"He is only twenty-three years old, for godsake, the first millionaire businessman to rise up out of the teen-age netherworld, king of the rock and roll record producers...."

"Spector walks into the inner office, gingerly, like a cowboy, because of the way the English boots lift him up off the floor. He is slight, five feet seven, 130 pounds. His hair shakes faintly behind. It is a big room, like a living room, all beige except for nine gold-plated rock and roll records on the wall, some of Phil Spector’s 'goldies,' one million sales each. 'He’s a Rebel,' by the Crystals, 'Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,' by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, 'Be My Baby,' by the Ronettes, 'Da Do Ron Ron,' 'Then He Kissed Me,' 'Uptown,' 'He’s Sure the Boy I Love,' all by the Crystals, 'Wait Til My Baby Gets Home,' by Darlene Love. And beige walls, beige telephones all over the place, a beige upright piano, beige paintings, beige tables... There have been teen-agers who have made a million dollars before, but invariably they are entertainers, they are steered by older people, such as the good Colonel Tom Parker steers Elvis Presley. But Phil Spector is the bona-fide Genius of Teen....  Anyway, Phil Spector likes this music. He genuinely likes it. He is not a short-armed fatty hustling nutball fads. 'I get a little angry when people say it’s bad music.... This music has a spontaneity that doesn’t exist in any other kind of music, and it’s what is here now. It’s unfair to classify it as rock and roll and condemn it. It has limited chord changes, and people are always saying the words are banal and why doesn’t anybody write lyrics like Cole Porter anymore, but we don’t have any presidents like Lincoln anymore, either. You know? Actually, it’s more like the blues. It’s pop blues. I feel it’s very American. It’s very today. It’s what people respond to today. It’s not just the kids. I hear cab drivers, everybody, listening to it.'"

Wrote Tom Wolfe in "The First Tycoon of Teen," chapter 5 of "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby."

The erstwhile teen genius died yesterday — at the age of 81. In prison. Of covid.

Not phrenology. Phenology.

Phrenology is the pseudo-science of studying bumps on the skull ("When the forehead is perfectly perpendicular, from the hair to the eyebrows, it denotes an utter deficiency of understanding").

Phenology is...

... the study of plant and animal activities and when they occur each year. Phenology is a real science that has many applications. In farming and gardening, phenology is used chiefly for planting times and pest control. Certain plants give a cue, by blooming or leafing out, that it's time for certain activities, such as sowing particular crops.... Indicator plants are often used to look for a particular pest and manage it in its most vulnerable stages. They can also be used to time the planting of vegetables, apply fertilizer, prune, and so on....

We were worried that we were going to have a freeze last night, and Meade said to look at the lilacs. They're an indicator plant. If they're opened up, then we would not get a frost. Those within earshot all thought — But how does the lilac know the future? I was going to the Arb, and I made sure to photograph the lilac:



It's indicating that there will be no freeze, and sure enough, there was no freeze. The lilac knew. There was a lack of lie in that indication.

Another thing about yesterday: It was the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles' "Let It Be." That includes "Dig a Pony," which has those lines: "You can celebrate anything you want... You can penetrate any place you go... You can radiate everything you are... You can imitate everyone you know... You can indicate everything you see... You can syndicate any boat you row..."

John Lennon wrote that song, which he called "a piece of garbage." Wikipedia says it has a "multitude of strange, seemingly nonsense phrases which were strung together in what Lennon refers to as a Bob Dylan style of lyric." I don't trust these putdowns. That's a way of speaking to the press (a Bob Dylan way by the way). But "Dig a Pony" — with all its "-ate" words — does feel like Bob's "analyze you, categorize you, finalize you, or advertise you...."

I'm willing to believe you can celebrate anything you want, penetrate any place you go, radiate everything you are, imitate everyone you know, and indicate everything you see.

Look! There's the lilac, telling the truth again.

I left out "syndicate any boat you row" because that's getting into metaphor. Genius lyrics tells me "syndicate" is a British way to say "incorporate," and, at the time, The Beatles were turning themselves into "Apple Corps."  To get back to phenology: "When apple trees shed their petals, sow corn."

"Prison must agree with him...That's the least creepy he has looked in years."

The highest-rated comment on "EXCLUSIVE: Phil Spector is pictured sporting a goatee, bald head and hearing aids in his latest mugshot revealed a day before his 80th birthday after spending ten years behind bars and wearing a selection of wigs during his trial" (Daily Mail).

