On "He's a Rebel" what were your initial thoughts on his producing? Did you think he was doing something different?

Well "He's a Rebel" is the first song that I worked with Phil Spector on. Ah, and I was, at that point I didn't like Phil very much personality-wise. He'd been in the studio prior to that and he recorded with another engineer Stan Ross. He'd recorded "To Know Him is to Love Him" and "I Love How You Love Me" and I knew Phil's talents. And then he went back to New York of course and he created the great songs with, ah…

Move on.

Okay so I, I knew that, that, you know, Phil's reputation was made. And anyway Phil comes in to, to this session "He's a Rebel" and I knew I wasn't his first choice as recording engineer 'cause Dan Ross is the one he worked with all along. But he was fighting a release. Vicki Carr was recording the same song at the same time. As a matter of fact when he went to master it he found that, that Vicki Carr was recording at the studio he went to master United at United Recording. But at any rate he worked with, with me and as Phil told me, he hadn't worked with most of the musicians but he was fighting this release so he had to use whatever he could. And, ah, we did it, ah.

Was it unusual what he was doing?

Well that wasn't, that wasn't, no Phil didn't depart, this was not into the Wall of Sound. "He's a Rebel" was not into the Wall of Sound yet. "He… He's a Rebel" was a pretty standard, ah, layout. He had, for musicians, he only had the one piano which was Al DeLaurie playing piano, playing that figure, [sings] ta ta ta ta. I don't sing and I don't play piano. So that's the end of that. But, ah, Phil told me later that the next record we did together which was "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" was the one that he had heard in his mind for some time and he was looking for the studio that would get the sound that he heard. And so, and that, that was really the advent of the Wall of Sound, of using, of his using more musicians than at that point in time were being used. All that people were basically using were, you know, straight rhythm section, piano, bass, guitar and drums. And then with the "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" where he used two pianos on "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", three pianos came later. As a matter of fact if on some of those things, if we had four pianos we'd use four pianos. Whoever came buy was going to play something. People didn't get into our sessions free. They, ah, the great musicians and, and artists who came by, Phil would always press them into service so we would end up with percussionists and piano players, guitar players. There was no telling how many. But his basic concept after "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" was like three pianos, three basses, four or five, ah, acoustic guitars, ah, one drum which later expanded to two drummers. Well, even that's a misnomer because everybody played percussion. As I said if they came in, he would, ah, even though he had one drummer, Hal Blane, he would throw people into playing maracas or timbales or whatever was available when they came in, so, just to add to it, sometimes we'd end up with 25 people in a, in a room that was, ideally would hold about 15. But I, it seemed to me that the more people we got in the room the better the sound was.

"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" was one of the great experiences of my professional life or semi-professional, at that point we were only semi-professional. We grew professional later on but then the music industry was young and we were just having fun. But that was one of the great experiences of my life because Phil would come back after, ah, "He's a Rebel" to do "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" at Gold Star. Again, I got to work with him because his favorite engineer Stan Ross was busy on vacation. And, ah, we started working and it was a very long into getting the sound, it was very hard getting the sound.

