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I was saddened, but not particularly surprised to hear about Phil’s fate.

I had worked many times with Phil in the 60s and 70s, first with The Righteous Brothers and then with John Lennon and Leonard Cohen. There may have been a few other sessions thrown in here and there, but I don’t recall the artists names.

I, like many others, knew Phil from his music of the late fifties and early 60s. I first met him when he was scouting The Righteous Brothers. I was playing guitar for Bill and Bob and we were performing at the Red Velvet on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles. The place was packed and everyone knew Phil was coming to scout the Brothers and we were all pretty excited. Phil and his entourage came in with a lot of commotion.
It was quite a show, both on and off stage. It must have all worked because Phil signed the Brothers and the rest is history.

When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” came out all of us who knew The Righteous Brothers and their earlier music were extremely disappointed. Hah, what did we know! I do remember Bill telling me how grueling the vocal sessions were. Being young and naive I didn’t know at the time what making records was all about. I did work for Phil on some of the Righteous Brothers’ album cuts. Of course, for the hits Phil was using the well-known “A players”, the “Wrecking Crew”. As Bill started producing more and more he was using many of those same players, so I got to work with them, and that was an added thrill. At about this time stories of Phil’s eccentric behavior started coming to my attention.

Fast forward to the early 70s. I got a call from Phil’s office to work on the John Lennon album. Needless to say I was stoked. I arrived at the session at A&M’s Studio A and the place was packed with all the best players in town, including many members of the “Wrecking Crew”.

There were at least eight acoustic guitar players and probably eight electrics as well as two drummers, two bass players, a few keyboards, percussionists and horns. I believe Larry Levine was engineering (I had worked with him at Goldstar many times). Typical of Phil, the call was for 7:00 PM but he wouldn’t show up until around 9:00 PM so we would just sit around. Phil would finally arrive with his “people” including Barney Kessel’s kids who were both wearing shoulder holsters and very visible guns and the “fun” would begin. We would play the first eight bars (of whatever song we were working on) over and over for hours, while Phil worked on the sound (at an excruciating level in the control room). After wearing us down, Phil would be ready to record. Of course everyone was tight for the first eight bars, but after that it was anyone’s guess what would happen musically. We had all played on enough sessions that whatever came out was passable, but it was an interesting and challenging way to work.

Phil’s antics during those sessions are legendary. Along with the constant presence of guns, there were a number of memorable events. One thing Spector liked to do was to try and egg someone into a confrontation with him. Just before you thought it would end in a fist fight he would make a joke. He only did this to me once, but it was annoying and stressful. It went on all the time throughout these sessions. One night one of the keyboard players got fed up and walked out with Spector running after him shouting “you’ll never work in this town again!”. Hah, this keyboardist was a great player and I doubt he would ever have trouble finding work! And then there is the infamous incident when Spector shot off his gun in the control room. I only heard that story the next night, as it happened after I had left the previous session.

A few other things stick out for me about the sessions with Phil:

1.) Sitting next to Lennon and playing guitar with him.
2.) Watching Dylan, Cher and Neilson singing background vocals.
3.) Lennon walking into the studio one night with a magnum of vodka under his arm.

One of the offshoots of all this craziness was the we were always into “golden time”, per the Union, which meant double scale. That was about $800 per night. This went on for a few weeks and was great money even by today’s standards.

Around that time Phil’s office called me to work on Leonard Cohen’s album “Death Of A Ladies’ Man”. These sessions were much lower key with only a few players and were more intimate. Nothing very memorable sticks out in my mind about those sessions.

The last time I saw Phil was around 2006. Nino Tempo called to tell me he was playing at the Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset (BTW Nino is a great jazz sax player). My wife Robin and I went to see him. There were only a few people there that night, but Phil came in to see Nino play. (They go back a long way). After Nino finished his set I went over to say hi to Phil. I must say Phil was very gracious to Robin and me, and not the same person from those many years ago (of course his life had changed dramatically ).

I do feel honored that I was able to work with someone who made such an important contribution to music for so many years. But I am saddened that his life turned out so tragically for others as well as himself.

© 2009 Art Munson

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