Phil Spector's volatile career exploded in the early 1960s at Gold Star Studios, where his "wall of sound" technique and insecurities about height fueled erratic behavior involving bodyguards and gaslighting. His obsession with Ronnie Bennett led to isolation and a disastrous marriage marked by threats, while his refusal to let The Ronettes join The Beatles' private jet highlighted his petty jealousy. Despite the massive failure of "River Deep – Mountain High" in the US due to segregation, Spector's legacy remains defined by this toxic blend of musical innovation and abusive control, illustrating how personal demons ultimately overshadowed his artistic genius. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Behind The Bastards Intro00:02:59
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that this week is about Philliam Specter.
I'm fairly certain that's not what his first name is.
Here to correct me, Greasy Will.
That's actually, I think his name was Philliam.
I have no reason to dispute that.
That's legally the truth then.
Yeah, absolutely.
100%.
I do want to lead off with saying that I forgot last episode, but I did want to mention I have made a playlist of all of Phil Specter's music.
I thought that it would be very, even though it's technically whenever you're doing this is educational, so you can use music for anything that you want when it's educational.
But I thought it would be, you know, especially with the new prestigious Netflix deal that you guys got.
I didn't want you to have any, you know, copyright complications around you building too.
No, I'm just saying, I just didn't want you guys to have any complications, you know?
So instead of what I think is Phil's most seminal song, instead of playing that, I'll play you my interpretation of it.
Thank you all for listening.
I will be here all week.
The night we met, I knew I found my show.
The kind that talks about every freaking old.
Each time I listen, I can't believe my whole ears.
The worst of mankind through eternity.
Behind the bastards you're now.
Behind the bastards from War Primes Carlson COs.
The weirdo history tried to leave unto that darkest show.
You'll laugh and cringe at every feeling they expose.
So can we go beyond behind the ballad stream?
Behind the bastards.
Behind the ballad stream.
Behind the bastards.
Behind behind the bastards.
Behind behind the bastards.
That was beautiful.
Legitimately Made That Song00:03:29
Will, that was genuinely one of the sweetest things.
I looked at the broken.
I just want everybody to know, like, this was not an AI song.
I legitimately made that song.
I would never have accused you of that.
I know, but it's like right now, there's so much like, you know, like 50 Cent does 50s song, you know, like do up, you know, and you're like, ah, no, I legit, I brought in a girl.
Her name is Clancy.
I shout her out.
Shout out Clancy.
She was amazing.
She crushed that Ronnie Specter vibe.
She absolutely killed it.
It was amazing.
And I and I very much appreciate it.
Yeah.
But yes, you show that wall of sound thing, too, that you were talking about.
Literally what I was going for was trying to sound exactly like Phil Specter's Be My Baby, which is where we will pick up today.
Beautiful.
After what an introduction to this.
Nailed it.
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Shall we stay with me each night, each morning?
Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Motor.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Ray Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So back to our story, back to our pal, Philip Specter.
His career is exploding, right?
Bachelor Star Paternity Scandal00:15:29
This is where we're at right now.
His career is exploding.
He is the hottest.
He is Max Martin in the 90s, right?
He just wrote Britney Spears, and now he's working for Christina Aguilera.
And then he's working for, you know, it's just like hit after hit after hit after hit.
And like I said before, in the last episode, we talked about he was the tycoon of teen.
No.
I hate that.
So yeah, so he's, yes, it's very, it's a very upsetting name as an, you know, this, but to be fair, he is probably only like 20 years old.
Like he is barely not a teen himself at this point.
And this is a very, very peculiar time in history, right?
Because most of his competition is like 50, 40, right?
They're like old dudes, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's like, like in the early days, like it's very funny, but they talk about this all the time.
Like basically, if you heard a song by a young black girl group, it was written by an old white Jewish man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Without fail, that's what, I mean, you know, not quite yet, but very soon the chess brothers are going to have chess records in Chicago.
It's going to be everything, you know, everything that exists, you know, in music is going to come out of there for a little while.
It's like, there is absolutely There is just a world of old white dudes writing pop music for teenage girls.
And Phil Spector is the Maverick.
He's the young guy.
He's and he's doing it different.
He's very different, right?
All right.
So the studio becomes his creative space.
The studio becomes everything to him.
He's using it as part.
It's like the, it's, it's really in these moments too, when he's making these, these wall of sound productions, it is basically Phil Spector and the studio is the musician.
He's bringing in Randos from the parking lot to sing backgrounds.
Like there's layers of percussion and shit.
It was like, if you could keep a beat at all, it was like, cool, go in there and play this thing.
He would have multiple drums, like all sorts of stuff going on in these productions.
They were, they were, the musicians were interchangeable.
The studio was important to him, Gold Star Studios in Hollywood on Vine, and which is no longer there by the record.
It was a shitty studio in the 1960s.
I got to break it here to say one of my favorite early in our friendship memories was coming to visit you at the studio you were working at in LA for the first time with Lenny and like cracking a six pack when you're like putting the finishing touches on something and you're like, you know, this is where they made pet sounds.
And I was like, oh, this building?
You're like, no, like this room is the room that again, I mentioned this the first episode, but I, you know, part of my love for this whole story is that this is all combined.
This story is all one story, which also includes Charles Manson.
I don't know if you know that Charles Manson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Charles Manson's in this whole thing too.
And I actually have a little bit like, dang, I should pivot from this one.
The next one I come over here, I should, I should Charles Manson, Beach Boys.
We talked a little bit about the Beach Boys and Charlie Manson, but not as much as the subject deserves.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
It is, I mean, it's, it's, we'll get there.
We'll get there.
That's a later, but that's a that's a little special thing for you guys in the future.
You'll love it.
Um, so yeah, so uh, you know, uh, Phil is is working at Gold Star.
The Beach Boys are a Brian Wilson actually is part of these early like background people, not singers.
He's like a hanger on.
He's like showing up places and being like, oh, Phil's working.
Like, and he's a kid and he's just like, oh, I just want to see what Phil is doing because Phil is the guiding force of what would become the Beach Boys, which would then become the Beatles who's like whole vibe on how they just were not doing.
Phil is the architect of this original sound.
And you cannot be stressed enough how big of a deal this is.
Like he is like as big as Dr. Dre is, right?
Like when you think of like, oh, like everybody knows Dr. Dre, everybody knows Phil Specter.
Right.
Across continents, they know Phil Spector.
Everybody knows Phil Spector, right?
He is, after, after the hits that he's crafted already, just he's he's world, he's worldwide.
Mr. Worldwide.
He's pit full himself.
Right, right.
Yes.
He's the first Mr. Worldwide.
He is also, as I said, only about like five foot three or whatever.
And he wears heels.
He starts wearing heels all the time because he doesn't want people to know how short he is.
He starts losing his hair, which we'll talk about a little bit.
And so he starts wearing wigs and starts like on this is the beginning of all this at this exact, he's like 21 and he's like losing his hair at a crazy rate.
He's like, all right, real insecure about it.
Really has a lot of self-worth image issues.
You know, he really just does not like, he's doing all this because of that.
He's trying to go bigger and bigger and bigger because he looks at himself as being just like the worst because, you know, mom issues and all that.
Yeah.
But by the mid-1960s, Phil Specter had achieved something few producers had ever managed.
He had transformed himself from songwriter into brand, from collaborator into architect.
The wall of sound was no longer experimental.
It was defining popular music.
But as his professional authority grew, so did his emotional instability.
He got married to a woman named Annette Marar, right?
And it is such a small blip.
Like this is, I should have started with that, but it's such a small blip.
