Part Three: The Phil Spector Episodes

Greazy Wil continues the story of Phil Spector, and how his relationship with the Beatles and his relationship with his wife came into, uh, conflict. Cool Zone Media is nominated for 3 Webby Awards! Please submit your votes by April 16th :) Behind the Bastards - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/experimental-innovation It Could Happen Here - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/news-politics Migrating to America - https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/documentary See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Hey everybody, Robert here. And the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences have announced that three different Cool Zone Media shows have been nominated for awards at the 30th Annual Webby Awards. You can vote on these now if you just Google the name of the podcast and the category. Behind the Bastards is nominated in the Experimental and Innovation Podcasts category. It Could Happen Here is in the News and Politics Podcasts category. And James Stout's mini-series, Migrating to America: A Dream Worth Dying For, has been nominated in the Podcasts Documentary category. And you can find links to vote for each of these podcasts in the episode description and in the posts on social

• 0:47Robert Evans?

  media for episodes of It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards. Thank you. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, everyone. I'm Robert Evans. This is a classy podcast about the worst people in all of history, always introduced by beautiful musical accompaniment, courtesy of our guest, Greasy Will.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Nothing to hear every Tuesday.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  No pumps, no creams for you.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Imagine all the people.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Nothing else to do.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  You may say I'm a dreamer.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  But this part has made it clear.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  The whole world is full of bastards.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And they somehow persevere.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Imagine there's no warlords.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Or tech freaks running schemes.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  No poison gas dictators.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Or libertarian dreams.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Imagine all the time robbers.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Would finally have free.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  You may say I'm a dreamer.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  But if the bastards were all through.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Then there'd be silence in the studio. And there'd be nothing left to renew.

• 3:55Robert Evans?

  That was beautiful, Will.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you. Yes, this was an entire composition by me. I reproduced this all because today we are going to be talking a little bit about The Beatles and about John Lennon and Phil Spector and his relationship to all of them. And so yesterday, I decided I had so many things to do that I was like, gonna like, lose my mind. And I thought, what could be better than ignoring all of those things? Getting blackout drunk and making a tribute song for this week's second week here on Phil Spector, episode three, which I thought this was gonna be like, one episode.

• 4:35Robert Evans?

  I can't believe we're getting two songs.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, well, I had to. It was like, it was, you know, it was like, I gotta keep them, keep them, keep the fans interested.

• 4:46Robert Evans?

  I judge it. Good.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  So yeah, so yesterday, I got, you got your gavel.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Honorable.

• 4:53Robert Evans?

  It's official. Yeah. That was beautiful. And I do wonder a lot, Will. I wake up scared every night. Like, did people finally figure out how to stop being evil? Like, is this the day that that my job loses all meaning? And then I wake up and someone's committed a horrible crime against humanity and being like, thank God. Thank God.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  And watch, like, even just opening your phone, you're like, oh, cool, still employed.

• 5:15Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 5:17Robert Evans?

  Still got work to do. Thank God. Thank God.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Well, this has been a cold open and it's a musical cold opening.

• 5:26Robert Evans?

  A very warm cold open.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  A very warm cold opening.

• 5:32Speaker 03

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• 5:36Speaker 04

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• 6:04Robert Evans?

  Picture this, you're listening to the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast and suddenly, wait, what did they just say? Well, the questions raised in those show-stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. Hosts Gabe and Chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's Tuesday episode, from sexual health and HIV prevention to finding the right doctor. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences.

• 6:39Robert Evans?

  We're hearing more about Phil Spector. If anyone notices that my robe is covered in hay, it's because I just fed the animals.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  It's a robe? If you'd have not said anything, I'd assume that was a regular winter jacket, but no, you're wearing a robe.

• 6:54Robert Evans?

  No, it's a robe I got, well, it's a robe I got at Caesar's Palace.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  They know now when you steal them.

• 7:00Robert Evans?

  I don't remember buying this.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Well.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  That's my favorite part.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  When we last left Phil, he and Ronnie had just been married, and he went to visit his mother, Bertha, literally the day of, right? He went to visit his mother, Bertha.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  And came back, abusive as ever.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  Truly terrible.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  When he gets home, he's drunk as hell. He starts screaming, right? And he's all mad at Ronnie and everything because he believes she's taken his money. And Ronnie and her mother spend the night locked in her bathroom, hiding from Phil, scared, you know, and they sleep in her bathtub, right? On her wedding night, that's how she spends her wedding night.

• 7:44Robert Evans?

  Cool, that's romantic.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  So the next day, Phil wakes up, realizes he's a bastard, and changes all his ways. That's the end of the story.

• 7:54Robert Evans?

  Okay, good, great. Wow, you really put a lot of work into the song for a six-minute-long episode, but I appreciate it, Will.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Not yet, well, so I was lying.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  You're lying? No, not you. Not Greasy Will lying.

• 8:09Robert Evans?

  Phil Spector went on to spend the rest of his life volunteering at a children's hospital.

• 8:15Robert Evans?

  Doing some with children.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  He's just kind of a shitty husband at this point, you know? It's like, I guess it's behind the shitty husbands. That's why I'm on.

• 8:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so far, so far. Well, and also, he's fucked over a lot of women.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  He has. He has been horrible. He's in general, he's a horrible person.

• 8:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  So his relationship with his mother is strained at best. He doesn't let her come into the studio at all. He doesn't, he doesn't like her being around at all. She, sometimes she does show up at the studio, and she still calls him Harvey, which pisses him off, you know? She like refuses to ever call him Phil.

• 8:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's weird.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  And she'll like randomly show up at the studio with like, like matzo ball soup and shit and be like, "Phil, you need to eat!" And he's like, "No, go away." I know, I would not either, but like, you know, whatever. Anyway.

• 9:04Robert Evans?

  He's also probably consuming his weight in cocaine every day, right? So I'm imagining not much of an appetite.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  He's not really a drug user as much. He kind of looks down on, on drugs mostly. He looks down on artists that do drugs. Yeah.

• 9:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  When he does get into the vices, it's mostly, um, it's mostly alcohol, you know? It's mostly that he's an alcoholic, but he's super Jekyll and Hyde with it all the time.

• 9:31Robert Evans?

  Interesting.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  It's like, he'll go, and he'll go through like, this is his whole life, he does this, like periods of sobriety, and then periods where he's just getting lit all the time.

• 9:39Robert Evans?

  But he's one of those guys, he's pissed by people like doing, doing blow, getting, smoking weed, taking acid, right?

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, he doesn't seem to really, like, it's not really mentioned about weed, so I especially assume since like The Beatles and everything, he probably was fine with weed, but like definitely didn't like cocaine being around in the studio.

• 9:59Robert Evans?

  He's not the cool party guy, yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, by the time he married Ronnie, right, he's barely seen his mom, uh, but that's when his sister, around the same time, his sister gets committed to a psychiatric facility.

• 10:13Robert Evans?

  Great.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  And she will remain there for the rest of her life. So Shirley is gone from the story now. Phil will never talk about her, ever. He'd never discuss her, and because of that, she just kinda just disappears to history. I mean, obviously, she spends the rest of her life pretty much in and out of mental health care, so, uh, so she's gone.

• 10:32Robert Evans?

  Right, okay.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Phil, at the same time, this is when he starts transforming his home into a literal fortress. He's got this huge mansion in Hollywood, and he's got- Gates all around it. He's got dogs. He's got multiple like guard dogs. He's got a guy who's basically like his, his like personal bodyguards slash also he's like regularly, uh, like he gets his like sandwiches and stuff, you know, it's his dude, George Brennan. He's, he's around for most of this story and a lot of the stuff that happens. He's like involved in in some way, but he seems to be just a pretty, pretty decent guy, but um, over, overall like, like part of his job is to monitor Ronnie. Part of his job is to monitor the visitors that come by if, if like,

• 11:17Speaker 02

  if somebody comes in and like, like a guest or whatever, he's not to leave the room while they're there and stuff like that. Yeah. And like Ronnie.

• 11:26Robert Evans?

  I knew one son of a really famous and wealthy guy and who was otherwise normal, but would periodically get really paranoid while like out hanging out, doing normal person things that they were going to get kidnapped. Like that, that was a constant, even when there was no, nothing happening, no indication of it. And I, I guess that like, I think that just happens to some people when they start to hit that level of like wealth and fame where they just can't stop thinking about all of the people that, all the things that might go wrong, all the people who might want to take it from them. I don't know.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Uh, side story and a really correlating side one that, uh, is music industry. I once worked for Balt Getty, who is the great grandson of.

• 12:08Robert Evans?

  Oh, like those Geddys.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Those Geddys. Yes. His dad, his dad is the Getty that was kidnapped in, in Europe and had his ears sliced off and everything. So it's like, it's understandable to carry a level of paranoia, you know, like I could, and like when he talked about it, like it was always just like, yeah, man, like, like he did not seem very trusting of people just showing up at his place, you know?

• 12:33Robert Evans?

  I mean, we were going to kidnap my friend, but we just never got around to it too.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  And he didn't, he didn't have any money. So we're just doing it for no reason.

