Chapter 1: Who is Phil Spector and why is he considered a controversial figure?
Call zone media. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, ladies, gentlemen, gentle-thems, and all points in between. This is a podcast about the very worst people in all of history.
And normally, it's a podcast where I, the host, Robert Evans, read a story about the very worst people in all of history to a guest who generally comes in cold, not always, yada, yada. We've been doing this eight years. You know the drill, folks. You've figured it out by now. Even I know the drill by now. And regular listeners will recognize the voice of my dear friend, Greasy Will.
The Grammy award winning Greasy Will. Hey, buddy. What's up? How's it going? I'm very excited to be here. I know. Because today, we are going to flip the roles here. That's right, baby. And I'm going to tell you about somebody who's very near and dear to my heart, a bastard of the music industry, and I'm very excited about this.
Yeah, but I have a question first. Yeah? Yeah, Greasy Will Who I Love, my buddy. Do you know where this is being streamed right now? Oh, are we on Netflix? We're on Netflix. Yeah, our good buddy Greasy Will here, the second we announced that we were going to be streaming video episodes on Netflix, commented, sellouts. So what does that make you? That's what I have to say.
My friend of 15 years. Look, when I was a kid, being a sellout was an insult. But now as an adult, the world that we're in, being a sellout just means you're successful. You know, it's exciting for me.
Just means you get to buy the good produce.
Are there other ways I made money in the past that I might have preferred more? Are there different ways to, you know, this is the future we've been given. Look, you're talking to a guy who, all right, so I have a course, a recording course that I made.
And recently I posted this ad that I had made with a high quality camera, like the one you're viewing me on right now, if you are in fact viewing me. I have a high quality camera and all the comments where people are like, greasy and high def is weird, I don't like it. Welcome to our lives. You specifically? Like I do not do high quality in anything I do. In music, in anything.
It's perfect, Will, because I reached the peak of my success as a professional in an audio medium. And you also reached the peak of your success as a professional in an audio medium.
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Chapter 2: What childhood experiences shaped Phil Spector's personality?
People need to see their faces for some reason. I don't know. When we moved to Netflix, a surprising number of people were just based on confusion or based on the fact that it changed from YouTube were like, I didn't realize that many people were watching the podcast. Yes. Right, right. We've been working on it. We have gotten it to where audio episodes of the show are back on YouTube Music.
So if you listen to the show that way, I know there was confusion. Things got disrupted there for a while. But from now on, that should be normal. And initially, a lot of our international listeners
viewers were cut out because it was netflix wasn't letting it wasn't our show wasn't available internationally damn region specific broadcasts yeah now our show is available on most of the places that netflix serves worldwide baby minus uh vietnam and korea for reasons i don't know So the Aussies out there, you can watch now if you've got Netflix. I don't know.
Again, 90% of the audience listens because it's a fucking podcast. So hopefully none of this should be changing for most of you. Who are we hearing about today, Will? What piece of shit are you going to tell me about? I know. All right. So let me ask you this. Let me ask you this first. If you had a Mount Rushmore of... horrible music people, right? Like, whoever you could think of.
Who's your George Washington? It's gotta be Michael Jackson, because Michael's the perfect mix of that man's music. You simply can't cut his music out of popular culture and have it make sense. There's too big a gap. The impact he made is there, and a bunch of his music is immortal. And also, definitely raped a bunch of kids. Ton of kids. That's like my peak bastard, maybe.
I can give my four.
Yeah, go ahead, Sophie.
My four, Michael Jackson. R. Kelly, P. Diddy, and the subject of this episode.
All right, so I'm going to tell y'all, I don't think the subject of my episode makes it on the bastards of Mount Rushmore. Shots fired, Sophie. And here's why. Who do you put instead? Because you want to hear, because number one is Ian Watkins. Do you guys know who Ian Watkins is? No. No.
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Chapter 3: How did Phil Spector's family dynamics influence his career?
Ian Watkins was recently, actually I was going to bring this up even before, but Ian Watkins was recently murdered in prison because they don't like those types of people who do those things to infants. Oh.
Infants. He was the singer of Lost. That tells me a lot.
Yeah, he was the singer of Lost Prophets. Oh, yes, I have heard of him. Yes. So it was interesting that you brought it up because I do have a question in my overall thesis in discussing this person is when is it bad enough to cut somebody out and when does their music overshadow the big picture, right? Because we so often in the music industry, we will give people weird passes.
Weird people get weird passes just because they're... good at something. You know, they're good at making noise. That's kind of ridiculous to me. I do not think that makes a lot of sense. But that's how it is. People really love your noises, so you're allowed to molest 15-year-olds. Yes, yes. Or younger.
So our subject today is somebody who I think is horrible, and you will hear a lot of evidence to back that up, yes. But our subject today is Phil Spector. Phil Spector, do you know about... Do you know about Phil Spector at all? Like, what do you know, Robert? Here's how much I know about Phil Spector. In order to even listen to this podcast, I had to make sure I had a gun on me.
