Jan. 5, 1934—Phil Ramone, who cut a wide and influential swath among jazz, pop and rock ‘n’
roll musicians in the second half of the 20th century by producing
records by Ray Charles, Stan Getz, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Frank
Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and especially Billy Joel, was born in South Africa.
In the last few days, I came across a lively
Facebook discussion on the career of Ramone’s near-contemporary, Phil Spector. Although I disagreed with
Spector’s many detractors on the quality of his records (though not about his
insanity or lack of integrity), the comments did give me a frame of reference
for assessing why a music figure who started out at almost the same time as the
creator of the “Wall of Sound” could have turned out so differently.
Each producer initially got a toehold in the music
industry through mastery of an instrument (Spector, the guitar; Ramone, more
formally trained at the Juilliard School in New York on the piano and violin).
The two made their marks in the exact same year,
1958: Spector, as composer of “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” and
Ramone as co-founder of A & R Recording with then- business partner Jack
Arnold.
By the mid-Sixties, each had produced enormous hits for
other artists: Spector, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” for the Righteous
Brothers; Ramone, “The Girl From Ipanema” for Stan Getz.
By 1967, however, with his withdrawal from his label
Philles Records after the commercial failure of “River Deep, Mountain High,” Spector’s
best days were behind him. Ramone, however, was only getting started. Among the
records he would produce over the next four decades were:
* A Happening
in Central Park, Barbra Streisand;
* Blood on the
Tracks, Bob Dylan;
* Still Crazy
After All These Years, Paul Simon;
* Celebrate Me
Home, Kenny Loggins;
* Double
Fantasy, John and Yoko Lennon;
* Duets,
Frank Sinatra;
* The Broadway cast album for Stephen Sondheim’s Passion; and
* Genius Loves
Company, Ray Charles.
Take a look at that list again. It not only presents
a staggering variety of artists and styles, but also represents many of these
musicians at the height of their powers.
This may be the key difference between Spector and
Ramone; while the former sought to impose his sound on each artist, the latter
consistently tried to help his musicians find theirs. Often, that meant waiting patiently for a moment that made
a song special.
Nowhere might this have been more vividly
illustrated than in the case of Billy Joel, whom Ramone produced for nearly a
decade—and, not coincidentally, in the period when the Piano Man finally broke
through to a wider public.
To start with, Spector might have wanted to import
his loose collection of musicians, the Wrecking Crew, into the studio to
perform most of the instruments. But Ramone readily bought into Joel’s notion
that he sounded better with his own band of backup musicians.
Then, in their first collaboration together, The Stranger, Joel, trying to imagine a
key instrument for the title tune, began to whistle. Ramone told him that this was the instrument he wanted, and
the singer’s whistle was kept on the recorded song.
Lack of grandiosity
especially distinguished Ramone from Spector. "I like to joke with people,
‘I’m the guy on the back cover,'” Spector once said. "It’s not like in the
movies where it says, ‘Steven Spielberg presents Abe Lincoln.’ What I do is
kind of invisible.”
Finally: in 2009,
when Spector was found guilty of second-degree murder for killing actress Lana
Clarkson at his mansion, several musicians said they were not at all surprised,
given Spector’s instability and use of firearms. When Ramone died in 2013,
tributes came pouring forth across the entire spectrum of artists who had
worked with him—or wished they could have.
No comments:
Post a Comment