A descendant of royalty, Michael Des Barres has had more record deals than seemingly anybody, from Silverhead to Detective to Chequered Past to solo, as well as acting in “MacGyver” and scores more movies and television shows. Recently a documentary of his life was released, “Michael Des Barres: Who Do You Want Me To Be?” We cover the film and so much more!
The first inauguration I remember watching was back in 1961, with President Kennedy. We were in a cold war. The Russians were beating us in space. America was being tested. It was a battle between the old and the new. And the new had won.
In more ways than one. Kennedy refused to wear a hat, killing that business overnight. But he also looked to the future. It was bright, but it had challenges. And we all had to work together to make our country better.
“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
That ethos started to evaporate in the seventies, and it was excised from the fabric of our nation in the eighties, when greed became good and income inequality began to accelerate. We forgot about people, souls, and focused on wealth accumulation, believing if we did not get ours, someone else would take it.
“Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
Britain exits the E.U. The U.S. exits one international organization after another. As if we can make it alone. We’re intertwined, not only economically, but as human beings inhabiting a planet in peril, where religious wars kill innocent people and those without purchase become radicalized. It is not the sixties any longer.
I watched JFK’s inauguration because it was a snow day. But it rarely snows anymore. Sure, it’s good that we have Zoom, that we can connect in spite of the weather, but winters are shorter, and our entire ecosystem is screwed-up. Try living in the west, water is precious, and oftentimes just a trickle. But maybe you live elsewhere…where hurricanes are rampant and fracking might cause an earthquake. Progress is always a balance. But the move to electric automobiles will be a great boon to this planet, for they are much more efficient than those powered by internal combustion, which dispenses so much of its energy as useless heat.
So now it’s 2021.
If you lived through the nineties, the economy was raging, the budget was balanced, but many were left behind. And in the twenty first century, technology supercharged our economy and our lifestyles, we thought our problems were over. But hatred knows no limits. And unless you lift your brother up, he’s going to be left behind.
So for forty years one side labeled government bad, taxes bad, to the point where our roads are peppered with potholes. As for a hands-off business policy, these advocates are now raging against giant tech companies, like Twitter and Facebook and Google, that have more power than the government itself. We live in a society, there must be limits.
Yes, America is challenged.
But instead of crying in our beer, pointing fingers, we must have hope.
We’re not going to get it with music, where if you make it you might be shot to death, where the dollar supersedes the message. Music has squandered its power.
As for celebrities… The internet brought them down to earth. Turns out they’re no better than the rest of us. And people tell them that every damn day online. America is a hating country, just rise above, you’ll see.
So, how strange is it that the only leader we have today is a politician?
Politicians have a bad name. Watergate killed the reputation of lawyers, and lying and cheating and duplicity killed the reputation of politicians. We’ve got no one to believe in anymore. And I certainly did not expect to believe in Joe Biden.
Maybe it’s because Biden has lived long enough to see it all, to remember what America once was. That’s how far we’ve gotten from the garden, the youth never lived through the golden era, they’ve got no idea what it was like. Not that the past was all shiny, but depression did not rule the nation’s minds, people still knew the American Dream existed. Now, it does not. You can say it does, but statistics tell us otherwise, your chances of upward mobility are better in Canada and Europe. We’ve got no facts in the U.S. anymore, just opinions. How are we going to get out of this mess?
Through leadership.
A coach does not play to lose. A coach observes the rules and then does his best to win. But this has not been the ethos of the ruling party. The fabric of our nation, its very rules, have been called into question. And chaos has been sown. Victory has eluded our hands to the point where it’s no longer even visible.
So, we’ve got a septuagenarian leader, who was given up for good, seen as aged toast, come back to lead our way out of the darkness. He wasn’t my guy, but I voted for him, knowing that when we come together, good things can happen, there’s no upside to a protest vote, 2016 taught us that.
And this septuagenarian leader, labeled as senile by his detractors, came to the pulpit today and delivered a speech hitting all the points. We’re used to speakers avoiding the hard topics. Like race, like climate, like the division in our nation. But Biden touched upon them all.
Was Biden as good a speaker as JFK? No way.
But speaking is not as important as action. And unlike his predecessor, Biden is hitting the ground running, he’s prepared, to tackle our national health crisis know as Covid-19, never mind our economic and ecological issues.
That’s how far we’ve sunk. If you’re a wonk, if you’re educated, if you’re prepared, you’re seen as a loser. Even worse, there are the privileged people who spew endless falsehoods, obscuring the path. But that’s America, where there’s no longer any truth.
It’s been pretty depressing.
And it’s depressing that Biden had to speak to very few, because of fear of disruption.
But it comes down to the man on camera, in a close-up, the words.
We live in a world where we can reach everyone, but very few are paying attention. But if you’ve got something to say, something worth paying attention to, it continues to exist online, that’s one definite improvement from the sixties, if you miss it, you can still see it, and you should see Joe Biden’s speech.