Jesus Christ, Robert. Because I know Phil's bringing one. Yes. Yeah, Phil is definitely bringing a gun to the party, for sure.
Okay.
All right. Let's do it. This will be our episode today. We're going to talk about Phil Spector. Boom. Cold open. Done. We did it. We're done. We're opened coldly.
Look at you. Prettiest girl at the party. I love it. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. On the CINO Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trejo to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
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Chapter 4: What was Phil Spector's rise to fame in the music industry?
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All right, are you guys ready to hear about Phil Spector? Unfortunately. I was born ready. Well, actually I was born bloody with a cord wrapped around my neck, but also ready. Were you in fact a cord baby? That explains a lot, I think.
I don't remember.
My mom was in labor for like 70 hours. Something was wrong with me. My God. Yeah, she had a chip on her shoulder about that. It might have just been 48 hours. It was like a long time.
And in perfect comparison of our relationship, my mom was in labor with me for less than an hour.
I think my mom had me inside of the back of a pickup truck, but I don't know. Like a camper, maybe? I think I was born in a camper. You are one of my friends most likely to be born inside of a pickup truck. Oh my God. Yes, very likely. I say it's an honor. So first off, I want to say, this is why I picked Phil Spector, because I am personally a very... big fan of his work.
It is, it has informed a lot of my work as a musician, as a producer, as an engineer. I, I love Phil Spector's work to me. It was, um, it was so groundbreaking for the time before many reasons. And there's a lot of like, uh, uh, future of music that came from where he was at, you know?
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Chapter 5: How did Phil Spector's recording techniques revolutionize music?
So, you know, this is a very classic early 1900s American tale of, you know, Jewish immigrant families leaving their country because of the anti-Semitic pogroms going on and then coming to America, settling in New York in a very Jewish neighborhood or being surrounded by other Jews who had escaped these same situations.
So obviously some generational trauma going on for sure to start off and also family trauma and also some questionable things going on with his mother already, you know, as far as her mental stability is. Yeah. So as a child, Spector was described as overweight and physically fragile.
He struggled with recurring health problems and was often encouraged to stay indoors rather than participate in sports or outdoor activities. He developed a strong dislike for beaches, athletics, and physical competition and any environment where he felt exposed and inadequate. Over time, his body changed. Yeah, yeah. He hates beaches.
Yeah, he hates beaches. favorite tidbit of that whole thing. He's like, yeah, you know what I hate? I hate beach. You are not Ken, Phil Spector. Your job is not beach.
Okay. No, no joke. Like multiple times throughout any of the biographies that you read about him, it's brought up that he doesn't like beaches, specifically beaches. He's like, oh yeah, Phil wouldn't go to Venice because there was a beach close by. Like he was like mad about it.
All right, bro.
Uh, As he entered adolescence, he lost weight dramatically, and he became notably small and slight in stature. Instead of solving his insecurities, this transformation reinforced them. He remained physically unimposing, ill-suited for sports, and deeply self-conscious about his appearance and masculinity.
As an adult, he would always joke that, like, when they were picking sports teams, that he was, he wanted to be the manager. I'm the manager of the team today, you know? Like, right from, because he's like, I'm not going to play sports. It's ridiculous. What a weird little guy. When Phil was nine years old, his father, Benjamin Spector, died by suicide. Ooh.
Yeah, we are gonna have some classic bastard-style empathy to start off our show today. That's tough, that's tough. He's having a difficult start of things, you know? Yes, he's had it rough. I'm sure this won't make him a monster. Spoiler alert.
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Chapter 6: What was the impact of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound?
His mother would often disparage his father and blame young Phil for his death. So she's like over there, like your dad killed himself because of you. Before you, he was happy and then you came along and then he killed himself. And that's the best thing for kids, right? Giving them that sense of agency and control.
No, you killed your dad and you can do anything you put your mind to, including kill your parents, which you already did. Right? Yeah. Very impressive, bro. I couldn't kill my parents. All right, so... she treated his father's death as a source of family shame as well too. So it was like, she never told the truth about it to anybody.
Like if she met somebody and they're like, Oh, Oh, he's off in Europe on business or he died in the war. Like, she's always like just making up other things and not saying, Oh yeah, he, you know, killed himself or whatever, which I mean, I guess I kind of understand, you know, it's not like I'm like, yeah, dude, mom, step mom killed herself, which is facts.
You know, I guess I just did announce it to the world. Nevermind.
Yeah.
So, yeah, obviously not a great start to life. He's small. He's frail. His dad kills himself. His mom and his sister are both super possessive and controlling over him. Pretty bastards-y start to the story. Yeah. Not long after Benjamin's death, Bertha relocated the family across the country to Los Angeles.
This is where Phil decides he absolutely hates being called Harvey, and he starts going by his middle name, Phil. Cool. All right. The move placed them in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Fairfax, which, this is just a stupid little aside, but all the kids called it, like, and the neighborhoods called it Fairyfax, because it was like... Like the weakest school around.
