Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Phil Spector Episodes
Aired: 2026-03-31
Duration: 01:20:19


=== Mount Rushmore of Horrible Music (09:26) ===

[00:00:01]  Cool zone media.
[00:00:05]  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, ladies, gentlemen, gentle thems, and all points in between.
[00:00:13]  This is a podcast about the very worst people in all of history.
[00:00:17]  And normally, it's a podcast where I, the host, Robert Evans, read a story about the very worst people in all of history to a guest who generally comes in cold.
[00:00:27]  Not always.
[00:00:28]  Yada yada.
[00:00:28]  We've been doing this eight years.
[00:00:29]  You know, you know the drill, though.
[00:00:31]  You've figured it out by now.
[00:00:32]  Even I know the drill by now.
[00:00:34]  And regular listeners will recognize the voice of my dear friend, Greasy Will, the Grammy Award-winning Greasy Will.
[00:00:43]  Hey, buddy.
[00:00:45]  What's up?
[00:00:46]  How's it going?
[00:00:47]  I'm very excited to be here because today we are going to flip the rolls there.
[00:00:54]  And that's right.
[00:00:55]  And I'm going to tell you about somebody who's very near and dear to my heart, a bastard of the music industry.
[00:01:01]  And I'm very excited about this.
[00:01:04]  I have a question first.
[00:01:07]  Yeah.
[00:01:08]  Yeah.
[00:01:09]  Greasy Will, who I love, my buddy.
[00:01:12]  Do you know where this is being streamed right now?
[00:01:15]  Oh, are we on Netflix?
[00:01:17]  We're on Netflix.
[00:01:19]  Yeah.
[00:01:19]  Our good buddy Greasy Will here, the second we announced that we were going to be streaming video episodes on Netflix, commented sellouts.
[00:01:27]  So what does that make you?
[00:01:30]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:01:31]  My friend of 15 years.
[00:01:32]  Look, when I was a kid, being a sellout was an insult.
[00:01:36]  But now, as an adult, the world that we're in, being a sellout just means you're successful.
[00:01:40]  You know, like it's exciting for me.
[00:01:43]  Just means you get to buy the good produce.
[00:01:45]  Are there other ways I made money in the past that I might have preferred more?
[00:01:49]  Are there different ways to, you know, this is the future we've been given.
[00:01:53]  Look.
[00:01:54]  Look, you're talking to a guy who, all right, so I have a course, a recording course that I made.
[00:01:59]  And recently I posted this ad that I had made with a high-quality camera, like the one you're viewing me on right now.
[00:02:05]  If you are in fact viewing me, I with a high-quality camera, and all the comments were people like, Greasy and high death is weird.
[00:02:12]  I don't like it.
[00:02:13]  So welcome to our lives.
[00:02:19]  Like, I do not do high-quality in anything I do in music.
[00:02:23]  I mean, in anything.
[00:02:25]  It's perfect, Will, because I've reached the peak of my success as a professional in an audio medium.
[00:02:33]  And you also reached the peak of your success as a professional in an audio medium.
[00:02:37]  Yes.
[00:02:38]  And the powers that be in their wisdom decided we got to put these guys on TV.
[00:02:45]  People need to see their faces for some reason.
[00:02:48]  I don't know.
[00:02:49]  When we moved to Netflix, a surprising number of people were just based on confusion or based on the fact that it changed from YouTube.
[00:02:56]  We're like, I didn't realize that many people were watching the podcast.
[00:03:01]  Right.
[00:03:03]  We have, we've been working on it.
[00:03:04]  We have gotten it to where audio episodes of the show are back on YouTube music.
[00:03:09]  So if you listen to the show that way, I know there was confusion and things got disrupted there for a while.
[00:03:15]  But from now on, that should be normal.
[00:03:18]  And initially, a lot of our international viewers were cut out because it was Netflix wasn't letting, it wasn't, our show wasn't available internationally.
[00:03:27]  Dim region-specific broadcasts.
[00:03:29]  Yeah.
[00:03:30]  Now our show is available on most of the places that Netflix serves.
[00:03:34]  Worldwide baby minus Vietnam and Korea for reasons I don't know.
[00:03:39]  So the Aussies out there, you can watch now if you've got Netflix.
[00:03:44]  I don't know.
[00:03:44]  Again, 90% of the audience listens because it's a fucking podcast.
[00:03:49]  So hopefully none of this should be changing for most of you.
[00:03:53]  Yeah.
[00:03:54]  Who are we hearing about today, Will?
[00:03:56]  What piece of shit are you going to tell me about?
[00:03:58]  I know, but.
[00:03:59]  All right.
[00:03:59]  So let me ask you this.
[00:04:00]  Let me ask you this first.
[00:04:02]  If you had a Mount Rushmore of horrible music people, right?
[00:04:06]  Like whoever you could think of, who's your George Washington?
[00:04:12]  It's got to be Michael Jackson because Michael's the perfect mix of that man's music.
[00:04:16]  You simply can't cut his music out of popular culture and have it make sense.
[00:04:20]  There's too big a gap.
[00:04:21]  Like the impact he made is there and a bunch of his music is immortal.
[00:04:26]  And also definitely raped a bunch of kids.
[00:04:29]  Ton of kids.
[00:04:31]  Just like my peak bastard, maybe.
[00:04:33]  Yeah.
[00:04:34]  I can give my four.
[00:04:35]  Yeah, go ahead, Sophie.
[00:04:36]  My four: Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, P. Diddy, and the subject of this episode.
[00:04:45]  That's it.
[00:04:46]  All right.
[00:04:46]  So I'm going to tell y'all, I don't think the subject of my episode makes it on the bastards Mount Rushmore fires.
[00:04:55]  And here's why.
[00:04:56]  Here's why.
[00:04:57]  Because you want to hear, because number one is Ian Watkins.
[00:05:01]  Do you guys know who Ian Watkins is?
[00:05:02]  No.
[00:05:03]  No.
[00:05:04]  Ian Watkins was recently just actually, I was going to bring this up even before, but Ian Watkins was recently murdered in prison because they don't like those types of people who do those things to infants.
[00:05:16]  Oh.
[00:05:17]  Infants.
[00:05:18]  He was the singer.
[00:05:19]  That tells me a lot.
[00:05:21]  Yeah, he was the singer of Lost Prophets.
[00:05:23]  And it's interesting about this guy.
[00:05:25]  Yes.
[00:05:26]  So it was interesting that you, because I do have a question, and my overall thesis in discussing this person is when is it bad enough to cut somebody out?
[00:05:35]  And when does their music overshadow the big, the big picture, right?
[00:05:40]  Because we so often in the music industry, we will give people weird passes.
[00:05:46]  Weird people get weird passes just because they're good at something.
[00:05:50]  You know, they're good at making noise.
[00:05:52]  That's kind of ridiculous to me.
[00:05:54]  I do not think that makes a lot of sense.
[00:05:56]  But people really love noise.
[00:05:58]  So you're allowed to molest 15-year-olds.
[00:06:00]  Yes.
[00:06:01]  Yes.
[00:06:01]  Or younger.
[00:06:02]  So our subject today is somebody who I think is horrible.
[00:06:06]  And you will hear a lot of evidence to back that up.
[00:06:12]  Yes.
[00:06:12]  But our subject today is Phil Specter.
[00:06:16]  Phil Specter.
[00:06:18]  Do you know about Phil Specter at all?
[00:06:20]  Like, what do you know, Robert?
[00:06:22]  Here's how much I know about Phil Specter.
[00:06:23]  In order to even listen to this podcast, I had to make sure I had a gun on me.
[00:06:28]  Like, Christ, Robert.
[00:06:30]  Because I know Phil's bringing one.
[00:06:32]  Yes.
[00:06:33]  Yeah.
[00:06:33]  Phil is definitely bringing a gun to the party for sure.
[00:06:37]  Okay.
[00:06:38]  All right.
[00:06:38]  Let's do it.
[00:06:39]  This will be our episode today.
[00:06:42]  We're going to talk about Phil Specter.
[00:06:43]  Boom.
[00:06:44]  Cold open.
[00:06:44]  Done.
[00:06:45]  We did it.
[00:06:45]  We're done.
[00:06:46]  We're opened coldly.
[00:06:47]  Look at you.
[00:06:48]  Prettiest girl at the party.
[00:06:50]  I love it.
[00:06:54]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:06:56]  Guaranteed human.
[00:06:59]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:07:07]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:07:09]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:07:11]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:07:13]  We always say: trust your girlfriends.
[00:07:18]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:07:20]  Trust me, babe.
[00:07:20]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:07:30]  What's up, everyone?
[00:07:31]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:07:32]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:07:36]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:07:39]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:07:41]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:07:48]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:07:50]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:07:58]  It would not be that.
[00:08:00]  There's a lot of life.
[00:08:02]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:08:09]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:08:16]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:08:20]  I doctored the test once.
[00:08:22]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:08:26]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:08:29]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Rancini.
[00:08:31]  My mind was blown.
[00:08:32]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:08:34]  This is Love Trapped.
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[00:08:37]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:08:42]  Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:08:49]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[00:08:52]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:08:54]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:08:54]  Jeffrey Wilkinson.
[00:08:55]  A shocking public murder.
[00:08:57]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:09:03]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:09:05]  Those are shots.
[00:09:07]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[00:09:09]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[00:09:14]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:09:27]  All right.