Now I can’t remember the last inauguration I watched, maybe not since JFK. I was in school. Or I was in the hinterlands. Or I was frustrated with the victor. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t get up and watch Biden either. I didn’t need to hear platitudes and false hope in a country where I believe I count less and less. But as the afternoon wore on, checking the news, reading the stories, I decided to tune in.
Usually, the highlight is the swearing in.
But in this case it was the speech itself.
Biden’s predecessor tried his best to pour water on the parade. Insisting that taxes would go up, not mentioning that under his reign, taxes went down for all those who had money, never mind the fact that many people don’t pay income taxes at all, because they just don’t make enough money. Oh, they pay sales taxes, gas taxes, payroll taxes, all kinds of taxes, and they oftentimes can’t make it on their wages.
But this predecessor is now in the rearview mirror. It’s only now that media is transitioning to a younger, more tech-savvy worker base that knows today to get your message across you’ve got to make news every day, but it’s only news if you have a pulpit, a position of power, which the old guy no longer has. He can do his best to spew his untruths, but he’s been banned by so many social media platforms that his words will have a limited spread. So attention will fade and the lazy man will play golf, rant to his friends and fade away. Come on, how many entertainers and athletes continue to be in the news after their careers peak? Almost none of them. So, in an era where it’s tough to get attention to begin with, we tend to forget the past and plow under its instigators.
You should watch Biden’s speech because…
It’s written in English. Delivered in English. There’s no base vernacular. I’ve got no problem with dirty words, but even I know there’s a time and a place. There has to be some respect for our institutions, otherwise they’re not worth saving. But democracy and the United States are worth it.
That was the focus of Biden’s speech. Democracy. How it triumphed.
And it wasn’t an easy fight and it wasn’t even a fair fight. One side didn’t even respect the rules. And it’s hard to have a game when this occurs. But somehow, the glue held, we held elections and those who won have been seated.
So now we look forward.
Blind optimism is worthless. Because unless you can see your failures, you’re hobbled by them, and everybody fails. You have to know when to give up, when to pivot, progress is hard, and it’s never in a straight line. But if you’re prepared and willing to do the work, great things can be achieved, especially when the people, the country, are behind you.
Despite hogwash to the contrary, Biden does not want to ruin the country, we’re not going to socialism overnight, as a matter of fact if he succeeds, it will be good for everybody, most definitely those who’ve been protesting. And nothing breeds contentment like success. Victory pulls people along, not only the true believers, but the questioning, those not paying attention in the first place.
We elected these officials. The tail cannot wag the dog. They need to do what is right, they must not base every decision on whether they’ll be popular or not…don’t they teach this in elementary school?
So, we’re at the beginning of a great reset. Just in time. Biden is just the leader, but in his case he’s got a full roster on his team and it is prepared. Will there be hiccups, will there be failures? Of course, there’s no advancement without them.
So breathe a sigh of relief. We’ve got an experienced pilot at the helm. Hopefully we’ll be able to stop thinking about the plane crashing, about America going off the rails, because our leader and his crew will be paying attention, doing the right thing.
Or you could say no. You could be a hater. Since it’s not you, since you didn’t win, no one else can. You can try and tear everybody down to achieve…exactly what? What is the goal, further chaos, for the sake of chaos? How does that work?
This is who we’ve got. Criticize him when he makes mistakes. But don’t get in his way when he’s trying to fix things. Once again, America must be a can-do nation, not a can-not.
Sometimes you have to get to the brink to appreciate what you might lose, to inspire people to work hard and do the right thing. Possibly the last four years will be a giant wake-up call, to restore the luster of our nation, and its worldwide respect. To help our allies and challenge our enemies.
Today Biden grabbed the reins, he’s kicking the horse, he’s getting it moving, the race has begun.
And the race for victory is for you and me.
That’s what they call society.
That’s what they call the United States of America.
As you and i have discussed i knew phil, the stones did too, before the tom wolfe casting, before the madness and the medication, before the silly old man trolled out in his viagra limousine much too late at night.
The man who brought good cheer and maracas to “not fade away” at regent sound on london’s denmark street in february of ’64 ; who, when bill and charlie were knackered and had gone back to the hotel, played bass as jack nitzsche played harpsichord to keith’s accoustic as jagger sang and made “play with fire” forever at 5am at RCA on sunset and iver.
This was before the recognition set in like a permanent wound to the soul, before the medication de- wired an already fragile system. One of the last straws was attempting to record a UK university band, Starsailor. Spector was back at the location of his earlier Harrison and Lennon triumphs, and sometimes you cannot go home again. Phil had been sober a few years, he returned to LA and Dan Tana’s, defeated and started drinking again. As any knowing alcoholic will tell you you may have stopped drinking but your body did not. Lana Clarkson was only a couple of drinks away.
You write perfectly of the Lennon collaboration. An added ingredient to that mix was probably that Phil would have to be on his better behavior. One of John’s gifts was that he could whack you with a word. And with Phil he did just that.
RIP Lana Clarkson and RIP Phil, who died many years before.
