Phil Spector

[Sneakeater]

I always thought it should have been the Ramones who were waving guns at Spector during the recording of End of the Century.

[Sneakeater]

I mean, you create four brilliant albums based on the premise of stripping down bubblegummy pop-rock to the point where it becomes brutal. And then you have the least stripped-down record producer in the history of record production produce you?

[hollywood]

2 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Funny.   I just thought of Burroughs too. 

And William Tell.

[Wilfrid]

William Tell missed his son!

I don't know who's idea it was for Spector to produce the Ramones. Although I may have the answer here somewhere.

 

[Wilfrid]

Seymour Stein's idea, partly connected with having Spector produce "Rock and Roll High School" for the eponymous movie (he did a re-mix in the end), and partly in the hope that the boys would finally have a U.S. pop hit. Never to happen, not even with "Sheena." Although "Baby I Love You" was top 10 in the UK.

(I had Dee Dee's autobiography within reach.)

 

[mongo_jones]

speaking of unlikely combinations, spector also produced leonard cohen's death of a ladies' man. the results are simultaneously incongruous and affecting.

[Sneakeater]

Yeah, from the day it came out, I never disliked that album as much as everyone said I was supposed to.

[Sneakeater]

Good thing Spector never got at Dylan, though.

[Sneakeater]

Dion's Born to Be with You:  THAT'S a good latter-day Spector album (although it doesn't sound quite as good to me now as it did then).

[Sneakeater]

16 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

I'd be very wary of being more forgiving about the crime because of the quality of the art.

But I guess my question is, when would this come up?  When you're writing an obituary (or a life history), I guess.  But that's it.  When you're writing an evaluation of the work, the fact that the creator is a murderer might be a fact you'd mention (as Rowland does about Caravaggio) (brawl or no brawl).  But it shouldn't be a focus.  You certainly don’t have to be considering how “bad” the crime was.

Now to be sure, in the real case on which my thought experiment was based, Norman Mailer led a successful campaign to get clemency for imprisoned murderer/author Jack Henry Abbott because he was a good writer -- who returned the favor by killing another person almost immediately upon his release.  But Mailer did a lot of stupid things.

[hollywood]

2 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

William Tell missed his son!

I don't know who's idea it was for Spector to produce the Ramones. Although I may have the answer here somewhere.

 

But Tell inspired Burroughs.

[Wilfrid]

Yes indeed.

BTW, saw a funny Norman Mailer story somewhere this week. Buckley gave Mailer a copy of his autobiography with "Hi Norman!" penciled in the index next to the entry on Mailer.