February, 1985

Dear Diary: Last night I went to Phil Spector’s house. With the Heaters. He’s interested in producing them. I sent him a tape a year ago and his secretary called yesterday.

Two days ago the Heaters broke up.

But yesterday they re-formed up at Phil’s house. He asked Mercy to sing while he played piano. She sang “Maybe,” and a slow version of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” He asked them if they want to have a hit record. He said he hasn’t tried producing in about five years, and we’re the first people he’s called…We sat around the reception hall of his gigantic Beverly Hills mansion. He had soda and beer and donuts and chewing gum and coffee and tea and whisky and wine laid out for us. He said he’d wanted to meet them, and afterwards said he had a good feeling about it. When Mercy asked him how he got their tape, he pointed to me.

Maybe the Heaters deal will happen. Maybe it will be workable. But then again maybe it sounds rosy now and will sour. Or he’ll change his mind. But what the hell, you know?

One minute I’m an ordinary guy; the next I know Phil Spector.

That first visit was something of a blur. My strongest memories: Phil presented the hook and verse for something he’d written called “Goodbye Song.” The simple refrain, a couple of lines, was so fundamentally Spector that I momentarily broke down hearing Mercy sing it. It took no imagination to fill in the choruses and the timpani as the song unfolded. I turned away to hide tears. Mercy was singing a new Phil Spector song, a song created to be in her mouth, while Phil Spector played piano. Was this the culmination of everything I dreamed of when I was 17, sitting with my ears pressed against mammoth speakers listening to Phil’s Christmas album? Damn right it was.

As the designated business man (I don’t think anyone there believed that), I was supposed to be outside and above it all, but there I sat with my eyes pressed shut, weeping with joy, gripping the edge of my chair and grinning. Phil saw me and teased, ‘’Look at Arthur. He thinks this is funny. He doesn’t like my song. He thinks it should sound more like the theme song to his TV show.” He pounded the piano and hollered, “She loves to watch!” His antics couldn’t kill what had already happened with Mercy—the most transcendent moment of music I’ve ever experienced.* And, I thought, he watches my show!!

At our second visit, nearly a month later, I had the presence of mind to notice more. The four of us arrived at Spector’s 21-room spread—was it French Chateau-ish? Spanish-castlesque? Were those turrets?—at 10 p.m. As before, a bearded bodyguard who looked like Theodore Bikel smiled a silent greeting and let us in the wrought iron security doors and the front door. Why exactly did Phil need bodyguards? That was never clear.

He led us through the dimly lit foyer. On the wall were several Beatles-related graphics, including a bus poster showing Lennon in various life phases; a rug with Disney animal figures—Mickey, Pluto, Goofy, et al.—with the admonition in the middle “Buy fake fur”; and photos of Lenny Bruce. His 1966 death by overdose was said to have devastated Spector, who paid for the funeral.

A table held many other photos, including Phil with Carole King, with the Beatles, with Wilt Chamberlain. In one picture, teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy wore a Phil Spector Appreciation Society T-shirt. In 1977, the kid’s version of “Da Doo Ron Ron” went to number-one, and Phil had a cameo in the video, sitting in the back of a limo pursued by screaming girls as Cassidy wonders, “Who was that guy?”

We barreled into the large reception room like old hands, headed for the refreshment table, poured tea and coffee and ate cookies. The room had high ceilings. On the east wall, massive gilt mirrors flanked tall, draped windows. All the furniture was heavy: four bulky armchairs upholstered in velvet; a chess table resting on a carved elephant; two dark gray mid-century modern couches forming an L, one of them facing the large fireplace, on its mantle a gold clock stopped at three. The lamps beside the couches were lacquered blue and gold with a Chinese dragon motif. A square glass dish commemorating Yoko Ono’s Season of Glass album sat on a coffee table with a carved base of intertwined snakes. On the white piano (grand? baby grand? teenage grand?) were three photos of Phil with a karate instructor I recognized as Mike Stone, who was Phil’s bodyguard for a while. Elvis introduced the two of them at the karate school where Stone taught. Later, Elvis wanted Stone killed for going out with about-to-be-ex-wife Priscilla, it was said.

To the left of the piano was a record rack containing an odd array of albums: Belafonte, the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, Johnny Tillotson, Bob E. Soxx, two Crystals, three Roger Millers, and one from the great jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, who gave teenage Phil guitar lessons. Near the piano, a round table with inset Elizabethanish portraits under glass held Phil’s Grammy for 1973 Album of the Year, The Concert for Bangladesh, which he co-produced with George Harrison. The west wall displayed many old-fangled paintings of landscapes and a historical portrait or two, including a conquistador-looking guy wearing a big pendant cross. The console TV, with its doors closed, was identifiable as such by the cable box. A flying-saucer-shaped fish tank, dark and empty, looked like a discarded toy. At the northwest corner of the room, six stairs led up to a hallway connecting to the rest of the house. As on our first visit, classical organ music filtered down from upstairs.