"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" was one of the great experiences of my life recording because when Phil came in to do it I didn't know what the song was but we spent maybe three, three and a half hours getting set up. And, he, Phil was working like crazy, he couldn't get the sound that he heard in his mind and I was running out of room frankly, all my meters were pinning. I couldn't, I knew I wasn't going to be able to record but I didn't have the nerve to tell them, well we have to stop and I have to reset these things 'cause I can't record it's going to all distort. And I kept waiting and I, finally I knew it was going to be lost. So, at that point, we, now we had rotary faders, we didn't have sliders but I just realized it wasn't going to work and I reached over and I turned every knob down and I was sweating pretty bad. Phil looked at me like I was crazy and he started screaming at me, and he said, I just about had the sound how could you do that? And I said, well it wasn't going to work, I could, it wasn't going to happen. And I said, I have to start over balancing, you know, meanwhile the guys are out there playing and I started bringing up the microphones one by one, starting with the bass drum and then the basses and the, and I got to the point where I had 11 of the 12 microphones up. And Phil says, that's the sound. Stop. And I says, well I don't have Billie Stranger's microphone on yet, he was the lead guitar. And he says, don't turn it on, I don't want it. Let's record. And, ah, so I says, well what's the name of the song so I can slate it? And he says, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah". I thought it was a big put on. And I said, come on, tell me, what's the name of the, I have to slate it. He says, it is, it's "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" and when I realized that what I was hearing was part of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" I literally fell out of the chair. We did it one take. We did the voices, of course we only had mono, one stereo machine and one mono machine. Well, it wasn't stereo it was a two track machine and a mono machine. So we over-dubbed the voices twice and played it back and I mixed it to the mono and I mixed it while we were playing back and that was it. The thing start., it took three and a half hours to get on tape and it took another half hour to finish it. And, the, the, but the one great thing that I recall about "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is, again, we were a little more informal in those days and at Gold Star producers would come in the back door and they were all friends. And so when Phil went back to New York I, I couldn't contain myself and I would tell people who came in from other record labels, you know, I'll play a tape for you and if you tell me there's a chance that this is not a top ten record, I'll eat the tape right here in front of you. And he'd look at me like I was crazy. Well nobody could predict with that certainly except nobody ever said, I want to see you eat the tape. I mean they were, they were in awe. Phil told me later, he said, I had to put this record out 'cause everybody in Hollywood had heard it, you know I got the, but he got great feedback from everyone on that.

You stayed working in mono even in the stereo ______ why was that?

We, ah, always recorded in mono with Phil because and he said, even when stereo was in fashion because he said that he could never depend, that it would never be exactly the same the next time he came back in. The only way he could ever lock it in was to record it in a monaural mode and so everything stayed mono 'cause he, he wanted people to hear it the way he recorded it. People had never heard, you know, this kind of music - da, da, da da, you know come out right off the bat and it just was, the whole room was rocking and then you'd hear - "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" Zip, and it was, it was phenomenal you know everybody dropped everything to, he told me when he, when he went back and played the demo for the, who was it? Somebody back in New York that they offered to buy it from him. They played, yeah, they took it off after, before the intro was finished, they took it off and said, I'll give you ten thousand dollars for it without knowing any more in front, I'll give you ten thousand in front which was big in those days.

Where did it go on the charts?

Number 4 I think. And it would have been, it would have been even better. I have to tell you if I had mastered, made the, the disc master, it went to RCA I think made it but and Phil wouldn't let him put any equalization on it but I needed to, you know, yeah, he, he made it, you know, flat from the tape but it needed, it would have had a little more life, the record itself, had I, although I'm happy with what we've got on the ...

I was wondering, did you EQ it?

Yeah, the box set is, yeah.

Talk about Phil and mono.

Phil recorded everything in mono even when stereo became the music of choice. And, ah, I often said to him, why don't we record mono and spread this thing out and he says… [INTERRUPTION].

Start again.

Phil insisted on staying in monaural recording even when stereo became the music of choice. And I said to him once or twice, why don't we go into stereo like everyone else is doing? And he says, no, I'm never going into stereo because I can never come back and reproduce what I had the next day. If I record mono it's locked in and people are always going to hear it that way no matter where they're sitting in a room or what I add to the tape, it's always going to be locked in. So that was his reason for staying monaural.

Can you give us a sense of what a typical session was with Phil.

On a typical session with Phil we almost never rolled tape for the first three hours. Now a union session was three hours and then you went into overtime. The first three hours we never rolled tape that I can remember. I don't know whether Phil needed to get them tired enough so that they weren't playing as individuals 'cause they were all great musicians in their own right. But I have a feeling that they didn't get to where he wanted to go till they were too exhausted to, you know, be great musicians in their own right. And they were playing what Phil wanted. But, ah, the sessions would always start the same way. He would always start with the guitars. I feel sorry for those guys I'm sure that all the guitar players that were ever on Phil's sessions are now very sick and they all, they must all have terrible hands because they played the longest, they played from the beginning of the session to the end of the session. He would start with the guitars and then he would add the pianos when he had something that he heard was working with the guitars, he'd add the pianos, if that didn't work together, out went the pianos and he'd try another line doing something with guitars then he'd add the pianos. When he had something working there, he'd add the basses went in next. And if that didn't work, out with the pianos and out with the basses and back to the guitars. The guitars always working. And from, ah, the guitars, pianos and basses we went to percussion instruments and then horns and finally the drums. And that was basically the session.