At the link, there are lots of photographs of Spector, including the different weird wigs he wore during his trial. A woman had died, it was a murder trial, so it was not an ideal occasion for lightweight mockery of wigstyles. I remember getting a call from someone at a TV or radio network. Blogging was a big deal, and I was a conspicuous blogger and law professor, and I would get calls from media and need to try to figure out what they thought they could get from me. I'm no expert on criminal law, but it became apparent that they wanted to fill out time with talk about Spector's hair. They were filling in their airtime and Spector was coming in with different wigs. Weren't they funny? But funny in the context of a murdered woman? Did they want to talk about that, how he was perhaps trying to make people think he was lovable or inept and whether he's deviously playing us? I asked, but I didn't get a straight answer... or an invitation to do on-air commentary. It was pretty obvious that what they wanted was to fill out time on the subject of hair: Wasn't it really weird and silly? Are you a source of multiple words that could more or less say that over and over for the amusement of our audience? If I'd spluttered out a lot of synonyms for "curly" and "big" and "weird" very quickly, I'd have gotten the part, and I could be regretting how dismally I leveraged my transitory blog-fame back in the '00s.

ADDED: I think the reason they called me was that I had blogged about Phil Spector. The post, from September 2007, was titled, "The news is a freak show":

We've got O.J. back in the news. Pushing him out of the headlines is upstart Taser-boy Andrew Meyer. Phil Spector is rearing his ugly head again as jurors cannot make up their minds about whether he's a murderer. Pictures of those 3 characters dominate the front page of The Drudge Report right now, with one more right in the middle: Hillary. This is what we are paying attention to now. Oh, we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. The presidential candidates have been in the news too long. Are we really supposed to stop everything and study the provisions of Hillary's health care plan? Would we be more virtuous if we did?

But when they called me, it wasn't because they wanted my metacommentary on their commentary. They wanted me to be part of their freak show. Luckily, I couldn't do freak-show style on command, or my only defense would have been virtue.

"I was disappointed that Lennon got away with giving it to Spector, and even more disappointed with what Spector did to it."

"It has nothing to do with the Beatles at all. ‘Let It Be’ is a bunch of garbage.... [Spector] puked all over it. I’ve never listened to the whole thing, I’ve only listened to the first few bars of some things and said, ‘Oh, forget it.’ It was ridiculously, disgustingly syrupy."

Said the recording engineer and producer Glyn Johns.

Also at the link: Johns on The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin.)

"Is it okay to make a fiction film, "inspired by actual persons in a trial" — but not even "based on a true story"?

HBO's movie with Al Pacino as Phil Spector says "it is neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor to comment upon the trial or its outcome."

Of course, filmmakers — particularly one as talented as writer-director David Mamet — are entitled to artistic license. But the problem here is that the movie blends fact and fiction into a misinformation smoothie. Characters bear the actual names of participants, dialogue is lifted directly from trial transcripts, and Al Pacino nails Spector's shuffle and rasp. But when the movie jets off to the land of make believe — as it often does — there's no red flashing light to warn the audience....

In lieu of examining Spector's actual case and what it says about the American legal system, the film prefers to meditate on what HBO calls "the nature of celebrity" and how it contributed to the supposed framing of Spector. There are long stretches in which former pals, lawyers and the defendant himself muse on the larger reasons for the injustice.

"It's called envy," Pacino-as-Spector says. "Extraordinary accomplishments … transform the grateful into an audience and the envious into a mob."

I respect Mamet enough to withhold judgment until I see the film. I'll get back to you on the subject. But since a real woman was killed, and I think — in real life — we know Spector killed her, there's at least some disrespect entailed in portraying Spector as innocent and railroaded.

A work of fiction can explore an alternate history: What if Elvis didn't die, but went into hiding? What if... whatever all that crazy stuff is in the movie "JFK" happened? It could be just junk, feeding fantasies of what we wish had really happened or what would be thrilling to discover had happened, but it could be a serious work of art. I'm trying to think of how it could be great fiction. I'm projecting on to David Mamet what I want to be true of David Mamet and perhaps it's a serious contemplation of what we/Mamet project onto Phil Spector, the truth of what we want to be true.

Let's dance like it's 1958 in Idaho.

That's nice and slow. I think you can all learn that, and I think it would be nice if kids today learned that dance, maybe in gym class. I think it would help them in many ways. And feel free to dress like that, even unironically.

I found that because YouTube suggested it after I watched this 1965 clip from the TV show "Hollywood a Go-Go" with Del Shannon singing "Runaway" and the "Hollywood a Go-Go" go go dancers were dancing around him doing some dance that represented running away, even though their forward motion only took them in a circle so they never got away. It's faster and more frenetic dancing, but I think you might be able to figure out the moves, even though we never get to see the feet.

