Yeah anyway so in comes these Phil Spector records and every one's a hit and every one's just magical and nobody has ever heard a sound like this and being a song writer, um, I ju… I wanted to know how ... how this was done. I couldn't ... I couldn't imagine how this sound got ... got on a record you know. So having um, having some communication with Phil, I was able to call him and ask him if I could ask if I could work for him exclusively as a promotion man. So um, he said yeah, he liked it. Money wasn't ... wasn't an issue um and he hired me as his independent promotion man so I distributed his ... his records, but the most exciting part of it was that you know, if you ... if you were in certain camps, you had this prestige of ... of working for eit…being with Brian Wilson or the Beach Boys or Phil Spector so I was a Phil Spector clan and everybody then ... ther- ther- everybody would go and listen to everybody else's records. We'd go and listen to Brian Wilson's songs and Brian would come over and listen to ours and as soon as you cut a master, everybody would go play it for everybody and ... and the big boys, Brian Wilson and Phil Spector would always try to ... they had a rivalry and ... and the Beach Boys and then - in those days there was a West Coast sound and an East Coast sound. So here you were with the ... the king dominator of the West Coast sound and aside from that I just wanted to learn how he wrote that way and how he produced that way. So I did everything for Phil um, including getting up at ah, 4:00 in the morning and going to Denny's having coffee and donuts or French fries. I mean, I ... sometimes I'd get a call at four in the morning and, hey Sonny, - yeah Phil, you ... you want to go to Denny's? Oh, yeah, that's a great ide., how did you know that's what I was thinking of doing? I just wanted to get up now. So you'd have to go, I mean when you worked for Phil and ... and it was time to go do what you had to do, you did it. I mean there was no discussion or you didn't look for a rationale. You just went and did it. So um and Phil had seventeen personalities and you had to acclimate to every one but if you wanted to be around the, the genius of him, that's what you did. So, it was fun. It was hard at times. It was fun at times. So I sang, I played percussion, I got him hamburgers, whatever ... whatever, but ... but the opportunity I had there, I knew it was valuable because I ... I really got to understand how to make records.

So you were actually in the studio for a lot of his big records?

Yeah, most of ... most of his big records. I, I think I was with ... with Phillip during the prime ... his prime time and the, I was there when he was the hottest, and I was there when he was cold. I remember that um, I remember Phil cut another record, "Walking In The Rain". I forget who cut it. I think it was Ronnie ... Ronnie Spector and um, and so um, he sent me the record and I took it to the radio stations and the radio stations for the first time went ah, same sound and it was the first time they were negative about ... about the sound. They did - they started not liking it because they ... they thought it was all too similar and I ... I was ... I didn't get the record on the air, which was unheard of and so you know, whenever I'd take a record into a radio station and I'd go down and call Phil right after. So um, this was at KFWB and it didn't get on the air and so then I went downstairs, called Phillip to tell him that ah, that it didn't get on, which was ... which was painful and then we talked about the record and usually you never comment about th… about the product to Phil, but ah, I said ... I said ah, maybe ah, maybe we should change our sound and then ah, there's a time in your life when you know you've done something and you know there are consequences without any words being spoken. I knew I was gone after that, saying that we should change our sound. Ah, there was a ... a communication lag there, a few beats and then he continued to talk but I knew I was in trouble. Ah, I knew I would never have the same relationship with Phil. I said something that was unheard of in his, from his point of view.

What was it that made the sound old?

Just the repetition of it. You know, no matter how revolutionary something is, if you keep doing it over and over and over then it does loses it's excitement and it's high dynamics and people get used to ... get used to it like anything else you know um and then it just becomes a normal deal and then it becomes not very interesting at all and so that caught him and that ... that kind of was the ... the slide for Phil and it really ah, I think threw him because he couldn't find the formula as easily anymore and he knew he had to do something about it and that's when Phil started seeking out the Beatles, or ah, Tina Turner, different artists. Up until then, Phil Spector was the star on ... no matter who was singing. He would just grab anybody and say you're Ronnie, you're Bobby Sox and the Blue Jeans, um, Darlene Love was Ronnie, the Ronettes, I think she was the Crystals, she was Darlene Love. He didn't care. He broke all the rules when he recorded then because he was the star. His song was the star and the sound was the star. So wh., the artist was ... was a secondary item then you know. But then that changed and then he started looking for an ar… artist to ... to implement his sound or his song and he was successful with Tina and um, with George Harrison.

"All Things Must Pass".

Yeah. Um, a slightly successful. I mean it... it happened and then they did My Swe., "My Sweet Lord" which was a total rip of "My Kind of Guy". Ah, - note for note I don't know if there was a ... he's my guy [hums] exact same thing. "My Sweet Lord" [hums] and so, but that happens, that happens. You know you write a song and ... and you're singing these lyrics and suddenly you realize you wrote the Seven-Up commercial and re-wrote it you know and ... and you get embarrassed then. Ah, I went to England and came back and ... and wrote "But You're Mine" and it was an exact rip of, gosh what was the song, [hums] "You Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine", it was just note for note and it happens to you. You know, you don't realize it.