=== Generational Trauma and Family Secrets (16:01) ===

[00:09:28]  Are you guys ready to hear about Phil Specter?
[00:09:32]  I was born ready.
[00:09:34]  Well, actually, I was born bloody with the cord wrapped around my neck, but also ready.
[00:09:40]  Were you, in fact, a cord baby?
[00:09:42]  That explains a lot, I think.
[00:09:44]  I don't remember.
[00:09:45]  I was in labor for like 70 hours.
[00:09:47]  Something was wrong with me.
[00:09:48]  My God.
[00:09:49]  I think I was.
[00:09:51]  Yeah, she had a chip on her shoulder about that.
[00:09:55]  It might have just been 48 hours.
[00:09:57]  It was like a long time.
[00:09:59]  And in perfect comparison of our relationship, my mom was in labor with me for less than an hour.
[00:10:07]  I think my mom had me inside of the back of a pickup truck, but I don't know.
[00:10:13]  Like a camper, maybe?
[00:10:14]  I think you are one of my friends most likely to be born inside of a pickup truck.
[00:10:19]  Oh my God.
[00:10:20]  I say it's an honor.
[00:10:22]  So first off, I want to say this is why I picked Phil Specter because I am personally a very big fan of his work.
[00:10:32]  It has informed a lot of my work as a musician, as a producer, as an engineer.
[00:10:36]  I love Phil Spector's work.
[00:10:38]  To me, it was so groundbreaking for the time for many reasons.
[00:10:43]  And there's a lot of future of music that came from where he was at, you know?
[00:10:49]  And I like to do that game of like, oh, well, I like the Beatles and the Beatles were really influenced by like what Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were doing.
[00:10:57]  And Brian Wilson loved Phil Specter, right?
[00:11:01]  And so it's like, if you are a Beatles fan, you not only have heard Phil Specter's work, you've also been influenced by him indirectly through them loving, you know, the chain of command that went away.
[00:11:18]  Right, right.
[00:11:19]  Right.
[00:11:19]  Or chain of custody.
[00:11:20]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:21]  Yes, yes.
[00:11:22]  So Harvey Phillips Specter, his name was not Phil originally Harvey.
[00:11:26]  Harvey was his name.
[00:11:27]  Harvey Phillips Specter was born on December 26, 1939 in the Bronx, New York.
[00:11:33]  That's at least what the birth records say.
[00:11:36]  His mom claimed that he was born on Christmas Day because she honestly and truly, I think, maybe believed that he was the second coming of Christ.
[00:11:46]  That was actually like, she was smart.
[00:11:51]  Really, really like into it.
[00:11:53]  So He had an older sister, Shirley, and an older brother who died just days after being born, who was born just before him, which is a bit why he got the ultimate Jewish mother protection system going on over him for his whole childhood.
[00:12:11]  Yeah, so he is, he is wrapped up.
[00:12:13]  There's a wall between him and the real world.
[00:12:16]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:12:17]  Absolutely.
[00:12:18]  There are unconfirmed theories regarding Specter's extended family structure.
[00:12:23]  Some biographical accounts suggest his parents may have been closely related, possibly even first cousins, though this has never been definitively proven, but he said it all the time.
[00:12:34]  He would tell people this.
[00:12:35]  He'd be like, my parents were cousins.
[00:12:37]  I was like, all right.
[00:12:38]  Like, I guess randomly at like lunch on a Tuesday or something, he's bringing this stuff up.
[00:12:43]  Cool story, brother.
[00:12:44]  Yeah.
[00:12:45]  Yeah.
[00:12:46]  What is well documented is that both sides of his family were Jewish immigrants whose families fled.
[00:12:52]  Let's take a break real quick.
[00:12:53]  Robert, you want to play guess the country his Jewish relatives had to escape in the late 1800s to early 1900s?
[00:13:01]  I'm going to go with Poland.
[00:13:05]  Oh, so close.
[00:13:06]  Very close.
[00:13:07]  Very close.
[00:13:09]  We don't know exactly, but probably Belarus or Belarus.
[00:13:12]  Yeah, yeah, or Ukraine to Ukraine.
[00:13:15]  Okay.
[00:13:15]  It's possible.
[00:13:16]  So you're in the right, the right area.
[00:13:18]  A lot of people who are like, I don't know exactly what country they were in, in part because it was several countries over the period of time they lived there.
[00:13:27]  That's literally the description that's most often given is Eastern Europe.
[00:13:31]  They fled Eastern Europe.
[00:13:33]  They lived under three or four governments.
[00:13:35]  Yeah.
[00:13:36]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:13:37]  So, you know, this is a very classic early 1900s American tale of, you know, Jewish immigrant families leaving their country because of the anti-Semitic pogroms going on and then coming to America, settling in New York in a very Jewish neighborhood or being surrounded by other Jews who had escaped these same situations.
[00:13:59]  So obviously some generational trauma going on for sure to start off and also family trauma and also some questionable things going on with his mother already, you know, as far as her mental stability is.
[00:14:16]  So as a child, Specter was described as overweight and physically fragile.
[00:14:21]  He struggled with recurring health problems and was often encouraged to stay indoors rather than participate in sports or outdoor activities.
[00:14:28]  He developed a strong dislike for beaches, athletics, and physical competition and any environment where he felt exposed and inadequate.
[00:14:36]  Over time, his body changed.
[00:14:38]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:40]  He hates beaches.
[00:14:41]  He hates beaches.
[00:14:42]  That's my favorite tidbit of that whole thing.
[00:14:45]  He's like, yeah, you know what I hate?
[00:14:47]  I hate beach.
[00:14:48]  You are not Ken, Phil Spector.
[00:14:50]  Your job is not beach.
[00:14:51]  Okay.
[00:14:52]  No, no joke.
[00:14:54]  Like multiple times throughout any of the biographies that you read about him, it's brought up that he doesn't like beaches, specifically beaches.
[00:15:02]  He's like, oh yeah, Phil wouldn't go to Venice because there was a beach close by.
[00:15:05]  Like he was like mad about it.
[00:15:06]  All right, bro.
[00:15:10]  As he entered adolescent, he lost weight dramatically and he became notably small and slight in stature.
[00:15:14]  Instead of solving his insecurities, this transformation reinforced them.
[00:15:18]  He remained physically unimposing, ill-suited for sports, and deeply self-conscious about his appearance and masculinity.
[00:15:25]  As an adult, he would always joke that like when they were picking sports teams that he was, he wanted to be the manager.
[00:15:30]  I'm the manager of the team today, you know, like right from, because he's like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to play sports.
[00:15:36]  This is ridiculous.
[00:15:37]  What a weird little guy.
[00:15:39]  When Phil was nine years old, his father, Benjamin Specter, died by suicide.
[00:15:44]  Ooh.
[00:15:46]  Yeah.
[00:15:47]  We are going to have some classic bastard style empathy to start off our show today.
[00:15:53]  That's tough.
[00:15:54]  That's tough.
[00:15:54]  He's having a difficult start of things.
[00:15:56]  Yeah.
[00:15:57]  Yes, he's had it.
[00:15:57]  He's had it rough.
[00:15:58]  I'm sure this won't make him a monster.
[00:16:02]  Spoiler alert.
[00:16:05]  His dad killed himself.
[00:16:06]  So basically the story is his dad left the factory.
[00:16:09]  He was like a metal worker and he left the factory and started driving home and just parked a couple blocks away, put a hose in his tailpipe and started sucking on some carbon monoxide fumes in his in his car.
[00:16:25]  And they don't know, they don't really even know why he did it.
[00:16:28]  Like he had financial stress, but he decided he was done.
[00:16:32]  Yeah, it was the right time for that to be a normal thing, you know?
[00:16:36]  Yeah.
[00:16:38]  Financial stress, business failures, depression, they've all been cited, possible mental illness as well.
[00:16:42]  Like there seems to be a very strong prevalence of that in Phil's life.
[00:16:48]  Whatever the cause, the event shattered the whole family, right?
[00:16:52]  So Bertha Specter becomes the central force in Phil's life, tightening her grip on her son's emotional and developmental trajectory.
[00:16:59]  Alongside her was Phil's older sister, Shirley, who would exhibit as much control of his issues over Phil as his mother did.
[00:17:06]  Both of them would emotionally abuse Phil often.
[00:17:08]  His mother would often disparage his father and blame young Phil for his death.
[00:17:13]  So she's like over there.
[00:17:14]  Great.
[00:17:14]  Like, your dad killed himself because of you.
[00:17:17]  Before you, he was happy, and then you came along and then he killed himself.
[00:17:21]  And that's the best thing for kids, right?
[00:17:23]  Giving them that sense of agency and control.
[00:17:26]  No, you killed your dad and you can do anything you put your mind to, including kill your parents, which you already did.
[00:17:34]  Right?
[00:17:35]  Yeah.
[00:17:36]  Very impressive, bro.
[00:17:37]  I couldn't kill my parents.
[00:17:41]  All right.
[00:17:41]  So she treated his father's death as a source of family shame as well, too.
[00:17:46]  So it was like she never told the truth about it to anybody.
[00:17:49]  Like if she met somebody and they're like, oh, oh, he's off in Europe on business or he died in the war.
[00:17:54]  Like she's always like just making up other things and not saying, oh, yeah, he, you know, killed himself or whatever, which I mean, I guess I kind of understand.
[00:18:02]  You know, it's not like I'm like, yeah, dude, my stepmom killed herself, which is facts.
[00:18:06]  You know, I guess I just did announce it to the world.
[00:18:07]  Never mind.
[00:18:12]  So, yeah, obviously not a great start to life.
[00:18:14]  He's small.
[00:18:15]  He's frail.
[00:18:15]  He's his dad kills himself.
[00:18:17]  His mom and his sister are both super possessive and controlling over him.
[00:18:20]  Pretty bastardsy start to the story.
[00:18:24]  Not long after Benjamin's death, Bertha relocated the family across the country to Los Angeles.
[00:18:29]  This is where Phil decides he absolutely hates being called Harvey and he starts going by his middle name, Phil.
[00:18:35]  Cool.
[00:18:35]  All right.
[00:18:36]  The move placed them in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Fairfax, which this is just a stupid little aside, but all the kids called it, like in the neighborhoods called it Fairy Facts because it was like the weakest school around.
[00:18:48]  They were like, so he's like the, he's like the weakest kid at the weakest school.
[00:18:53]  Right.
[00:18:53]  You know, yeah, they're calling his school.
[00:18:55]  They're basically calling his school gay in like the parlance of the times, right?
[00:18:58]  Which was absolutely not true when I was in high school because Fairfax beat our ass at basketball.
[00:19:05]  Well, it's good to hear that they, I don't know.
[00:19:07]  I don't know if it's true.
[00:19:08]  Turns out money does something long term.
[00:19:12]  Shocking.
[00:19:13]  So Phil struggled to make friends outside his small circle of family and school acquaintances, and he remained socially awkward and intensely sensitive and deeply dependent on maternal approval, obviously, on account of his mom and the way she is.
[00:19:27]  Yeah, the mommy issues.
[00:19:29]  His only advancement into social normacy came as a result of his musicianship.
[00:19:33]  He was said to be able to play any song that you heard on the radio.
[00:19:37]  He'd hear it on the radio and could play it immediately.
[00:19:40]  Like he could just start playing along before the song even finished, right?
[00:19:45]  During this time, Phil found himself his first real girlfriend, a girl named Donna Cass.
[00:19:50]  Donna believed, Donna recalled Phil being very intelligent, but intensely possessive.
[00:19:54]  He would call to places he believed she was and question the people there about her whereabouts.
[00:19:59]  And when he found her, he would grill her about what she'd been doing, right?
[00:20:03]  She said she believes this was his nature because it was what Bertha and Shirley did to him whenever he was at home, right?
[00:20:12]  She said, this is from Breaking Down the Wall of Sound.
[00:20:14]  By the way, this will be my primary source for almost everything.
[00:20:17]  Nick Brown wrote an amazing book, Breaking Down the Wall of Sound.
[00:20:21]  It's really, really good.
[00:20:22]  We'll touch on some stuff about it later.
[00:20:24]  But that and Ronnie Specter's book, which was Be My Baby, which is amazing.
[00:20:31]  I highly recommend reading the audio or hearing the audio book of that because it's narrated by Rosie Perez, which is amazing to listen to Rosie Perez narrate this whole story because she's like, you know, she's like, she's Rosie's thoughts.
[00:20:45]  You know, she's got that whole thing.
[00:20:46]  It's amazing.
[00:20:47]  It's really good.
[00:20:48]  Yeah.
[00:20:49]  From Breaking Down the Wall of Sound, quote, to Donna, it was as if Bertha and Shirley saw her as a rival for Phil's affections who was trying to steal him away from them.
[00:20:59]  She says, I always felt they were in love with him or something.
[00:21:02]  They treated him like he was a god.
[00:21:05]  They protected him and they wanted to protect him from me.
[00:21:08]  Weird.
[00:21:09]  So, so this is like 15, 16 years old.
[00:21:13]  He's already intense, like they barely even had phones.
[00:21:16]  And this dude is calling around, checking on his girlfriend everywhere she goes and like making sure her story matches at like, you know, like 15, right?
[00:21:26]  Unhinged.
[00:21:27]  I think it's, you know, yeah, well, and here's the thing.
[00:21:30]  This is something that I think is interesting.
[00:21:32]  A lot of musicians are weirdos, right?
[00:21:34]  It's like there's a certain thing that goes along with being a weirdo and being like that kind of musical genius that people can like, that you can hear a song and, you know, and play it the first time you hear it, right?
[00:21:46]  There's something that's like kind of hand in hand with the two personalities that kind of seem to go together a lot of times.
[00:21:52]  So it's not weird to be weird, right?
[00:21:54]  It's not weird to be small.
[00:21:55]  It's not weird to be skinny.
[00:21:57]  It's like, I know a lot of those people in the music industry, but it is weird to be possessive and shitty, you know, and like and treat, you know, and have a pattern against women, which we'll see in this, in this whole thing.
[00:22:12]  So during his teenage years in Los Angeles, Specter became obsessed with guitarist Barney Kessel, one of the most respected and accomplished session musicians working in the recording industry.
[00:22:22]  Kessel was a jazz guitarist, but he'll often go on to play pop hits of the day and eventually became part of the legendary wrecking crew.
[00:22:28]  If you know about Hollywood music in this time, the wrecking crew is everything.
[00:22:32]  They played on every single song in the late 50s and early 60s, all the way to the 70s, pretty much.
[00:22:38]  They were the band you heard in the back of it.
[00:22:41]  So Phil respected him both for his mastery of jazz and his seamless transition to other genres.
[00:22:46]  At one point, Specter was given the opportunity to meet his idol.
[00:22:50]  The meeting did not unfold as he had imagined.
[00:22:53]  Bertha, his mother, insisted on accompanying him.
[00:22:56]  During the conversation with his idol, yeah, Bertha, she does it, man.
[00:23:01]  During the conversation, she begins questioning Kessel about career prospects, financial stability, practical viability, like a career in music, all this stuff.
[00:23:10]  It's like, like, yeah, he's like, he's there.
[00:23:12]  He's like, yeah, dude, I get to meet this guitarist, this legend.
[00:23:15]  And she's like, well, what's the money like in the job?
[00:23:17]  You know, like, she's just taking over control of this whole conversation.
[00:23:22]  And Phil's just so embarrassed.
[00:23:25]  Like, this goes from being like, oh, I get to meet my hero in music to like, I'm just really embarrassed.
[00:23:32]  I'm really embarrassed that I'm sitting here having this conversation.
[00:23:35]  And this is just, this is his mom.
[00:23:37]  His mom is in control of his life at all times.
[00:23:40]  He's always, he's always stuck with that.
[00:23:42]  That's, yeah.
[00:23:43]  Okay.
[00:23:44]  I did not realize, like, knowing about like the later stage of Phil Specter's life somewhat, I did not realize he started out dominated by his mom to such an extent.
[00:23:54]  That, yes, that does kind of scan.
[00:23:57]  It does kind of scan.
[00:23:58]  Yeah, you know, I mean, there, it's not always true, right?
[00:24:02]  It's like a lot of times, a lot of times people are just shitty people, right?
[00:24:06]  But a lot of times, if you look into it, it is kind of like when your dad, when you're little, like, oh, he's just beating you up because he's got a shitty home life and he's trying to.
[00:24:13]  So, a lot of sometimes that is true.
[00:24:15]  Sometimes they're just bullies, you know, but sometimes they just got a shitty home life and they're dealing with something that you can't possibly understand.
[00:24:22]  Um, so by the mid-1950s, Specter began forming musical groups with classmates and neighborhood friends.
[00:24:30]  Uh, eventually, he helped create a vocal trio called the Teddy Bears, consisting of Phil, Annette Kleinbard, and Marshall Lee.
[00:24:36]  Teddy Bears.
[00:24:37]  The group formed the Teddy Bears.
[00:24:40]  Yeah, that's such a 1950s name, too.
[00:24:42]  You know, yeah, it is.
[00:24:44]  Um, so the group formed through teenage friendships.
[00:24:48]  They all went to the same school or whatever, and like they knew each other.
[00:24:51]  And so it was like just a very high school organic situation, right?
[00:24:56]  Uh, but then Phil's sister, Shirley, uh, forced her way into the band as a manager, right?
[00:25:04]  She like immediately is like as soon as they start having any success whatsoever, she forces her way into the whole situation as a manager.
[00:25:13]  And then when Phil's like, no, I don't want you to be in a manager, mom's like, let him be the manager, Phil, you know, like let him down immediately, yeah, immediately, like, takes his sister's side.
[00:25:23]  So, um, and she has no idea what she's doing, of course.
[00:25:26]  So, like, she makes horrible decisions all over the place.
[00:25:29]  She's doing dumb stuff.