They were like, so he's like the he's like the weakest kid at the weakest school. Right.
Yeah. They're calling his school.
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Chapter 7: How did Phil Spector's relationships with artists evolve over time?
Right. Unhinged. I think it's, you know, yeah, well, and here's the thing. This is something that I think is interesting. A lot of musicians are weirdos, right? It's like there's a certain thing that goes along with being a weirdo and being like that kind of musical genius that people can like, that you can hear a song and, you know, and play it the first time you hear it, right? Right.
There's something that's like kind of hand in hand with the two personalities that kind of seem to go together a lot of times. So it's not weird to be weird, right? It's not weird to be small. It's not weird to be skinny. It's like I know a lot of those people in the music industry, but it is...
weird to be possessive and shitty and treat, and have a pattern against women, which we'll see in this whole thing. So during his teenage years in Los Angeles, Spector became obsessed with guitarist Barney Kessel, one of the most respected and accomplished session musicians working in the recording industry.
Kessel was a jazz guitarist, but would often go on to play pop hits of the day and eventually became part of the legendary Wrecking Crew. If you know about Hollywood music in this time, the Wrecking Crew is everything. They played on every single song in the late 50s and early 60s, all the way to the 70s, pretty much. They were the band you heard in the back of it.
So Phil respected him both for his mastery of jazz and his seamless transition to other genres. At one point, Spector was given the opportunity to meet his idol. The meeting did not unfold as he had imagined. Bertha, his mother, insisted on accompanying him. During the conversation with his idol... Yeah, Bertha, she does it, man.
During the conversation, she begins questioning Kessel about career prospects, financial stability, practical viability, like a career in music, all this stuff. It's like... Yeah, he's like, he's there. He's like, yo, dude, I get to meet this guitarist, this legend. And she's like, well, what's the money like in the job? You know? Yeah. She's just taking over control of this whole conversation.
And Phil's just so embarrassed. Like, this goes from being like, oh, I get to meet my hero in music to like... I'm just really embarrassed. I'm really embarrassed that I'm sitting here having this conversation. And this is just, this is his mom. His mom is in control of his life at all times. He's always, he's always stuck with that. That's yeah. Okay.
I did not realize like knowing about like the later stage of Phil Spector's life somewhat, I did not realize he started out dominated by his mom to such an extent that yes, that does kind of scan. Yeah. It does kind of scan, yeah. You know, I mean, it's not always true, right? It's like a lot of times people are just shitty people, right?
But a lot of times if you look into it, it is kind of like when your dad, when you're little, like, oh, he's just beating you up because he's got a shitty home life and he's trying to... Sometimes that is true. Sometimes they're just bullies, you know? But sometimes they got a shitty home life and they're dealing with something that you can't possibly understand. So...
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Chapter 8: What controversies surrounded Phil Spector's later career?
force her way into the band as a manager, right? She like immediately is like, as soon as they start having any success whatsoever, she forces her way into, into the whole situation as the manager. And then when Phil's like, no, I don't want you to be in a mandatory mom's like, Let her be the manager, Phil. You know? Let him do it. Immediately. Yeah. Immediately, like, takes his sister's side.
And she has no idea what she's doing, of course. So, like, she makes horrible decisions all over the place. She's doing dumb stuff. But Phil is still, he's the architect of this whole thing. And he writes this amazing song, right? Yeah. In 1958, while still in high school, Spector wrote and produced a song titled To Know Him Is To Love Him.
This is where I'll make my first entry and do evidence of Phil was seriously fucked up. Like I had some, that was, he was fucked up, right? But this is where we're going to get into Phil was seriously fucked up. Sophie, can you show Robert the image of the gravestone there?
Yep. Okay, I'm seeing it. Yeah, Ben Spector, April 20th, 1949. Father, husband, to know him. 420, baby, yeah. Yeah, 420. Hell yeah, brother.
To know him was to love him. What was that? The name of Phil's song there was to know him is to love him. Phil wrote. He doesn't have daddy issues. He's doing good. He's fine. Yeah. Phil wrote a song, and he talks later. He says, this song is about death. This is a song about death. And nobody noticed because it's framed in the 1950s kind of, you know, to know, know, know.
yeah it's very silly but he had you know nobody else gets it but if you listen to it it's like okay yeah you were kind of like a huge fucking hit yeah yeah it was a huge hit it was a huge hit it was very big deal um it became a massive national hit reaching number one on billboard charts uh part of its success came from side bastards appearance dick clark american bandstand so Yes, that's right.
Dick Clark is a side bastard today. I'm not going to get deep into him, but he basically invented payola. People would pay him to put bands on American Bandstand. And because of him, literally, that's what got out of control eventually and caused one of the biggest scandals in the music industry for the longest time. It's like, you have to pay in order to become successful.
Yeah.
Thanks, dude. Yeah, the pay to play deal. Thanks for creating that.
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