He marries her and immediately just starts ignoring her, has no interest in her.
He love bombs her.
He does what we now call love bombing.
Yeah.
Right.
He love bombs the shit out of her, but then once they get married, because this is like a very short courtship, once they get married, he's like not interested anymore.
So that gives me a major ick.
Sorry, go ahead.
That gives me major ick is all I'm saying.
Yeah.
Well, calm down on hating on people for bad relationship situations.
Yes, we have.
Well, I hardly want to talk.
Yeah.
I'm doing the best I can.
Look, I figured out, I figured out the problem.
It's me.
It's me.
Yeah, that's it.
I'm in the same place.
I've locked it up.
I figured out the problem.
Paul was coming.
He's inside the house the whole time.
100%.
We figured out the problem, but the real, you know, we got to.
He's saying you got 99 problems, but you're the bitch and it's you.
Yes, yes.
I've got 99 problems and I'm all of them.
And I have been nefariously behind every single one of them.
Just, this will never come back to me.
All my problems are either me or the government, which is why I really focus on hating the government.
It's true.
All right.
So his paranoia is escalating.
His reliance on intimidation is becoming really normalized, right?
Wait, that's actually kind of interesting.
So he love bombs this person.
He's obsessed with her.
And then they get married, but then he no longer wants to like control or stalk her.
No, he literally, he, so that's a new behavior.
He, he basically, it's that classic, like as soon as he gets it, he's not interested.
Yeah, as soon as he gets it, it pivots, like the whole thing changes, right?
But he doesn't want to control her anymore.
Not really.
It's more of like, it's more of like he, I mean, he is still controlling, right?
But he just doesn't care at all.
You know, like most of the time, he's more interested in his career, in his work, in what's going on in the studio.
He builds a studio underneath his house so that he can just like be down there whenever he's like, anytime he's annoyed or like whatever, he just goes downstairs.
So he has the ultimate like escape plan.
Yeah.
I'm sure if he were to catch her cheating on him, he'd be pissed, but he's hardly paying enough attention to know.
Got it.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's very much, at this point, he's very much interested in Phil.
Phil is what's driving him, right?
Yeah.
So what he's looking for this whole time, he keeps talking about this is a constant reference.
He's looking for the voice.
He's looking for the voice that perfectly complements his wall of sound, his musical compositions, like being all these like big Wagnerian like opuses and everything.
He wants a person to be that thing, to be that front and center for all of this to make it worth what he's doing.
He doesn't feel like he's found that with any of his previous stuff.
So in walks Ronnie Bennett.
Ronnie Bennett.
Let's talk about Ronnie Bennett will eventually become his wife.
Spoiler alert.
I don't know how much I wrote.
So now I just got to, now I wrote a lot.
I wrote a lot.
There's a lot of words in here.
41 pages you wrote, my friend.
Briefly, yes.
No, no, no.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
You know, I'm on the subreddits.
I'm on the YouTubes.
I read the comments.
I read the comments because they keep me humble.
Because like, I'll be like posting something on the internet and someone will be like, this guy's a fucking loser.
And I'm like, all right, cool, you know, like, I'm not exactly a loser.
No, I just, you know, I gotta, I gotta keep it real out there.
But sometimes I see comments on there where people will be like, I can't believe Robert did.
Fuck you.
Fuck every one of you who has ever made a comment like that.
Fuck any of you who have ever said anything bad about Sophie too, I slap the shit out of you.
And this is for the subreddit right now.
I'm one of you and I see the things you say and I'm disgusted by them sometimes because I'm like, God, do you know, this took me a year.
This took me a whole year to do this.
I'm busy.
I'm a busy person.
But even whenever I was like, like, you know, I told you like last week, oh, I'm done with this.
And I was like, mostly done.
But I wrote another like 3,000 words because I was like, well, there's some parts I'm missing and all this stuff.
This is how you're talking about shit.
And you're going to be talking about it.
This is hard.
And I hear all your little internet comments like, oh, he did some weird shit.
Or why?
Yeah, I'm doing my best, dude.
It's like, I'm improvising at the same time while I'm obviously drinking a little bit.
And like, you know, you guys got to cut me a break.
Well, that's got to do that.
Yeah.
I don't know how anybody else operates, but this is how I do things.
Speaking of which, Purchase Greasy Does It recording course taught by me, a very responsible human being.
Great plug.
Marketing grave.
Great plug.
Incredible work.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, so yeah, so Ronnie is born into a family shape.
She's born in Spanish Harlem, New York City, August 10th, 1943, four years after Phil was born, just down the street, basically.
They probably lived almost in the same area at this time, essentially.
All right.
So her father, Louis Bennett, was an Irish American and her mother was African-American Cherokee.
Her father was also a drummer and a drunk, something that can still be found together in massive quantities around the world.
You can have a drummer and drinking anywhere you go.
It's true.
You can find it.
It's as prevalent as Coca-Cola, man.
It's there.
So he's also a failure, right?
He can't keep a job.
He can't do anything.
He's just a mess most of the time.
So she grows up not really down with alcohol, right?
This is important for later, but she starts her life being traumatized by a little bit by alcohol.
She always loves her dad, but she definitely feels like, you know, this is an alcohol thing.
Yeah.
She loves singing.
She's really big on like Frankie Lyman.
She loves Frankie Lyman.
She thinks he's the best ever, Dinah Washington, just voices that were raw and like real, real authentic feeling, right?
And she also gravitated towards performance.
She was always like, you know, like the classic front woman thing, you know, it's like when she was a little kid, she was always singing into microphones.
You know, it's like that story, right?
Her father being a drummer and a failed drummer did not discourage her mother because her father left pretty early, but it didn't discourage her mother from encouraging Ronnie's musical talent.
She didn't just like all of a sudden, I mean, if it was me, like, dude, I had ex-girlfriends that were like, my ex-boyfriend was a drummer and he failed at music.
So you can't possibly make money off of music.
And I'm like, you know, maybe you're wrong.
I don't know.
To be fair, I didn't make a lot of money off of it.
So whatever.
So yeah, so her mom, her mom supports her.
Her dad's always waxing poetic about his days as a musician.
So she grows up as that being like a really important thing.
Right.
She was always singing at school events, neighborhood functions.
She got a style, right?
That's something that happens when you do a lot of music is eventually at first you're just learning.
You're just trying to replicate other people's things.
But eventually, once you do it enough, you develop style, right?
And for her, she developed a very unique style.
Very raw.
It wasn't musically perfect, but it had just a tone that was just beautiful.
Everybody recognized it.
Right.
So, her older sister, Estelle, and her cousin Nedra formed a vocal group called the Darling Sisters.
The trio practiced constantly singing in school hallways, street corners in their apartments.
That's like a thing that still happens in this time period.
People like out doo-wapping on the corner and everything.
Yeah, just singing in public.
Bro, if you saw that shit, now you'd be like, oh my god, fucking influencers are the shittiest.
I was about to say, unfortunately, I would assume it's some incredibly irritating, like TikTok thing or whatever, some fucking viral bullshit or something.
Some dumb.
I don't want to be a part of your fucking videos, weirdo.
You know, that's yeah, I'd be a huge asshole about it.
I would absolutely.
I'd be like, you guys suck anyways.
I don't even want to lose you.
You're from making music in public.
I'll tell you.
So the group was eventually renamed the Ronettes, a name that captured their identity and Ronnie's emerging role as a front woman.
You know, Ronnie and the Ronettes.
It's very normal.
It's coded.
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
You know.
But, you know, Ronnie's lead vocals really do become the defining characteristic of this whole thing.