I can imagine.

Yeah, or you do realize it and try to get away with it.

So what was Phil like in the studio?

He was brilliant in the studio. He was ...

Let me start it one more time.

Phil Spector was a ... was brilliant in the studio. He was ... he was magical in the studio and he was um, I used to love to watch him because I ... I was going how can he hear one note in all of this ah, ocean of sound you know. But he had a ... he had a great ear and he could hear a bad note or he could hear things and then I ... I learned to pick them up the same way, but he ... he ... he was like a painter that would bring all these parts together and then start throwing colors up on canvas and then pretty soon there would be this beautiful ah canvas completed and ah, and Phillip used to say to me, when we'd play it back out of the ... out of the speaker when the playback came back, he'd go, that's gold, that represents gold coming out of that speaker. And he used to have sayings like that. He used to say his, and then he'd say, hey Sonny is that song dumb enough? Is it dumb enough was the term and what he really meant was, did it have the simplicity that a song has to have so that it's comprehensive to ... to everybody? But those were his terms, songs had to be dumb, ah, so he insisted on that quality and that ingredient in every one of his songs.

Let's see, how about the Wrecking Crew. Can you tell us what the Wrecking Crew was?

The Wrecking Crew was bas… basically a clique or a gang, as I said everybody ... everybody had their own clan or crew or clique and ... and some of the musicians of course played for everybody, Glen Campbell was a studio musician and he'd play for us and he played for ah, for the Beach Boys, Leon Russell was ... was our studio piano player. Leon Russell just came in my restaurant three nights ago and ... and he, I came over and said is everything OK? It was a man sitting there with hair down to here all white. He said, do you know who I am? And I looked at him and a lot of people say that to me, you know, and I don't know if it's fans or what, but then I remember, I saw the eyes and ... and I said Leon and ah, he was just down here ah, doing a little gig and Leon used to be the quietest ah, musician in the studio. He'd come in, skinny guy, play on the piano and then just leave except for um, one time and Leon came in the studio drunk.

He was never ... he never... he didn't really talk much. He was very introverted.

You were just telling me about what the Wrecking Crew was.

The Wrecking Crew was really the studio...

Start again.

Ok, the Wrecking Crew was the studio musicians basically and the background singers and we were just Phil's gang you know, but it., we had incredible musicians then. I mean we had um, Glen Campbell, ah, Leon Russell, ah Hal Blaine, um I can't think of them all, but a lot of them just went on to be… become either artists or great studio musicians themselves. The ... the incredible thing was the studio was ... was a small studio and the way that Phil recorded, one of the things that created the Spector sound was that normally you'd have one piano, one guitar, one you know, one base, one drum, but he would always have three of four of everything and we'd always have three drummers in the studio so all of us are crammed in probably a room not much bigger than this, making this outrageous sound and that was ... that was ah, one of the revolutionary things that Phil did was, you never thought of saying well, I'll have three pianos basically playing the same variations of the same rhythm and what that did was create this rolling rumble that bounced off the ceiling, went into somebody else's microphone and became the wall of sound because it was ... it was a rumble of ... of ... of echo there from instruments bouncing off of each other. The same kind of instruments. You had four guitars just cranking. I was exciting.

That's really exciting. Such a big noise. Big sound.

Yeah, ok. You got it.

You mentioned earlier, Darlene Love. Can you talk about what her presence was like in the studio?

Darlene was ... Darlene was the rebel. Darlene was the one who would stand up to Phil a little bit. In a way Phil Spector was very intimidating because he was the god then and everybody worked for him and Phil, you were either in or you were out with Phil. There wasn't an ... an in between much you know. So you didn't want to get on the outside because you would be on the outside looking in you know, so um, so you ... you stayed in line and ... and never answered back except for Darlene. She didn't care. I mean we would ah Phil would cut the track and then he'd put the violins on and then he'd do whatever instruments he was going to do. Don't forget in those days, we were ... four track I think, two tra… or four track I think, two track or four track, four track probably two - okay two. So Phil in… I never saw done it before, invented bouncing back and forth with two machines. So he would ... he would take two tracks, mix it down, bounce it over to one track here and then he created four track that way, but anyway, Darlene ah, then we would go in last and sing the background and now the Blossoms were ah, everybody again. I mean the Blossoms were ... were Jack Mitchies' wife, Darlene Love, Edna, I can't remember her last name, and then me ah, Ronnie, Cher, um and that was the Blossoms then and we, we had the dirtiest job because when ... when Phil finished, it was usually 2 A.M. and then we had to sing to the background probably until about 3 or 4 A.M., so we ... we would get out last so ah, um, Darlene would get a ... a little grumpy and she'd go, damn Phil you got it already. You know, she'd sass him back. But none, none of us would, you know, and she was spunky and Darlene stayed with Phil because she wanted a career. And recently I did an interview about Darlene because she's trying to ... to create a career now you know and now in retrospect she ... as I understand it, she kind of feels like she got cheated out of a ... out of a suc… successful singing career because she stayed with Phil and ah, with ... it was the wrong move. With Phillip you got to stay a certain time and then you got to move on. If you don't move on, you're not going to get an identity and that's kind of what happened to Ar… Darlene and then when she went out, she got a little identity. But it was always att…. attached to Phil and ... and all of Phil's records. Now she's fighting for an identity of her own, which I certainly can identify with.