=== Luck, Ego, and Secret Outsiders (07:55) ===

[00:25:30]  But Phil is still, he's the architect of this whole thing.
[00:25:33]  And he, he writes this amazing song, right?
[00:25:36]  Um, in 1958, while still in high school, Specter wrote and produced a song titled To Know Him is to Love Him.
[00:25:42]  This is where I'll make my first entry into evidence of Phil was seriously fucked up.
[00:25:46]  Like, I had some fucking that was, he was fucked up, right?
[00:25:49]  But this is where we're going to get into Phil was seriously fucked up.
[00:25:52]  Uh, Sophie, can you show uh Robert the image of the gravestone there?
[00:25:57]  Yep, okay, I'm seeing it.
[00:25:59]  Yeah, Ben Specter, April 20th, 1949, father, husband, 420, baby, yeah, 420, hell yeah, brother.
[00:26:07]  To know him was to love him.
[00:26:09]  What was that?
[00:26:10]  Then the name of Phil's song there was to know him is to love him.
[00:26:15]  Phil, uh, Phil wrote, he doesn't have daddy issues, he's doing good, he's fine, yeah, Phil, Phil wrote a song, and uh, he talks later.
[00:26:25]  He says, This is this song is about death, you know, this is a song about death, and um, nobody noticed because it's framed in the 1950s, kind of, you know, to know, yes, very silly, but he had, you know, nobody else gets it, but if you listen to it, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, you were kind of like a huge fucking hit, yeah, yeah, it was a huge hit, it was a huge hit, it was a very big deal.
[00:26:49]  Um, it became a massive national hit, reaching number one on Billboard charts.
[00:26:54]  Uh, part of its success came from Sidebastard's appearance, Dick Clark, American Bandstand, Side Bastard, yes, that's right, Dick Clark is a side bastard today.
[00:27:07]  I'm not going to get deep into him, but he basically invented Payola.
[00:27:11]  People would pay him to put bands on American Bandstand, and it because of him, like literally, like the that's what got out of control eventually and caused like the biggest, you know, one of the biggest scandals in the music industry for the longest time.
[00:27:24]  It's like you have to pay in order to become successful.
[00:27:28]  Yeah, thanks, dude.
[00:27:29]  Yeah, the pay-to-play deal.
[00:27:30]  Thanks for creating that.
[00:27:32]  Yeah.
[00:27:33]  So, the success was astonishing, right?
[00:27:35]  Given the band's youth, Phil is only 17 at this time.
[00:27:38]  He's a baby, right?
[00:27:41]  So, it's massive.
[00:27:43]  Like Sophie said, it was a number one hit across the country.
[00:27:45]  It was a huge song.
[00:27:47]  Even today, it's still like a kind of a big song.
[00:27:50]  Like that, I looked it up, it had like a couple hundred million streams or something.
[00:27:53]  It was insane.
[00:27:54]  Yeah, this experience kind of cemented because he was the architect of this whole thing.
[00:27:59]  He was the boss of this whole situation.
[00:28:02]  So, this kind of cemented like his dominance in the studio.
[00:28:06]  This is what made him want to, he was the producer on it at 17 years old.
[00:28:10]  You have a number one hit in the country.
[00:28:12]  Your ego is probably going to go a little bit.
[00:28:16]  It's certainly not so.
[00:28:18]  Um, but this is where I'm going to hit item number two of Phil Specter was seriously fucked up.
[00:28:23]  But before you do that, as the boss and the producer of this podcast, you know what time it is.
[00:28:28]  Oh, shit.
[00:28:28]  It is advertising for some advertising.
[00:28:31]  And you know what?
[00:28:32]  None of our sponsors did is raise Phil Specter.
[00:28:37]  I feel confident saying that.
[00:28:38]  None of our advertisers helped raise Phil Spector.
[00:28:42]  Fairly certain.
[00:28:43]  I believe it.
[00:28:44]  I was really curious where you were going with that.
[00:28:46]  Yeah.
[00:28:51]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:28:55]  Rule one: never mess with a country girl.
[00:28:59]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:29:02]  And rule two: never mess with her friends either.
[00:29:05]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:29:09]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:29:15]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:29:20]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:29:22]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:29:23]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:29:25]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:29:28]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:29:30]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:29:32]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:29:37]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:29:38]  Trust me, babe.
[00:29:39]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:29:49]  What's up, everyone?
[00:29:50]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:29:51]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:29:59]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:30:02]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:30:06]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:30:10]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:30:13]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:30:17]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:30:22]  Yeah.
[00:30:22]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:30:25]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:30:27]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:30:35]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:30:38]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:30:45]  Yeah, it would not be right.
[00:30:47]  It wouldn't be that.
[00:30:48]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:30:50]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:31:00]  10-10 shots five, city hall building.
[00:31:03]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:31:07]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach: murder at City Hall.
[00:31:13]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:31:15]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:31:16]  Jeffrey Hood did it.
[00:31:17]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:31:24]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:31:27]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:31:35]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:31:38]  A shocking public murder.
[00:31:39]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:31:41]  Those are shots.
[00:31:43]  A charismatic politician.
[00:31:45]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:31:47]  I still have a weapon, and I could shoot you.
[00:31:53]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:31:54]  He alleged he was a victim of flatmail.
[00:31:57]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:31:59]  That may have been about sex.
[00:32:01]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:32:05]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:32:12]  I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:32:17]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:32:24]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
[00:32:31]  From power to parenthood.
[00:32:33]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:32:36]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:32:38]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:32:41]  The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
[00:32:45]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:32:52]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:32:54]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:33:00]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:33:02]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:33:05]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:33:18]  And we're back.
[00:33:19]  Ah, boy, I sure love those ads from, I don't know, probably the Portland Police Bureau and then some AI company.