Their early performances were energetic, glamorous, and slightly rebellious.
Ronnie developed distinctive stage presence that blended confidence with vulnerability.
She wore dramatic eye makeup, teased her hair into towering beehives, and moved with a swagger that contrasted with her petite frame.
She was creating an image that felt simultaneously innocent and dangerous, an aesthetic that would later become iconic in 1960s pop culture.
Sophie, if you would please show Phil and the lovely ladies of the Ronettes.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Woman.
They didn't invent that beehive hairdo.
Yeah, but I call it.
They're the reason it became popular, right?
It was like their adoption of it was the thing that made that.
You, I mean, that was iconic.
My grandmother had one of those when I was a kid still, and it was like the 80s.
Like it, it stayed on for 20-some years how popular that was.
So it's like their cultural relevance just cannot be understated in any way.
They were incredibly important to the look of the early 60s.
Breaking Into Music Industry00:04:45
So breaking into the professional music industry proved difficult for them.
The Ronettes performed at clubs and talent contests, dance venues all throughout New York City, struggling to secure recording contracts or industry attention.
Their persistence reflected both ambition and necessity because music was important to Ronnie.
Like she, it was get rich or die trying on this.
You know, she was 50 cent and hard right now.
Eventually, the group secured opportunities to perform at venues that exposed them to evolving pop and rhythm and blues scene of the 1960s New York.
They performed at the Peppermint Lounge and other popular clubs.
And again, Ronnie driving the way.
Yeah, it's they were starting to get.
Sorry, go ahead.
Just because this is Inspector, and I know what's coming is like based on just how he treats artists, like the replaceability of them treating them just like another tool.
And hearing a story like this that really drives home, just like, no, to get anywhere close to people hearing you on the radio, you have to have been relentless about making this your life.
Like absolutely unhinged in your dedication to this career.
Especially at this time, right?
Like, and it's a really good point.
Like, I cannot, the dedication cannot be understated.
It's like at this point, in order to get a record made, right, that cost a lot of money, you know, like for the time, you know, it'd be like a hundred and or two hundred dollars or something like that to record a song at the studio.
Like $200 is like a whole month's paycheck for people in this piece.
Like it's a crazy amount of money.
Yes, it's a lot of money for a lot of people.
So, and it's still kind of that way today.
In fact, if you're interested in working with Greasy Will, you can find him at the Grease Factory at Greasy Will Duck.
Sorry.
Anyway, so, you know, it's very expensive.
So even to just get something recorded is expensive.
Then you have to get it to a DJ.
You have to get it on the radio because the only way you will ever sell anything is if it's on the radio.
So you got to get it on the radio.
And then it has to build local support.
And then it has to build regional support.
And then it has to build, you know, it's like sometimes this is like a years-long process to get music to be heard.
So she's hustling.
She's like relentless and trying to get her stuff out there.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
She strongly believed that the right producer would eventually understand how to capture her voice authentically.
And she continued performing relentlessly, touring, rehearsing, and refining her stage present.
She saw her career not as a sudden break waiting to happen, but something that she would build through persistence and emotional honesty.
So yes, that's exactly it.
She worked.
She put in the work from the time she was like 14 years old, just grinded all the time.
Yeah, I'd say it's the only way to do it, but it's the only, it's not.
But it's the only way to do it if like you're not somebody who's coming from somewhere, you know?
Sure.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, there's a lot of Nepo babies in the music industry right now.
Sure.
So we don't have to pretend.
So they're rising through New York.
It's 1963.
And she's looking for this producer.
And coincidentally, a producer is looking for his voice, his muse, his wall of sound, his girl who will be that for him.
And they meet.
Literally, it's very funny.
They literally just call.
You know, it's like 1963.
You just like, you just look up in the telephone.
Yeah.
Hey, you want to produce my album?
Yeah.
It's like, when I think about the old days of how things were done, it's like, what?
You just called somebody?
I won't even answer a phone call from a number I don't know.
Right.
Well, yeah.
You can just pick up the phone and yeah, get a fucking music deal based on that.
Yeah.
So they're assuming your call timed in well with when he just done a line.
Yeah, you might be able to fucking make some shit happen.
Absolutely.
So yeah, so I was like, all right, so they just call him.
They just call him.
They call him and he's like, oh, yeah, I've heard of you guys because they're making a noise in New York, right?
And Phil at this time too, there's a lot of geographical confusion with a lot of the stuff that he is bouncing back and forth between California and New York all the time.
Like it's like he loves working in Gold Star.
So he goes out to California to work at Gold Star, the studio, but he doesn't, like the New York scene is still the scene, right?
So he's got to like go to New York and then he flies back and then he'll work there for a while.
So a lot of times it might seem like he is just like transporting across the country in the story, but he really is.
So he heard Phil in Ronnie.
He heard the voice that he'd been waiting for.
The emotional landscape that he had spent years construction would fit perfectly with her, right?
First Podcast To Do That00:04:29
The professional relationship, though, immediately blurs into personal fixation.
He starts spending extraordinary amounts of time rehearsing Ronnie, rehearsing Ronnie.
He's always rehearsing Ronnie.
It's like, Ronnie, stay after.
We got to do this.
Ronnie, Ronnie, it's like always Ronnie.
And of course, she is the front woman.
I'm not saying, you know, that's not important or whatever.
But it's like very obvious, right?
That he is, that he is pushing to have her isolate her as a great isolation began disguised as mentorship.
Exactly, right?
Okay.
Ah, that's never happened before.
Yes.
You know what else hasn't happened before?
Advertisements.
We're the first podcast to do that.
So yeah, you're welcome.
Yes, let's do it.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
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.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
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.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Karate Lessons And Confidence00:15:04
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Maranchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
We're back into Phil Specter.
Actually, I don't know if I like that.
Hated it.
Sophie's face.
Yeah.
All right.
So it's easy to portray Ronnie as a victim and only as a victim, right?
But it kind of denies the fact that Phil Specter is Phil Spector at this time.
He is a legendary person in the music industry.
And she fell into love with him as well.
It was not one-sided.
It was not just Phil love-bombing her, but it was, in fact, quote, I already knew I liked him that first day, and I knew he liked me too.
It really was love at first sight on both our parts, even though I hardly said three words the whole night.
I didn't have to say anything else.
We communicated in other ways.
Every time Phil put that song back on, I was wondering, I wondered if he wasn't trying to tell me something because it sure did speak to me.
I couldn't stop thinking that today I really met the boy I was going to marry.
And that's from Ronnie's book, Be My Baby.
Yes, from Ronnie's book, Be My Baby.
Oh, I know where this goes.
I'm so bummed about this.
Yeah.
He showers her with gifts, attention, grand declarations of devotion.
Like he is just, he's on it, right?
Yeah.
However, remember I said that Phil has his studio in his house, right?
Yes.
And he is still married.
Oh.
His wife lives upstairs.
Cool.
So again, this is also from Ronnie's book.
She goes to visit him and she says, quote, I'd never been in a penthouse before, Phil or anyone else.
So naturally, when I walked in, I couldn't resist peeking into all the closets and poking around behind all the closed doors.
I opened one door and was surprised to find a bedroom where six or seven pairs of women's shoes were scattered all over the floor.
I asked Phil who they belonged to and he nearly turned pink.
Will you stop snooping around where you don't belong?
He snapped.
I think it was the first time I ever saw Phil lose his temper.
Okay, honey, I said, I'm sorry.
He must have noticed the hurt look in my eyes because he softened his tone immediately.
Those are my sister Shirley's shoes, he explained.