• 12:42Speaker 06

  It also like with the whole Patty Hearst thing became like a very popular.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Right. That's such an interesting story. Alright, so Ronnie is restricted inside the house. She can't really do much, like she, uh, she's not allowed to leave ever. The doors are always locked. Phil always locks the doors. He's big on that. So as she's, her isolation intensifies, she began drinking heavily. Phil actually gave her the first alcohol she ever had. She did not drink until she was well into like her relationship with Phil. And Phil gave her the first sip of alcohol she ever had. But now it's becoming like one of the few emotional outlets available to her. Right. Uh, it wasn't recreational at all. It was absolutely a coping mechanism.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Inside an environment she could not safely leave. Like, uh, Phil's behavior becomes increasingly unpredictable, alternating between affection, surveillance, and intimidation. He gets more and more controlling. He would tell her to stop focusing on her music, you know, and like be a good wife, and that's what she should do. And that's her job. And, uh, he no longer even pretends that, like, to be interested in taking her into the studio anymore. Like, she very, she has no career anymore. Being her, like, the Ronettes are still doing things, like touring and stuff like that. She's just not a part of it, right? Right. The group that's literally her namesake, the Ronettes. The Ronettes don't have Ronnie anymore. Yeah, they're still touring.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  And because like, you know, again, like, it's very, like, bands back then are very amorphous. You don't really know what a lot of them look like, because you've never seen a picture of them, you know? Sure. Um, so no one else knows or whatever. But, um, because she's drinking heavily, she would sneak downstairs. They had a bar, right? Because Phil's in, you know, in the entertainment industry, people come over. They have a bar, and, uh, but he would lock it up. And she would just come down and jimmy it open and drink all the liquor that's inside. And then, you know, and Phil obviously sees this or whatever. Sure. Even though she's stressed and, you know, isolated and going through this whole thing, they still are trying to have a baby, you know? But they weren't able to ever conceive.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Uh, and the blame was always passed to her despite, you know, Phil being half of that situation as well, you know? Yeah. Sensing that she was getting frustrated with life as a shut-in, in 1968, for her birthday, Phil bought Ronnie a Camaro. But even in the gift came the air of control. He had the car monogrammed with VS for Veronica Spector, so everyone would know that she's his possession, right?

• 15:26Robert Evans?

  Wow.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Because she's-

• 15:29Robert Evans?

  It's a tag on a livestock ear or something like that.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Yes, and she, um, she's like, you know, musically, she's known as Ronnie, right? So for her, he starts calling her Veronica all the time, specifically as a measure of control, like, "You are not Ronnie anymore, you are Veronica Spector, you are Phil's wife," right?

• 15:51Speaker 06

  Whatever, Harvey, was that his real name? Harvey?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:56Robert Evans?

  Wow, just the emphasis on really forcing her to like that in front of her face is interesting.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:03Robert Evans?

  And speaks to some desperation, his part, too.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  It's about to get even better.

• 16:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, good.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  So, uh, this is a quote from Ronnie from, um, from Be My Baby, quote, "It might seem far-fetched that anyone would put that much energy into controlling someone else's life, but that was Phil. You've got to remember that the man was a genius, and he had nothing better to do with his life after he retired from rock and roll. So turning me into the perfect wife became his major project, just as making me into a number one singer had been his goal five years earlier." So, you know, he, this is what he spends his time doing instead of music now, is just being-

• 16:40Robert Evans?

  Maybe there's other things he could have done with his life, with his vast fortune and access to the halls of power and entertainment, maybe other things, okay?

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Uh, this next part is easily my favorite Phil Spector story, like, we're gonna get into, alright, so there's going to be some very troubling things and also some extremely hilarious things that you will, you just, alright, I'm gonna tell you. Alright, so, so, understand that when we're laughing, we're also crying, you know, I wanna make sure everybody knows that this is funny in retrospect, but in, at the time, I'm sure it was horrific and trigger warnings and all that shit.

• 17:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, these are just the things you have to laugh about afterwards, because that's, how else do you handle it?

• 17:24Speaker 06

  Crazy, crazy.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  So, when showing her the brand-new Camaro, he goes to the trunk, and he pulls out an inflatable mannequin, dressed exactly like himself.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Ronnie is completely baffled about it, yes. And he tells her, "This is for when you're driving alone, so no one will ever fuck with you." Oh my god. Phil has this dummy just to watch over her when she's not, when he's not with her, yeah. He's got a dummy. And like, she talks about it extensively, like, it had, like, his face basically, like, on it, you know? Like, he spent- Did you say it's a blow-up dummy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an inflatable dummy. And he's got it dressed exactly like him. Sure. He's got it, and he puts it in the seat, and she's like, "What is this?" He's got tailored clothes for the dummy. Yeah. Hey, why does the dummy have a gun, Phil? It's so funny, dude. Yeah, inflatable dummy with a gun?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Keeps popping himself every time there's fire. I feel like he's trying to send a message, but I just can't figure out what it is. Phil the dummy, you shot himself in the head. I've never seen anything like it.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  So just 10 days later, and only four months after their wedding, Ronnie hired a lawyer to file for divorce. Uh, but- Fair enough. Almost immediately, she rescinds and says, like, "Okay, I'm just, I'm being silly, like, I need to chill out, I'm not, this doesn't have to be this way." Like, it definitely, you know, probably, I mean, a bit of early marriage jitters, because this guy's a giant asshole. Maybe I can fix him, you know? Yeah, yeah. I'm sure many of my ex-wives thought exactly the same thing. No comment, well.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Look, I can't stand me. I think you're perfect the way you are.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Um, alright, so Ronnie says that Phil was never physically violent, it just, it wasn't his style. But his emotional and mental abuse was legendary. Yeah. Uh, when she falls and suffers a minor sprain, and he has to leave town, he hires a nurse to look over her while he's gone. Sounds, that sounds nice, right? He hires her a nurse while he's out of town. No, uh, the nurse is there to forbid her from doing anything. She's forced to sit in a wheelchair and use a wheelchair while he's gone, so that she can't get around or whatever, alright? And then- He's not, he's not just like controlling her with the nurse. He's also, I mean, he is controlling, but he's also having the nurse give her heavy duty tranquilizers. Oh shit.

• 20:02Robert Evans?

  Oh, cool.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  So that she just has no like willpower to do anything while he's gone.

• 20:09Robert Evans?

  So she's just, yeah, she should just put her on pause. He's putting his partner on pause as he leaves for the weekend or whatever.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:16Robert Evans?

  Like, like a TiVo. Kids don't know what TiVo is. Like a Vidjima game.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  So yeah, so he's, he's literally, he's like, she, she has some friends come over and her friends are like, why are you, what are these pills you're taking? And she's like, the nurse just makes me take them. I don't know what they are.

• 20:31Robert Evans?

  You seem dead inside. Are you okay?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Nightmare. So Phil eventually lets her get back into the studio, but, and writes a song for her, but it bombs horribly. And he uses it as justification for her to no longer pursue her music career. Years later, she realizes that Phil likely gave her a bad song for that exact reason. And she finally resigns to just be the housewife that Phil wants her to be. So he like, he, he gives her a purposely bad song. And it's like, see it, it failed. You should just be a wife.

• 21:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's trying, great. That's like gaslighting. You really have to, that's like a whole separate level.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like on the national stage. Literally like, I'll fuck up my career just to fuck up your career.

• 21:21Robert Evans?

  It's the opposite of what I want to do to like right wingers who, who fail out of Hollywood or whatever and try to, and go into politics. It's just like make fake fans in a fake industry. Like, oh yeah, you can fill fake Madison Square Garden, Ben Shapiro. People love to hear your speeches.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Oh man. So, um, so yeah, so she finally resigns to just be the housewife and they adopt a baby boy named Dante.

• 21:48Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Um, but Phil doesn't want anyone to know that this baby is adopted. So he sends out. Fake birth announcements being like, we welcome Dante to our family. And like, when people ask, he tells her like, just tell her, just tell everybody. Cause like, obviously she was not pregnant and then she has a baby, right? Uh, and he's like, just tell everybody that, that, uh, it was, it was a premature birth. And, and that's why, you know, we, you didn't see me pregnant at all because I was barely ever pregnant. You know?

• 22:21Speaker 06

  That's not how that works.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's 1967 or eight or some shit, you know? It's like, probably, you know, it's like, the, it's not like FaceTime exists or whatever, you know? Like, you could go a good time without really seeing somebody and then be like, oh, I guess that's what happened. Entirely, yeah. Yes.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  So, uh, she gets the, the, the, the baby and everything, uh, but she's not allowed to be a mother to the baby at all. So they get like a nanny and the nanny does all the work and Phil's like, that's why we hired a nanny. What are you doing work for? So why are you doing nanny stuff? Yeah. Yeah. So she's like, you tell me to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother. And then, then you yell at me whenever I'm trying to be a mother. She, she completely gives up on having a career. All right. And then this is from, this is from Ronnie's book, quote, besides, he pointed out, who's going to take care of the baby while we're in the studio? Phil knew he had me. I wasn't going to argue against anything that might get my career back. So I accepted it.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Uh, and then she goes on to say that anytime she would bring up, uh, getting back into the studio, he would either like, be like, you gotta take care of the baby. What are you doing? Or he'd like, or he'd flip out on her and be like, I've got other things to do. I've got a call to make. I can't be doing this shit right now. Yeah. So he's like, so he's like gaslighting her like back and forth on everything that's going on in her life. You know, it's like, you know, you can't go into the studio because you gotta be a mom, but you can't be a mom because we hired a nanny. Why would you be a mom? Like, you know, it's like, she just has this profound sense of being basically nothing anymore. From going from a mega superstar on the world stage, touring the Europe and everything to like, you can't even take care of your kid. You don't even have an audience with your own child, you know, type shit.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  God, that's. Um.

• 24:11Robert Evans?