=== Whiskey Ads and Bathroom Breaks (09:46) ===

[00:33:25]  No.
[00:33:26]  I wish you'd get sponsored by a whiskey company.
[00:33:28]  That would be nice.
[00:33:29]  I know.
[00:33:29]  I wish I'll take your whiskey.
[00:33:32]  I'll tell people to drink it.
[00:33:33]  I have no problem telling people, you know, to drink.
[00:33:37]  There's no health consequences to that.
[00:33:39]  You know, it's a lot healthier than gambling.
[00:33:42]  I actually tried, like, I was doing social media for a little while where I was doing cocktails with Greasy, like as a thing, hoping like some company would be like, hey, this guy's doing alcohol content.
[00:33:52]  Some liquor?
[00:33:52]  Yeah.
[00:33:53]  Didn't work though.
[00:33:54]  That was the only reason to do it.
[00:33:55]  I literally just was like, oh, some free booze, you know, like, let's subsidize this control.
[00:34:00]  You're just, you're just throwing out like a fishing line and hoping a brand picks up so you can drink for free.
[00:34:06]  That's all I've ever wanted.
[00:34:07]  That's how the internet works now.
[00:34:11]  All right.
[00:34:11]  Where are we?
[00:34:12]  All right.
[00:34:13]  So while on tour, Spectre was allegedly cornered by hostile individuals who mocked and humiliated him.
[00:34:21]  What are they talking about?
[00:34:22]  Hold up.
[00:34:23]  Being short, being a nerd, being short and nerdy.
[00:34:27]  I mean, I'm assuming.
[00:34:28]  I'm still old enough that just being short and having glasses will cause you some serious shit.
[00:34:33]  Yeah.
[00:34:34]  So keep in mind, too, like, this is important.
[00:34:37]  He at adulthood was probably only like five foot three.
[00:34:41]  Like he did not.
[00:34:44]  He was real little, right?
[00:34:46]  So like, we don't know if this story is true.
[00:34:50]  It's very mythological bullshit type stuff, but we don't know if this story is true.
[00:34:54]  But it absolutely, if it is true, it makes a lot of sense about who he would later become.
[00:35:01]  He was physically restrained and urinated on during the encounter.
[00:35:07]  The precise details vary depending on the source.
[00:35:10]  And it's like kind of multiple biographies reference it.
[00:35:13]  He said it.
[00:35:13]  He told this story later on.
[00:35:16]  He gets like ganged up on by a bunch of guys outside of a show who are making fun of him because he's a short little nerd and they like hold him down and piss on him, it sounds like.
[00:35:25]  I think he's in the bathroom when it happens.
[00:35:28]  Like he goes in to go to the bathroom after a show and they like attack him in the bathroom or whatever.
[00:35:32]  It's very like 90s like teen high school movie type situation.
[00:35:37]  Yeah.
[00:35:37]  Yeah.
[00:35:38]  It's very strange.
[00:35:39]  Cherry type deal if Heathers or something like that.
[00:35:41]  That's intense bullying.
[00:35:43]  Yeah.
[00:35:43]  They're pissing on you.
[00:35:45]  Yeah.
[00:35:46]  If the story is accurate, it appears to have deeply scarred him.
[00:35:50]  Yeah, that's good.
[00:35:51]  Yeah.
[00:35:52]  That's pretty bad.
[00:35:53]  Yeah.
[00:35:53]  Especially when you think, like, imagine where he's at in this whole situation.
[00:35:57]  Like, he thinks he's made it.
[00:36:00]  Like, he's on top of the world.
[00:36:01]  He's got a number one hit on him.
[00:36:02]  He's got it.
[00:36:02]  Right.
[00:36:03]  He's got money.
[00:36:04]  He's got success.
[00:36:05]  People all over the country are seeing him come to see him play shows.
[00:36:08]  And he just goes to the bathroom, like walking off stage probably one night and he gets jumped in the bathroom and pissed on.
[00:36:15]  Like that's yikes.
[00:36:17]  Yeah, that'll be a number on you.
[00:36:19]  I don't think that's going to make him a better guy.
[00:36:21]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:36:22]  Definitely not going to make him a nice person.
[00:36:25]  All right.
[00:36:26]  So despite the group's success, fractures quickly appeared within the teddy bears.
[00:36:29]  Annette Kleinbard used her earnings from the hit record to purchase a car.
[00:36:33]  And not long afterwards, she was involved in a serious accident that left her hospitalized for an extended period.
[00:36:39]  So she gets a bunch of money.
[00:36:41]  She gets a nice car.
[00:36:43]  She drives out to her.
[00:36:44]  One of those 50-60s cars that just, it's steel.
[00:36:47]  There's no seatbelts.
[00:36:50]  All of the force of the impact is transferred to you.
[00:36:52]  Yeah.
[00:36:53]  We're probably predating like the National Traffic Safety Board, like requiring seatbelts by like 20 years at this point.
[00:37:00]  I feel like, yeah, I don't know when.
[00:37:03]  So she gets in this horrible accident.
[00:37:05]  And this is kind of the nail in the coffin for the group.
[00:37:08]  But, you know, she's, Annette says that well, she's in the hospital.
[00:37:12]  She gets in this horrible accident.
[00:37:13]  And Phil doesn't call her or come by or anything.
[00:37:15]  He just, that's it.
[00:37:17]  That's just the end.
[00:37:18]  She just, he just leaves.
[00:37:19]  He just goes away and that's it.
[00:37:21]  There's no band anymore.
[00:37:22]  You know, so they're like high school friends.
[00:37:24]  This is very strange, you know, to like to get this, you know, this far successful with your high school friends.
[00:37:31]  And there's no incident.
[00:37:32]  It's not like they didn't get along or anything like that.
[00:37:35]  They were all friends.
[00:37:37]  And then he was just like, deuces, I'm out of here.
[00:37:40]  Do you think it feels like she could no longer provide use to him?
[00:37:43]  You think it was something like that?
[00:37:45]  Or we really can't even speculate.
[00:37:47]  I think you're right on the path, Sophie.
[00:37:50]  I think you will find as we continue on, anytime somebody stops serving their usefulness to him, Phil is done with them.
[00:37:59]  He just wipes them from his life.
[00:38:01]  Very transactional.
[00:38:03]  Which, spoiler alert, is the next person we're going to talk about, Lester Sill.
[00:38:06]  Lester Sill, this is right after this time or during this time.
[00:38:11]  This is when he made friends and a partnership with Lester Sill.
[00:38:14]  Lester Sill was a decorated World War II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
[00:38:19]  He made his way into the music industry after that.
[00:38:21]  And despite what you'd think, actually, the nicest guy.
[00:38:24]  Everybody's like, oh, dude, as soon as he walks in the room, he's the best, man.
[00:38:28]  I love this guy.
[00:38:29]  You know, like, this is like, this is like.
[00:38:32]  If you live through the Battle of the Bulge, it's hard to get bent out of shape about the little things.
[00:38:39]  One would assume, but also, I've met a lot of very disgruntled war veterans in my time.
[00:38:46]  And I've been like, God, why are you guys so mad, bro?
[00:38:49]  Just like, I don't know, get an addiction that helps out or something.
[00:38:53]  I don't know.
[00:38:54]  Right.
[00:38:54]  Get an addiction.
[00:38:55]  That's always my advice to people.
[00:38:59]  So Lester took a liking to Phil and assumed a fatherly role in his life.
[00:39:04]  So he like really does step into Phil's life.
[00:39:07]  Him and Bertha and Phil start having problems at home.
[00:39:10]  He lets Phil move in with him, you know.
[00:39:13]  He gives him connections.
[00:39:15]  He introduces him to people.
[00:39:16]  He tells everybody, this is this killer producer, Phil.
[00:39:20]  Like he's just like helping him out anywhere.
[00:39:21]  And he even sends him to Phoenix, I believe it was, to meet Lee Hazelwood.
[00:39:27]  Lee Hazelwood at this time is a really successful writer.
[00:39:29]  He would later go on to write these boots are made for walking, which is my girl.
[00:39:35]  My girl Nancy Sinatra.
[00:39:37]  Oh, she's so beautiful.
[00:39:38]  That's one of the finest achievements of our species.
[00:39:41]  Yeah.
[00:39:41]  Love that song.
[00:39:43]  So he sends him to hang out with Lee Hazelwood and Lee Hazelwood hates him.
[00:39:49]  Lee Hazelwood is like, this motherfucker won't stop asking questions.
[00:39:53]  He's always like doing stuff.
[00:39:55]  He's like, he's weird and he's just always around me and I don't like him.
[00:39:59]  And he tells him, never bring him back to my studio.
[00:40:02]  I never want to see that guy again.
[00:40:03]  Wow.
[00:40:04]  Okay.
[00:40:05]  So, so this is the kind of seems like a pattern as we'll start to like emerge here is that like either you love Phil or you are like, I can't do that.
[00:40:16]  Yeah.
[00:40:17]  Yeah.
[00:40:17]  Like, yeah, that guy's the worst.
[00:40:20]  So after this, he moves on to a relationship with another girl.
[00:40:23]  So he breaks up with Donna Cass or whatever.
[00:40:25]  He moves on to a relationship with another girl, Lynn Castle, but it was short-lived as she couldn't stand his incessant interrogations.
[00:40:32]  This quote, his behavior got too friggin' crazy, too absolutely crazy.
[00:40:37]  Where are you?
[00:40:38]  What are you doing?
[00:40:38]  Where are you going?
[00:40:39]  Controlling.
[00:40:41]  Yeah, that sounds right.
[00:40:42]  So this is clearly a pattern.
[00:40:45]  He is absolutely controlling.
[00:40:48]  He's like definitely trying to like.
[00:40:51]  That's basically what I knew about Phil Specter going into this is that he was like super controlling in his professional and personal relationships.
[00:40:58]  Yeah.
[00:40:58]  That's kind of all I knew.
[00:41:00]  And that is, that is exactly it.
[00:41:02]  And we'll, we'll, we'll get more into like this professional side of this too, but it is, uh, it is alarming early, you know?
[00:41:09]  And like Sophie, we, we, we brought this up earlier.
[00:41:11]  It's like, it's like letting people get away with stuff and how long can they get away with it, you know?
[00:41:17]  And yeah.
[00:41:17]  And it seems like, I mean, it's the 50s.
[00:41:20]  So let's be fair.
[00:41:20]  Like this is still the time where, or like early 60s, this is definitely the time where like like jokes on TV were like, your wife is talking too much.
[00:41:29]  Give her the old one four in the eye, you know?
[00:41:32]  Like, right, right.
[00:41:33]  You know, like the honeymooners are like actively like like to the moon.
[00:41:37]  I'm going to punch you.
[00:41:38]  Yeah, bang zoom straight to it.
[00:41:40]  It's like an aspect of like, yeah, because it's just like so common and universal at the time, right?
[00:41:45]  So nice to hear somebody else do an old-timey voice besides Robert because Robert's is so good.
[00:41:50]  Straight to the moon, Alice.
[00:41:52]  That's not even a good accent.
[00:41:54]  I don't know.
[00:41:54]  I love it.
[00:41:55]  Archie Bunker's shit.
[00:41:56]  It's great.
[00:41:57]  You were doing your best.
[00:41:58]  It is two different, it's interesting, the two different kinds of reactions to, oh, I keep like doing things I'm not supposed to be doing and I haven't gotten in trouble yet.
[00:42:08]  Because like the two reactions are the one, the one I have had about things that I won't talk about on air, where at a certain point, more than whatever the statute of limitations is ago, I was like, I'm going to stop doing this.
[00:42:20]  Done this too many times.
[00:42:21]  I'm not going to keep taking this risk anymore.
[00:42:23]  Like I've gotten lucky, but I feel like I'm going to stop rolling the dice on this.
[00:42:28]  I feel the exact same way every time my registration on my car goes more than eight months out of date.
[00:42:36]  When I'm like, all right, eight months, that's a long time to be getting.
[00:42:39]  Eight years I didn't register my car.
[00:42:40]  Right.
[00:42:41]  Yeah.
[00:42:41]  Stuff like that, where it's like, that's probably now I'm going to, or shoplifting, where it's like, I've got enough money now.
[00:42:47]  I'm not going to keep taking the risk.
[00:42:49]  And then other people who are like, no one's called me on my shit.
[00:42:52]  Guess I'm going to get even crazier.
[00:42:54]  And then they become the president.
[00:42:56]  No reason to stop now.
[00:43:00]  All right.
[00:43:01]  So spoiler alert on Phil, he doesn't get any better.
[00:43:06]  This is this, this is his pattern.
[00:43:08]  He keeps going.
[00:43:09]  But they do break up.
[00:43:11]  Him and Lynn break up.