Seemingly bridging the time gap between the first and second video — and also suggested by YouTube — here's Little Eva singing about the brand-new dance "The Loco-Motion." I say "seemingly" because it looks early 60s and the "Runaway" dance looks later 60s, but in fact, both clips are from 1965. A lot of old and new intersected in 1965. Personally, I was 14 years old, and I was rooting for progress. I watched "Hollywood a Go-Go" and "Shindig" (the show Little Eva's on), and I tuned in hoping to see British invasion stuff like The Kinks or folk rock stuff like The Byrds. I would have regarded Del Shannon as an intrusion from the pre-Beatles era. "Runaway" was a hit in 1961. It was one of the singles we played at slumber parties when we were children.

"The Loco-Motion" was a hit in 1962. Little Eva — Eva Narcissus Boyd — was a maid who also worked as a babysitter for Carole King and Gerry Goffin: "It is often claimed that Goffin and King were amused by Boyd's individual dancing style, so they wrote 'The Loco-Motion' for her" — but maybe that's not true. Little Eva doesn't look too interested in dancing in that "Shindig" clip. The notorious song "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" was based on what Little Eva told Carole King about her relationship with her boyfriend. That song was originally recorded by The Crystals — produced by the not-yet-a-murderer Phil Spector — and in recent years, it's been covered by Courtney Love and Grizzly Bear — with some unknown degree of irony.

Al Pacino avoided meeting Phil Spector, whom he's portraying in an HBO movie.

"It would have been meeting a different person. Now he’s been convicted and he’s in prison. I play him before his first trial."

After doing the film role, said Pacino, he didn’t feel he knew Spector much better – but that it didn’t matter, because his job was to explore the film character, not the real-life person.

“The play’s the thing,” said Pacino. “I was looking for the truth of the drama.”

It's not an impersonation, but something much deeper.  Or that's the PR for the HBO movie. Maybe it's a preemptive defense against the criticism that he doesn't seem like Spector at all.

ADDED: In other HBO celebrity impersonation news:

HBO’s new Liberace biopic was “too gay” for every studio in Hollywood, director Steven Soderbergh says.

What big name actor will be probing the depths of the truth of the drama of Liberace? Matt Damon? No. Damon's playing Liberace's younger lover. Liberace will be... Michael Douglas!

Aw, give me a break. The studios turned down this movie because it was (whine) too gay? It's obviously insufficiently commercial.

Promos of the film screened for TV critic in Los Angeles yesterday contain numerous scenes of the two male stars shirtless and about to kiss.

No one wants to see that. It's not anti-gay to say I don't want to see that. Who wants to see Michael Douglas shirtless and about to... do anything?

"For the bridge [of 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin''], Phil experimented on the piano with a 'Hang On Sloopy' riff. It was brilliant."

That would be Phil Spector, as described by the songwriter Barry Mann, who says:

I built a melody on the riff while Cynthia shouted out lyrics: "Baby, baby, I get down on my knees for you" and so on. When we met the Righteous Brothers a few days later, we were nervous they might not like it.

Cynthia is co-writer Cynthia Weil, who says:

Bill and Bobby [Hatfield, The Righteous Brothers] stood at the piano while Barry played and sang the melody and Phil sang harmony. At the end, there was dead silence. Bill said, "Sounds good — for the Everly Brothers." At first he didn't hear the soul. So Phil asked them to try it.

Mr. Mann: But Phil wanted Bill to sing the verses alone, with Bobby joining on the chorus.

Ms. Weil: They had always sung together, and Bobby wasn't happy. He said to Phil, "What am I supposed to do while the big guy is singing?" Phil snapped, "You can go to the bank."

Phil snapped, eh? Well, look out. Phil Spector is in prison right now, for killing a woman. Had you forgotten?

I love the picture of Mann and Weil at the link. It's exactly the way I like to think songwriting teams of that era looked. It makes me want to get a shag rug and some index cards and lie down on the floor with my bare feet up on the sofa where Meade is stretched out, dressed in white (including white crew socks), strumming out some chords on the guitar. And I come up with lines about something beautiful dying or whatever and then our crazy friend comes in and bangs out the intro to "Louie Louie" or "Mony Mony" or "I Want Candy" and suddenly that's the bridge and I'm jotting on the index cards "We had a love...a love...a love you don't find every day..."

"It's growing in the street right up through the concrete/But soft and sweet and dreaming..."

So wrote Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector about the Rose in Spanish Harlem.

And then there's the Queen Anne's lace here in Madison...



It's growing right up through the concrete, and, even here, Anne/Ann is feeling soft and sweet and dreaming....

Me and Phil Specter on Twitter.