How long did that take altogether?

It generally too, a session would generally take about a hour overtime, four hours to do a track before he got what he wanted.

What was the Wrecking Crew?

The Wrecking Crew was a name, I think Hal Blane was the one who ended up 'cause Hal would do that. He, Hal was one of the funny guys around and it sounds, I, I'm almost certain that Hal coined the name The Wrecking Crew but of course the Dodgers were already here then and they were the Blue Crew and now we were the Wrecking Crew or they were the Wrecking Crew. I tried to repair their wrecking. But these were the musicians that Phil used standard and there was - do you want me to ...

Why the name Wrecking Crew? Were they wrecking music or what were they doing?

No, I, The Wrecking Crew the, the name itself, ah, I, as I say, I think derived from the fact that there was the Blue Crew and, ah, Hal Blane wanted to give it something, give us something and, ah, The Wrecking Crew came about. But nobody wrecked anything to my knowledge.

What was your impression of Ronnie Spector's voice?

Ronnie Spector, ah, well, well of course, at that point they were the Ronettes before Phil and Ronnie got married. The Ronettes were three beautiful girls from New York. We were all in love with them, ah, in lust anyway if not in love. But they, they were three of the most beautiful girls. And Ronnie had this voice, Phil was in love with her voice before he was in love with her. I know 'cause he said, boy, there's Frankie Lymon, you know he compared her to Frankie Lymon. And she had this unique voice. When we did "Be My Baby" it was, it was perfect, it seemed like her voice no matter how full the track became, her voice found its slot inside the track so that we could ride the music up as full as we wanted to against her and not lose her. That was, I don't know whether that was Phil's uniqueness in being able to, but he did that a lot in a lot of records where he could bring the, the music up around vocalists. But her, she just cut through this beautifully.

What was your impression of the Darling Love?

Darling Love of course was one of the big background voices, singers at that time, ah. And she, she had, but she had this great voice. She was doing church choir stuff, she and her sister. And, ah, she could sell a song like nobody's business. She, she, ah, was one of the great undiscovered talents, still is, I think.

What did you think about the Righteous Brother? [INAUDIBLE].

Speaking of, "You've Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’", the Righteous Brothers. Phil had wanted to record the Righteous Brothers for a long time. They were, he loved Bill Medley's, well, well he loved both the voices of brothers. He'd wanted to record them for a long time but there had been contractual differences or whatever, I never got into that area so I, I don't really know but I know he wanted to record them long before he was able to. When we did "You've Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’" he brought ... I'm sorry, was it Barry and Cynthia that wrote it with him?

Start again.

In, in, on You've Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’" with the Righteous Brothers, Phil had wanted to record the Righteous Brothers for a long time prior to actually doing it but he wasn't able to sign them and then eventually it did come about. And, ah, so Barry and Cynthia came up, I remember they looked at the studio and they said, - this is where you record all of this stuff? They couldn't believe that a studio that small could put out that sound. Everybody that came from New York had that. But, they were, I remember Phil playing it on the piano in the studio for the, for the two boys, Bobby and, and Billy and they weren't too excited about it. And Phil was, had a peak at that, I mean everything he was doing was meaningful and to hear these changes coming up and them not to get excited. I remember saying to Billy, how can you not get thrilled over it? You're going to have a big record here. And, ah, I think Bill was unhappy because Bobby was, wasn't getting enough work in that particular song, he wanted Bob to have more, more work. But Phil had this sound in his head and it was again a great departure.