=== Ruthless Moves in Cutthroat Courts (05:40) ===

[00:43:12]  And he starts expressing a desire to relocate back to New York City.
[00:43:16]  New York offered something that he really wanted, which was proximity to a legitimacy.
[00:43:21]  In New York at the time, there is a building called the Brill Building.
[00:43:26]  And we're going to tell you this, I'll just read because it's better to read than summarize, I think.
[00:43:31]  Specter quickly embedded himself in the Brill Building ecosystem, the highly competitive songwriting and production factory that produced some of the most influential pop music of the era.
[00:43:40]  The environment was famously ruthless.
[00:43:42]  Young writers churned out songs daily, competing for placement with artists and labels.
[00:43:47]  Success required speed, instinct, and relentless self-promotion.
[00:43:51]  Spectre thrived creatively, but developed a reputation almost immediately for opportunism.
[00:43:56]  So I just read this thing where it's like, hey, everybody's cutthroat up in this shit.
[00:44:01]  And then it's like, Spectre immediately gets a reputation for being opportunistic in a cutthroat building.
[00:44:09]  To be opportunistic, to be like that in a cutthroat building.
[00:44:11]  You definitely in the music industry to be a cutthroat.
[00:44:16]  For people to be like, that guy is fucking ruthless is something.
[00:44:20]  Yeah.
[00:44:21]  Multiple collaborators from this period later accused him of aggressively positioning himself for credit and financial participation in projects that were often collaborative efforts.
[00:44:32]  There were recurring stories of Spectre inserting himself into songwriting or production roles and minimizing the contributions of others once success became likely.
[00:44:40]  In some cases, he was accused of leaving collaborators off credits entirely, a move that not only deprived them of recognition, but also cut them out of long-term royalty income.
[00:44:49]  So he's already just ruthless.
[00:44:53]  So there's something that I want to bring up here, which is about the way that writing works or writing a song works, right?
[00:44:59]  Which is like, the deal is, if there is no prior agreement, all right?
[00:45:07]  If two people just walk into a room and write a song together, and they didn't 50%.
[00:45:12]  And not as part of a pre-existing business arrangement or whatever.
[00:45:15]  Yeah, they did not, no one specified like, hey, spontaneous art.
[00:45:19]  Yeah.
[00:45:19]  Yes.
[00:45:20]  If nothing is specified, it is a 50-50 split.
[00:45:23]  Doesn't matter if one person wrote one word and the other wrote the entire song and all he was like, if you come into that, if it's three people, it's 33 to 30.
[00:45:32]  If it's four, it's 25%.
[00:45:33]  Unless you have already agreed to something, that's what the like legal split is for this whole situation.
[00:45:40]  So for him to come into like sessions and be like, jumping right on, it's like, it's like, I've seen this before, like somebody walks in the room and starts suggesting things and you're just like, you just took a portion of my cut of this song.
[00:45:54]  And your suggestions were things I was going to do anyways.
[00:45:56]  That's kind of annoying, you know?
[00:45:57]  It's like, it's really easy to finagle in this time period, especially.
[00:46:02]  So a fellow writer named Beverly Ross, who helped Phil recalled his promises to bring her with him if he were to ever get into the right rooms, but he reneged immediately upon being granted opportunities.
[00:46:13]  She saw Phil as a user and she was eventually offered a staff job, but she declined it because she would have to see Phil every day.
[00:46:21]  So this woman literally turns down a successful money-paying job writing at the Brill building because she was like, oh, I'd have to see Phil every day.
[00:46:32]  And he is cold.
[00:46:34]  I don't want to be around him.
[00:46:35]  He's the worst, right?
[00:46:36]  Yeah, he's sketchy as hell.
[00:46:38]  I respect it.
[00:46:39]  A man could be that annoying that you're like, absolutely not.
[00:46:42]  This is not worth the job.
[00:46:44]  The job is not worth my peace of mind.
[00:46:46]  Please stay away from me.
[00:46:48]  We should all have that much self-respect.
[00:46:50]  Yeah.
[00:46:51]  Yeah, really.
[00:46:52]  But, you know, 2026, man, it's hard, man.
[00:46:55]  It's hard to leave.
[00:46:55]  You should be able to get it.
[00:46:56]  There you go.
[00:46:58]  Nuts.
[00:47:01]  All right.
[00:47:02]  So this is from her.
[00:47:03]  Quote, I was so gun shy of ever becoming vulnerable to someone who'd betrayed me like that because Phil practically killed me emotionally.
[00:47:11]  I figured I wasn't smart enough to handle the part of his personality that I understand.
[00:47:15]  It was like Phil was born without a conscience and I was his victim.
[00:47:18]  He could be so ruthless.
[00:47:20]  Wow.
[00:47:21]  So seemingly we have heard only from women that this is an issue, right?
[00:47:26]  It's like, this does not seem to be very much a male issue.
[00:47:30]  This is consistent.
[00:47:31]  Yeah.
[00:47:32]  Women around him have to feel the burnt.
[00:47:35]  And, you know, I mean, yeah.
[00:47:37]  Again, not to like give anybody an out or any empathy for somebody who's a shitty person because like shitty acts are shitty acts and it doesn't matter.
[00:47:44]  But you can see like this is kind of like an emotional and you know reaction to his mother and his sister totally pushing him, controlling him.
[00:47:53]  Sure.
[00:47:53]  And also to an explanation isn't absolution.
[00:47:56]  Yeah.
[00:47:57]  I think I'm going to talk about this later, but so Phil, whenever he went to work at the Braille building, after he got his money from the teddy bears, right, he made a lot of money.
[00:48:06]  He had to actually take his mother to court.
[00:48:09]  I know it's so funny.
[00:48:10]  He had to take his mother to court to get his money because even as like a teenager, his mom was like, no, he can't, you can't, you can't be trusted.
[00:48:19]  You'll leave us.
[00:48:20]  You won't let us have any money.
[00:48:21]  You won't take care of us.
[00:48:22]  And so he's basically, even like going into adulthood, he's having to fight his mom in court over his own money because of the way things, you know, because the way that she is, the controlling nature of her and everything.
[00:48:35]  So, you know, it's like he's, he's doing that while also controlling other people and, you know, doing shitty things to other women.
[00:48:44]  Yeah.
[00:48:44]  Yeah.
[00:48:45]  I mean, that, yeah.
[00:48:45]  So it's in part just kind of his revenge based on his shitty mom.