  I mean, and that's also gotta be getting him off, just the exercise of that much power. Like, I can take you from this to this. I don't know how like direct he's talking about that, but it feels like that's gotta be part of it, right?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yes, and it does seem to be like a common situation is like that power and like having that power. And Sophie, to bring up something that you mentioned before, it's like with his first wife. The reason it's, it's like he has to have control and he has to be in charge until being in charge no longer means anything to him, right? And then, that's why with his first wife, he wasn't possessive and controlling. Once he had her, he was like, oh, I don't care. I've proved everything I need to prove here. But now with like Ronnie, he continually needs to prove how in charge of her life he is. And to himself, to everyone else, and he takes joy from that, you know?

• 24:59Robert Evans?

  Interesting, okay.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  But Ronnie's memoir is full of the most hilarious stories you've ever heard, like. Uh, so, so Ronnie is mixed race. She's black and, and white and, uh, and Cherokee, I believe. And, and Phil is obviously white Jewish, uh, and they, Dante is a mixed race baby. So this makes sense for everything. But, uh, shortly after they adopt Dante, Ronnie's mom comes to stay with him and Phil sends her out to Watts to buy him an Afro wig.

• 25:30Robert Evans?

  Oh, God.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  No, no, no, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. No.

• 25:36Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  That's not real.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  To Watts, huh?

• 25:38Speaker 05

  That's not real. Uh, you're.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  In, in like.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  You're fucking with me.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Late 60s, early 70s. He's like, go over to Watts.

• 25:45Robert Evans?

  Watts was, if you don't know.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  That's where you would buy an Afro wig, for sure.

• 25:49Robert Evans?

  It is where you get an Afro wig. And listeners, Watts was calmest, calmly, the, the, famously the calmest place in Los Angeles in this part of the 60s. Nothing, nothing happened in Watts during this part of the 60s.

• 26:01Speaker 05

  No, no, no. Okay.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  So she has to go all over Watts looking for one. She finally finds it and she brings it back for Phil and he loves it. And he starts wearing it all the time, dude, including.

• 26:12Robert Evans?

  Oh, awesome, awesome.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Including to a black church in Watts that he forces them to go to. He's like, we're gonna go to this black church in Watts.

• 26:23Robert Evans?

  This man's gonna cause his own Watts riots.

• 26:25Speaker 05

  Wait, wait, wait. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I misinterpreted what you were saying, and now it's even funnier because I thought you were saying he forced her to get that for the kid to wear.

• 26:37Robert Evans?

  No.

• 26:38Speaker 05

  But no, he forced her to get that for-

• 26:40Speaker 02

  This is for Phil to wear.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  For Phil to wear. Is there a picture?

• 26:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Afro.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  Is there a picture?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  So Ronnie says she's like kinda bored, but Phil is loving it. He's

• 26:51Speaker 02

  you know, hallelujah, he's dancing around and he's got, and he's wearing a gun at the time.

• 26:58Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  And everybody can see he's wearing a gun and being the only white person in like a very black church in Watts, dancing around and clapping and singing hallelujah and doing all this shit.

• 27:11Robert Evans?

  Wearing an Afro wig with a piece. Oh my god.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  I mean, could you, could you even imagine this happening? Like,

• 27:20Speaker 02

  he survived through like the grace of people just being like, oh, that guy's crazy as fuck. There's something wrong with him.

• 27:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  It's so funny, man. So, um, so Ronnie, of course, continues to abuse alcohol because who wouldn't in this situation?

• 27:35Robert Evans?

  Right, yeah. I don't even call that abusing. I would just call that

• 27:38Speaker 02

  That's, that's self-medicating.

• 27:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you're just dealing.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Um, so she blacks out while driving her car and she wrecks her, her Camaro. And, uh, she doesn't get in any trouble, but Phil's then like, alright, well, you gotta see a psychiatrist and, which she does, right up until the psychiatrist says, also, hey, Phil, you should come in because clearly there's some other things going on that are, you know, that are, that are causing this stuff.

• 28:06Robert Evans?

  There might be more to, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  And, and he's like, and he's like, no, I ain't doing that. He's like, and you ain't either. You ain't going to a psychiatrist? And so, uh, and he tells her specifically, you're the one with the problems. Why would I go?

• 28:22Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 28:24Robert Evans?

  Wow.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:26Robert Evans?

  What a perfectly shitty response, though. That is beautiful, Phil. Well crafted.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, he tries locking the liquor cabinet, but she just pries it open. Yeah. He eventually, he forces her into rehab, which she actually loves. I'm sure she does. She's like, rehab is the shit.

• 28:44Robert Evans?

  They tried to make her go to rehab, and it was great. It helped her a lot.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  And she, and she, cause it's like, oh, I get to be away from Phil. I don't have to be around him anymore.

• 28:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  So now, anytime she starts this cycle, right, where anytime she just gets sick of Phil, she just drinks a shitload.

• 29:01Robert Evans?

  And goes to rehab.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  And gets put into rehab. And then she's like, cool, two week vacation from Phil, right? And then pops right back. Okay, fine. I'll come back. I can deal with him again, you know?

• 29:12Robert Evans?

  So she doesn't have a, an alcohol problem as much as she has a Phil Spector problem?

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yes, completely. Just a Phil Spector problem.

• 29:20Robert Evans?

  Gotcha, gotcha. Speaking of things that will make you go to rehab.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  They tried to make me go to rehab.

• 29:27Robert Evans?

  I have to go to rehab every time we do an advertisement, cause I'm addicted to our advertisements.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  I should probably go to rehab, but rehab is for quitters, says the t-shirt I saw at the state fair when I was 11.

• 29:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. That state fair taught you a lot.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Thank you, carny parents.

• 29:44Robert Evans?

  Come back, and we'll learn some things you can't learn at a state fair, unless it's the Texas one.

• 29:53Speaker 04

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• 30:21Robert Evans?

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• 30:45Speaker 07

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• 31:20Robert Evans?

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• 31:28Speaker 08

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• 32:01Speaker 02

  And we're back. All right, so she's drinking, she's a drunk, she's going to rehab. She's a specter. She's addicted to Phil Spector, yeah, and she's going to rehab. One night, Phil takes Ronnie down to the basement of their house.

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Don't like the story already. Don't like this way this is starting.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  I don't love that. I don't love that. He takes her down to their basement, and he shows her a golden glass casket. And he says, "This is where you will be if you ever leave me." Oh, oh.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  The level of commitment to this intimidation, I cannot begin to stress.

• 32:45Robert Evans?

  A golden casket.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  A custom-made casket, right? He, he had them bring it into his house, like, he presumably left it there for years.

• 32:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Only as a threat.

• 32:57Robert Evans?

  Waiting, yeah, waiting until he knew he needed the big guns to pull out.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Like, this is, this is high-level mental abuse.

• 33:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  This, this is like what an unlimited budget, like, this is why I would never date a millionaire, right, or a billionaire.

• 33:11Robert Evans?

  Oh, right, no, because they can do crazy shit to you.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, they're gonna be able to, like, pay somebody to just follow you around for an entire year when you, when you leave them, you know?

• 33:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  It's dark, it's super dark.

• 33:24Robert Evans?

  I'm just imagining, like, protecting that casket, like, he's not pissed and she wants to go downstairs, and he's like, "Wait, no, no, no, I gotta take care of that, you can't go down there, you can't go down there."

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not ready for the surprise yet.

• 33:33Robert Evans?

  A Christmas gift, yeah, something like that.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  She's like, "I'm just gonna go get a jar of spaghetti," he's like, "No, no, no, no, not in the basement, not in the basement." Make George get it.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Alright, so, uh, she would claim that the doors of the house were always locked and she was only allowed to leave during their anniversary. Phil kept her shoes so she could never leave the house without his approval. For her 26th birthday, she's 26 years old, for her 26th birthday, Phil takes her to Las Vegas to see Elvis Presley. And presumably so they could do karate in the fucking back room together.

• 34:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I would imagine they're doing karate, maybe showing off the guns they always carry, yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  So she's stoked because, you know, she, she always wanted to meet Elvis and they're a big-time couple or whatever, yeah. And basically Phil, like, abandons her in the crowd, and it's like, "I'm going to hang out with Elvis, go to the hotel room."

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Such a menace.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  "I'll see you later."

• 34:30Speaker 05

  He's such a menace.

• 34:31Robert Evans?

  That didn't make into the new Elvis movie, that's tragic.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Him and Phil Spector just in the back, just, "Hya, hya."

• 34:38Robert Evans?

  Dude, karate?

• 34:40Speaker 05

  So crazy.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  In 1969, in the midst of The Beatles' well-documented decline.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Side bastard Alan Klein asked Phil to come to London to help assemble the disaster of the Let It Be recordings. So for people who are the dumbest human beings alive and don't know everything about the Beatles. Sure, okay, fair enough. The Let It Be album was actually recorded before Abbey Road, right? It was recorded- I didn't know that. Yeah, it was recorded before Abbey Road, but it was a mess, right? They like, they were fighting. John is on heroin hardcore. Well, of course. By the way, side story, do you know who got, who I heard got John addicted to heroin? Was it- James Taylor. Oh, okay, I can see that. Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  James Taylor of Fire and Rain is the guy who got him addicted to heroin. Well, because if James Taylor offered me heroin, I would definitely do it. I would do it, yeah, for sure. That makes sense. I can see that, yeah. Literally, if like my brother offered me heroin, I'd probably do it. I'm not quite there, but certainly James Taylor, yeah. But yeah, so, so they're a mess, right? They're falling apart and Phil is brought in to save these recordings, right? While, and, and there are, I believe they're already done with, with Abbey Road, having recorded Abbey Road and Let It Be definitely comes after, you know, like it was, but it was assembled by Phil essentially. He, um, he, he flies in literally just for this job.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  They're like, here's a bunch of tapes, just do something with it. And it's why that album is generally, um, is generally like, kind of, it's, it's kind of wild, right? There's like these huge orchestrations, but also like these like slapdash little like weird interlude sections and talking and jokes and all that. Because they just needed to fill out space and it was part of the creativity of the whole thing, right? Right.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Phil hates flying, which, uh, I, I read a story somewhere and I wish I, I tried to find it so hard, but I read a story one time about Phil freaking out on a private plane that they had to turn around and come back like almost immediately after taking off, because he's terrified of flying all the time, but he has to fly back and forth.