I saw a recent prison mugshot of Phil. He looked better than I’d seen him look in yonks. Perhaps he’d been unable to self- medicate in jail…
One 45rpm to add to your list. “Try some, Buy Some” by Ronnie Spector on the Apple label; in Bowie’s Top Ten as well.
Abrazo, ALO
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From: Toby Mamis
Re: Phil Spector
Phil came to see Blondie at the Whisky, accompanied by Dan and David Kessel (sons of Barney), in 1977, and told me he wanted to produce them. I told him they were under contract to Richard Gottehrer and also Private Stock. We arranged to have dinner with him and the band at Carlos N Charlies a few nights later, and at the last minute he (predictably) cancelled and offered to send his driver to bring us up to his old house (up in the hills behind the Hamburger Hamlet at the west end of the Strip). So I went with Debbie, Chris, and my former partner whose name I don’t speak or type, and it was, to say the least memorable. His bottles of diet Manischewitz (who knew that was a thing). He was armed, even inside his own home. He played us rough mixes of the Leonard Cohen album at more than full volume, ear-splitting. He sat at a piano and asked Debbie to sit with with him and sing some old song I didn’t recognize (something like “I’ll Be At Your Wedding” I think) – the sheet music was on the piano. When we were leaving, he couldn’t figure out how to unlock the door to let us out and had to call his driver to come help and also drive us back to Carlos N Charlies. By that time, our car keys were locked up inside Carlos N Charlies til the next day. It was WAY past closing time. Â
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From: Claris Sayadian-Dodge
Re: Phil Spector
I met Phil Spector during his recording of Celine Dion at Ocean Way studio-1 in ’95. I don’t believe anything was released from those sessions that lasted for weeks.Â
Story of Mr Spector (he made sure we addressed him that way) terrorizing our parking attendant with a gun circulated quickly. Then one late afternoon, the assistant called my office and said Mr Spector wants me to visit the studio and hear his song. That sounded odd. I was just the manager booking the studio and producers seldom cared to hear my opinion!Â
I hesitated at first thinking it’s got to be a joke. But, after many calls, I gathered myself and stopped by. He sat behind the Neve console and asked me to sit in the back on the couch and listen. After about an hour, I asked to be excused. I usually went home after finishing work about 7 or 8Pm. He insisted that I stay. Yes, the sound was big. Ah, it must be his wall of sound, I told to myself.Â
So, after another few hours, I went to the lounge and heard from the musicians who had been held up in the studio overnight. I can’t remember, how I got out. It may have been an excuse like, taking care of my elderly mom or something. He finally let me go.
The following day, his assistant called and said Mr Spector wants to get together over a cup of coffee. I wish I could remember her name. Was it Michelle (Hal Blaine’s daughter)? Anyone remember mid 90s and these sessions? Anyhow, I never agreed, siting that it’s my policy not to mix up socially with clients.
That Christmas, I got a check for $100 from Mr Spector. I never cashed it. It now sits in a frame on my desk. I just noticed it says MS Claris. Wow, that’s cool.
During one of many requests to meet him, his assistant told me how he became a different person after his son’s death (at age 9 from leukemia).Â
Mental illness, the silent killer, effects even the brightest. He admitted to being bipolar and having mental problems much later. His father had committed suicide when Phil was a young boy. As you say, he wrote his first song after the words on his Dad’s epitaph: “To Know Him Was To Love Him.”
How things could have been different.Â
Perhaps, “Let It Be.”Â
RIP Mr Spector (December 26, 1939 – January 16, 2021)
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From: Dave Dederer
Subject: Re: StreamingÂ
Bob,
I was already thinking this after listening to some of your recent podcasts with industry insiders and now even moreso after reading today’s post: there’s still a lot of ignorance re how much money’s being made in streaming.Â
The upside is far beyond even what you’re reporting:
“What we’re saying here is 200 artists made nearly half a million bucks from streaming last year. You keep nearly all the money if you’re your own label, but the new standard is closer to a fifty/fifty split of net if you’re signed to a label and if this is the case, this means that over 200 acts made in excess of $215,000 from streaming last year.”Â
The Presidents own the masters to our debut album. We’ve had total control of them throughout the digital era (Sony Music’s license to them expired in 2003). Just two tracks from the debut, “Lump” and “Peaches,” make up nearly all of our streaming. Â
We’re certainly not in the top 200 most-streamed acts. Or even close. Yes, “Lump” was an Alternative Rock #1 and “Peaches” and a few other Presidents tracks charted high on Alternative Rock and the Hot 100, and the record sold ~5M+ copies worldwide in its first go-round, but the reality is we’re a mid-level catalog act, we’re small potatoes, nobodies. Â
But the revenue numbers you’re talking about apply to us. Generated almost entirely by just two mid-level catalog hits.Â
Do you know what that means? If you really grasp it, it will make your hair stand up on end!!!
Do the math. If our puny little label is generating well into the six figures from just two mid-level catalog hits (and we have spent ZERO dollars on marketing in 20 years), can you imagine what the Sony, Warner and Universal catalogs are generating? Holy crap!