=== Unearned Opportunities and Creative Control (04:42) ===

[00:48:52]  Yeah, he's just kicking it out on other people.
[00:48:54]  Well, it also just he grew up learning that like that's what you do to people.
[00:48:58]  Like you can either be controlled or controlling.
[00:49:01]  Yes.
[00:49:01]  I'll pick control.
[00:49:02]  Absolutely.
[00:49:03]  Yeah.
[00:49:03]  Sure.
[00:49:04]  So so yeah.
[00:49:05]  So being cutthroat, like we said, being cutthroat isn't weird in the music industry.
[00:49:09]  Like, you know, there's a lot of people that are famous for their like ruthless activities inside the music industry, especially in the old days or whatever.
[00:49:15]  But to be in a cutthroat environment and be the cuttiest, throatiest person of that environment is like, okay, like everybody is like, no, Phil is the worst of all of them.
[00:49:26]  Like, you know, everybody, everybody in the building hates him.
[00:49:29]  Nobody trusts him.
[00:49:30]  He gets a reputation from just being like the dude that would show up all the time and just like jump in on things and take control and all this stuff.
[00:49:37]  People don't like him.
[00:49:39]  So one of the most important relationships Spectre formed during this New York period was with legendary songwriting production duo Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller.
[00:49:48]  Lieber and Stoller were already giants of the early rock and rhythm and blues era and were responsible for shaping hits for artists like Elvis Presley, the Coasters, like numerous other artists.
[00:49:57]  They were architects of the modern producer model, combining songwriting and arrangement and studio direction into a single creative authority.
[00:50:04]  At this point, like music is changing really fast at this point, you know, because the technology is changing, the way that people operate is changing.
[00:50:13]  It went from being like, oh, this is a band that plays this music to now like, we got a creative team.
[00:50:20]  All these people are writing this stuff.
[00:50:22]  And like, also, too, this is really important.
[00:50:24]  This is the first time in musical history that music goes from being marketed to adults to being marketed to teenagers.
[00:50:33]  Oh, right.
[00:50:34]  Yeah.
[00:50:35]  Because prior to this, there has never been teenagers with money.
[00:50:41]  You know, like teenagers just.
[00:50:43]  They weren't an economic force.
[00:50:44]  Yeah.
[00:50:45]  Yes.
[00:50:45]  They weren't in the middle.
[00:50:46]  As a teenager, you were just working in the mines and handing money to your parents so that they could buy starvation with it.
[00:50:52]  Yeah.
[00:50:53]  So you can afford to starve to death.
[00:50:55]  So this is the first time in all of recorded history, basically, that teenagers become a market.
[00:51:01]  Right.
[00:51:02]  And this is really important to this whole overview of like where, where the money comes from and how they market to things and how they even write a song.
[00:51:12]  Like, so it went from being like, okay, a band does all this to like a group of guys would get together in a room and start being like, okay, cool.
[00:51:20]  Like I wrote this song.
[00:51:21]  I was going to give it to this person, but you know, we should give it to this person.
[00:51:24]  And that's why in this time, you'll see a lot of like, you know, like Aretha Franklin songs that are also Otis Redding songs later or whatever.
[00:51:32]  You know, like people would just write a song and give it to an artist.
[00:51:35]  And then anybody who liked that song would also cover it because the money went back to the publishing.
[00:51:41]  Right.
[00:51:41]  The performance is a minimal amount of the money.
[00:51:43]  The publishing is the money.
[00:51:45]  So these guys would keep giving these songs to other people, other artists, and be like, you should do this song.
[00:51:50]  And it just became normalized to do that.
[00:51:52]  So the strength of the music industry went from being bands to being producers, right?
[00:52:01]  And this is where Phil kind of slams hard into the industry.
[00:52:05]  All right.
[00:52:06]  So he falls in, like, he falls in with these guys, Lieber and Stoller, who are like the guys of the time.
[00:52:12]  They are the Max Martins or whatever famous producer, the Kenny Beats, or the Dr. Dre's or the whatever you love.
[00:52:21]  They're that of this time.
[00:52:24]  And Spectre admired them intensely.
[00:52:26]  He studied their recording techniques, their business strategies, and their ability to shape artist identities from behind the glass.
[00:52:33]  In many ways, Lieber and Stoller provided Spectre with a blueprint for the career he wanted to build.
[00:52:38]  Despite recognizing his talent, however, Lieber and Stoller never fully trusted him.
[00:52:44]  Accounts from associates and later biographies describe them as simultaneously impressed by Spectre's musical talents and wary of his personality.
[00:52:52]  He was ambitious, obsessive, and socially abrasive.
[00:52:55]  He pushed himself into rooms he had not been invited into.
[00:52:58]  He demanded opportunities he had not yet earned.
[00:53:00]  He hovered around sessions, absorbing information and inserting suggestions, persistently trying to attach himself to projects.
[00:53:07]  But they kept giving him chances, right?
[00:53:10]  Part of this was practical because he was good.
[00:53:14]  He was very good.
[00:53:15]  He was musically talented.
[00:53:17]  Yeah.
[00:53:17]  Yes.
[00:53:18]  And so it's like, man, you ever worked with somebody who's good at their job, but a horrible person?
[00:53:22]  Yes.
[00:53:23]  Like, we've all been there, right?
[00:53:25]  Yeah.
[00:53:25]  Yes.
[00:53:26]  Many a time.
[00:53:27]  Many a time.
[00:53:28]  Right.
[00:53:29]  Yeah.
[00:53:29]  And you're like, oh, Spectre's coming to the studio today.

=== Pushing Into Rooms Without Invites (05:25) ===

[00:53:34]  Yeah.
[00:53:34]  We're going to write.
[00:53:35]  I'm going to make sure I'm not there, but we're going to write a banger, but he sucks in the room with that dick.
[00:53:42]  Yeah.
[00:53:44]  Yeah.
[00:53:44]  Their willingness to tolerate him also reflected that, you know, he represents the next step, like what I was just talking about.
[00:53:51]  He's the next step in the evolutionary ladder of working in the music industry.
[00:53:56]  You know, it's like he's, he is the producer model that will become the tour de force in the industry.
[00:54:04]  That's, yeah, that's, that's, that's a good note.
[00:54:06]  I do want to say, you know what, I'm willing to settle for Will.
[00:54:13]  Billions of dollars.
[00:54:15]  I only want to become a million words for the record.
[00:54:17]  And I'm sure I know, I actually know that you do get billions of dollars from these ads, right?
[00:54:23]  I do.
[00:54:23]  I do.
[00:54:24]  Billions.
[00:54:24]  Every single ad.
[00:54:26]  And there's no health care given to any of your employees.
[00:54:29]  You are just like you are a hardcore Jeff Bezos, man.
[00:54:33]  This is the same thing.
[00:54:33]  I actually bought Bezos's yacht just to sink so that my yacht will avoid sinking the same way.
[00:54:41]  You know, I've heard about that yet.
[00:54:43]  I would not sleep on that couch, is what I'm saying.
[00:54:48]  Anyways, Temperance.
[00:54:49]  Let's all think about what diseases you'd get from Jeff Bezos' yacht couch.
[00:54:53]  And here's some ads.
[00:54:54]  Yeah.
[00:54:55]  Jesus Christ.
[00:55:01]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:55:05]  Rule one: never mess with a country girl.
[00:55:08]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:55:11]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:55:14]  We always say that: trust your girlfriends.
[00:55:18]  I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:55:22]  Oh my god, this is the same man.
[00:55:24]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:55:29]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:55:31]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:55:33]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:55:35]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:55:38]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:55:39]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:55:42]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:55:46]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:55:48]  Trust me, babe.
[00:55:49]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:55:59]  What's up, everyone?
[00:55:59]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:56:01]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:56:08]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:56:12]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:56:15]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:56:20]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:56:22]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:56:27]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:56:31]  Yeah.
[00:56:32]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:56:35]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:56:36]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:56:45]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:56:47]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:56:53]  Just hang in there.
[00:56:54]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:56:56]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:56:57]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:56:59]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:57:09]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:57:10]  City Hall building.
[00:57:12]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:57:16]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:57:22]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:57:24]  Somebody tell me that!
[00:57:25]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:57:27]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:57:33]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:57:36]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:57:45]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:57:47]  A shocking public murder.
[00:57:49]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:57:51]  Those are shots.
[00:57:51]  Those are shots.
[00:57:52]  Get down.
[00:57:53]  A charismatic politician.
[00:57:54]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:57:57]  I still have a weapon.
[00:57:59]  And I could shoot you.
[00:58:02]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:58:04]  He alleged you was a victim of flat down.
[00:58:07]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:58:08]  That may have been about sex.
[00:58:10]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:58:14]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:58:21]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:58:26]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:58:31]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:58:37]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:58:46]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:58:51]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:58:54]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:58:57]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.