• 37:04Robert Evans?

  Has to do with, I mean, do you think any of his fears related to, I mean, like the day the music died, right? The famous plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Right, and Big Bopper, Richie, yeah, yeah.

• 37:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Very likely, I mean, like, I think there was a lot of musicians that died around this time in plane crashes. Otis Redding dies in a plane crash right around this time, you know, like, and Phil feels every one of those deaths intimately. I think it's also a bit of like a control thing. I think Phil is a control freak in the truest term of a, a control freak.

• 37:34Robert Evans?

  That makes total sense.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  So I definitely think that that was a bit of what was going on, but I think also too, he just, just has a natural like fear of flying. Uh, so he arrives in, in London and he immediately starts Spectreizing the Beatles recording. He added strings to it, uh, dense production to McCartney's Long and Winding Road, which if you know now, like, McCartney hates that. McCartney released his own version of Let It Be that was like despectorized, basically. Like he took all of his production out and released that individual project as like his own thing because he hated what Phil Spector did to it. In fact, he was so enraged, he sent a letter to side bastard Alan Klein demanding that the arrangement

• 38:17Speaker 02

  be minimized. Uh, Sophie, can you show the letter? This is, this is probably the angriest letter that Paul McCartney has ever written. He says, "Dear sir," this is to Alan Klein, "Dear sir, in the future, no one will be allowed to add or subtract from recording of any of one of my songs without my permission. I had considered orchestrating the Long and Winding Road, but I decided against it. Therefore, I want it altered to these specifications." Gives a list of some stuff. Uh, "One is strings and horns, voices, all noises to be reduced, vocal and Beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume. Three is harp to be removed completely at the end of the song. And four is don't ever do it again. Signed, Paul McCartney."

• 38:59Speaker 05

  Don't do it again.

• 39:01Robert Evans?

  And this is, this has to be like an unstoppable force and movable object thing. Cause like Paul McCartney, very rarely would anyone, I imagine it this time, it's pretty rare for people to tell Paul McCartney, other than other Beatles, other than other Beatles, what to do. And the same has to be true of Spectre.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  It does speak very highly of who Phil Spector is, that he managed to get away with all of this. Yeah. That he could do this to the Beatles, arguably the biggest band. It's 1969, they're the biggest band in the world.

• 39:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Um, this is their last album to be released collectively. And, um, uh, and Paul would never work with Phil again, but both Lennon and Harrison loved him. Lennon and Harrison both loved him.

• 39:44Robert Evans?

  Good.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Thought he did a wonderful job.

• 39:45Robert Evans?

  Well, no, good. There you go. Yeah. Makes sense.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  He's mad. Paul is so mad, but, uh, and, and a lot of people claim that he ruined the Beatles, right? But Let It Be sold 1.2 million in the first two days as a single. And it was the Beatles' final number one in America, earning them a Grammy. So, mm, uh, mm, you know, there's certainly, I honestly, I listened to Paul's. I listened to Paul's version of The Long and Winding Road versus Phil's. Uh, the, maybe it's nostalgia that I just always feel that way, but Phil's just feels more, more correct for what's going on. It feels still very George Martiny. It doesn't feel like they stripped the soul of the original, like, or the mid decade, uh, uh, Beatles albums,

• 40:31Speaker 02

  like the 66, 67 stuff. It feels, it feels real, right?

• 40:35Robert Evans?

  Um, right.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  So, uh, so I, I, I get what Phil was on and I can respect that. I think it was still a really great album. Uh, there's some really cool stuff about it. Um, so they finish work on Let It Be and Spectre set to work on another Beatles project. This time, the solo effort of George Harrison. This is when Phil starts actually drinking again. Uh, normally he's the perfectionist in the studio, but George matched his perfectionist attitude. And he, you know, he's scared he's not going to be able to compete with the other Beatles, right? Like Paul will release a record or John, and it will overshadow him. So he makes his first record, the record, like he puts all of his.

• 41:14Robert Evans?

  I imagine he wasn't worried about Ringo, but yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no one would. I mentioned John and I mentioned Paul. That's what I said.

• 41:21Robert Evans?

  You very clearly mentioned just John and Paul.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Nobody's worrying about old octopus under the sea bullshit. Look everyone, I figured out how to make a dimmer switch.

• 41:33Robert Evans?

  I don't know why, that's my ringo.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  So, so this starts a Jekyll and Hyde personality with him. He would endlessly abuse studio personnel for his own humor. One night, he gets so drunk, he falls off his chair and hurts his arm, and then he can't go to sessions for like a few days.

• 41:50Robert Evans?

  Classic.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Also, who hasn't, right?

• 41:53Robert Evans?

  Who hasn't?

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Who hasn't had to miss work for a day or two because you got drunk and fell?

• 41:58Robert Evans?

  I've gotten suddenly ill and had to delay podcast recordings with Sophie, of course.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  For sure, absolutely.

• 42:06Robert Evans?

  It's happened.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Because we're adults, and that's what adults do.

• 42:09Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Eventually, he, he returns to America, he leaves George to finish the album. He kind of is like, oh, you know. And, uh, George complains that he's being inattentive and, uh, but, a- and he doesn't, he doesn't like that Phil is doing this, but he does, regardless, finished his record, and All Things Must Pass was released and spent seven weeks at number one. And he's the first Beatle to chart post-breakup, right?

• 42:35Robert Evans?

  Good for him.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  He is, I mean, All Things Must Pass is a banger of a record. It is, it is, top to bottom, it's, it's a no-skip album. It's amazing. And it's nothing like The Beatles, which is the most interesting thing about it, is like, the fact that he put out a record that was not reminiscent of any of his work really with The Beatles in any way. He was very Ravi Shankar influenced at this point in his life. He's into spiritual. He's literally doing Hare Krishna songs and stuff, you know, like. So, so. For that to be seven weeks at number one, pretty impressive, you know?

• 43:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  It's a great album. In September of the same year, John Lennon returned from America. He was staying in America. He returns from America, and he brought Phil into Abbey Road Studios to record what would become the Plastic Ono Band album. In contrast to Phil's previous work, he listened to John's direction and made a record of sparse arrangements. It perfectly matched John's words and the tone of lyrics and everything. So, in John, Phil found a kindred spirit, and the same for, for John, right? John had this belief that- Tortured geniuses, right, are always the tortured part of that, right? They have, there's something that makes a person a genius and it's usually incredible tragedy. And of course, John had his own mother die.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  John was a victim of tragedy himself, oftentimes in the Beatles.

• 43:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he sure is.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  You know, he had a hard life as well. And so he kind of thought both sides of this, him and Phil, kind of kindred spirits, right?

• 44:06Robert Evans?

  Right, right, yeah. And we're both kind of giant assholes to the women in our lives. This probably helps us bond.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get you, bro.

• 44:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I too am a piece of shit sometimes.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  So Klaus Vorman played bass on the George Harrison record and the John Lennon record. And he, he said there's a stark contrast of tone between Phil for George Harrison and Phil for John Lennon, you know?

• 44:33Robert Evans?

  Interesting.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  And also Mick, Mick Brown, who wrote the book, Breaking Down the Wall of Sound, that I referenced for a lot of this. He, he mentions that Phil got along with Yoko Ono really well as well. And he relates this a lot to the same thing as the way Ike Turner gave Phil his space to work when, when he was working with Tina. You know, it was like, he was so respected that even the controlling member of their lives was like, yeah, yeah, let Phil do his thing, you know?

• 45:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, that does say a lot.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  That says a lot, a lot, you know? Like, that's, that's, those people are famously controlling of the others' careers, you know? So in the meantime, Ronnie is in New York. She thinks her career is over and Phil flies her out to London and says, hey, actually, George wrote a song for you. He wants you to sing it. And so she flies out there and, and she gets into it and, and unfortunately, it flops again. And she's like, all right, yeah, yeah, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, right?

• 45:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  John Lennon's album did not flop, but only managed to reach number six in America and number 11 in the UK, which is a pale comparison to George's success. And with John seeing what he perceived as the weaker writer's success over his, over his, right? He pulled back on releasing music and starts supporting Yoko's career more at the time. They reunite to work on Imagine, which we, we listened to an exact copy of today.

• 46:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  And despite it being a legendary piece of work, it wasn't really well received. And Phil retreated again into semi-retirement and did not record any music for over a year.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  On Christmas 1971, Phil surprised Ronnie with a set of five-year-old twin boys who he had adopted without her knowledge. Jesus Christ. He went through.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Awesome. Awesome. Surprise adoption. It's better than surprise knocking someone up and having two surprise kids.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know. There you go. Or is it worse, actually? Sort of. It takes a lot more thought to adopt secretly two kids. You gotta sign so much paperwork to adopt kids. It might be, you're right, it might be worse. It might be worse. I'm coming back. She thinks they're adorable, but she doesn't really want anything to do with them because, you know, his behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. He's worse and worse all the time. She's just, she, like, her whole life is just story after story of horrible things. Like, I could do an entire episode just on Ronnie Spector and the horrible things that happened to her. Yeah. Cool. Phil's behavior. In January of 1972, he's arrested at the Daisy Club in Beverly Hills after a woman called the police

• 47:20Speaker 02

  to report that a small man in a karate jacket pointed a gun at her.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  That sounds like our Phil.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  That's the description? A small man in a karate jacket? That's like the most insulting thing I can possibly imagine being called. I love it. I love it. Police arrived promptly and found Spector in Beverly Hills, you know? They arrived promptly, fined Spector with a handgun in his waistband, and he was charged with a misdemeanor and received a $200 fine. Wow. All the good old days of brandishing a weapon and getting a simple misdemeanor fine. Yeah, ah, if only. Just a few months later, in the middle of the night, Ronnie escaped with the help of her mother. She was forced to escape barefoot because Phil didn't let her have shoes, and she had to leave behind her kids and all of her possessions.