She stays here sometimes when she's in New York.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Your sister Shirley.
Yeah.
Bro, getting mad was the distraction to come up with the excuse, right?
He was like, what are you looking around for?
Oh, yeah, sister's shoes.
But those are my sister's shoes.
If I'd have thought of that before, I wouldn't have gotten mad first.
If I'd have thought of sister's shoes immediately, I wouldn't have gotten mad.
Come on.
So, you know, he's abrupt, defensive, you know, aggressive.
This is a pattern that would kind of define the relationship, you know?
Curiosity would be met with intimidation or reality would be replaced with Phil's version of truth.
Right.
He's gaslighting.
She accepts that.
Gaslights.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She accepts that as the truth, right?
And just doesn't even question it.
She does say that she recognized that Phil, Phil was, had some issues, right?
She was like, he's got some confidence issues.
And this is another quote that I think is...
Confidence issues, okay?
So important.
So, so important.
Listen to this.
All right.
So this is from her book, Be My Baby.
Quote, Phil first started losing his hair around the time we met.
In fact, there's a picture that was taken when he signed us in March 1963, which also was the first day I ever saw him wearing a toupee.
It was so obvious if you knew him, but he still went to great lengths to hide the fact that he wore wigs, even when we slept together.
After we'd do our foreplay, he'd get up from bed and make sure the lights were all out.
That way I couldn't watch him when he took his hair off.
Then he'd stumble into the bathroom in the dark so he could rub this acetone solvent all over his head.
It was the smelliest stuff in the world, but I guess it was the only thing he could get the tongue, the toupee glue off his scalp.
So he's like 21 and he's like lost all his hair already.
And he is incredibly insecure.
He's the worst way possible.
The worst way.
Sorry.
Yes.
And everybody knows.
Everybody around him knows, but like he's so powerful, you don't say anything.
Sure, sure.
And so it's just like everybody's just kind of accepting that this is a thing that has happened and nobody says anything.
And they just let him go on with his little delusion about not being bald.
You know, I'm not really bald.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course, Phil.
Absolutely.
I always wonder with guys like that.
Do you know that everyone knows?
Is this like a power thing?
Are you truly deluded?
I'm so excited that you brought this up and I can't wait for down the road when we discuss Phil and his hair because we have to at some point in time really get into Phil's psyche about his hair.
And spoiler alert.
It's a big deal for him.
It's a big deal.
It's a big deal.
He just flat out does never acknowledges that he wears wigs.
It's amazing.
All right.
So, and that's going to get even funnier in a couple paragraphs here.
All right.
So Phil brings Ronnie to California under the promise of expanding her career opportunities away from her family.
She's now crossed the country, New York to California away, you know.
During this whole time, Ronnie claims to have not known that Phil was married.
She didn't find out until they had been sleeping together for several months when a fellow musician finally broke the news to her.
She had been in love with Phil and ignored all the warnings, but now it was clear.
It didn't change her love.
She still loved him and he still loved her.
And he love bombs her with the house and they move in together.
Wow.
Yeah, so she's literally just in like the bathroom one day and somebody's like, oh, yeah, because, you know, because his wife.
And she's like, wait, what?
She's like, yeah, he's married.
You didn't know he's married?
He's married.
What are you talking about?
So she's just like, she's hurt, but she's like, you know, I mean, he comes and tells her, of course, you know, naturally, oh, it's not, we're done.
We're getting divorced.
We don't love each other.
It's all thing, right?
So Phil lied to Ronnie's mother about the nature of their relationship too, and tells her that they're married already.
Because she's like, you guys can't be living together and shit.
And he's like, no, we're already married.
It's fine.
And she's like, I don't believe you.
I believe it.
It's like an obvious lie.
Yeah, yeah, I don't believe you, but I do need to like, you know, figure this all out, right?
How old is Ronnie at this time?
Ronnie is like 19 years old, like 20, 19, 20.
And Phil is Phil is like 22, 23 years old.
Like he was born in 39, so 24.
He's 24.
Okay.
He would have these wild swings between like heavy love and then targeted insults.
One night after a show, he flew into a rage after a cameraman compliments her and he loses his mind.
Quote from Ronnie's book, quote, this was a big thing with Phil.
If I lost control in front of a crowd, he hated it because that meant I was out of his control.
And on top of everything else, you came in off key.
He could only ever criticize my singing for technical reasons because he knew I didn't read music.
So I couldn't argue.
Don't bother coming to the party after the show, he ordered.
I don't want to see you there.
I went straight back to my hotel room and cried.
I suppose I could have gone to the party anyways, but I never considered it.
I just couldn't go against Phil's wishes in those days.
Phil couldn't control what I did once I got out on stage, but that wasn't a problem he had in our personal life.
So he is pretty early.
They're not married.
This is very early, and he's already taking control.
The Beatles asked them to go on tour with the Ronettes, and Phil told Ronnie not to do it.
Yeah, why would you want to go on tour with the Beatles?
That's not.
No, not with those guys.
He's very.
Yeah, that band's not going anywhere.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fuck those guys.
Those random blokes from Liverpool or whatever.
Yeah.
No future.
So, all right.
So following the incident where he was urinated on, Spectre developed an intense obsession with personal protection.
This is classic Phil, right?
He began collecting firearms, frequently carrying them during studio sessions and public appearances.
Over time, his guns become more than defensive tools.
They become theatrical symbols of authority and intimidation.
Naturally, right?
Like this guy doesn't just, he loves guns, right?
He likes to scare people with guns a lot.
Yes.
He loves a snub nose.
He loves a 38, dude.
He just like, that's a pocket gun like crazy.
It's really just whip it out and wave it in people's faces, you know?
That's the perfect.
Yeah.
It's the perfect.
And also, you can hit him with it.
It's very heavy.
It's got a, you know, I mean, that's like hit him with it.
That's a good pistol whipping gun for sure, right?
Yeah, when you jam it into someone's body, the slide doesn't, you know, get out of battery or whatever.
Like you can, you can really just poke people with a 38 very easily.
And yes, and let's be real honest, too.
When it comes to a 38, like it's not like a long distance weapon.
It's not an aiming gun.
Not at all.
All right.
He also developed a fascination with martial arts, particularly karate.
All right.
No, again, this is 1960s America.
We're about to see Elvis get into the same thing.
This isn't like out of control.
Lots of actors are like, okay, but, all right, but Phil's particularly fun.
So he's watching television right now and he sees a guy named Santi Yosol break a brick with his hand and he's it.
That's it.
He's sold, bro.
He's sold.
Sure.
Yes.
So he starts taking lessons from this guy.
He finds this guy and starts taking lessons from him, right?
And he just like goes crazy.
It's like every day.
And he starts, he starts walking around town in a karate geek.
Just like, yeah, you're gonna go literally.
He's inventing being a weeb.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Yes.
And all right, and again, and again, he doesn't have real hair.
So he's wearing a wig, right?
He's wearing an obvious wig and a karate outfit walking around town.
Oh, my God.
But you can't make fun of him because you know he's also going to pull that 38 on you if you do.
Yes.
And probably armed with a gun.
So like all of the things, right?
All right.
So this also gives him access to actual karate practitioners because he's taken lessons from these guys.
So then he hires them.
He hires Santi to be his bodyguard because he's like, well, now I got this tough guy, right?
You're just karate.
And so these guys also, I just want to point out, like, I don't know this to be fact, but I just can't stop thinking about this because another bodyguard who's a karate guy, he talks about this a little bit.
But, you know, you know that they're getting paid a lot of money to be around this guy.