=== Ten Pianos and Recording Layers (09:43) ===

[00:58:59]  That's so funny.
[00:59:01]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:59:09]  Say you love me.
[00:59:12]  You know I.
[00:59:14]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:59:18]  Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:59:25]  We're back.
[00:59:26]  The answer was gonorrhea.
[00:59:28]  All right, well, let's continue.
[00:59:30]  All right.
[00:59:31]  So, this is where Phil starts really developing his understanding of how records are made.
[00:59:37]  How, I mean, this is a learning environment.
[00:59:39]  This is the professional environment of writers in New York.
[00:59:44]  This is his high school or college or whatever.
[00:59:47]  This is his moment.
[00:59:48]  He absorbs all that.
[00:59:49]  And he starts really understanding like the recording studio and the process of recording is like the music itself.
[00:59:59]  The music comes from the environment that this stuff is made in as much as anything else.
[01:00:03]  And this is kind of like a new concept because, you know, music is, we're in the 60s right now, right?
[01:00:10]  We're in the 60s.
[01:00:12]  We only really started having like reasonable sounding recording, recorded music like 10 years prior to this.
[01:00:22]  Before anything like that, before 10 years, like we only got everybody say thank you to Adolf Hitler right now.
[01:00:29]  Thank you, Adolf.
[01:00:30]  Without one of his many contributions to the world was we got post-World War II.
[01:00:41]  Do you know this about Hitler?
[01:00:42]  This is actually a really funny situation because it was huge to him.
[01:00:45]  He famously believed and wrote about this in Mein Kampf that the best way to convince people of anything was the human voice, that the pure human voice was the best tool for influencing people.
[01:00:55]  And at the time, the Brits.
[01:00:56]  I was so confused.
[01:00:58]  At the time, exactly.
[01:01:00]  Literally, he was ahead of the curve on that shit.
[01:01:03]  He would have been a podcaster.
[01:01:05]  Oh, my God.
[01:01:05]  Adolf Hitler, the world's first podcaster.
[01:01:07]  Amazing.
[01:01:08]  That's right.
[01:01:08]  That's right.
[01:01:10]  You know, it's like the British were all baffled at the time, too, because prior to this, basically, they had magnetic wire recording and they had wax cylinders that they could record to, right?
[01:01:19]  And it was basically one shot, one kill.
[01:01:22]  If you like, if you messed up, it was over, right?
[01:01:24]  But magnetic recording actually, and it was cleaner.
[01:01:28]  It sounded way better.
[01:01:29]  Like in comparison to like the old vinyls that I had, it was way cleaner.
[01:01:34]  It sounded more pure.
[01:01:35]  And the Brits were like, how is this guy broadcasting from like eight different cities in absolute clarity?
[01:01:41]  Like they're so confused at the time.
[01:01:43]  They have no idea what's going on.
[01:01:44]  Oh, because Hitler's over there with the only magnetic recorder that's in the entire world.
[01:01:48]  Because just turns out, BASF there in Germany, which is still a company.
[01:01:52]  Congratulations, you guys made it through the entire Nazi regime and all the backlash.
[01:01:56]  I, you know, hats off.
[01:01:58]  So without Hitler and his magnetic recording, we would not have the music industry.
[01:02:03]  They brought the GIs, the GIs brought it back in the 40s to America.
[01:02:08]  We started tinkering with it.
[01:02:10]  By late 50s, we have Les Paul and Bill Putnam basically like the gods of recording.
[01:02:16]  Folks, if it hadn't been for Hitler, none of us would have been able to hear the Mighty, Mighty Boss Tones album about George Floyd.
[01:02:23]  And what kind of America would that be?
[01:02:26]  I so desperately want to take the time.
[01:02:28]  Five second story.
[01:02:30]  I once went to a concert and you know the guy that dances on stage and that's his only job.
[01:02:33]  Somebody threw a shoe and it hit him right in the fucking face and it took him completely out and they stopped the concert and they're like, we're not going to play.
[01:02:40]  And somebody goes, who cares?
[01:02:44]  Wow.
[01:02:46]  Wow.
[01:02:47]  That's my favorite Mighty Mighty Boss story.
[01:02:49]  All right.
[01:02:51]  So sorry, I was on a little tangent there.
[01:02:54]  Hitler gave us recording, but it's very new.
[01:02:56]  Recording is very new, right?
[01:02:58]  So the way that they record is changing by the day, right?
[01:03:04]  It's like people are discovering new things.
[01:03:05]  We go from a single track to record to, to now we have two tracks and you can bounce back and forth.
[01:03:12]  And now we have four tracks.
[01:03:12]  And then the next thing you know, they've got a whole console that they've made that, you know, and these guys are literally building them themselves.
[01:03:19]  Like Bill Putnam was like building, hand building his own consoles and everything.
[01:03:23]  And so they now have some technology.
[01:03:26]  It opens up the world of recording.
[01:03:28]  Prior to this, if you were a band, that was the only way to record music, right?
[01:03:34]  You had to stand all around this horn and everybody like make their noise.
[01:03:39]  And whoever was like the loudest in the horn is the loudest.
[01:03:42]  So you put the vocalist the closest and you put the drummer way the hell back.
[01:03:45]  And like, you know, you have to, it's, it's complicated.
[01:03:48]  It's, it's, you're so concerned with just getting a recording that you don't have really time to think about the artistic direction of the recording.
[01:03:57]  And so this moment in history, the late 50s, early 1960s, this is the moment that changes all of recorded music.
[01:04:06]  And why obviously I'm such a big fan of this.
[01:04:08]  As someone who considers himself to be a stereo Phil Specter, you know, I absorb a lot of his music.
[01:04:16]  And I think that this is like how I try and portray myself in a lot of this stuff without all the, you know, well, actually, we same number of ex-wives.
[01:04:24]  That's great.
[01:04:24]  We have the same number of X-Wives at three.
[01:04:26]  We're crushing it.
[01:04:29]  But without the other crimes.
[01:04:31]  Without the other crimes.
[01:04:33]  Yeah.
[01:04:34]  All right.
[01:04:35]  So rather than treating musicians as equal collaborators, Spectre increasingly saw them as interchangeable components in a larger sonic structure.
[01:04:44]  If one player failed to achieve the desired result, another could replace them.
[01:04:48]  If a vocalist lacked the emotional texture he wanted, he could manipulate arrangement, echo, orchestration, reverb, all these things to compensate.
[01:04:56]  And it would never evolve.
[01:04:57]  Sorry, go ahead.
[01:04:58]  No, this is like, and it seems like this is, in a lot of ways, the birth of the end of music transitioning away, popular music transitioning away from.
[01:05:05]  These are people who like, make something like art that they want to share with people to.
[01:05:10]  This is a product and we can we can cut out pieces and slide in pieces wherever we need to, 100.
[01:05:17]  Yeah, this is absolutely the birth of that.
[01:05:19]  This is the birth of, uh like, I am pitching this song to Ariana Grande because she might sing it great, but I don't care if Beyonce takes it.
[01:05:28]  Let's get bidding on this music.
[01:05:30]  Yeah yes yeah yeah yeah, it's no longer as much.
[01:05:32]  I mean, I still think people put as much love and passion into their sure yeah, music as always, but it's we're saying it's nothing but bad or whatever, but it's a big change.
[01:05:42]  Yes, it is a very big change.
[01:05:44]  Yeah um, so Specter closely studied records that were experimenting with dense layering and orchestral pop arrangements, particularly productions that emphasized emotional saturation through instrumental doubling and echo chamber effects.
[01:05:56]  Songs like Under The Boardwalk.
[01:05:57]  You know that song Under The Boardwalk.
[01:06:00]  If you listen to something.
[01:06:04]  If you listen to that, you will absolutely hear what are the early, you know phrases that that specter would draw from.
[01:06:11]  It sounds basically like a Phil Specter song.
[01:06:14]  It's got you know like the orchestration is buried in there.
[01:06:17]  It's like you know, the vocal is very upfront and everything but everything else is kind of a mesh behind it and um, and it's not nearly Nearly, there's a lot of reverb and everything.
[01:06:26]  It's not nearly as clean and clear as some of like, because that was the goal, right?
[01:06:31]  It was like for so long, they're like, we just want to make something that sounds good.
[01:06:34]  And then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, actually, we can make anything.
[01:06:37]  So let's just make it sound crazy.
[01:06:38]  Let's make it sound reverb-y.
[01:06:40]  Let's do like experimentation with this stuff.
[01:06:42]  So he starts to get into that.
[01:06:45]  What distinguished Spectre was not necessarily that he invented these techniques, but that he became obsessed with expanding them to their absolute extreme.
[01:06:52]  Where earlier producers used layering to enhance song, Spectre began envisioning arrangements where individual instruments disappeared into a unified emotional mass.
[01:07:01]  Precision gave way to density.
[01:07:03]  Clarity gave way to atmosphere.
[01:07:05]  Recording was not meant to be dissected.
[01:07:07]  It was meant to overwhelm you, right?
[01:07:10]  And this is like the big principle of the wall of sound.
[01:07:14]  Anyone who knows about Phil Specter, like seriously, knows about the wall of sound.
[01:07:17]  The wall of sound was Phil Spector's creation in sorts.
[01:07:23]  It's a way of recording that makes the music very Wagnerian, right?
[01:07:30]  It's very, it's like a Wagner opera.
[01:07:32]  It's a bunch of noise coming at you, right?
[01:07:35]  And it is meant to overwhelm you.
[01:07:37]  There's often layers of percussion.
[01:07:39]  It was all like layers of instrumentation.
[01:07:43]  There'd be drummer on drummer on drummer, three piano players, like six guitarists.
[01:07:47]  And this is such a big change because, like I said, prior to this, it was like, well, you just put a band in a room and then you record the band, right?
[01:07:55]  And so now it's all of a sudden like, I don't have to reproduce this on stage.
[01:07:59]  It doesn't have to sound like this.
[01:08:00]  I'm going to make this, I'm going to put 10 pianos on here.
[01:08:03]  I'm going to go crazy with this.
[01:08:05]  You know, like, yeah, like, I can do anything.
[01:08:08]  Okay, I want 10 pianos then.
[01:08:09]  Bring in 10 pianos.
[01:08:10]  It's also like kind of that like era of like that starts there where it's like the money is actually in music where they're like, I need 10 pianos tonight.
[01:08:19]  And like someone goes out and picks up 10 pianos.
[01:08:23]  It's really amazing.
[01:08:24]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:08:25]  So like this is also, yeah, kind of the birth of the insane expenditures for like crazy artistical wins aspects.
[01:08:32]  It later transforms into a cocaine budget, but it's a little early.
[01:08:36]  It's early for the cocaine budget, but it will eventually become a cocaine budget.
[01:08:41]  Exciting.