• 48:15Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  But, Robert, do you know who won't force you to have been in your home in the middle of the night barefoot with nothing to your name?

• 48:24Robert Evans?

  Well, hopefully not the sponsors of this podcast because they're kind of how I got my home. Yeah, they could giveeth and taketh away, I suppose.

• 48:37Speaker 09

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• 49:08Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto, Dolutegravir, Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 49:31Speaker 07

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients, or taking defetolide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 50:07Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

• 50:14Speaker 08

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• 50:48Speaker 02

  And we're back. I'm taking control of this whole situation. All right.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  I love it.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  So when we last left our hero, his wife Ronnie had escaped into the night with no shoes and fear for her life. She filed for divorce and surprisingly, Phil walked away completely amicably and gave her everything that she asked for.

• 51:04Robert Evans?

  Hey, okay, weird.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Psych, psych, psych, I got you.

• 51:09Robert Evans?

  Okay, you hit me for a second, you did. He's a weird enough guy, I don't know.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  No, he was an idea.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  He was an absolute asshole about every single aspect of their divorce. Just days after she fled during a telephone call, Phil informed her that all her clothes were in a trash can on La Cienega Boulevard. Been there.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  She files for custody of Dante, but not the twins, for obvious reasons, and cited the dangerous nature of the mansion and Phil's collection of guns and temper for the reason. At the time, Phil kept numerous guns around the house and had up to five guard dogs as a mansion. The mansion was surrounded by tall fence, barbed wire, signs everywhere. He's super paranoid, obviously. So Phil retaliated by claiming that Ronnie was unstable. And what did he use as evidence of her instability? Why those frequent trips to rehab that she took?

• 52:01Robert Evans?

  Oh my god, and she barely is even covered in guns all the time. So she's clearly not thinking about those kids' safety. I've got three on me right now and I handed one to the kids.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  So the court orders Phil to pay for Ronnie's temporary lodging and provide her with support. He wrote a check for the first month, but the second month, he had three armed guards deliver $1,250 payments in nickels to her lawyer's office.

• 52:29Robert Evans?

  What? Oh, to be a dick, just to be a dick. Sure, yeah, makes sense.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  For the record, 25,000, that's 25,000 nickels, 25,000 nickels, and it weighed 275.6 pounds. I did the math.

• 52:41Speaker 05

  He sucks.

• 52:43Robert Evans?

  Three petty dick move.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Guards, two of them with shotguns to deliver $1,250 in nickels.

• 52:52Robert Evans?

  Now, look, have I been petty before? Have I, for example, been treated badly at a, uh, at a, at a, at a, uh, private gym that I went to? And mailed them a box that exploded into glitter? Sure.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 53:07Robert Evans?

  Absolutely.

• 53:07Speaker 05

  Allegedly.

• 53:08Robert Evans?

  Have I mailed anime shit? When I had a bad experience at a small business that I specifically hated the owner? Perhaps.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Allegedly.

• 53:17Robert Evans?

  Would I do this? Well, maybe.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Maybe. Yeah, yeah, I might actually do this. This again, you know, it's like, oh.

• 53:23Robert Evans?

  This sounds pretty funny.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I do think about this all the time.

• 53:27Robert Evans?

  I never owe anyone that much money.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, but here's the fun- to me, this is the funniest thing, right?

• 53:32Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Because like, I mean, I didn't do the math on what the quarters or pennies situation was, but he chose nickels, right? He could have chosen dimes, he could have chosen pennies.

• 53:41Robert Evans?

  He had options.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Pennies would have been way more. I assume that he was like, okay, well, that's a lot of pennies.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  And he was like, maybe too much. And they were like, well, actually, if you do that, we're gonna have to have four armed guards. And he was like, ah, that's a waste of money.

• 53:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  At the beginning of August, at the behest of her lawyers, Ronnie checked herself into psychiatric care and spent several weeks there. Then, on September 14th, her lawyers were called to the Beverly Crest Hotel to deal with her in an intoxicated condition. Heavily with the finger quotes here, right? Intoxicated condition. She was lit.

• 54:14Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  She said she drank a lot and she was just screaming in the lobby, right?

• 54:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, oh, yeah, okay.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  A few days later, they're called again when Ronnie nearly killed herself after passing out with a lit cigarette and setting the bed on fire.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  Oh, my god.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  She drank a full fifth of vodka by herself.

• 54:31Robert Evans?

  Oh, honey.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  And then said she was getting a little nap.

• 54:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Nap with a cigarette. Uh, she was unharmed, fortunately, you know, for the most part, but she didn't have to go to the hospital and everything.

• 54:42Robert Evans?

  That's good. That, that did kill a lot of people back then. Yeah.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Um, you know, but obviously she's, she's going through, this is, this is taking its toll on her for sure.

• 54:52Robert Evans?

  Side note, that's part of why they made, they changed how they made, uh, both beds and like couches. There's new fabrics they use on all of those because of how many people burnt to death smoking and bedding on the couch.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  What, what do you mean, Robert? You mean that, that's all those spontaneous combustions that just stopped recently? Might've been a manufacturer's issue?

• 55:13Robert Evans?

  The eternal mystery. What caused the, the, uh, human combustion?

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Well, he was a lifelong smoker.

• 55:20Robert Evans?

  Was it all the smoking? Was it smoking next to cocktails that were just pure liquor? I don't know. It's to say.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Crazy how that happens.

• 55:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  So, um, right after this, she tries to fire her lawyers, right? And, and her divorce proceedings, right? But in one of the rarest moments of lawyers being amazing people, they refuse to be fired. They say, "We don't think that you are making sound decisions. This is not what you want. Our conversations with you have said that this is not what you want. You are under mental distress right now and we want to make sure that you continue with this, with this divorce proceeding because this person is bad for you." And, and, and she does. And she, she rehires them or whatever the hell, but they, they move on. Um, she reversed course again, continues with the divorce. It takes another 18 months to finalize the divorce.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  She received a $25,000 payment in addition to $2,500 a month, under the condition that she never disparaged Phil in public. Um, she also would, uh, Phil would receive control over her master recordings and most of the publishing leverage and the ability to limit Ronnie's access to her own hits.

• 56:33Robert Evans?

  That's fucked. That's fucked.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:37Robert Evans?

  I mean, it has been great before, but that's...

• 56:41Robert Evans?

  That's really bad.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  He takes away her ability to make money, making her dependent on his money.

• 56:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Right? And, and, and then also she has no control, so he can do whatever he wants.

• 56:52Robert Evans?

  And he kind of robs her too, like not just of her money, but of like.

• 56:56Speaker 06

  Her future.

• 56:57Robert Evans?

  The things probable, and also just like, probably some of the stuff she's proudest of. Like this, this stuff that she made that was hugely successful and influential. She has no control, like that also has, as a creative, that's like a knife, another knife.

• 57:12Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:13Robert Evans?

  She's got a lot of knives in her.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 57:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he has to send her a check every single month, uh, and every single month, oh, she doesn't get custody of the children. And he has to send her a check every month, and every single month, he sends her a check. And he writes fuck off on the back. So, so she has to write her name underneath, so it says fuck off Ronnie Bennett every single time she cashes a check.

• 57:39Robert Evans?

  This man, this man could give classes, yeah, like fucking.

• 57:44Speaker 06

  Smallest man in the world.

• 57:46Robert Evans?

  I have, I have never, ever heard of this, this level of pettiness in a relationship.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Dude, super petty, super petty. But Ronnie's free, you know, and she, she looks back on this, you know, it's like she, uh, she, she says she escaped their divorce. And she was happy to escape it with her life, like she was, she was happy to be done.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  So shortly after the divorce, Spectre was brought in again to work with John Lennon. Things had been extremely rough for John Lennon in the years following the Beatles breakup. He's fighting the government for his right to stay in America, he's fighting his bandmates, he's fighting, uh, his wife for money. Like there's, everybody is fighting for his money, right?

• 58:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Um, in one of the strangest situations ever, Yoko sensed that John was working towards cheating on her. And rather than lose him completely, she opted to pawn him off on one of her friends. Uh, May Pang is her name.

• 58:41Robert Evans?

  I didn't know any of this.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Yes, so it's basically a sanctioned affair, right? It's like, you're gonna do this anyways, let's just, May, will you just like be his little fling for a while or whatever? Um.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  He's that, he's living outside of his means, but he convinced the label to give him $10,000 to record an album of standards, and he enlists Phil to produce.

• 59:01Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  So, he, when he worked with John previously, he's on their turf and he's, and he's gotta do their things, right? But now they're in Los Angeles and he's, he's doing his thing, right? So, he brings in his favorite musicians, uh, including the sons of his idol Barney Kessel. Remember Barney Kessel? His mom embarrassed him in front of?

• 59:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  He, he brings in his kids, right? They come in and play on this record. Um, we're gonna talk about them in a minute. Uh, he developed a joy for amyl nitrates. Robert, you're a big fan of amyl nitrate?