Can you remember any stories about the Do Ron Ron Productions that you were involved with, maybe about Darlene or any specific stories?

Well there's a million stories um, I guess the ... I guess the most interesting story ... studio story I have with Phil Spector is that he'd bring Ronnie Spector, she wasn't married to him then, out from New York and it was Ronnie and her cousins and ...

OK the greatest Phil Spector story. Actually there's a lot of them. One, the one that was really significant to me was ah, we're all in the studio and we're cutting this happy song and Phillip's cutting the track and so ah, Ronnie wanted to go get a hamburger or get something to eat and then Nino Temple was in ... in the clique then ah, with us ah he got cut out, but he was in it for a while, um and so we took Ronnie and her cousin to Delores Drive-In, the infamous drive-in on Wilshire, got a hamburger. I mean I considered it my job and sometimes when you could get away from the studio, you know, you'd go take that breather and not have to ... not to have stay in the stu… studio all the time because it's like a cave and listen to the song over and over and over so it was ... it was nice so we probably took longer than we should of and really it ... it was just what it was supposed to be no more than going and getting something to eat, and then we come back to the studio, musicians are there, the lights are out, the ... the engineer is just sitting there like this, everybody's sitting around, the singers are sitting there and Phil's leaning against the wall, just, so you don't dare ask what's wrong you know because you ... you know you have no idea but we knew it was bleak whatever it was, you know, and then fina… and nothing would move this. So then finally Phil went into the engineering room and when Phil went into the engineering room, we knew what he would do. He would get on the phone to his shrink in New York and ah, then his shrink would ... they would talk, we wouldn't hear any of it, but we knew there was a little therapy going on. Then he ... then he came out - lights went on and everything was alright. Well, come to find out that he was really jealous that or whatever that we had taken Ronnie to go get a hamburger at Delores Drive-In but ... and I was kind of worried that was ... that was the concern but I kept saying no, no, no that would be the last thing he would think of, but ... but ah, that was the concern. That's the greatest in ... in the studio story. One more, out of the studio story. Phil hated to fly. He lived in New York. He'd fly here, cut, and go back to New York. So, so he came. We, we'd cut a single and he, he'd go back to New York. Now he, he was so afraid of flying that he would take either a Valium or something and just be at a point to where he was about knocked out so that when he got on the plane he wouldn't have to deal with the fear. So every time I took Phil to the, to the, ah, airport it was a traumatic experience. So this was real early in the morning, I take him to the airport, I go, Philip don't worry, you'll be fine. And he would always assess the passengers. And he looked at the passengers and he decided they looked, he'd go, I don't know they look like a bunch of losers to me. I'd say, Phil, no, they're good passengers. No man, they're losers. I said, Phil, I, I wanted to go back and go to bed, you know, it was early in the morning and I was living with Cher at the time. I talk him into getting on the plane. Close the door and go, phew. Get my car, go home, climb in bed. And the phone rings. And so, hello. Sonny. Yeah. It's Phil. Phil, I put you on the plane. I, I made them turn around. So, they dropped me off. So, they, they got on the runway, he didn't like the way the passengers looked, he insisted that the plane come back to the dock and drop him off. They drop him off and he calls me. And he says, - come on down. So, I went, - oh boy and I was so sleepy 'cause we had recorded all night. And so I said, - Cher, you got to go. I got to get some sleep. So she said, okay. So I had a Catholic medal on. So I, and Phil is Jewish, so I said, - Cher, give him this, tell him to wear it and tell him he'll be okay. So, now she drives down there with a Catholic medal, gives it to Phil. When she gets there, he's sleepy now 'cause the pills had knocked him out, so he's sleeping on one of the benches there. She gives him a Catholic medal, gets him on a plane and he gets to New York. Those are two favorite stories.

So was he every allowed to fly the airline again?

No, they were upset to say the least. I mean I've, I've never heard of anyone pulling that, getting them to turn around and come back. He pulled it off.