Phil Spector's crime
Closing arguments in the Phil Spector murder trial are set for Sept. 6-7, with the jury expected to begin considering his case the following day. I've already considered Spector's case. He's guilty.
Oh, surely he killed Lana Clarkson. I'm not talking about that. He's guilty of subverting and sliming Rock 'n' Roll in it's very early days.
I've been considering his offenses since the late '50s. I was about 12 years old when Rock 'n'Roll reared itself up from Rhythm & Blues and Honky Tonk country music. White and Black people singing fast blues. The radio record players told us it was our music. So we believed them. This was the '50s, we believed everything authority was telling us.
And the music was good. Rock Around the Clock, Mystery Train, Long Tall Sally, Bebob a Lula, Great Balls of Fire, Whole lot of Shakin' Going On. But all the while we were innocent about the real nature of radio and the record business. The wee people, the small souls, who didn't get the Rock and didn't feel the Roll, they thought about money, they thought about fame, they thought about business.
So Spector squeezed out his first warm and wet hit in 1958, a sluggish, saccharine piece of drivel called "To know Him is to Love Him." You cannot imagine my horror when first I heard it. The lyrics wen something like this: "To know, know, know him, is to love, love, love him. And I do, and I do, and I do."
Twelve-year-olds should not be afflicted with lyrics like this. It is a crime. Twelve-year-olds get the shakes when exposed to tepid crap of this magnitude. Admit it, if you saw those lyrics on a Hallmark Card, you would not buy it, you would not even finish reading it.
But this was the golden age of payola, of record promoters, guys who were paid to go round to local radio stations to meet and bribe tiny-souled record jockeys to play their loathsome records. And they did, and they did and they did.
So little Phil had a hit at 19. Then he began working the system in earnest. He acquired and jettisoned mentors and tried to make money off everyone who could help him.
And the hits kept coming. Pretty Little Angel Eyes, He Knows I Love Him Too Much, He's Sure the Boy I Love, the infamous Da Doo Ron Ron. Be My Baby.
You see the pattern. This isn't about rebel teenagers. This isn't about good times, get it while you're young. This is the Tin Pan Alley sausage machine mentality. Of course he wasn't alone, little Philly had lots of company and they had very little Teen Spirit. They wanted to be someone special, and they had the machinery and the contacts to do it.
So very quickly Rock 'n' Roll got pre-empted from it's home in the South and hijacked by professional friends in New York, Philadelphia and to a lesser extent the Los Angeles grubs. It wasn't pretty. It was like listening to elevator music cranking out of your car radio. Luckily the Brits had been listening and sent their mobs over. The invasion more or less stopped that sticky swill from drowning us all. Not the Beatles, they were more of the same. But surely the Rolling Stones, Eric Burden and the Animals.
Now we await the closing arguments of Spector's murder trial, the decision of jury. Maybe we'll get a little justice for the hours of horror he has inflicted upon us.
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