• 59:32Speaker 06

  Like poppers?

• 59:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're poppers. Who doesn't love a good amyl nitrate every now and again and again and again?

• 59:39Speaker 02

  May, May Pang remembers that he just smelled like old socks all the time.

• 59:44Robert Evans?

  Is it cuz he's huffing them out of socks?

• 59:48Speaker 02

  No, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But she just says he smells like old socks.

• 59:51Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Or, or VCR cleaner, I guess, I don't know. Anyway, um. He'd show up wearing a holster, right? With a gun in it. He'd show up and, and he'd dance around with his guns off lit. He's 35 at this point, right? It's like, he's, he's in a, he's a grown ass man.

• 1:00:07Robert Evans?

  He's a grown man, yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Uh, John, he, John would drink, uh, vodka, straight from the bottle. And, uh, and cuz he's depressed. And Phil would drink this wine called Manischewitz, which is basically like a,

• 1:00:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  It's like a Jewish ceremony wine, you know?

• 1:00:22Robert Evans?

  You can get it in most grocery stores. I don't recommend it, it doesn't taste good.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Nobody says that it tastes good. I've never had it, and I was gonna just get a bottle of it for the episode. But you know what? I'll just drink whiskey instead, we'll play everybody's favorite game.

• 1:00:37Robert Evans?

  It's not expensive, but it's not good. It's grape, it tastes like grape juice with alcohol in it, but also the grape juice is bad.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, really shitty wine. Um, they'd explode into arguments about the direction of the music and things were often hectic. One night, John comes by and he's hanging out for like a little bit. And, and he's like, I gotta go. And he leaves and he tells the guy that brought him, he's like, what the fuck was going on? They're like, yeah, they're just like that. They're just, and he's like, I'm so glad we left. Like, this sucks.

• 1:01:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Phil would, because they're arguing all the time. Phil started dressing in ridiculous outfits. He'd show up dressed like a captain or dressed like a, you know, like a pirate or like crazy, like just random outfits all the time. He'd show up dressed like a waiter or something, you know, just look ridiculous. But then eventually they'd get drunk and then they'd fight. One night Chuck Berry comes by Phil's house to meet with John and John's a big fan of Chuck Berry. Like a lot of the Beatles music came because of Chuck Berry.

• 1:01:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, obviously. He helped invent the kind of music they do.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Phil is just in the other room playing music so loudly that no one can hear anything. And so Chuck just gets mad and leaves.

• 1:01:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Which, by the way, presumably so that he could go watch PP tapes or traffic an underage girl across state lines. Cause he's a.

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  If you don't know, Chuck Berry is, he was a founder of rock and roll, other than, you know, Big Mama Thornton and, and, you know, Sister Rosetta.

• 1:02:08Robert Evans?

  He helped to found rock and roll and found a lot of the bad things rock and roll musicians did.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  He is one of the reasons why The Man Act was so successful was because he actually was trafficking a 14 year old girl across state lines for purposes of sex.

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  And he got convicted, which is crazy.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Yes. He sentenced to three years in prison for said crime.

• 1:02:30Robert Evans?

  He was a black man, so he got convicted as opposed to being a president. Yes.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, absolutely. As things go.

• 1:02:36Robert Evans?

  As things tend to go.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  So Phil would always play games with John's mental, you know, fragile mental state and everything. He'd, he'd call him, or John would call him when he was supposed to be at the studio and he'd be like, yeah, I'm on my way. And then he just wouldn't show up, you know, and John's like wasting money on this studio shit. Which, by the way, uh, we find out later that Phil has been kind of grifting the whole, the whole thing. He's paying for the sessions himself so that he can maintain control of things and, uh, so that he can bill John's label. It's a whole thing. We'll get to it in a second, but, um, so, uh, one night, John gets blasted, right? He gets shitfaced and him and another guy, his bodyguard, take him to Lou Adler's house where John was staying. And they tied him to the bed and John.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Thinks they're gonna rape him. He thinks they're gonna sexually assault him and he freaks out. Like he loses.

• 1:03:32Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Phil gets a black eye, like it's they they they fight. They physically fight. Like, I don't know, John was obviously very, very drunk. Like, they don't, it's not, it's not insinuated that that was actually, that a sexual assault was actually going to happen. But for whatever reason, John thinks that that's what's gonna happen. And he freaks out and they, they, they tie him to the bed and.

• 1:03:56Robert Evans?

  Oh, probably not a good way to make him not think that's happening, yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then he eventually like gets out or whatever, but they leave and, uh, and Phil has to wear makeup on his bruised eye for a couple of days and stuff.

• 1:04:07Robert Evans?

  Jesus.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  The sessions are so crazy that A and M Studios evicts them from the studio. They're like, Phil's waving a gun around during sessions. This is too, too much shit, right?

• 1:04:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Fair enough.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Something is going to happen.

• 1:04:23Robert Evans?

  We don't think our insurance covers whatever you're doing.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Yes, right? And so they kick him out and they head over to Record Plant, which is especially hilarious if you know the. So Record Plant is this, uh, famous Hollywood studio. There's a lot of record plants around the world, but the Record Plant in Hollywood is kind of a famous Hollywood studio, especially currently. It just shut down like a year ago, but prior to that, it was like the party studio. It was the Arizona State University of Studios. So the fact that they got kicked out of A and M, which is now owned by John Mayer and called Chaplin Studios or something like that.

• 1:04:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Which is a very professional fancy studio to go to Record Plant that's basically like, yeah, we let people party.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Uh, this, this is where at Record Plant, Phil fires his gun into the ceiling of the studio. So Record Plant's like, yeah, we'll have you. I'm like, first night, he's like.

• 1:05:23Robert Evans?

  What is the context? Is he trying to emphasize a point? Is he using it like a punctuation mark? Is it just an accident?

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  So he gets into an argument of some type with Mal Evans, who is a famous, like, kind of Fifth Beatles situation. He's like their roadie, he's their fixer, he does everything. He's hanging out with John Lennon and he is very trusted by the group, right? And he gets into an argument with Phil, presumably about, like, "Hey, man, you gotta stop doing some dumb shit," or whatever. Hey, man, did you try to molest John Lennon? Something like that. Phil has like a measure of anger, pulls his gun out, and he says accidentally fires his gun into the studio, which says something, right?

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  John turns to him, and he's like, "Phil, if you're gonna shoot me, shoot me, but don't fuck with me ears." He's like, "I need them to listen with." Oh, my god, what a great response, honestly. That's a pretty badass response. "Shoot me, but like, I need my ears, bro. Don't shoot guns beside my head, dick." That's pretty cool. I gotta give it to him, that's pretty cool. Everybody thinks Phil is just shooting blanks in these guns, right? Nope. But the next day, Mal Evans shows up to John Lennon's house with the bullet from the ceiling. He's like, "Here's the bullet from last night." And John's like, "What bullet?" And he's like, "The bullet that he fired into the ceiling." And he's like, "He's got bullets in that thing!" That's a real gun? Yes, it's a real gun. Right?

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  So shortly after that incident, John returns to New York City. And one night, he receives a phone call from Phil claiming that the studio had burnt down and they lost everything. So John's like, "Whoa, what was going on?" He calls the studio, and they're like, "There's no fire. What are you talking about, man? There's no fire here." And then, so he's like, "What the fuck is going on?" And then a week later, Phil calls again, this time ranting about helicopters surrounding the house. Right? He's like, "There's helicopters surrounding the house," right? And he says, "But don't worry, I got the tapes, I got the tapes," right? And so John eventually discovers, basically, Phil had paid for the entire session, which means, in the recording world, if you pay for it, you own the tapes. The tapes are released to the person who pays for them, right? Okay.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  You own all of John Lennon's work if you own those tapes, right? And so they get a bill from Phil's label for $90,000.

• 1:07:45Robert Evans?

  Oh, God.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  And they're like, what the fuck? Apparently, he's like, he's, he's paying for all the sessions. And then he's doing the old classic rebuild at like, like 170% of the cost of whatever it is type thing, right?

• 1:07:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Hollywood shit, yeah.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  So, uh, when Bob Mercer of EMI Capital went to Phil's Sunset office to retrieve the tapes, Phil chased him down a flight of stairs with an axe.

• 1:08:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Robert Evans?

  He's back to being cool again.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  The album wasn't released until 1975 with only five tracks produced by Spectre and another eight that John recorded without him. So, obviously a mess.

• 1:08:28Robert Evans?

  Getting the album out, huh?

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  So, I mentioned before Barney Kessel's two sons, Dan and David, they start hanging out with Phil during the Lennon sessions. And this is the first time that they come to his house. And the first time they come to his house, he greeted them wearing a 38. And he asked them if they liked guns.

• 1:08:45Robert Evans?

  Of course, yes, absolutely.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  They said yes, of course, because, you know, who doesn't? And he takes them into the backyard in Hollywood, remember? And they spend a few hours shooting at old records. They, they idolize him. They love this dude. Like, they think he is the epitome of the rock star mentality, right? And to be fair, you know, he's like in his 30s, he's shooting guns, he's partying with John Lennon, like, he is kind of a rock star.

• 1:09:14Robert Evans?

  With all sorts of crimes, sure.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  He's kind of a rock star, right?

• 1:09:18Robert Evans?

  Definitely, yeah.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  He, he starts treating him like his kids, right? Which is fucked because he has kids and he is currently locking them in their rooms. And they're under the, they're under the supervision of a governess who doesn't let them do shit.

• 1:09:32Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, he takes the Kessels to Muhammad Ali fights and even took them to Vegas to see Elvis and brought them backstage after the show to hang out, which is super fucked because he just didn't take Ronnie backstage.