It would take 10,000 words here to explain all the details and I don’t want to write that much. In brief, we (and any other label that has an intelligently-run catalog division) run our business with a level of efficiency that would have been inconceivable in the physical media era — near-total transparency in monthly accounting, no breakage, no returns, etc. Our monthly operating costs are a few percent, max, sometimes as low as 1-2%. Yes, that means close to 100% margin. And the part that gets lost is that there is more music consumption/use than during the CD or any other previous era. Volume and margin are both higher than they have ever been.
Of course, we’re talking about labels and artists who own their masters. If you have an unfavorable deal with your label, well, that’s a whole different conversation.  Â
best,
dave
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From: tepnomusic
Subject: Re: Streaming
Your calculation is 100% correct, I made around 210k on streams last year, and then adding money from Soundexchange, remixes, new pub deal with Sony/Atv, Socan/Ascap and I’m now indie! Another thing I noticed is the amount of streams I got in December, probably my biggest streaming month last year. I’m saving every penny, music careers can be very short for low tier artists like me.
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From: Gordon Charlton
Subject: Re: Streaming TV
“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches†George Bernard Shaw.
I’m in the twilight of a 40 year career in the music industry and I have just started teaching about the music industry to student musicians and student managers.Â
One of the opinions you often hear quoted by my students is that streaming companies pay paltry money to artists. A prime example is this article: https://bit.ly/39Hx9dK with this weekend’s Guardian. Nadine Shah, who has 34k followers but only 110k monthly listeners blames streaming for her not being able to pay her rent. She’s won many awards over the course of her career but to most mainstream music fans, she has gone under the radar. Unfortunately, critical acclaim has never paid bills, in the old music business and in the new one this rule applies.Â
As someone who has managed a couple of artists who have owned their own masters I’ve experienced how regular income can be made from streaming and, obviously, that income, depends upon how much people like your music, which is why I was delighted to read your piece about streaming.Â
I’ve now posted it on my school’s Forum to help these students realise that there is still gold in them thar hills in today’s music business.Â
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Subject: Re: Do Stand So Close
Bob that’s funny that you bring up Rod Stewart. I know Sting and Rod had a little heat between them. I think it started when we were on the Rod Stewart Out Of Order tour doing some stadiums in Florida. We borrowed Stings private plane and after a show at Tampa Stadium Rod asked me for a sharp knife. He then carved a friendly little note into the beautiful exotic wood table on the plane that said and I quote
“String You Miserable C*nt Where’s Your Sense Of Humor “
I don’t think Sting was too happy about that.
Stevie Salas
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Subject: Re: The Rock Camp Movie
Bob, I’m really glad you covered this. You really hit the nail on the head with the fact that this may not be for everybody, however anyone that ever had any inspiration, even for a moment to get up on stage and perform gets it. I have been to many of the camps and have been a cheerleader for David Fishof and the Rock Camp. My observations have been that the campers don’t just get to hang with Rock celebrities, but in putting a band together with them they are actually realizing their dreams. As you say, David is a hustler, but also a great promoter. I think one hook that leads to his success is they treat the campers like stars. Sure, they pay, but they get to spend several days rehearsing for a performance with their own roadies, real backstage catering and people waiting on them hand and foot.
I always get a kick out of the fact that Fishof attributes the revival of the camp to Pollstar. As he tells it, after the first camp didn’t really make it and after a few years off he was at the Pollstar Live conference and “Who was the producer of the Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp” was offered up as a rock and roll trivia question. I’m not sure if anyone knew the answer, but consequently some of the celebrities at the conference asked David why he wasn’t still doing it. The rest is history!
My best, keep it up!
Gary Smith
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From: Tom Kenny
Subject: Bowie 5 years gone —January 10th
Bob.
It’s Bowies 5th anniversary on January 10th.
He disliked tributes and awards shows but loved the simple act of talking about how a song can connect you with a total stranger sitting next to you at a show or in line to buy tickets or an album.
He was the ultimate conversationalist.
So many people have great anecdotes of meeting him or something happening to them on the way or during a a show. Some of us where very fortunate to have worked or performed with him but he was equally funny and conversational with just ordinary citizen he’d meet along the way.
When we were in The Tower Theatre in Philadelphia in 2002 on the Heathens tour he asked me to ask the gentleman who was the stage manager if he’d been working there for a long time. I approached the man and he told me he’s been there since the early 70s and the last time Bowie was there he spoke to him at length as he was nervous about that show.
I went back to Bowie and he told me and the rest of the crew that he’d launched Young Americans and several other shows and had recorded a live album in that theatre and when he stepped up to the microphone for sound check on that day in 2002 some of those memories came flooding back when he saw the man in the corner as he’d seen him in exact same position all those years ago,
After that sound check Bowie went over to the old Geezer and the guy reminded him of the crane they used to load in Ziggys stardust lighting.