They're making a lot of money off of this guy, right?
So you know they're like, yeah, bro, you're killing me with karate chests, man.
Phil, Phil, you've got the most powerful dangerous.
Yeah, just a little push knocked me right over, Phil.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
It's also, especially in this period of time, just lying about your martial arts qualifications.
Oh, yeah.
I spent 10 years in China learning kung fu from monks.
Who's going to check up on that shit?
You learn and you're good, you know?
Yeah.
You could lie about anything back in the day, man.
It was so easy.
Even when I was like in high school, you could still lie about things.
Like, what am I going to do?
Go to the library and prove you wrong.
All of the top-build Native American actors in Hollywood were Italian men.
Italian guys.
It was very easy to lie.
It was so easy.
All right.
So Santi bodyguards for him.
And then he's like, bro, I ain't got time for this anymore.
I'm actually getting a legitimate business.
So he passes it off to this other guy, Emil Farkas.
And Emil felt that Spectre was using his bodyguards as a status symbol, but also as a threat to anyone who might get froggy.
So he's like, you know, walking around, I got these guys, you know, like, what are you going to do kind of shit?
Very Jack Doherty coded.
Do you know Jack Doherty?
Yeah.
The millennial, the young kid, the Zennials or whatever, we'll know who the fuck that is.
Anyway, he's doing that.
He's going up to clubs on Sunset Strip, getting in front of everybody.
And then when somebody dares to question him, he says, fuck you.
And they're like, okay, well, let's fight.
And then from out of behind him comes some actual karate guys, you know?
Plus, also too, actual karate guys in the 60s must have beat the shit out of everybody, dude.
Like, they're still in like the world of like wild haymakers.
Everyone else is doing like the Captain Kirk 200 punch.
And you actually know how to hit somebody.
Yeah.
You're fucking up.
Somebody's out there doing this thing.
You know what I mean?
Come on now.
Jack Johnson.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's like, like actual karate guys, I think about this all the time.
Like they must have just mopped the floor.
It's not like now you might actually run into like a UFC guy like or like an MMA guy right now.
There's guys who actually do that now just walking around.
But these are just karate guys walking around.
Anyway, so yeah, so he basically is just antagonizing people purposefully to cause problems and then has his bodyguards beat the shit out of him, which is super fucked up.
So Emil, though, he says, this is from Breaking the Wall of Sound, quote, Spectre had never quite got the hang of karate.
He might have worn a black belt tied around his gi and he might have boasted to journalists that in case of real trouble, I could totally kill a guy.
But according to Emil Farkas, he just play acted.
He'd do a lot of chopping his hands in the air, but he was nowhere near a black.
He's like a lot of chopping his hands in the air.
If the thing someone's going for is a chop, you can kind of guess the rest.
He's like, he's like, I know you can really hurt people that way, but generally, he's hitting them with the hi-ya.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, it's, it's hilarious to picture like in your brain, right?
I just always have to remind myself because he's a giant in the world, but he is a five-foot-three man.
He's a tiny little dude out here karate chopping.
Incredible.
Wearing a karate gear.
He's a five foot three man who believes he's a martial artist.
My God.
But all right, but what he was good at was playing pool.
Apparently, he was pretty good at playing pool.
And so he hired this pro player, Willie Moscone, and paid him $175,000 a year to hang out at his house and teach him how to play pool.
Hiring Willie Moscone For Pool00:02:41
Okay.
That's cool.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah.
And then, hold on.
Hold on.
Then he would go to pool halls and hustle people with him.
And then when people got mad, he'd have his bodyguards beat the shit out of him.
He's really, he was really scraping all of the fun you can have when you're rich enough for bodyguards.
He's like, I just have a posse of dangerous men that have to beat people up if I'm a dick.
I'm surprised more rich guys don't do this, to be honest.
Honestly, I'm going to be honest, man.
If I ever get that kind of money, like walking around with bodyguards money, oh, that's all I'm going to do.
Yeah.
That's all I'm going to do.
So he would throw crazy parties and then disappear.
He's a weird dude right now.
He's like, he'd throw these crazy parties and then disappear the whole night and then reappear right as people are about to leave.
And he would get super mad if the girls wanted to go home.
Super mad.
Messy.
Yeah, I'm not surprised.
He has got real, he hates to be alone, first of all.
And he establishes this, but he also just has, like, specifically when women want to leave, he is, he gets upset every single time.
Not cool with him.
Yeah.
Phil would, this is from Emil Farkas again, uh, from Breaking Down the Wall of Sound.
Phil would get very upset if women walked out on him, Farkas says.
He would rant and rave, you'll never work again.
I'll get you fired, whatever.
But then again, you'd have this thing at parties where you might have 20 girls each, and each one would try to last out the other to see who was going to stay the night with him.
But the feeling I got was that Phil sort of realized that most of these people were around for the external rather the internal.
And he would have preferred that he wasn't liked for the limousines and the money and all that.
He would have really liked to be loved for himself.
And there were girls who liked him for that.
I think the problem was that Phil could never believe that these people could love him for who he was.
I'm not surprised he had trouble believing people could love him for who he was because he's a dick.
You know who won't get mad when you try and leave their parties in the middle of the night?
These sponsors.
That was people who pay money.
I was going to say me because my parties don't go that late.
But the party of capitalism, that one keeps on going forever.
People Could Not Love Him00:03:44
Yeah.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield.
And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
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.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Aiko Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
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.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come.
Look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Sonny Bono And Cher Side00:13:23
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancine.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
Okay.
Well, take it away.
Yes.
So it's 1964.
The Ronnettes toured England with the Beatles.
They go.
They do actually go to the Beatles to tour with the Beatles.
And Phil insists on being there.
He is super jealous of it.
He does not like it.
You got to keep in mind, too, the Beatles are the next evolutionary step in this chain.
We went to now producers and bands are gone.
And Phil Spector represented the most important version of that.
But it's 1964 and the Beatles are about to cross over in America.
And Phil Spector is incredibly threatened by them.
They have been tearing up the charts and kind of pushing him out, very much so.
So when the Ronnetts are asked to go on tour with the Beatles, he's like, and so he goes to England to supervise.
You know, he has to go over and watch and make sure no one's putting the moves on the old girl, you know?
He said, from Ronnie, this is from Be My Baby, Ronnie's book.
Phil never came out and said it, but I could tell he didn't like the idea of us spending too much time with the Beatles.
I don't think his ego could stand the competition.
The Beatles were leaving to start their first U.S. tour in a few days.
And when John asked me if we wanted to fly back with them on their chartered jet, I didn't have the nerve to ask Phil if it was okay.
So I had my mom make the suggestion.
You know, Phil, she told him, it might be good publicity if the girls went back on the jet with the Beatles.
No, he told her, I've already bought their tickets.
And that was all it said.
So he tells them, nah, man, I got tickets for you already.
You can't fly back on the plane with the Beatles.
Are you crazy?
I'm just going to let my girlfriend get on a fucking plane, a private plane with a bunch of rock stars.
Hell no, that's a horrible idea.
Yeah, hell no.
So he buys them, he buys them private or commercial flights back, right?
She says, she continues, my mother, they landed the next day at JFK and she says, my mother and I watched the whole thing on TV.
We're amazed at how many kids showed up at the airport screaming and carrying banners.
But what surprised me even more was something that happened after the plane landed.
The jet was on the ground, and the cameras zoomed in on the door that was about to open up to give America its first glimpse of the Fab Four.
But when that hatch finally did swing open, who do you think was with them?
I almost fainted when I looked at the TV and saw Phil Specter following the Beatles out of their place.
