesting” that you have not responded to “inform the discussion” further…by the way, her name was Lana Clarkson.
Beeeeeecheeeee
more concise than my original, first post…
My thoughts precisely.
… must be a disgruntled Remainer, leftist not waving but”
I’m always impressed by a man who takes the time to possibly read something about a man who did great harm to women but is still celebrated as an icon, and then comment on how little it matters to him.
It mattered enough to post a comment to sneer at how little you care about the history of the celebration of the abuse of women.
And having said that, I always feel the best way for someone to find humanity and empathy internally is to suddenly find themselves deep in the same trauma, with everyone who can stop it caring so little they don’t even bother to comment.