Spector Vs Rector

Did anyone else watch the ‘Arena: Phil Spector: the Agony and the Ecstasy’ on BBC 2 the other week? If not, it may not be on the I-player anymore so let me talk to you about it for a while.

Damn fine television. Bear in mind that I don’t watch much TV that isn’t presented by David Attenborough apart from the news, which after a few hours pulls you into such a repetitive loop of pure fear that you’re shaking with absolute terror at the prospect of leaving the house in case you get attacked by a knife wielding viciously rabid hound who can’t afford his pedigree chum because of the cre*** c**nch. Blimey! What happened to bird flu by the way? It seems that particular fear phenomenon somehow mutated into a rather fine cross-over hit for MIA and presents a different, altogether harmless kind of infectiousness these days. 

Anyway, I digress so let us get back to Spector. Over the 1 hour and 45 minutes of this brilliantly made documentary, I deduced many things about the man.

The first (and be warned, this isn’t exactly a scoop of the day) is that he is absolutely stark raving mad. He looks and talks like a bloated Madame Tussauds waxwork of Al Pacino and has a queen bee in his bonnet about everyone from Paul McCartney to Dylan and Tony Bennet. Especially Tony Bennet- He hates him and can’t fathom his more recent popularity which means that I have at least one thing in common with Spector apart from my fondness for shotguns and strange wigs. 

Unlike many record producers who compare themselves to, say other producers or musicians Spector frequently compares himself to GALILEO. Yes, you read that right. He mutters something about showing people that the world was round in a musical context. Of course, if anyone else came out with such utter gumpf they would be laughed right out of my TV cable box and it would be back to the ghost train of Sky News. But the programme cleverly plays the hits that Spector is responsible for over the top of the court and interview footage in their near entirety, reminding you that his production style and ability for musical arrangement did indeed signal a new and unrivalled brave new world for popular music. Speaking about ‘Be my Baby’, Spector chuckles about how Brian Wilson has driven himself mad trying to copy the wall of sound his entire life. You simply can’t deny his cultural impact on pop music that now resonates in everything from the new Girls Aloud single to Glasvegas’s fanboy fascination with the dark menace behind Spector’s pop splendour.

Go on: Just do a quick mental list of the songs that he brought to the world: River Deep, Mountain High, He’s a rebel, Uptown, Da Do Ron Ron, You’ve lost that loving feeling, Spanish Harlem, all of his Christmas album. Spector’s back catalogue, especially the ‘Back to Mono’ vinyl box-set is an unparalleled symphony of wondrous and sumptuous pop music and undisputedly a gift that keeps on giving.      

For someone who is completely insane, he talks a great deal of sense about his work, from the dumb playground appeal of ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ to his frustrating search for a star who could carry his music live (Tina Turner was the first one). He is also surprisingly hilarious, when asked about the jury for his first trial he claims to have had no chance as he was in the hands of “12 people who voted for George Bush” and his scouse impressions of John Lennon are solid gold comedy. He was also a shrewd operator, ahead of his time in the record business when it came to understanding and manipulating rights retention and distribution channels, scoring his first Billboard number one with the Teddy Bear’s ‘To know him is to Love him’ at the remarkably tender age of 18.