So he's like, you can't fly back with the Beatles, and then he flies back with the Beatles.
I want to fly back with the Beatles.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's like thousands of people greeting him at the airport and they're like, and there's Phil Specter.
And they're like, that dick.
Fuck.
Amazing.
Amazing pettiness.
Amazing.
That is, that is Tom Petty right there, dude.
That's amazing.
Yeah, that's like a grand level of dickery.
Like, it's spectacular.
You can't ride with the hottest band that's going on in the world right now.
But I can.
And you have to take a shot.
I'm definitely going to be there.
Yeah.
So funny.
So Ronnie's life keeps like it's more and more confined.
She's starting to get like kind of more trapped by Phil and everything.
And Phil starts working repeatedly at this studio Gold Star.
I mentioned it before.
It was like the scene of his wall of sound.
And it's really important.
Like it is kind of like a big deal.
It's hate Ashberry for the hippie movement or, you know, or Woodstock or what it is.
It's an important moment in time where a bunch of people come together for a thing that is like significant.
And Gold Star is there.
Gold star is where the wrecking crew kind of was born.
It's where Phil was doing all these hits.
And it's a shithole for the record.
But Phil loves it.
He turns it into his fortress, right?
He just like, like, he, no one's allowed to come in unless he says so.
He's booking so much time there.
Like he lives in this studio.
And at this studio, he uh he is working with Sonny Bono and Cher.
Sonny Bono.
Side bastard.
Side bastard Sonny Bono.
Sonny Bono.
We're going to sidebast it Sonny Bono.
Sonny Bono is a big giant dick.
And we, first of all, bro, he's like the most, first of all, first of all, I mean, the Copyright Protections Act that he did just so Disney could keep Mickey Mouse and fucking in their that that sucks, right?
But also, how do you go from being Sonny and Cher, like this whole, like they, they sang on mamas and papa songs and stuff.
Yeah, they were, how do you do that and then become a Republican senator?
You know, like that's like the ultimate betrayal of a human being.
Sonny Bono ended as a, yeah, Republican senator.
He wasn't a Republican sellout senator.
Yeah, amazing.
He was the one.
And also the subject of one of my favorite MM lines, Sonny Bono skis horses and hitting some trees.
Oh, I love that.
Great.
So, um, so Ronnie develops a close relationship with Cher, who became one of the few people that Ronnie could confide in because she was also living very similar situation at this time.
Sonny and Cher is about as famous as Ike and Tina, about as famous as Ronnie and Phil.
Ironic that they would all work together with Phil.
Very strange.
And it's really interesting too, because in all of these situations, it shows that the men in these situations who are very dominant to their women also are all subservient to Phil.
Sonny Bono bends over for Phil like completely.
Like he is, he absolutely lets, I mean, he, I mean, Phil is the god at the time.
Sonny Bono is nobody.
He's a gopher.
He's a runner at a studio.
And Phil treats him like a runner at the studio.
He is horrible to him.
He treats him awfully.
Side note, this is a really funny story.
When Ronnie first met Cher, she thought she was a hooker.
She like, she like mentioned.
Yeah, she thought Cher was a hooker.
She was like, oh, this must be Sonny Bono's hooker.
Oh my God.
And she just, she just says that, which is really funny.
There's a liar.
There's a lot of things in these like interviews and books and stuff that I've read.
Like I, I, I love Phil Spector.
So I've read many books on him.
I watch every documentary.
I love, I love Phil Spector and I'm so interested by him.
So when I watch and read all these things, it's insane to see like how open and honest people are about the horrible things that they think and say out loud.
It's so crazy.
Why did you write this in a book?
You wrote that you thought Cher was a hooker.
You didn't tell anyone that.
Did you just say that?
That was totally, it was totally free to shut the fuck up.
It costs no money.
I told you you want it.
No one's going to be like, hey, man.
Do you ever think Cher was a hooker?
Right.
Like, you just, yeah, okay.
Incredible.
So funny.
So anyway, so they got a complicated relationship, Sonny and Phil, and it blossoms into this very like subservient relationship where Sonny just does everything that Phil asks.
He, he, he, like, whatever Phil tells him, like, hey, don't let the girls do this.
He's like, okay.
And he becomes like an enforcer for Cher and Ronnie Bennett's relationship in a lot of ways.
And it's very, again, he's like getting other people to carry out his like possessive, weird details of his life and stuff.
It's very strange.
Gives me the all right.
So Phil has had a killer career, right?
He's had a killer career.
Things have been going good for him.
The Beatles come to America.
Things start to change.
He does, he still has some hits.
Things are going good or whatever.
But we're about to hit 1966.
And in 1966, he produced River Deep Mountain High for Tina Turner.
Turner.
Yes.
And he, to him, he says this was the greatest thing he ever did.
It was the ultimate realization of the wall of sound.
It was, if you listen to this song, it is phenomenal.
It's a cacophony of sound.
It is absolutely.
It is, I mean, it's like you cannot tell other than Tina's voice, you cannot tell a single thing that is happening in the background.
You can kind of hear like a guitar riff in the beginning, but that could be anything, right?
It's like the whole sound is so amorphous.
It has no shape.
It has no body.
It's so drenched in reverb and it's just noise behind what's going on.
It's so brilliant and so beautiful.
And it's, yeah, it does rip.
And it's very reminiscent of like modern day like shoegaze type stuff is like this.
You know, it's got a really cool atmosphere.
It's all atmosphere and emotion.
Yeah.
Even notoriously shitty side bastard.
Side bastard.
Notoriously shitty side bastard Ike Turner.
Bowed.
It is a music industry episode.
We're going to have a lot of side bastards.
I just really like the sidebastard sound effect.
Yeah, we made a recording.
I recorded that myself as well, by the way.
Yeah, you should make it into the regular rotation.
I do.
It's so nice.
I have a soundboard.
I need it.
There we go.
It's so good.
It's so good.
Yeah.
So notoriously shitty sidebastard Ike Turner.
Yeah.
Revered Phil.
Let him be in control.
You're talking about a band, Ike and the Ikeets, right?
Featuring Tina Turner.
Like, like, we're talking, Ike is the control freak of control freaks.
But why is he submissive to this weird little guy?
Sophie, in the beginning, we asked, we asked this question.
Yeah.
Why do we allow people to be horrible and shitty?
And just because they can make a really cool, it's the same, it's the same world.
Why do those people allow this other person who's also shitty to get away with being in control of them?
Because the music industry, because you can write a good song, you can get away with murder, sort of.
Not completely.
Spoiler alert.
Do people like him?
He's visibly wearing wings.
Nobody is confused about this.
And he is wearing platform shoes.
He is 5'3 ⁇ .
He's wearing platform shoes that barely make him 5'5 ⁇ , which is still really, really short.
Yeah.
You know?
No offense, short kids.
There's nothing wrong with it, but it clearly is fucking with him.
I mean, this is what pops up when I searched Phil Spector in 1966.
Okay.
Dude, look at the hair.
Wow.
Oh, no, the glasses, the sideways diamond glasses.
Those are amazing.
This is a little early for this.
Those glasses are honestly whipped.
But I want to share this picture real quick because this is also very important.
Robert, God, I have been waiting to show you this picture.
Anyway, this is so good.
All right.
So this is Phil Specter in 1966, around this same time, around the same time.
This is him with his security guard, George Brandt.
Oh, my God.
So they're sitting in some sort of old-timey van, and George Brandt, like Phil is in George Brandt's lap.
He looks like a child.