Waiting for Phil, the girls and I chatted animatedly for half an hour, then availed ourselves of the various books lying around—two Spector bios from the ’70s, (Out of His Head and The Phil Spector Story); Elvis: The Boy Who Dared to Rock; Nik Cohn’s 1970 rock history; Who’s Who in California, 1971.

Phil came down at 10:45. The first guard was replaced by a younger, taller, bearded guy in jeans and a coat. He stood on the stairs, keeping his hand on a holstered gun, semi-concealed. “Sorry about the delay,” Phil said. “I have so many phone calls to make.”

He joined us on the couches and talked at length about… Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. How he was superior to Roy Rogers, the other singing cowboy; how Roy Rogers had a chain of fast-food places but Gene Autry had baseball teams and TV stations; how Roy Rogers was just some singing jerk while Gene Autry was a real cowboy and did all his own stunts. (Not quite true in either case.) Phil told us that Autry turned down “White Christmas” before Bing Crosby recorded it, had only one hit, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and should have shared publishing profits on it; that Autry hates Roy Rogers and gets mad when you mention his name. This monologue went on for 10 tension-filled minutes while I tried to figure out where it was going, and the girls chirped in with occasional “oh”s and “wow”s. “You see,” Spector concluded, as if making some point, “Roy Rogers named his horse Trigger, but Gene Autry named his Champion.”

I hastily mentioned that I’d recently seen Phil in Easy Rider on cable TV. The girls didn’t know about his cameo as a drug customer, so they looked interestedly towards us. “Oh, I had to live that down for many years,” he said. “The image of me snorting cocaine.” He said he’d just hired Dennis Hopper to head his video division. I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Videos? “Yes, but that’s not for publication.”

Then Phil had Mercy sing. They worked on Missy’s song “American Dream,” with Phil calling Maggie over to play piano. He suggested word changes in the chorus and sang the song a couple of times to demonstrate what he wanted. The whole time he kept up a constant surveillance of the room, a 360-degree scan. While he sat at the piano playing and Mercy stood singing, Missy walked up the stairs toward the guard, seeking the bathroom. Phil couldn’t keep his eyes on the music. His head naturally followed her as she ascended the stairs, and it bobbed as he signaled the guard to take note of Missy’s movements, presumably to watch her so she didn’t steal something or throw open a door and let in marauders. I planted myself in a chair near the piano, sensing that if I moved around I would be a distraction; Phil would be compelled to watch, or feel, my movements. I didn’t want my presence to accumulate in his psyche as an irritation. I loved being there. I loved watching the evolution of the music. Maybe I was seeing the resurrection of a legend.

Phil and Mercy worked on “American Dream” for a while, then Spector disappeared for half an hour. When he came back, he suggested that he and Mercy work on another song, “God Bless Our Love,” the gist of which was “you could never take me anywhere I wouldn’t go, you could never do anything that would make me leave you.” It was a complex song with a lot of lyrics, and he had Mercy sing the verses over and over and over for an hour. He was doing his thing, wearing the singer and the song down until something happened. But nothing did. When he was instructing Mercy to sing a certain way, he’d stop and say, “I’m trying to communicate something to you. But you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, do you?” It didn’t seem like a putdown or a complaint, just an observation. He hit a note and said, “like ‘You Cheated.’ I did that record.” He also said he was at the studio the day Ritchie Valens cut “La Bamba.” Well, he was a brash, interested kid in the late ’50s; he could have been hanging around Gold Star recording studio in L.A., later home base for the Wall of Sound, during the 1958 Valens session. But “You Cheated” by the Shields, a hit the same year? History is pretty clear that George Motola, who created the group, produced the record for his Tender label. Is Phil’s mind melting? I wondered. Is he like aging Bill Haley, knowing he did something great but wondering exactly what, so taking credit for everything he liked?

Along with Maggie and Missy, who were periodically called over to do backup sounds and piano, I decided we ought to be packing up because it was after 3:00 a.m. and they had to sing at an event the next night. Phil briefly vanished again. When he came back we said we’d better go. Mercy had been singing for hours and she was exhausted. Phil was astonished.

“Oh, oh, I see,” he said, pacing around jerkily. “Oh, you’re tired. I don’t want to keep you then.” More pacing. “But how can that be? You said you could go all night. I asked you whether your time was all right tonight.” We said yes, but that we had to look ahead, to get some rest for the next night.

“But you said you’d be all right.” In his mind, apparently, we were plotting to drive him crazy, switching what we’d (allegedly) said just to irritate him.

He left again. We were clearly destined to stay for a while, so I asked the guard if he could please get a pot of cold water. The Mr. Coffee was empty, and I could refill it with the used grounds next to the machine; all I needed was water and maybe a new filter. The guard departed, then returned with Phil, who looked around manically. “Coffee? Coffee? Who needs coffee?” He was asking solicitously, being the gracious host. The girls hadn’t known I’d asked, so they looked puzzled. ‘’Do you want some coffee?” he asked me up close, real interested.