• 1:09:44Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right. Not his wife, of course.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Um, in their eyes, Phil can do no wrong. They love him, dude. They, to this day, they always like, hey, Phil was the best, right? Um, you know, I mean, he's a legend at this point, you know, he's a legitimate legend. So he's veering out of control with his drinking and his relationships. At one point, this writer Roy Carr is brought to LA from, from London with the task of writing a book about him. One night, in between telling fantastical stories like Bruce Lee was my bodyguard once, and how he had worked as an undercover agent in Paris.

• 1:10:20Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Specter announced that he needed to pee and he gets up and walks out, only to come back wearing no shirt and a revolver in his waistband and playing the accordion.

• 1:10:29Robert Evans?

  So one thing we've learned about him is that no matter what he is or isn't wearing, he will have a gun. Like, that's just a guarantee.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Always got a gun on him.

• 1:10:38Robert Evans?

  Always got a gun on him.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Always got a gun on him and he's always doing something wild.

• 1:10:43Robert Evans?

  He's like Frank from Always Sunny.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, very much. Picture him as skinny Frank, a very little man with a gun. He's a very little man with always, so I started blasting him.

• 1:10:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, just ready to shoot.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  So, so Carr says he couldn't tell what was fact or fiction when it came to Phil, but he does know that, like, without a doubt, Phil has intense loneliness issues. Like, he would get mad anytime Carr would prepare to leave. Like, he'd be working all day, taking notes, and he'd be like, okay, all right, well, time to go. And, and he would go, no, no, no, stay for a little bit longer, stay, stay, stay, stay, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave. So, uh, he believes that Phil is even following him around town. One night, uh, Phil's assistant was sent to pick him up, and they get in the car and she looks in the rearview mirror and she sees Phil and the Kessel brothers in a Cadillac with shotguns. Jesus Christ. And they just chase him, chase him all over Hollywood until they escape, right? And then, and then they just, there's no explanation given for why they did this.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Like, the next day, they're like, Phil, why did you guys chase us around with shotguns last night? And he's just like, what are you talking about?

• 1:11:47Robert Evans?

  What do you mean? I didn't do that. I'm someone like me. I always have a little gun.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Um, another time Phil picks up Carr and the Kessel Boys uh with some mysterious people in the car and they fill the car with pump shotguns and rifles. And then they go to this Cantonese restaurant where they ate dinner by themselves all roped off in this little section. And then after dinner, they just go back to Phil's house and Phil shot at a tree with a pistol for like an hour, right? Oh yeah, okay, sure. Sounds like Phil. He's just, he's just living la vida loca, bro. He put a lot of bullets with him to shoot for an hour though. Yes, he absolutely did. Um, when Carr returns to England, Phil tries to give him a pistol and he's like, I can't take a pistol through customs. Like, what are you? Every country doesn't just let you take guns there, Phil.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  So funny. In 1974, Phil is brought in to produce for Cher. You know, Cher is in his life, um, but Cher is no longer with Sonny Bono now, she's with David Geffen. And David Geffen had become her manager as well as like her label head, as well as her boyfriend, as well as like every, he's everything, right?

• 1:12:54Speaker 06

  Does he like even have any connection to the music industry or no?

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Uh, David Geffen?

• 1:13:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, but here's, so here's the thing. Phil hates him because he's like, he's a kind of a nepo baby in this situation. Like, he doesn't know music, he doesn't, he's not a musician, he didn't come up that way. He came up through like the business side of the industry and he gets lucky, starts dating Cher, basically becomes her manager, becomes a label head, starts getting all these positions of like authority and shit. And Phil hates him. Phil despises him, right?

• 1:13:29Speaker 06

  Interesting.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  And one night, David Geffen tells Phil, hey man, maybe you should try this with Cher's song. And Phil punched him in the face and told him to get out of here, you fucking F slur.

• 1:13:43Speaker 06

  Great.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Okay, ooh.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  Uh, Cher is like, Phil, what are you doing? Chill the fuck out. And Phil does, right? And they just go back to work, right? And that's like the type of way Phil is. He'll just haul off and punch somebody in the face in the studio. Call him a slur and then get right back to work. You know, all in a day's work, you know?

• 1:14:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, all in a day's work. Look, he puts his gun on one gun at a time, the same that you do.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, same as all of us. Phil dated after Ronnie left. One of those women is a woman named Deborah Robitaille. She starts as his assistant, then becomes his lover, right? She was married when she starts working with him. But Phil's crazy hours and like constantly having to like answer ruins her marriage. And then one night after, after their, you know, uh, kind of flirting, office flirtation or whatever. Phil walks her to her car, gives her a kiss and now, you know, now they're dating her. She, but he's always mistreating her. He'd be super sweet and loving and then all of a sudden begins screaming and calling her name. One night during an argument at dinner, he dumps a bowl of noodles on her head.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  So they go through this cycle where it's like, yeah, he's just a shit dude. Noodles, they're at dinner and he's just like.

• 1:14:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah, she's being a huge asshole.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Noodles, yeah. And so she'd get mad.

• 1:15:01Robert Evans?

  Noodled her noodle. Sorry.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  So he'd get mad, boo, that dad joke sucks. So she'd get mad and quit. And then he'd send her like a dozen roses and she'd, you know, forgive him and come back. And it just keeps kind of doing this, right? It's this like constant, like revolving door of Phil Spector where he does something shitty. And then he gets super mad and they have a big argument and then he apologizes the next day. Or makes no mention of it whatsoever. Like sometimes she'd like, he'd do horrible things and then just the next day he'd be like, what are you talking about? I didn't do that.

• 1:15:33Robert Evans?

  I don't know, that doesn't sound like me. Yeah.

• 1:15:36Speaker 06

  Ladies, don't take back shitty little men.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. One night, tempers flared and he grabbed a shotgun and put it to her temple, telling her he would kill her if she left. She calmed him by telling him he's being silly and that he should open the door and let her leave. But as soon as he does calm down, she bolts out of there, right? But she does say, she never thought Phil would actually kill her. But she did think he might by accident.

• 1:16:05Robert Evans?

  Okay, yeah, not much better, but yeah.

• 1:16:08Speaker 05

  Babe.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  In November of 1975, a parking attendant claimed that Phil pulled a gun on him and told him to "get the fuck away from me" before driving away. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor brandishing a firearm and two years of probation, provided he not own any more firearms. Robert, can you guess who kept owning firearms?

• 1:16:28Robert Evans?

  I'm gonna guess it's Phil Spector. And I want to remind everybody, we talk about him carrying a gun everywhere. In this period of time, there weren't really concealed carry laws in most places. Like, there were some ways, if you were like a bodyguard, there were ways people could legally carry concealed guns in cities and stuff, but it wasn't like it is today. My point is that Phil was committing a felony basically every time he walked out the door.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Yes. From this day on, he is absolutely committing a felony because he's not supposed to be carrying any more guns.

• 1:16:59Robert Evans?

  He's not supposed to have any of them.

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  He's not supposed to have any guns.

• 1:17:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  So, Phil Spector, then in the mid 1970s, he starts working with Leonard Cohen, right? And this is crazy for everybody in the world, right?

• 1:17:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  This is like, this is like, what's the, what's the, Jesse Wells, the little folk kid that sings in the field? This is like him working with Max Martin, right?

• 1:17:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like, it's, you know, it's like, what, why would he be with like a pop producer? This doesn't make any sense.

• 1:17:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's a weird pick for Cohen.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  So everybody's like, already thinks it's kind of strange, right? But, but Spector thinks like, hey, maybe this will be like a really crazy, inspired thing. So they make the 1977 album Death of a Ladies Man. The sessions quickly deteriorated into chaos, fueled by Spector's alcohol abuse, erratic behavior, and obsession with dominance inside the studio. Cohen later described Spector as volatile and deeply intimidating, recounting an incident in which Spector allegedly pressed a loaded gun against Cohen's head during a recording session and declared, "Leonard, I love you." Cohen responded, "I hope you do."

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  All these rock stars have the coolest responses to Phil Spector putting a gun to their head.

• 1:18:18Robert Evans?

  That is really funny, yeah. And honestly, of all the rock stars I expected to be cool with a pistol pointed at their fucking skull, Leonard Cohen's gotta be top of the list, yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  In another incident, Spector pulled a gun on the violin player, Bobby Bruce. Which, by the way, the violin player? Like, yeah, I pulled, I pulled a gun on the guy that was... Yeah, I was, I was pulling a gun on a daycare teacher, man. Like, you're like the most innocent person you can find. It's like, there's extra bad that you're, this guy went to school, man.

• 1:18:53Robert Evans?

  It's like a gang enhancement thing on your sentencing, where, Leonard, you pulled a gun on a violinist? That's an extra five years.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, absolutely. Um, so, uh, Spector took control of the final mixes and didn't even allow Leonard Cohen to hear them. He didn't allow them to be present. He, uh, he layers all of his sounds into it and, um, over Cohen's stripped-down songwriting, which is what he is known for. Um, and, and they made a record that Cohen doesn't even stand on himself. He doesn't think that, that it's very good. Uh, but Cohen said of this, uh, of his time with Phil, quote, "In that state, he found himself, which was post-Wagnerian, I would say Hitlerian. The atmosphere was one of guns. I mean, that's really what was going on. Guns.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  The music was subsidiary and enterprise. People were armed to the teeth and everybody was drunk or intoxicated on other items. So you were slipping over bullets and biting into revolvers in your hamburger. There were guns everywhere."

• 1:19:56Robert Evans?