George has, because Phil's holding a gun and pointing it out the window, and he's got like a fucking, like, what kind of, what's that kind of game?
It looks like a Labrador or like a dog, like what a poodle, like a poodle hair situation going on in his back.
He's like a bootleg.
Kabuklay hats.
He's holding a gun.
And his bodyguard has his arm around Phil and is like holding him in place.
And his hand is like as big as both of Phil's hands put together.
Like one hand.
Like you, this contrast between the two men is jarring.
It's the like the flappy hair hats.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
In short, it is very funny.
It is so incredible.
I cannot believe that he took that picture and was like, yeah, print that shit.
Crazy.
It's so funny.
He's a tiny person.
That really gives you like a perspective.
He's a tiny person.
He looks like he looks very silly posing with a gun.
George Brand, this is George Brandon.
And George Brand is kind of big.
He's like 6'1 or something like that.
But he's not, that's not huge.
That's me.
I'm six foot.
You know, he's like my size.
But he looks like a giant compared to him.
He looks like he's holding his child.
Ike Turner and Sonny bowing to him in submission.
Lenny Bruce Documentary Film00:15:00
That's crazy.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
But that's the power of a hitmaker.
That's the power of a hitmaker.
That's pretty cool.
It's like kind of cool.
Being somebody who's controlling the industry and that kind of power is.
But as I said, well, I didn't say it, but spoiler alert, it doesn't last long.
Okay.
He produces River Deep Mountain High for Tina Turner, and he spends enormous amount of money.
This is signed to his label to the Phyllis Records.
And he spends a ton of money, right?
Emotional energy, just everything, time.
He puts everything.
This is his magna opus.
This is his thing, right?
He thinks it's the best thing he's ever done.
Massive orchestration, intricate layering.
One of the most powerful vocal performances ever recorded.
Specter later described it as the greatest work of his career.
Yeah.
In the United States, it failed miserably.
That's so wild.
It fails horribly.
Now, Spectre says, Specter's belief, and a lot of people's belief.
I've heard a lot of opinions on this, but the belief is generally it was too white for black audiences and too black for white audiences.
It was that rare moment of in-between.
It had orchestration, but it had Tina, but it had wall of sound mud, but it had Tina.
But, you know, it's like, it's like, it was so confusing for DJs at the time because you either played race records or you played white records.
And that was it.
Like, it was like, where does this fall?
We don't know.
Phil Specter is taking this to a logical conclusion, but it just doesn't hit.
Yeah.
This, it did, it did have success in the United Kingdom.
In the UK, it did chart, but the domestic rejection just devastated him.
For a man who equated control with emotional safety, the failure felt deeply personal.
If he could not guarantee success through perfection, then his entire identity as a producer was suddenly unstable, right?
So this breaks him.
Like, this is the breaking point.
He takes out a full-page ad in a newspaper in America saying Benedict Arnold was right.
Whoa.
Yeah, because England liked it and America didn't.
Whoa.
That's nuts.
That's a crazy place for your head to go.
What in the fuck?
And then Benedict Arnold was right.
Yeah.
Okay, bro.
So after that, everybody's like, okay, well, we're not spinning this record anymore.
This dude just called us all traitors.
Like he said, he said, England should have won the war.
Yeah.
Fuck that guy.
That's a little much.
Crazy.
So Phil's failure with River Deep Mountain High caused him to pull out of music completely.
He announced his retirement from music and spent the days wandering around his mansion despondent and depressed.
This is a common theme with Phil as well.
He spends a lot of time wandering around his mansion depressed.
Dennis Hopper was actually chronicling the process of making River Deep Mountain High.
He was doing like a documentary film on the process.
And because he'd been around, he saw this and how it reacted, Phil, he offers Phil a job playing a drug dealer, an Easy Rider, which is an amazing, amazing film, amazing role.
They said, literally, they're like, yeah, we let him be an Easy Rider.
The story I read framed it as like, oh, yeah, you know, like, it'll pick him up.
It'll make him feel better.
But then when you actually hear like the Dennis Hopper interview, he's like, yeah, he had a Rolls-Royce and he would let us use it if we put him in the movie.
We couldn't afford it otherwise.
It was Easy Rider, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, we're making like $25,000.
So other than that, other than his time on Easy Rider, he spent most of his time playing pool and often hanging with his friend Lenny Bruce.
Are you familiar with?
Oh my God.
Yeah, of course.
Lenny Bruce was like, I mean, Lenny Bruce was the inspired George Carlin.
He's kind of the error he's not the first stand-up guy.
Yeah.
But he's like the first shot.
Some people say the first really good stand-up comedian.
Yeah.
And big dude.
Yeah.
Phil loves him, right?
Phil just idolizes him.
He thinks he's amazing.
He's Phil Specter, so he's big enough to just be like, yeah, I'll just hang.
Lenny Bruce is, by the way, in his personal life, a massive piece of shit.
Yeah, basically.
He's not a nice guy and horrible at drug problems.
He has horrible drug problems, horrible everything problems.
Lenny Bruce is a mess.
And for those of you who are not familiar with Lenny Bruce, if you look it up, you're going to be a lot.
There's a lot of N-word Lenny Bruce rants is what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah.
A lot, a lot.
They also try to fictionalize, romanticize him in that marvelous Mrs. Maisel show that was on Amazon.
They make him a character in that and they make him like this like.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Totally.
Because he's not watching.
A lot of ways.
I think Finnish.
He's really beloved because of his influence on like comedy from a freedom of speech standpoint, which he really did take a stand and pay for.
Yes.
That they also whitewash a lot of like, he was, he was a messy motherfucker among comedians.
And standing up comedians are almost all messy sons of bitches.
There's a lot of stories about him showing up at Phil's house and like, and like, you know, Phil having to like basically kick him out and be like, and apologize to his guests.
Phil, Phil, the guy who held people at gunpoint, waved guns around, had to be like, yeah, guys, sorry, Lenny's messy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hey, listen, Lenny's messy, guys.
You know, my friend doesn't always use the right terms.
He can be kind of inappropriate.
All right.
So the two men bonded over a shared sense of being misunderstood.
Outsiders navigating industries that simultaneously rewarded and rejected them, which is extremely valid.
They're both kind of outsiders while also being like praised and glorified.
And also kind of at the top of their careers or kind of at the top of their feet.
It's very strange.
Bruce admired Spectre's musical intensity, and Spectre appeared to be drawn to Bruce's defiant rejection of authority and social norms.
He quotes Lenny Bruce all the time.
He'll be like, Lenny Bruce says, you know, it's like always how he goes.
He loves Lenny Bruce.
He loves Lenny Bruce so much that Phil keeps a blown-up image of Lenny Bruce above his bed.
What?
Oh, what?
Oh, what?
Ronnie.
Ronnie.
Oh!
Oh!
Okay.
So where is he?
Ronnie was like done.
Oh, yeah.
Famous guys who like getting wasted together.
Okay.
Yeah, it's weird.
That is.
That's okay.
What?
Like, when I wrote this, I literally had this funny mental image of me having a Robert Evans above my bed and like you're shirtless, you know, like just like you know, over the shoulder kind of look, you know, just like, I just, I was like, yes, dude, that's how I want my relationship with Robert to be.
It's like, like quasi-sexual and nature.
Lenny Bruce relationship.
Sure.
Absolutely.
My goodness.
So, so Spectre's get, he gets his belief that he's existing outside of conventional society.
By hanging out with Lenny Bruce, it validates that for him.
Right.
You know, and that society just didn't understand him.
Yeah.
This is why River Deep Mountain High failed.
It's just like Lenny Bruce, right?