=== Crystals, Underage Contracts, and Crime (10:58) ===

[01:08:42]  So despite being signed to Lieber and Stoller, those two mentors that he had, he eventually becomes enamored with the co-founder of Atlantic Records, Ahmed Erdogan.
[01:08:51]  And when given the opportunity to jump ship, he wasted no time, right?
[01:08:55]  Lieber and Stoller are pissed.
[01:08:57]  They're like, bro, what are you doing?
[01:08:59]  Like, we gave you this opportunity.
[01:09:00]  We tolerated your bitch ass.
[01:09:02]  And you're just going to dip?
[01:09:03]  Yes, we tolerated you.
[01:09:05]  We let you come in.
[01:09:06]  Put up with your ass.
[01:09:07]  And he's like, actually, I was underage when I signed your contract.
[01:09:10]  So it doesn't matter.
[01:09:11]  You guys can't do shit.
[01:09:12]  And he just walks out.
[01:09:13]  Right.
[01:09:13]  And they're like, it's fair.
[01:09:16]  That was true.
[01:09:17]  We did, in fact, sign an underage person to a contract without having the proper legal authority.
[01:09:22]  So, whoops, we fucked up.
[01:09:24]  So he becomes friends with Ahmed Erdogan.
[01:09:28]  Erdogan recognizes his talent and he starts learning from him.
[01:09:32]  He's just an old school record guy, right?
[01:09:35]  And now, so Phil's now learning the business, right?
[01:09:37]  This is, he was in the music thing, and now he's like, I'm going to learn the business.
[01:09:42]  Phil would find some reasonable successes during this time, remaining under the tutelage of his friend Lester still, the old World War II veteran.
[01:09:49]  But he would eventually desire more freedom to work as he pleased.
[01:09:52]  And so he and Lester formed Phil S. Records, a portmanteau of their two names.
[01:09:56]  I think that's the word, portmanteau, right?
[01:09:57]  When it comes to that word.
[01:09:59]  Yep.
[01:09:59]  Thanks.
[01:10:00]  Nailed it.
[01:10:00]  Look at me.
[01:10:02]  Look at it.
[01:10:03]  I just guessed on that one.
[01:10:04]  Thanks.
[01:10:06]  He was slowly becoming the king of girl groups.
[01:10:09]  It was actually around this time that he was dubbed the tycoon of teen, which sounds very questionable.
[01:10:15]  I don't like that.
[01:10:16]  Don't like that.
[01:10:17]  Nope.
[01:10:18]  Nope.
[01:10:19]  Visceral reaction.
[01:10:20]  Yeah.
[01:10:21]  So by the age of 21, he had become an undeniable force in the industry.
[01:10:28]  He had produced a string of hits.
[01:10:30]  Like I think he had like 21 top 10 singles in three years or something.
[01:10:36]  Yeah, it was like an insane amount.
[01:10:39]  His first major success was Spanish Harlem, after his own, Spanish Harlem by Benny King.
[01:10:44]  And then There's No One Other Like My Baby by the Crystals.
[01:10:48]  He's a Rebel by the Crystals.
[01:10:51]  Bobby Sox in the Blue Jeans had a song, Zippity Dooda.
[01:10:54]  Lots of crazy hits, right?
[01:10:57]  Yeah, crazy, crazy hits, right?
[01:10:59]  Here's a little piece, though.
[01:11:01]  The Crystals are sitting there.
[01:11:05]  They had recorded There's No One Other Like My Baby.
[01:11:07]  It did well on the charts.
[01:11:08]  And then, you know, a few months later, they're sitting there listening to the radio one afternoon and they hear a song come on.
[01:11:14]  They're like, oh, this is cool.
[01:11:15]  This is an interesting song.
[01:11:16]  And they get done and the radio announces all.
[01:11:19]  And that was He's a Rebel by the Crystals.
[01:11:22]  And they're like, wait, what?
[01:11:26]  Phil had begun recording songs and then releasing them as band songs without any of them having been on the song.
[01:11:36]  He didn't, he didn't care.
[01:11:38]  He was just like, they're all replaceable to me.
[01:11:41]  You're all just, you're all just singers.
[01:11:44]  I don't care about you at all.
[01:11:45]  Especially you're all female singers.
[01:11:48]  You are all female singers.
[01:11:50]  I will just replace you.
[01:11:51]  He never does this to a man, not in his entire career.
[01:11:53]  Oh my God.
[01:11:54]  To women, he does this.
[01:11:56]  Be slightly less obvious.
[01:11:59]  Oh, be just like 2% less obvious, man.
[01:12:03]  Jesus Christ.
[01:12:04]  I would have put it in.
[01:12:05]  1962.
[01:12:06]  I would have put, I don't care what dick, I would have punched him in this face.
[01:12:10]  I would have looked him at eye level and put it in.
[01:12:13]  I'm glad you bring that up.
[01:12:14]  Yes.
[01:12:15]  I'm glad you bring that up.
[01:12:18]  Because another tick in the Phil is seriously like uncomfortable without his gun comes from the lead singer, The Crystals.
[01:12:28]  And I forget her name.
[01:12:29]  I'm sorry.
[01:12:30]  I'm a hack and a fraud just like you.
[01:12:31]  So I forgot her name.
[01:12:33]  But she tells a story in this documentary I watched where she's like, yeah, I saw that and I was like, okay, so she goes and she talks to this mobster that she knows.
[01:12:41]  And this mobster goes out and just beats the dog piss out of Phil.
[01:12:45]  And it's like, ah!
[01:12:47]  Hey, like, if you ever do it.
[01:12:51]  Yeah.
[01:12:52]  Hey, man, sometimes organized crime has purpose.
[01:12:55]  Let's be fair, you know?
[01:12:57]  It's often more reliable than the government.
[01:13:01]  Wait, what was the name of the documentary you were just talking about?
[01:13:04]  This is from The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector.
[01:13:07]  Okay.
[01:13:08]  Cool.
[01:13:09]  So he has a bunch of successes.
[01:13:13]  Zippity Dooda, Be My Baby with the Ronettes, You've Lost That Love and Feeling with the Righteous Brothers.
[01:13:20]  He is on top of the world.
[01:13:24]  Yeah.
[01:13:25]  Jesus.
[01:13:26]  Be My Baby.
[01:13:27]  He has that one in an Uber last night, actually.
[01:13:29]  Yeah, Be My Baby is on the, I have a vinyl from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and it's on there.
[01:13:35]  It's so good.
[01:13:37]  Very funny story.
[01:13:38]  Years later, Phil Spector, he was asked by Martin Scorsese to use Be My Baby for the opening of Cocaine Cowboy, I think it was.
[01:13:47]  Is that the one?
[01:13:47]  Anyway, it's the opening of it.
[01:13:49]  It's Be My Baby.
[01:13:50]  They do a whole thing.
[01:13:51]  And he's asked and he's like, no.
[01:13:52]  And then they do it anyway.
[01:13:53]  And he sees it.
[01:13:55]  It comes out.
[01:13:55]  John Lennon shows it to him and he sees it and he comes out and he's like, what the hell?
[01:13:59]  How did town they could do that?
[01:14:01]  And so he gets all mad.
[01:14:02]  And then he sues him, of course, which, you know, is fair or whatever.
[01:14:05]  That's fair.
[01:14:06]  That's fair.
[01:14:06]  You use the song without permission.
[01:14:08]  That's fair.
[01:14:08]  You sued him.
[01:14:09]  But then he goes on for the rest of his life and tells everybody, I made Scorsese without me.
[01:14:16]  Yeah, okay.
[01:14:17]  All right.
[01:14:17]  That was a bit of a dick.
[01:14:19]  He loves everybody for the rest of his life.
[01:14:21]  I think that's why.
[01:14:23]  And that at the pinnacle of Phil's success is where we will leave this episode, Robert.
[01:14:32]  How do you feel about Phil so far?
[01:14:33]  I mean, he's a little bit of a dick, but you know, he's hit some bangers.
[01:14:37]  He's hit some bangers.
[01:14:38]  So far, he just sounds like an asshole who's really good at his job.
[01:14:42]  I didn't know all that shit about his mom.
[01:14:44]  Oh, wait, no, and a huge misogynist who screws over female.
[01:14:48]  Yeah.
[01:14:49]  Yeah, I would have punched him in the wiener is what I would say.
[01:14:52]  Again, it's like, if this was, if this was the end, right?
[01:14:55]  You'd be like, yeah, I mean, not really bastard worthy.
[01:14:58]  Like, he's a kind of a dick.
[01:15:00]  That guy sucks.
[01:15:01]  Sucky.
[01:15:02]  But there's no shortage of those people in the music industry, right?
[01:15:05]  It's like, there really is.
[01:15:07]  Yeah, there's no shortage of horrible people in the music industry.
[01:15:10]  Like, I meet them all the time.
[01:15:12]  And then I'm like, cool, this is why I stopped working with labels.
[01:15:14]  I'm going back to my studio.
[01:15:15]  I'll see you all later.
[01:15:17]  Yeah.
[01:15:17]  But it is, there's a lot of them, right?
[01:15:19]  And you know what's, you know, what's tough too?
[01:15:22]  For every awful person I meet in the music industry, I meet a legend that I'm like, you're the nicest person I've ever met.
[01:15:29]  And like, how are you this good and this cool?
[01:15:32]  And this person not that good and way shitty.
[01:15:37]  Like, I don't understand it.
[01:15:38]  I'll never get it.
[01:15:39]  It's, there's a weird proportion in that stuff.
[01:15:42]  Wild.
[01:15:43]  Robert, you can be found at iWriteOK, which I can.
[01:15:46]  Thank you for leading me in.
[01:15:48]  Yeah.
[01:15:49]  You, I like to think of it more as like, like you telling your parents back in like the early 2000s why you can't move back home and why you're having success in Los Angeles.
[01:16:00]  And you're like, I write, okay?
[01:16:02]  You know, it's just, it's, yeah, that's exactly how I'd have made it too.
[01:16:05]  Being exhaustive, explaining what I do for a living.
[01:16:09]  I write, okay?
[01:16:11]  Yeah.
[01:16:12]  It's just that.
[01:16:13]  Go away.
[01:16:15]  I can be found at Greasy Will, at Greasy Will Music.
[01:16:19]  You can just Google me.
[01:16:20]  I'm like on the internet.
[01:16:23]  I have a recording course.
[01:16:25]  If you want to learn about how to record from a Grammy Award-winning engineer, I have one.
[01:16:29]  It can be found at greasydeset.com, or you can just Google me or you can go to my.
[01:16:34]  I'm on the internet, man.
[01:16:35]  I'm on the internet.
[01:16:36]  Like, it can't be that hard.
[01:16:39]  It's easy to find people.
[01:16:41]  I feel like you guys will be fine tracking it.
[01:16:44]  It's a Z.
[01:16:45]  It's not with an S.
[01:16:46]  I get a lot of greasy wills, and that kind of does make me a different guy.
[01:16:50]  I don't want to meet him.
[01:16:52]  I mean, have you told this on the podcast?
[01:16:55]  Who gave you the name Greasy Will?
[01:16:58]  Pharrell.
[01:16:59]  It came from Pharrell.
[01:17:01]  Exactly.
[01:17:01]  Yeah, it's very cool.
[01:17:02]  It's fucking cool.
[01:17:03]  Very cool.
[01:17:04]  That is cool.
[01:17:04]  It's very cool.
[01:17:05]  It's super cool.
[01:17:06]  You know, it's fun.
[01:17:08]  Yeah, you know.
[01:17:09]  This is the end of the episode, friends.
[01:17:11]  We'll be back.
[01:17:12]  We'll be back.
[01:17:16]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
[01:17:19]  For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:17:28]  Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday.
[01:17:33]  Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode.
[01:17:36]  For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at behind the bastards.
[01:17:44]  We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.
[01:17:51]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:17:59]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:18:02]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:18:04]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:18:06]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:18:10]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:18:12]  Trust me, babe.
[01:18:13]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:18:22]  What's up, everyone?
[01:18:23]  I'm Ago Modern.
[01:18:24]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:18:28]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:18:31]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:18:33]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:18:40]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:18:42]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:18:49]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:18:51]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:18:52]  There's a lot of life.
[01:18:54]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:19:01]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:19:09]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:19:12]  I doctored the test once.
[01:19:14]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:19:19]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:19:21]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marcini.
[01:19:23]  My mind was blown.
[01:19:24]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:19:26]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:19:27]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:19:29]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:19:34]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

=== Doctored Tests and Shocking Patterns (00:37) ===

[01:19:41]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[01:19:44]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[01:19:46]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:19:47]  A shocking public murder.
[01:19:49]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:19:55]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[01:19:57]  Those are shots.
[01:19:59]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[01:20:02]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[01:20:06]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:20:15]  This is an iHeart Podcast.
[01:20:17]  Guaranteed human.