I just did 2 Instapundit posts about Twitter:

I TWEETED TWEETING. Twitter gets to your brain. In think it’s made me more Instapundit-y this go-round subbing for Glenn. Lord knows how he got so concise and spontaneous, pre-Twitter, but we’re all catching up.

Posted at 6:46 am by Ann Althouse

“MUSICALLY, IKE WAS BY FAR THE GREATER OF THE TURNERS.” Tweeted, by Phil Spector. Response #1: Nervy to say that — given Tina’s story of domestic abuse — when you’re in prison for shooting a woman to death. Response #2: If I knew I’d get a laptop and WiFi in prison, my calculation about whether to commit crimes would change radically.

Posted at 6:45 am by Ann Althouse

Copied here to get things started and so you can comment.

ADDED: Phil Spector tweets here. You can see he's only following one person. It's Yoko Ono. Think about it.

AND: "Finished reading The Book Of The Damned. About to write an angry letter to the governer demanding that they return my wig."

UPDATE: The clever Tweeter confesses he's an impostor — and adds that Twitter should learn a lesson from this. Well, you can't expect Twitter to catch impostors the instant they start, and obviously, people are going to pose as various celebrities and near-celebrities. I've had impostors myself. The important thing is to react when it is called to their attention. For example, I've complained about impostors twice. Facebook responded. Sadly, No (a blog) insisted on keeping the impostors.

Lawyer hopes his client will die soon.

"He's now 69 years old. His health is not great and all I can tell you is that I hope he doesn't have to serve anywhere near that time." — Phil Spector's lawyer, referring to the 19 years in the 19 years to life sentence.

"He had this one priceless gift. Which was a musical ability."

"And he was able to create out of this gift these extraordinary records, these grandiloquent dreams of romance and love and escape, and fling those back into the face of the world. It was flinging them at his father, who killed himself; flinging at the kids who wouldn't talk to him at school; flinging it at the record industry, who thought he was a madman. These records were Spector's revenge."

Unfortunately, Phil Spector was quite insane.

Insanity and insecurity haunted Spector's entire life. His older sister had to be institutionalized, and his father committed suicide when the boy was 9. The traumatized family moved from New York to Los Angeles. Spector's first hit, at age 18, was inspired by the inscription on his father's grave: "To Know Him Is to Love Him."

Phil Spector guilty.

"The Los Angeles jury spent nearly nine days deliberating over the case in which the prosecution portrayed Spector, 68, as a misogynist with a history of pulling guns and 'playing Russian roulette with the lives of women' while drunk. Prosecutors said it was only by a miracle that Clarkson, star of the cult film Barbarian Queen, was the first to die.... 'By the grace of God, five other women got the empty chamber and lived to tell,' said the prosecutor, Truc Do. 'Lana just happened to be the sixth woman who got the bullet.'"

The news is a freak show.

We've got O.J. back in the news. Pushing him out of the headlines is upstart Taser-boy Andrew Meyer. Phil Spector is rearing his ugly head again as jurors cannot make up their minds about whether he's a murderer. Pictures of those 3 characters dominate the front page of The Drudge Report right now, with one more right in the middle: Hillary. This is what we are paying attention to now. Oh, we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. The presidential candidates have been in the news too long. Are we really supposed to stop everything and study the provisions of Hillary's health care plan? Would we be more virtuous if we did?

Speaking of upstart Taser-boy Andrew Meyer, how many Americans do you think would agree to get tased if it would get them the attention it got him? By chance, I was just listing to #340 of "This American Life," called "The Devil in Me." In Act One:

Sam Slaven is an Iraq War veteran who came home from the War plagued by feelings of hate and anger toward Muslims. TAL producer Lisa Pollak tells the story of the unusual action Sam took to change himself, and the Muslim students who helped him do it.

There's a scene in there where American soldiers in Iraq are tasing each other for fun. You can hear them screaming and laughing in the audio. So, if guys with nothing else to do submit to the Taser for fun....

ADDED: "I'm a total boy, aren't I?"



UPDATE: Once there was a poll following "So, if guys with nothing else to do submit to the Taser for fun...." but it no longer displays, and I have no way to restore the content.

John Lennon Day.

ADDED (THOUGH IT SHOULD BE UNNECESSARY): This post is about... well, first, Phil Spector. He's on trial for murder, you know! And second, the absurd notion that there should be a national holiday for every hero. Come on! I love John Lennon, but he shouldn't have his own holiday. Martin Luther King, Jr.... that was special. Basically, there's no Duke Ellington Day, no Louis Armstrong Day, no Bessie Smith Day, no Buddy Holly Day, no Elvis Day. Get it? And John Lennon wasn't even an American! There's only one "Day" for a nonAmerican in America. 2, if you count Christmas. The category is closed.