“I said I needed some water so I could make my own coffee. It’s no big deal.” Now, with the plot set in his head—“there’s a coffee crisis!”—he darted towards the refreshment table, but snapped back as if he were attached to a long rubber band that had reached its limit. “No, well, yes, that shouldn’t be a problem.” He looked quizzical. “Coffee. Yes. We’ll take care of that.”

But his inability to take care of the coffee problem had him stymied. He’d launch into a new conversation, or monologue, and then, when the talk flagged, he’d fall back on the coffee. “Yes, we must get some coffee.” I wondered whether another problem was that to excuse the gun-toting guard to fetch some water was to leave him vulnerable to attack. Which was why they went off together to get the water.

When Phil returned, he said, “I’ve got to ask you two things.” We all sat on the couches. He couldn’t find a way to discuss his desired subject, and invited Mercy to the piano where they ran Phil’s song again for nearly a half hour more, until he noticed the rest of us yawning and called us back to the couches. “I’ve got to ask you two things,” he said again, and stopped.

Finally, he said, “I’ve got to know about your availability. First you’re available, then all of a sudden you’ve got all these gigs. What’s going on? I don’t like being fucked around.” This idea that he was being diddled was so left-field that nobody could get properly defensive or even respond. All what gigs? Fucked around how?

Eventually we came to understand what bothered him: He’d requested a 10:00 p.m. meeting the next night, a Thursday, and we’d parried with 11:00 p.m. That was the extent of it. The girls had that aforementioned paid gig, and they needed the money desperately. They’d told him they could cut it short, though, and see him immediately afterwards. Apparently Spector thought it odd that the band, who had told him Monday that they were available on Thursday, wouldn’t be available until later on Thursday.

We repeated what we’d already told him: The band would be available every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, with occasionally other weekdays also open, depending on whether they got bookings, which they were seriously seeking. “So you’re available Saturdays?” No, we said. “Oh, so now you’re not available Saturdays. Where are all these mysterious jobs coming from?” He wasn’t making much sense. I repeated that there was a clear, predictable pattern. He said, “I don’t understand why you’re sometimes available and sometimes not.” We were trying every method we could to please and reassure him, but he was looking for plots to humiliate him. He said his lawyer had advised him not to have us over without some boundaries drawn in advance, because it might be construed as an implicit contract to work together. “Maybe we should have signed a contract before you even came up here,” he said, “but I didn’t want to do that. Of course, we’ll need a contract before long, if this works out.’’ If what works out? I asked. “I’m trying to find something that I can’t define, and it didn’t click tonight. Something’s wrong, and I think it might be me. Maybe I’ll scrap that song.”

After we finally left, at dawn, we contemplated the significance of that statement. Was he singing Mercy to death in order to test the limits of his composition, using her voice to check the general suitability of the song? That would be a hell of a thing. Was he testing the song’s suitability to Mercy, someone he wanted to work with, in effect measuring her for a costume he was designing for her? We couldn’t tell.

On our first visit, during a reflective moment, he’d said, “I learned in this business that people cheat you openly. They just steal. I’m still amazed at it.” This time he’d wondered aloud who we were and what we wanted, and when Maggie answered something open and honest about music and happiness he said, “I never trust happiness or honesty,“ and laughed.

We heard nothing from Phil for a few months. Then I got a package from him, with a note:

August 15, 1985

Dear Art:

I thought you might want to have these “Limited Edition Wall of Sound Series” recordings, (Volumes One and Two,) prior to their release date. Please give Mercy my regards, and tell her I look forward…to continue working with her so that she can perhaps make some of the recordings that will fill a future “Wall of Sound Series.”

Warmest personal regards,

PHIL SPECTOR

The Heaters and I met with Spector sporadically throughout 1986. Sometimes Phil wanted to see only me and Mercy, not the other two women. The focus was always the music, but Phil and I developed a fairly comfortable relationship; we kidded good, like high school buddies. For example, I mentioned one night that Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It” was a poor rock & roll song.

“No, it’s a GREAT song!” he countered. I said nah, it’s self-consciously rock & roll, it sounds like it was written by a jazz guy trying to make rock & roll. “Exactly,” Phil said. “It could have been a jazz song.” I mentioned that the lyrics are difficult, and he recited them: “She messes round with every mother’s son.” I said, “It’s mesmerizes. Mesmerizes every mother’s son.” He laughed. “Mesmerizes! Ha!” I said I’d mail him the lyrics, but I didn’t.

The man definitely had his quirks. For example, he had to control when we left the house. I thought maybe it was because if we set our own time of departure, we were calling a shot, and he was the shot-caller. Disconcerting, yeah, but it didn’t diminish the thrill of the visits. Sometimes it was funny to see Phil as a mere mortal. Later, I would learn about other, far more chilling, instances of Phil holding guests hostage.