Let’s never forget wonderful venues , human beings and the artists that have performed there and their work that still gets us through these daysÂ
They are hallowed ground and places of worship for us nonbelievers ,
Tom
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From: Randall Wixen
Subject: Bowie/Arnold Corns Pseudonym
Did you ever hear these versions?
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From: Eric BazilianÂ
Subject: Re: Randall Wixen On Selling Your Publishing
No truer words, literally and figuratively. Maybe Dylan needs a bigger boat, but I want my songs to work for me and my descendants 70 years after I’m gone.Â
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Subject: Re: The Beatles Sneak Peek
Hi Bob, yes yes yes. What a great thing to see in the time of COVID. There’s an angle that not many will catch that’s really important: NO ONE IS WEARING HEADPHONES WHILE RECORDING.
They are just playing in a room, looks like there’s some pa speakers so that voices can be heard and so those in the control room can speak with the band, but my guess is the overall sound level is moderate, only as loud as it needs to be. Everyone has an amp near them, they can hear themselves best, but the band in the room is what they are ALL hearing. There is a bit of bleed from the mics, the drum mics pick up the guitars and bass, but it’s not a big deal unless there’s a massive mistake by one of the players. The pa speakers appear to be aimed to miss the instrument mics, so even if there’s a little bleed it isn’t a problem. I have been a recording engineer for decades and this is NOT how it is generally done, nowadays everyone has headphones, they each have their own mix, and it is illuminating (or shocking) to go listen to the various headphone mixes each player set up for themselves after the session is over. The drummer has MOSTLY DRUMS and CLICK, and so on.
Headphone listening is not the same as listening in a room. The intense level of transient detail is distracting, and I think it’s dangerous to your hearing. But, we use them in virtually every session.
Of course, recording a track instrument by instrument, musician by musician, part by part is also too common now. Each sound is *perfected* and fussed over, close miked to the point that each part sounds like it’s living on a piece of glass an inch in front of your nose. The level of *control* over the sound of any instrument has gone so far as to make perfection possible. Ugh! Arghhh! Someone said that technology “raises the level of mediocrity.†Indeed.
In fact, NO CLICK is pretty important too. Playing to the click means you don’t really have to groove, you just get on the grid and lock it down, you can use the click to defend your playing. “See, I’m with the click, you’re rushing.†Without a click the whole thing changes – you live or die together as a band. And, the tracks feel completely different, they feel alive, because they are.
Back to the no headphones thing – I’m in conversations with a band that wants to record as soon as it is safe. I was speaking with the bassist today about trying the no headphones approach, just like in the Beatles clip. They have had some success over the years, they want the project to sound live, sounds like they might be willing to try it. They already don’t use a click. I can’t wait…
Best…Hank Linderman
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From: ben staufferÂ
Subject: Re: WB/HBO Max
Can you imagine, ceteris paribus, if we were still in a CD era during this pandemic? Expecting that the pressing plants would all be running on-time and that we would be beholden to Amazon and the mail delivering said product to consumers all around the globe? What fortune for creators and rights holders to be able to distribute music to consumers over the wires at this time.
-b
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From: Robert Holladay
Subject: Re: WB/HBO Max
Good insights, Bob, especially about the speed of change. I’m moving to a new house in a new city and so far can’t find anyone to take my CDs (over 1,000).Â
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Subject: Re: Bode Miller On Winning
Hey Bob,
Great piece on Bode.
When my concert promotions company (Concerts North) had our offices in Portsmouth, New Hampshire I gave office space to Bill Rogers who was just finishing “Bode Miller Flying Downhill The Early Yearsâ€. Bill had grown up skiing with Bode at Cannon  Mountain and I was producing concerts at Loon Mountain at the time. Bill and I then screened this film in Lake Tahoe and several ski towns around the country. Watching Bode train and his distain for sponsors and the Olympic trainers reminded me so much of great rock musicians like John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, etc who didn’t want to follow the rules – they were true originals who had a new way of doing things and wanted everyone else to get out of the way while they broke new ground.
The way Bode talks about chasing speed and just seeing the fastest way down the mountain is how Magic Johnson saw the basketball court or Pele saw the soccer pitch, just everything else melts away, not concerned with proper form or his competition just doing it his own way.
I agree Bode has been totally misunderstood, he is not only the greatest US male skier ever but is a world class athlete in several sports. He grew up with an uncle who ran a tennis camp so is an incredible tennis player, competed to play in the US Open in golf, played minor league baseball, won the 2002 ABC Sports Competition putting athletes from various sports up against each other, etc.
http://www.flyingdownhill.com
Joe
Joe Fletcher
Crescent Bay Entertainment
Carmel, CA
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From: Rick Alexander
Subject: Re: Homeland Elegies
Bob,
The following 12/13/20 post from the Facebook feed of Sunday Times bestselling author Simon Scarrow will no doubt resonate with you…
“Good writing in the age of the Creative Writing degree course pandemic.”
