I like all things biographical so I read this along with Tearing Down the Wall of Sound to get a better glimpse of Phil Spector, the person who absolutely exploited everybody he could to make himself a music mogul during his prime. The fact that he was mental, misogynistic, and abusive until he ...
It wasn’t Johnson’s fault. His role was not really to alter anything they did, just to get them on tape in a technically professional manner. The band simply wasn’t yet good enough to get by on raw talent alone. They needed time to hone their sound and understand how to present this hybrid creatu...
If she left, Motown was prepared to “settle up” at $2,500 a year for six years against future royalties of her old Supremes records. While Flo may not have known how much all those hits brought in each year, $2,500 sounded more like a weekly cut, just from radio plays alone. As for what was being...
I loved them. I thought they were a tremendous expression for myself. I think they resented being an expression. —PHIL SPECTOR on the Righteous Brothers Phil had seen the creative weight of rock shifting westward as early as the autumn of 1964—the last important thing he did in New York was playi...