It's like society just doesn't get how important this is.
But then, but then Lenny, Lenny dies.
But then Lenny Bruce does die, doesn't he?
A long life expectancy as a Lenny Bruce type.
On August 3rd, 1966, Lenny was found on the floor of his bathroom with the pants around his ankles and a needle stuck in his arm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's how that goes, right?
He died of an overdose.
He died of an overdose on the toilet, which is very Elvis and sad.
Very, I mean, very Lenny Bruce.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very Lenny Bruce.
Yeah.
Lenny Bruce was the original.
Lenny Bruce, the OG dino in the toilet.
Yeah.
So Phil was devastated to lose his friend.
He's so sad about this.
And again, mopes around the house for days, you know.
But a few days later, a cop shows up at his, I think it was his lawyer's house.
It was might have is either his friend or a lawyer, but cop shows up and says, Hey, I got these pictures of Lenny Bruce from the crime scene.
Either you buy them or I'm selling them to the tabloids, right?
And so Phil spent 5K of his own money just, he purchased them, spent $5,000 of his own money, which at that time is like a house.
Yeah, that's a lot of money.
Yeah.
You know, spends $5,000 of his own money to purchase those photos to keep them out of the press.
He also paid for Lenny's funeral.
And then after Lenny's funeral, he locked himself in his house for weeks on end and didn't talk to anybody because he was so depressed at the loss of his friend.
Fuck me.
That's one of those real.
It's weird that he is capable of deeply caring for someone and it's Lenny Bruce.
Yeah, okay.
Exactly.
That's what I'm saying.
It's like, it's a really weird moment because you're like, oh, that's sad, but also.
This is the first really human emotion we've gotten.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, okay, interesting.
But also, huh?
You know?
Back to Ronnie, right?
Ronnie's mom finally is like, you guys aren't really married, right?
So she's like, you're not living with somebody if you're not married to them.
She like loses her mind over the whole thing.
She's like, you guys need to get married.
Right.
So Phil, you know, he still lies to her.
He tries like lying, but she comes out to California and she's like, nope, don't believe you.
And so she takes Ronnie and makes her move back to New York, which is again, very crazy.
This is like an era where being 21 is actually what's considered an adult at this time.
I mean, it kind of still is a little bit, but in the manner of like, if you were under 21, you could actually be told what to do by your parents still, you know.
Yeah, you're not really an Army.
And also no money and all sorts of shit.
Anyway, so she forces her to move back to New York.
Ronnie hates being in New York.
She hates being around her relatives.
She feels like they're all like gold diggers kind of.
And she wants to get back to California.
So Phil comes and rescues her and takes her back to California.
But as soon as they get back, he gets right back into being jealous, you know.
And it wasn't until she threatens to leave him that he finally does commit to marrying her.
Aw, wow.
They're planning to be married on April 14th, but MLK was shot and killed on April 4th.
And Phil goes into a despair.
It's super common with Phil.
Anytime somebody famous dies that he has had any association with at all, which does happen a lot, you know, 60s and all, he falls into like these horrible depressive states where he just like mopes around.
He was just playing MLK speeches on repeat in his house at like top volume, which I'm sure he had a killer stereo, right?
He's still spectacular.
He's just blasting MLK speeches at like top volume in his house and like crying in the living room.
It's like super crazy, which brings me to a point about Phil that I think is super interesting for all of Phil's flaws.
Racism is never racism.
Not once, not ever.
He is always...
When we look at these relationships, it's like it is always black girl groups that he's like, you know, doing this abuse to, but black is never really like a consideration.
It is women that is the consideration that like.
He has an issue with women.
Right.
For as awful as he is, he's never awful about black people.
He loves black people.
In fact, Ronnie thinks that he wished he was black.
And he cried, cried tears when LK died.
Given like the industry he's in at the time.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, that makes sense, actually.
Yeah.
So he eventually snaps out of his depression and they return to their wedding plans.
They get married on the 14th.
The marriage itself was performed at a Justice of the Peace ceremony.
They know for a millionaire record producer, he doesn't, he half asses the hell out of it.
He does Justice of the Peace.
And as someone who's done a couple of Justice of the Peace marriages, you know, I get it, right?
Sometimes you just want to get it over with.
You know, I got stuff to do today.
Yeah, I've done one.
His chauffeur's brother was his best man.
After the wedding, they celebrated by going to a concert.
And then Phil sent Ronnie and her mother home with his driver and went to visit his mother out of guilt of not having told her about the wedding.
So he feels bad.
He's like, oh, actually, I can't believe I didn't tell my mom about the wedding.
I should have told her about this.
So I got in trouble for that.
Right.
So I probably should have done that.
So he goes, right.
And Ronnie and her mom go back to the house.
Right?
Ronnie goes home.
She puts on some lingerie.
She gets wedding night, bro.
We wedding night, you know?
She gets all up and she waits and waits and waits and waits.
Hours go by.
Phil does not come back.
And she's like, uh, okay, well, what the hell?
Finally, he returns home late as hell, drunk as hell, and he's mad.
He walked into our room, she says.
This is from her book, Be My Baby. Quote, when he walked into our room, I could tell the last thing he was interested in was my body.
Remember, she's wearing lingerie and everything.
He was a completely different person than the man I had sat with at the concert three hours earlier.
You bitch, he shouted.
I couldn't believe how mad he looked and worse than I'd ever seen him.
He was raving so loud that the veins in his neck were bulging blue.
I know your game, Veronica, he shouted.
You just want my money.
That is it, isn't it?
I was so scared that I got up and ran out of the bedroom and into the hallway.
If Phil was going to kill me, I wanted him to do it where there might be witnesses.
What's wrong, Phil?
What did your mother tell you?
The truth, he panted, that this whole marriage is about one thing, my money.
He was so mad he could barely catch his breath now.
Ronnie and her mother locked themselves inside a bathroom for hours hiding from Phil's rage and unpredictable behavior.
Quote, my mother and I had been living on that pale blue carpet for over an hour when Phil finally wore himself out and went to bed.
After that, we got kind of drowsy ourselves.
I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard my mother sigh.
Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, what did you marry?
I moved in close to her and I started to cry.
Isn't this something I sniffed?
Here it is, my wedding night, and I'm spending it curled up on the bathroom floor with my mother.
Geez.
Wow.
So it is her wedding day, her wedding day, her wedding day.
He goes to a show and then he comes home drunk, drops her off, comes home drunk, screaming and threatening her.
An hour, he spent an hour banging on the bathroom door, threatening her, screaming at her with her and her mom just in the bathroom, cuddled up on the floor, crying.
Paying Strangers For Heroin00:04:25
Wow.
And that extremely happy moment is where we will leave this episode.
That's part two, baby.
Part two done.
I am Greasy Will.
You can find me all over the internet.
I have lots of things for sale if you ever want to buy them.
So you know, when I pay them money, it's not going to drugs.
That is super courteous.
That's the best you can say about anybody.
That's right.
That's right.
Whereas I take all of my profits and hand them out underneath a bridge so that people can buy drugs.
Not that.
You might as well pay me in heroin.
You know, like just pay me in heroin.
Just pay strangers I give money to in heroin.
You are Robert Evans, my good friend and founded I WriteOK on the internet.
And also here on Netflix, on Netflix, you might be watching this on the Netflix.
Bro, this is the closest I will ever come to success.
You could watch this.
You could watch another one of Netflix's classic hit shows, like whatever movie is out now.
That one about that pervert guy that kidnaps people and keeps them in their basement.
Sure.
You could be watching the pervert next.
Wow.
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