My wife handed me a recently published ‘literary’ novel this morning and asked me to read the opening and tell her what I thought about the writing. It’s a debut novel and the author is a graduate of the burgeoning empire of Creative Writing degree courses. The premise of the novel is very promising. So far, so good, I thought. Then I began to read, and by the time I had got through the first twenty pages I’d had enough…
It’s not that the writing is bad. There’s a certain mellifluous skill in the composition, and the author has done their research, but the style seems to be the only saving grace of the writing. The characters are flat and the story seems to take a distant second place in order for the author to parade their lengthy descriptions. Sometimes the effort to impress crashes to the ground with a confused thud as the wax that binds the words together loosens under the glaring scrutiny of the reader. (Sorry, couldn’t help playing the MFA game there).
Take this phrase, when referring to a photographer’s choice of a smaller camera for convenience – ‘the putative authenticity of spontaneity’. You can kind of see what the author is getting at, but the sense of it is lost in the clash of semantics. Aren’t authenticity and spontaneity more or less the same thing? Why would it be putative if it was authentic? It’s the kind of unnecessarily complex phrase that I am sure looks good on the page in the milieu of a Creative Writing degree course, but it only serves to obscure meaning while sounding erudite.
The wider effect of this approach is to constantly throw the reader out of the shimmering between the words on the page and the imaginative world they conjure up. I don’t think it is a good strategy to keep reminding readers that they are looking at print. Once in a while a polished gem of a sentence is worth the effort for the gratification of the writer and reader, but not for almost the entire duration of a novel. It only serves to aggrandise the author and diminish the creative opportunities for the reader.
When I read a book I want to be given the tools to create a lived experience in my head. I can live with the odd writerly flourish but I don’t want the author to constantly demand that I put down my readerly tools and admire their writerly skills. Are such authors so insecure or, worse, arrogant (and insecure) that they require such constant affirmation of their craft? It is possible to balance elegantly crafted writing with great characterisation and story-telling skills. Rosemary Sutcliff did it, as did Dodie Smith and more recently Yasmina Khadra.
Don’t get me wrong. I am perfectly happy for there to be plenty of Creative Writing courses out there. They serve a useful purpose in giving ‘putative’ writers the space and time to experiment and refine their craft. I felt the same way about the old PGCE courses where one third of the time was spent teaching and two-thirds of the course concerned thinking about teaching in order to define the best teaching strategies for each individual teacher. You get better teachers that way. You should also get better writers from similarly purposed Creative Writing courses.
And yet it feels like those who attend such courses are encouraged to look inwards, as if their writing has no relevance outside of the confines of their studies. This is reflected in much of the published output of Creative Writing course graduates, most of whom would appear to fall into the rut of ‘big words, small print, low sales’ and end up, if they are lucky, teaching the next generation of those doomed to follow the same path.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some hugely successful writers who emerge from Creative Writing programmes. But, from what works of theirs that I have read, I doubt that their legacy will long survive their deaths, or the deaths of their careers. For my own part, I am not interested in the posterity stakes. Nor the literary. I want to tell a story and tell it well enough that it is experienced as if a custom-made movie was playing inside the head of each individual reader. And that’s it. The old adage, trust the tale, not the teller seems to be the purpose of good writing.
A rewarding read, for me at least, should be about the story and the characters, not the author. The trouble with so much of the output of Creative Writing courses is that they seem to encourage the authors to leap out of the pages of their writing to such an extent that they become obstacles between the reader and the text that the reader has to fight past the author to get at. Where is the pleasure in that? What is there to admire in such a process, other than the author?
If I want to spend my time observing self-regarding individuals then that’s what television celebrities and politicians are for. People who care about stories and good writing are better than that. And, if they are wise, they avoid hostages to fortune like offering courses leading to the qualification of ‘Master of FA…’
I was aware of Spector’s pre-Beatle hits, but they were somewhere in the back of my brain, they were not foreground in my life, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I used to grimace every time “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” came over the radio at the end of ’64 into ’65, I’d push the button in the dashboard of my father’s VistaCruiser, or turn the dial in my mother’s Falcon, or on my no-name transistor. The Beatles heralded a new sound, a new life, the Righteous Brothers were a return to the old.
Or maybe I was just too young.
But I’m not that young anymore. Phil died at 81. Polygram Canada sent me his boxed set “Back to Mono” in 1991…Phil was 51! That’s a distant memory in my life, and Phil was already a has-been. How very weird. The sands of time keep flowing and you wake up one day and it’s not even your world anymore. I read Brian Wheat’s book about Tesla, a band I’ve always loved, and then I realized their big hits were thirty years ago, long before today’s youngsters driving popular music were even born! Think about that, today’s college freshmen never knew a world without high speed internet, whereas me and my fellow boomers lived through a wrenching transition we still can’t completely fathom, just like our parents lived through the dawn of television! And the smartphone… Not only did it give access, it killed boredom. How many times were you alone, killing time, waiting, and you ended up reading the contents of your wallet? I certainly did, many times!