  Jesus Christ. That's one of those things where I have to assume that's like a joke for flavor, but also... Maybe someone hit a revol-

• 1:20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, in a hamburger? Somebody was like, "Hey, hey, hey, Leonard, I got-"

• 1:20:10Robert Evans?

  I've seen some small revolvers in some big hamburgers.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  "Hey, hey, Leonard, I, I got you a hamburger. Oh, cool. Thanks, man." What? What? What is going on here?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  When it was released in 1978, it was critically panned. Everybody hated it. Spector claimed, and it, this is one thing I love about Phil Spector, is anytime you shit-talk Phil Spector, he will shit-talk back and say like, "Yeah, I got, I got hate mail from all 80 of your fans."

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  It's just so, so disrespectful. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. You guys really love it, all eight of them.

• 1:20:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Um, so, while he's cultivating this brilliant and eccentric producer, uh, his in, his family home is, is horrible. He treats his kids horrible. Uh, he, uh, oh, real quick, when I was mentioning the, the Barney Kessel kids, Dan and Dana David, how old did you get the sense that they were?

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  In their twenties?

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  They're hanging out, they're driving around shooting shotguns out of Cadillacs.

• 1:21:13Robert Evans?

  13 to 20, maybe?

• 1:21:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, early, late teens, early twenties.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  11 and 13.

• 1:21:18Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 1:21:19Speaker 06

  Oh, no.

• 1:21:22Speaker 06

  Why is he hanging out with children?

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  When I was reading this, I was like, this is wild, man. Like, this is crazy. Like, he's hanging out with these, like, teenagers. I got them, like, same thing, like, 17, 18, something like that, maybe even early twenties. The way they're referencing the things that they're doing, driving around shooting guns, they're going, they're hanging out together, right?

• 1:21:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  No. I looked it up, and his kids are born in like, in like, the late 60s, and they were like 11 and 12 years old. It's so crazy. Um, meanwhile, he's treating his own kids horribly. Um, they have the, the governess is always on them. They don't, they're not allowed to do anything. Uh, and he's very rarely involved in any actual parenting, except for when he is forcing them to simulate sexual acts on women, so that they learn how to be men. Hey, yikes.

• 1:22:15Robert Evans?

  One of those kinds, huh?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Yikes. He's doing the classic, like, no get over there and do, he brings a girl home from the strip or whatever, and it's like, lay down and like, takes control of the whole thing and like, is making them simulate. They all report having gone through this.

• 1:22:30Robert Evans?

  It is that, I, I wonder, is that more out of like a pow, him wanting power, him getting off on it, or just him being such a narcissist that like, if my kids are bad at sex, it reflects badly on me, so I'm gonna make goddamn sure they know what they're doing?

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  You know, very fairly, his kids kind of stayed out of the limelight. Sure, yeah, of course. And they don't talk about a lot of this stuff. And I did see a few interviews with them, like, they resurfaced in later years. And one of them tries to write like a book, I think, but it never gets off the ground. But it basically, whenever like the dirt comes out, it's, he's horrible to them. He treats them the same way as he treated Ronnie, threatening them all the time. He's making them do crazy stuff. Yeah. They, they all develop lifelong issues with trust, identity and emotional stability. Yeah. Uh, it, it's just, it's not, there's no guidance. It's all, it's all performance and it's all possession, right? Right.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Um, when John Lennon was murdered in cold blood in front of the Dakota Building in New York City on December 8th, 1980, Phil was once again thrown into a world of depression. Uh, but this time he took it as a sign. He always said that John moved too, too easy. John was too, too careless with how he acted and it would be his downfall one day. And this just reaffirms it for him, like, he's going to get killed, uh, if he doesn't travel with bodyguards and guns and all that stuff, so. Right. Um, he, by the 1980s, he starts withdrawing from public life. He, he moves out of his Hollywood mansion and bought a house in the suburb of Alhambra. He dubbed the Pyrenees Castle. Okay.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  It's, it is, it's a huge French style mansion. It's enormous, like, it's out in Alhambra, you know, it's, it's out of the city of Los Angeles. Uh, he, he, you know, as was his style, he surrounds himself with guard dogs and armed guards and fills the house with guns, uh, guns that he's not allowed to have. Yeah, illegal guns, sure. Um, so for a brief period, Specter attempted sobriety and acquaintance describe him as calmer and more reflective. The stability, though, is temporary. He, every time he relapses, he gets crazy again. Uh, and I think a large part of this stability was due to his relationship with Janice Savala. Uh, Phil first met her in the 60s when she was a teenager and eventually hired her to work for his label.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  After his split with Ronnie, he would date her on and off again for the next like 15, 20 years. And eventually he would give birth, she would, he would, she would give birth to two twins, Nicole and Philip Jr. And contrary to his relationships with his other kids, who are now adults at this point, uh, Phil treated him wonderfully. Uh, his daughter Nicole says that, you know, he was a doting father, that he loved spending time with him, that, uh, he was always around for his kids. Um, but in 1991, uh, this is now well removed from his music career in the, in the late 50s, early 60s and into the 70s. Uh, Philip Jr. Dies from leukemia and Phil, Phil goes back into deep depression and insanity. Yeah, well, of course.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  Um, Nicole remains devoted to her father throughout the rest of her life, always claiming that he was her hero. He never raised her voice to her. She says he was amazing. Um, yeah. Phil rarely grants any interviews. He remains a recluse, rarely leaving the house and never without a bodyguard. He hired Hal Blaine, who's the drummer from the wrecking crew that he had employed. He hired his daughter to, um, be his day-to-day, you know, manager or whatever. Yeah. And was generally pretty kind to her. Uh, and everything's set for Phil to just ride off into the sunset and be forgotten as, as a nobody. Happens, right? Until Mick Brown shows up in his life. Mick Brown is the author of the book that I was describing that I got the primary source from all of this.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Mick Brown's book is one of the most, uh, authoritative, you know, biographies on, on, on Phil Spector. It is, it is brilliant. It, it, it has everything. It's a very good book. I highly recommend. He's the primary source of my research. Uh, and he's probably one of, besides me, probably one of the most knowledgeable people on Phil Spector in the world. Um, and he managed to get an interview with Spector in December of 2002. He recorded the entire interview on tapes and they painted a picture of a deeply troubled and eccentric man who was likely suffering from mental illness. His article was titled, "The Mad Genius of Phil Spector," and questioned whether the madness was part of the genius or just something that had gone unchecked because of his genius. It was a deeply intelligent and honest look at Phil's life, which angered Phil.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  Uh, he broke what many said was a decade of sobriety and began drinking and, and acting erratically again.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  On February 2nd, 2003, just a week, two weeks after the article came out, Phil Spector began his evening at Dantana's, a longstanding Hollywood restaurant and bar, known for attracting entertainment industry regulars. He took a high school friend out for dinner and began drinking heavily before taking her home, and then returning to Dantana's and starting to drink with his waitress from the night.

• 1:27:36Robert Evans?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  He was heavily intoxicated by the time he left for the House of Blues in Hollywood.

• 1:27:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, when you, when you leave with your friend and then come back to keep drinking with the waitress, that's, that's, that implies a level of drunk that is, yeah.

• 1:27:49Speaker 05

  But if you're, but if you're gonna do it, it's at Dantana's.

• 1:27:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's at Dantana's.

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  You know, hit the Troubadour for a little bit, you know, it's a good night.

• 1:27:58Robert Evans?

  Sure, baby.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  So, uh, it was then that he would begin his fateful interaction with the hostess of the foundation room in the House of Blues, Lana Clarkson. And this is the end of this episode.

• 1:28:11Robert Evans?

  Ah, boy.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  We, we are about to get into one of the most storied and important nights in musical history. Uh, but for now, we are gonna plug our pluggables, which, uh, I, I have, I have a podcast. It's about music stuff. I, I, I, it's the most poorly produced podcast in the entire world. We need a Sophie so bad. Like, we would crush with a Sophie, but we are incapable of doing things ourselves, so we just forget to do it. But I do have a podcast. It's called That Sounds About Right. I have a recording course that teaches you the principles of recording, and I have a label, and by the time this song comes out, our very first artist on the label will release her single. So please, check that shit out. Her name is Violet Lux.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  The link will be in my bio, Greasy Will, on Instagram. It'll be all over the place. But I am a rebel of the music industry and I need your support. So love me and care for me. And also, you are on all sorts of the internets, as I write, "Okay."

• 1:29:10Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  And, uh, and you also sell, uh, merch at places.

• 1:29:16Robert Evans?

  Some places, probably, presumably.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  We're both, it, we're both Google-able, just being adults and, and use Google, man. Get, get those. Do you know what I think is interesting? Everybody keeps discussing about how, you know, Chat GPT uses like a tablespoon or a teaspoon of water every time you search. Nobody is mentioning that Google is automatically using AI to search your answers. So Googling now is also using that same amount of water. Let's be mad about everything.

• 1:29:43Robert Evans?

  Type in minus AI with your Google searches and it'll cut that part of it out. I don't know if it actually reduces the energy usage, but at least you don't have to see the summary.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  It's still logging all your information and keeping.

• 1:29:55Robert Evans?

  It's still logging all.

• 1:29:56Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it knows everything you're doing, so that's why I stay off the real internet.

• 1:30:01Robert Evans?

  That's right. That's right. That's right. I still use Netscape Navigator. It does not work well.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  That's what I'm relying on, is my technology being too outdated to spy on me.

• 1:30:12Robert Evans?

  That's right. That's the secret.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  Old Mozilla Firefox.

• 1:30:16Speaker 05

  This is the end of the, this is the end of the episode, guys.

• 1:30:20Robert Evans?

  Okay, we're done. Bye.

• 1:30:25Speaker 06

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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