Phil Spector

What's often considered Leonard Cohen's worst album was produced entirely by Phil Spector. And even though it's clearly not his best work I'm still a fan of it just like I'm a fan of everything Phil Spector has ever done, aside from murder.(Allegedly) It's not often that you can hear the masterforce behind a record, like the hidden face of God painted huge in the Sistine Chapel, but in Phil's best hits and records his face is hidden there just as huge. The Crystals, The Teddy Bears, The Paris Sisters, Darlene Love. Apocalypse and creation. The universe and death, longing and frustration, Ronnie Bennett and the Ronnettes. Bigger, longer, deeper, faster. The highest stakes are on the line. The entire universe played back in glorious mono as the valkyries fall hard against a wall of sound too tall and huge to climb. There's something very big here, something sweeping and very deep. These are drums mic'd in the skys, rivers deep and mountains high, Ronnie singing from the stars, and Darlene says "He's sure the boy I love" from the comet that she rides. It's the heartbreak of being young and of what first love can do; the whole world shrunken down to just one boy or girl and the 2 minutes and 40 seconds that all of eternity is shrunken to. And in that tiny eternity there's an eternity of longing, an eternity of being young, an eternity of love and loss, and an eternity of 1963 too. Things are on the biggest terms possible; cosmic, universal, bigger than God, bigger than truth. Simple love songs were no longer good enough; young love is cosumming, dark, and makes nothing else in all creation matter. The audience wanted records sounding the same way and that's what Phil's records do. The me generation? Phil shrunk all of eternity and released it as a single in September '63 and it only got to #2. Sam Phillips of Sun Records once said about the records of the great blues singer "Howlin' Wolf", "This is where the soul of man lives on". And Phil's records are the same except it's the soul of man and something more. Love, youth, all of creation, and the lonely heart of longing, in a universe expanding while Phil's records stay just as huge. Next post I'll write the 10 greatest Phil Spector songs