So if you go back to the beginning, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” was a standard, something everybody knew, just like “Try to Remember” from the “Fantasticks” two years later. Same deal with “Da Doo Ron Ron.” And I knew “Then He Kissed Me,” but I heard it most on the 1965 Beach Boys album “Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), where it was entitled “Then I Kissed Her” and was sung by Al Jardine, on the side of the LP that ended with the hit version of “Help Me Rhonda,” also sung by Jardine, as opposed to the first iteration on “The Beach Boys Today!” Brian Wilson revered Phil Spector, but Brian was born in 1942, I was born in 1953, completely different eras when it comes to music.
As far as “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You”…I dabbled in pop music on the radio, in between listening to sports, before the Beatles arrived, but Phil Spector was never a big hero to me, I really didn’t know that much about him.
But then I started reading “Rolling Stone” and in its pages “River Deep – Mountain High” was constantly lauded as a masterpiece, but I’d never heard it, the 1966 track was never a hit, and it wasn’t until the Rolling Stones took Ike & Tina on tour in ’69 that they really started to get any traction in the minds of most white people.
But there was that Tom Wolfe article, “The Tycoon of Teen.”
Written in 1964 for the “International Herald Tribune”…needless to say I missed that initial printing. But, the essay was included in the 1965 Tom Wolfe compilation, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.” My mother had that book. And one day I took it down from the shelf and read the article about Spector. But it had little effect on me, like I said, he was already in the rearview mirror, never mind ahead of my time, but the story of getting off the airplane…that always stuck with me.
Now my friend Andrew Loog Oldham posits the Tom Wolfe article killed Spector’s career, because Phil bought the hype, became full of himself and lost perspective, and ability. You’re only as good as your last hit, this is what drives people in the music business, but when you’re anointed a god, you’re atop the mountain, there’s nowhere else to go. Actually, this is the story of rock music…misfits believing success will cure their ills and when they make it and it doesn’t, they have no more hits.
But just like Brian Wilson, his contemporaries, the Beatles, also born in the early forties, worshiped Phil Spector too. And ultimately worked with him.
Hmm…
Am I the only person who hates “The Long and Winding Road”? The strings…execrable. Schmaltzy. I pushed the button, turned the dial on that one too.
As for the “Let It Be” album, which Spector also produced… There was a big push when it came out, but the focus was on the film, and in America we did not get the boxed set of the U.K., we got an LP that seemed thrown together, not fully-formed, and never forget that Paul McCartney released his first solo LP at the same time. But there are winners on the “Let It Be” album, yet no one ever talks about my favorite, “I’ve Got a Feeling,” never mind “For You Blue.”
As for Spector after the Beatles…
All the news was about his eccentricities. People would talk about him, you’d read he was going to produce some star’s album, but then it wouldn’t happen. He worked with the Ramones, but I never cottoned to “End of the Century,” I vastly preferred what came earlier, “Rocket to Russia” and “Road to Ruin.” As for Leonard Cohen’s “Death of a Ladies Man”…if you read the rock press, this was a story, you were aware of it, and I purchased the album, but it was a stiff, never mind the fact that Leonard Cohen’s recording success had really taken place in the sixties, with his first two albums, it was only when Cohen went back on tour in the twenty first century that he was universally lauded.
So, from the seventies on, most of the stories about Phil Spector were about his eccentricities. How he controlled his wife Ronnie, his guns, he was around, but he never seemed to work.
And then came the death of Lana Clarkson in 2003. Anybody who followed Spector was not surprised, they’d been fearing something like this would happen. But in a castle atop a mountain in Alhambra? That’s like hearing a hedge fund king lives in Yonkers. And then came the ridiculous wigs in court and Phil’s ultimate conviction and he faded away, you rarely read about him, and now he’s dead.
Covid-19. Everyone ignores it until it affects them. 81 is a full ride, but Phil still had runway, he was a human being, however insane. And he was insane. But if you’re rich you have enablers. You get a pass. Phil got so many passes that he ended up shooting Clarkson and going to jail for the rest of his life.
Now never underestimate the influence, the footprint of Phil’s wall of sound productions. They ruled. Sure, Phil had help from others, like Larry Levine and Lester Sill, but Phil had a vision, and he was able to lay it down on tape, and he influenced and started so many others, even Sonny Bono.
But Phil Spector worked with the Beatles.
Most notably, Phil produced George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.” That boxed set was the biggest of the Beatle solo debuts. And it came out for Christmas, it was everywhere. George never had such big success again. And listening to subsequent albums, you can hear what Phil added, the new records were stripped of so much steel wool, and then time went by and George and his solo work were relegated to secondary status, at least amongst Beatles. Unfortunately, George died. And those who lived through his heyday remember him, but the music does not permeate the airwaves of today like that of McCartney.
And Ringo is still alive and recording.
As for John Lennon…
He did his greatest work with Phil Spector.
