When
producer Phil Spector released "River Deep, Mountain High" in May
1966, he was aiming for far more than a hit record. God knows, he had had
enough of those as head of Philles Records. Nor was he that anxious to make a star of the lead singer on the single, Tina Turner—he’d found other singers
with far less talent and had made them big.
No,
the “First Tycoon of Teen” (as Tom Wolfe had called him in a famous profile)
wanted, amid the continuous wave of the British Invasion overwhelming American
music, to show that he, at least, was
impervious to shifting musical tastes. Maybe above all, he wanted to top
himself.
As I discussed in this prior post,
The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” had become a smash
hit, broken radio stations’ tight limits on song length, and been acclaimed a
record of almost frightening power. But that was over a year ago. Now, rock ‘n’
roll’s greatest producer would put his trademark “wall of sound” at the
service of nearly four minutes of concentrated but stratospheric intensity: 21
musicians and 21 backup singers supporting Tina Turner’s guttural, urgent lead
vocal. It was as if Richard Wagner had tired of opera and found a new musical
genre: the pop single.
As an aural monument, "River Deep, Mountain
High" fulfilled all of Spector’s ambitions. But commercially, it was a great
disappointment. Although achieving number 3 on the British pop charts, it rose
no higher than #88 in the United States. One critic had a simple explanation
for this: “The general consensus in America was that the record was too black
for white radio stations to play, and too white for the black stations to
play.” If that was the case, it was an early harbinger of the increasing racial
homogenization that would occur in pop music distribution over the next several
decades.
There
was another explanation besides falling out of musical fashion, however. Many
in the music industry in the U.S. were waiting for the slightest misstep by Spector.
Even in an industry notorious for disputes that ended in lawsuits, he was
making a reputation as an executive given to sharp practices. (He had outraged
Darlene Love by assigning her lead-vocal credit to someone else, for instance.)
Spector
was demanding and all-controlling of women in business and personal relationships. Once he wed Ronnie Bennett, lead singer
of The Ronettes, he insisted that she give up her career and remain in their
mansion, even as his behavior became more and more capricious.
The
producer must have sensed in Ike Turner
a kindred spirit, a male who had to dominate his wife (though, unlike Spector,
Ike was physically rather than mentally abusive). Spector also surely sensed a threat both to
his command of his record’s chosen vocalist and the studio musicians. Thus,
Spector agreed to list Ike on the credits for the song he was planning, but he
paid him to stay away from the studio.
Just
how much did Spector want Ike gone? Well, think of it this way: out of the
$22,000 for the record’s production budget, all but $2,000 was allotted to make
Tina’s husband disappear. “For all we knew Ike was in Alaska when we did the
session," Love recalled.
That
left Tina to work for Spector with no interference from her husband. And did
Tina work…and work…and work, in one take after another, until, by the end of
the sessions, she was so dripping in sweat that she had to strip to her
underwear. If it was a miserable experience for her, it was almost as bad for
the stable of Philles musicians who, by now, should have been used to Spector’s
perfectionism.
With
all the takes, nobody seemed to know what Spector wanted—with one important
exception: himself. In an interview in the June 2, 2016 issue of Rolling Stone, Ronnie Spector put it
vividly, when questioned if she had any “positive memories” of her ex: “He was
great in the studio. He could hear one mistake in one person’s guitar and say,
‘Over there, in the corner—you hit a wrong note.’ That blew my mind. He was
great as a producer. As a husband, not so much.’”
After
hours and hours, the agony was over. When Ellie Greenwich heard the product of
all the work she had done with Spector and her songwriting partner Jeff Barry,
she is reported to have thrown the acetate against the wall in frustration. (It
couldn’t have helped her spirits for this to be happening just when her
marriage to Barry was coming to an end.)
The
reaction of Spector was slower than Greenwich’s but perhaps more extreme. He
felt so frustrated by the tepid commercial reaction to the song that he lost
interest in Philles and, within two years, sold the business. He largely
withdrew from the recording industry in the late Sixties, at only age 25. When he re-emerged,
he seemed to be in a futile chase to recapture old glory, most controversially
through involvement with solo albums by George Harrison and John Lennon and,
more controversially, The Beatles’ Let It
Be and The Ramones’ End of the
Century LPs. (His overreliance on strings came in for
some heavy criticism by Paul McCartney and The Ramones.)
These
days, it is difficult to view Spector’s career in the Sixties without reference
to the sentence he is currently serving for the fatal shooting of actress Lana
Clarkson. But in the case of “River Deep, Mountain High,” posterity has come
down on the side of the deeply troubled superstar producer. The song remains
one of the most heavily covered of his career.
Deejay
Jonathan Schwartz is fond of quoting someone else’s opinion that you can tell a
standard by whether or not it’s been covered by Ella Fitzgerald or Frank
Sinatra. It turns out that the same can be said about more contemporary
rock/pop standards, except that it would have to be covered on the late TV shows
“Glee” (in this case, on the “Duets” episode of Season 2, as seen in this YouTube clip) or “American Idol”
(by contestant Pia Toscano) .
But this is only the beginning of the long
list of singers who have plunged into the powerful current of “River Deep,
Mountain High”: Darlene Love (finally getting a chance at the song she had
coveted), Dobie Gray, Harry Nilsson, Leslie Uggams, Deep Purple, Eric Burdon
and The Animals, Bob Seger System, The Supremes & The Four Tops, Neil
Diamond, and Celine Dion.
There
are two other live versions on YouTube that deserve to be seen: first, by Annie Lennox in 1992 (later part of the
MTV Unplugged series); second, by Meat Loaf in 1978, in a duet with Karla Devito that starts about 42 minutes in
and continues for just short of another five.
The
Wall of Sound “was all-consuming, left no room for anything else in your head,
and tore at your heart with tympani and an exuberant rush of noise,” according
to music historian Bob Stanley. Other songs that featured this style might have
been more tender and yearning (“Be My Baby”) or more atmospheric (The Righteous
Brothers’ “Ebb Tide”). But no other engulfed the listener from start to finish
more than “River Deep, Mountain High,” a fact recognized when Rolling Stone recently listed it as number 33 on its “500 Greatest Songs of All-Time.”
(The image accompanying this post shows
Spector, in sunglasses, with Tina Turner, and, at one of the few points he must
have been around the studio, Ike Turner.)
When
producer Phil Spector released "River Deep, Mountain High" in May
1966, he was aiming for far more than a hit record. God knows, he had had
enough of those as head of Philles Records. Nor was he that anxious to make a star of the lead singer on the single, Tina Turner—he’d found other singers
with far less talent and had made them big.
“So we cast a brunette as Sandy and a guy as Rizzo.
Who’s directing this — Julie Taymor?”—Artie (played by Kevin McHale), at
a casting meeting for the musical Grease
at his high school, on Glee, Season
4, Episode 5, “The Role You Were Born to Play,” written by Michael Hitchcock,
directed by Brad Falchuk , air date November 8, 2012
Walking through Times Square in the last week, I was immediately struck by the billboard juxtaposing two ABC series, and I just had to take this picture.
“She's looser than a thrift store turtleneck and probably just as diseased."—Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch), on substitute teacher Holly Holliday (played by Gwyneth Paltrow, in the accompanying image), in Glee, Season 2, Episode 17, “A Night of Neglect,” air date April 19, 2011, written by Ian Brennan, directed by Carol Banker
