As the late producer and musician Jack Nitzsche recalled to writer Harvey Kubernik when directing guitarists, Spector “would whisper in their ears, ‘Dumb - don’t do anything. His motto: “Back to mono.”īefore takes, Spector was known to roam the room coaching musicians as if he were Quentin Tarantino prepping actors before an action sequence. An engineering classicist, Spector famously rejected the burgeoning hi-fidelity stereophonic advances in sound reproduction. With dozens of musicians arranged by timbre and tone and surrounded by strategically placed microphones, Spector and engineer and unsung hero Larry Levine captured the sound of the room, the instrumental resonance and, somehow, the emotional heart of the record. If you want to get technical, the so-called Wall of Sound was actually angled back, like a rising wave just before a surfer catches it. He accomplished a lot in pre-production, spending entire days, for example, getting the percussion properly amplified in one of the studio’s four echo chambers, working with pounders including Bono and Palmer on woodblocks, castanets, bells, tom-toms, timpani and congas. A millionaire by the time he hit 23, he booked studio time, conferred with writers and directed studio engineers. He knew talent when he heard it: Session players on Spector’s classic hits included Sonny Bono, Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, bassist Carol Kaye and drummer Earl Palmer.Īs the puppet master, Spector was a hands-on operator. It didn’t always overwhelm Pitney’s “Every Little Breath I Take” and the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” were more contained but still bursting at the seams. Some of the earliest singles by the Beatles and Rolling Stones reek of Spector’s influence and his production style remains an archetype. River Deep, Mountain High by Ike & Tina TurnerĪs he matured, Spector’s aural signature - huge, echoed percussion, prominent string arrangements and charismatic, pitch-perfect Black belters - became immediately identifiable. 1 when he was 18 and just out of Fairfax High School. Some days after school he would race home to turn on the radio and practice guitar along with KGFJ disc jockey Hunter Hancock.Ī shy kid, he landed his 1958 debut single, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” by the Teddy Bears, at No. He got his first professional music lessons around the corner from Wallich’s Music City at Sunset and Vine. Growing up just south of Melrose and Fairfax, the son of a single mom and a father who died by suicide when Spector was a boy, the prime orchestrator of teenage love and angst lived just a 10-minute cruise to downtown Hollywood, where dozens of recording studios and labels operated. The best of his singles were so propellant that they upended pop music in the pre-Beatles 1960s by delivering action, swing and excitement to stagnant pop charts then weighted down by Pat Boone-style pablum. A generation of teenagers was transforming boom-time America - and the Billboard charts - and the scrawny Spector manifested their desires. Although his reign on the charts only lasted half a decade, echoes of Spector’s famed “wall of sound” production technique can be heard in the work of Bruce Springsteen, the Beach Boys, Katy Perry, Beck and Best Coast.Īt peak success in the early 1960s, Spector described his three-minute pop gems as “little symphonies for the kids,” and the moment was right for them. The result was a string of breathtakingly deep hits that helped guide the trajectory of the 1960s and beyond. and others on songs including “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” “He’s a Rebel,” “Unchained Melody, “Walking in the Rain” and “And Then He Kissed Me” as if each record were preordained. Dre, Timbaland and Mike Will Made It.Įqual parts composer, maestro, producer, director and impresario, Spector helmed his sessions at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood with vocalists the Ronettes, Crystals, Gene Pitney, the Righteous Bros. Among the first American hitmaker-producers of the record era to combine his sonic ideas and single-minded drive to become a chart-busting one-stop shop, Spector laid the foundation for auteur-producers such as Rick Rubin, Dr. It’s right there in the grooves, every clack of clave, doo-wop wail, stealthy saxophone run, chorale explosion, jangle of bells and rat-a-tat percussion breakdown. Record producer, songwriter and studio auteur, Spector - who died Saturday at age 81 in a Northern California hospital of complications from COVID-19 - was one of the most influential musical creators of the 20th century.
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