Only in retrospect has John Lennon’s true first solo album, “Plastic Ono Band,” ascended into the pantheon. A ripping up of the soul, a dissection of his insides, stark and immediate, there were no obvious hit singles, so there was no AM airplay in an era where that radio band still dominated. Not that the tracks on “Plastic Ono Band” were radio-friendly, but “Working Class Hero” is still as relevant today. Never mind “Mother” and “God.” Lennon didn’t care about his past, his career, he was unafraid of risking, and Spector helped get his feelings and sound down on wax. Mostly unfettered. Phil didn’t dominate John’s sound, didn’t turn him into another act that could have been signed to Philles Records.
By time he got to “Mind Games,” Lennon had jettisoned Spector, just as George Harrison had done previously. But, Spector did produce John’s second solo album, containing Lennon’s signature song, “Imagine.” In addition to the title track, there was the indelible “Jealous Guy,” which I believe was made better by Spector, and “Gimme Some Truth” and “How Do You Sleep?” Spector shined on “Imagine,” even though I think he overdid it with the single, it veered on the schmaltziness of “The Long and Winding Road,” it always seemed too obvious to me.
But for me, the apotheosis, the peak of Spector’s work with Lennon, came with the initial single, Spector’s debut with John, “Instant Karma.”
Now “Give Peace a Chance” was Lennon’s first solo single, and a radio success, the song became ubiquitous, we need an anthem like that in today’s troubled times. But the follow-up was a true killer, “Cold Turkey,” with Eric Clapton’s stinging guitar, but it failed on the charts in the U.S., only making it to number 30.
But then came the aforementioned “Instant Karma.”
Unlike with Spector’s initial hits, now I was the right age. I was a senior in high school. The focus was now on the blues-based bands of the U.K. The first two Zeppelin albums had been released, and Cream before them. But these albums were mostly FM products, there was occasional crossover to AM, usually way later, but they were not made for amplitude modulation. “Instant Karma” was.
It was the drums. No matter how small your speaker, they jumped out, they anchored the record, they penetrated your body.
And then there was John’s urgent vocal, he was singing like he truly meant it, he was holding nothing back.
And the singalong chorus.
And the message.
“Instant karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head”
Lennon popularized the term, prior to this single most people had no idea what “karma” was.
“How in the world you gonna see”
The drum fill right after this line is positively magical. The drums are as important to the success of “Instant Karma” as Lennon’s vocal, this is what Phil Spector could provide, no one else could capture this sound.
And Phil made the chorus an anthem, gave it impact.
“Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Come on and on and on, on, on”
Spector was a co-conspirator, someone from Lennon’s same generation, not an oldster, a parent like George Martin. Spector did not look at the track from afar, he embedded himself right in it, he was creating an indelible single, THAT WAS HIS SKILL!
Phil Spector was not about albums. He was all about the track, one single cut that would blow people’s minds, that they could not get out of their head. There are tons of hit singles, number ones, but most fade away, and they definitely do not radiate. And when you listen to tracks from the past, many seem so quaint, whereas Phil’s hits jump out of the radio, with as much impact as when they were first released, they may not sound like today, but they sound just as good.
Like today’s rappers, who know their tracks are played through headphones and car stereos, sometimes with overemphasized bass, Phil knew his tracks were heard streaming out of tiny single speakers in cars and transistor radios. Stereo didn’t become big until the late sixties, Phil cut in mono, his tracks were impenetrable, that was part of his genius, his records were an assault, on all levels, a tsunami of sound, and he infected the populace just like Elvis and the original rockers before him.
And the problem with music history is time always marches on, there’s always a number one, which people equate with former number ones when in truth there may be no comparison. Some records are better than others, much better.
I don’t know what happens to Phil Spector’s legacy, how he’s viewed in the future. Probably as a madman. Someone who might be medicated today, but might lose his talent in the process. That’s Kanye’s dilemma.
It will probably take decades, centuries for Phil Spector’s records to be separated from his personal life. But the records will live on, that’s what’s great about the modern age, you can keep what is precious, seemingly forever.
But was Phil really heads and shoulders above the rest of the producers?
Tom Wolfe never wrote a story about George Martin, never mind Roy Thomas Baker, who crafted Queen’s sound and more. And then there’s Mutt Lange.
But let’s never forget that Phil wrote too. He had an investment in his records, he wasn’t just a gun for hire. He started out as a teen, who chucked convention to do it his way, paving the way for so many after him.
The truth is if you’re well-adjusted, if you’ve lived a life without hardship, you’re probably not a successful artist. You might even have hits, you might play in the band, but you don’t change people’s lives, you don’t have a lasting impact.
Phil Spector was crazy. But his records were not. Or maybe they were, it takes chutzpah to do it your way, to break all the rules, to have confidence in yourself that you know what is right, especially in a business rampant with me-tooism…have a hit and everybody tries to imitate it.
But people could never truly copy Phil Spector’s wall of sound. And with “Instant Karma” he was able to adjust to the present, he didn’t fill up all the holes, but he knew how to make the sound big, how to create an aural pile driver that scorched ears and crashed bodies.
But karma ultimately got Phil. It didn’t happen early, and it wasn’t instant, but he got paid back for his bad behavior. Phil’s gone now, but his work shines on, like the moon, the stars and the sun.
