Thursday, February 4, 2010

Song Lyric of the Day (Phil Spector on “That Lovin’ Feelin’”)


“You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.”—“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, produced by Phil Spector, recorded by The Righteous Brothers

Bill Medley’s deep, dark rendition of this line made it clear from the get-go that this would not be one of the standard-issue lightweight singles from producer Phil Spector’s Philles label. The pop genius—dubbed by Tom Wolfe “the first Tycoon of Teen”—was after something else entirely this time--immense, oceanic even—to convey the most titanic feelings involved with possession and loss, the kind that haunts Heathcliff every day of his life.

He found it when he counterpointed Medley’s baritone with Hatfield’s stratospheric wail on this song, which reached #1 on the UK charts on this date in 1965, before attaining the same position two days later in the U.S.

Notice who this headline credits for the song. Not the Righteous Brothers, though it made their credit. Not even the husband-and-wife team of Mann and Weil, even though they wrote all of it, every word and note, Spector’s songwriting credit notwithstanding. (He got a credit because he had made scads of money, and in those days, it was outrageous what you could get away with in terms of claiming credit.)

No, the headline—my responsibility!—credits Spector because he was the first pop music equivalent of film director Frank Capra: The Name Above the Title. You might not know the Ronettes from the Crystals, or Curtis Lee from Bob B. Sox and the Blue Jeans. But you knew a Spector record the way you knew Capracorn, instantly, with that “Wall of Sound” of multilayered instruments and voices.

All this despite the fact that the style influenced artists as disparate as the Beach Boys, Abba, The Beatles, Billy Joel (“Until the Night”) and Bruce Springsteen (who made no secret of his debt to Spector on Born to Run, which featured the fullest, warmest sound of The Boss’s long career).

"For Spector,” Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler told Rolling Stone four years ago, “the song and the recording were one thing, and they existed in his brain. When he went into the studio, it came out of him, like Minerva coming out of Jupiter's head. Every instrument had its role to play, and it was all prefigured."

But, following the tragic events of the last several years, I can’t hear “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” anymore without considering it a song of desperation, a control freak’s last strangled, needy cry. The need to make himself noticed, to be honored, to be loved, had grown exponentially since the suicide of Spector’s father when the future producer was only 12.

That sense of urgency made him cut corners and take chances in his career and personal life. How else to explain not only the songwriting infringement of royalties from Mann and Weil, but also the same shameless financial grand larceny that took advantage of Darlene Love and the Ronettes--and led them to take him to court?

Sometimes Spector’s chances were minor, like listing “Lovin’ Feelin’” as 40 seconds shorter than it actually was in order to circumvent deejay guidelines regarding three-minute-plus songs. But brandishing guns in the studio before the likes of John Lennon and the Ramones was a cry for help.

In 2003, that latter penchant caught up with him, as he was arrested in connection with the death of a B-movie actress who had come back to his home and, police say, died at Spector’s hands. After one mistrial, Spector was convicted in the death of Lana Clarkson and sentenced to a term of 19 years to life.

Forty-five years ago, past, present and future came together, in three-and-a-half minutes of some of the most broodingly majestic sounds in American pop music history. That first line of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin” initially seems plaintive, but repeated listenings reveal it as accusatory.

If I had to rank Spector songs, I’d put this just a notch below “Be My Baby” because of the latter’s pure joy, or that steeplechase of a song released a year later, “River Deep, Mountain High” (a tune turbocharged from its opening chord, then, amazingly, taken to higher and higher levels, before concluding in a deeply satisfying musical thunderclap).

But “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” has its own awesome power, a compressed emotionalism bursting way beyond the confines of any turntable, jukebox, CD or Internet connection. Born to Run shares one theme in common with “Lovin’ Feelin’": the sense that everything is riding on the present moment. The tragedy of the narrator of the latter, however, is that, like the mad genius who brought it to life, it might already be too late.

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