Part Two: The Phil Spector Episodes

Greazy Wil continues the story of Phil Spector, now with The Beatles! Cool Zone Media is nominated for 3 Webby Awards🎉🎉🎉 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.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that this week is about Philium Spector. I'm fairly certain that's not what his first name is. Here to correct me, Greasy Will.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  That's actually, I think his name was Philium. I have no reason to dispute that.

• 0:23Robert Evans?

  That's legally the truth, then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, 100%. I do want to lead off with saying that I forgot last episode, but I did want to mention, I have made a playlist of all of Phil Spector's music. I thought that it would be very, even though it's technically, whenever you're doing this, it's educational, so you can use music for anything that you want when it's educational. But I thought it would be, you know, especially with the new prestigious Netflix deal that you guys got, I didn't want you to have any, you know, copyright complications.

• 0:47Robert Evans?

  Uh oh, what are you building to?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  No, I'm just saying, I just didn't want you guys to have any complications, you know? So, uh, so instead of, uh, what I think is Phil's most seminal song, instead of playing that, I'll play you my interpretation of it. Thank you all for listening, I will be here all week.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  The weirdo history tried to leave untold. Crummet and Sophie dropped the bat and the darkest chose. You'll laugh and cringe at every villain they expose. So can we go? Behind, behind the bastards. Street. Behind, behind the bastards. Play. Behind, behind the bastards. Now. Behind, behind the bastards. So behind, behind the bastards. Street. Behind, behind the bastards.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Play. Behind, behind the bastards. Now. Behind, behind the bastards. Behind, behind the bastards. Behind, behind the bastards.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  That was beautiful.

• 3:04Robert Evans?

  Well, that was genuinely one of the sweetest things.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  I loved every second of that.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I just want everybody to know, like, this was not an AI song. I legitimately made that song.

• 3:14Robert Evans?

  I would never have accused you of that.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I know, but it's like, right now, there's so much like, like, you know, like, 50 Cent does 50's song, you know, like, doo-wop, you know? And you're like, ah, no, I legit, I brought in a girl, her name is Clancy. I shout her out, shout out Clancy, she was amazing. She crushed that Ronnie Spector vibe. She absolutely killed it, it was amazing. And I, and I very much appreciate it.

• 3:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  But yes, I wanted to.

• 3:39Robert Evans?

  You didn't really show that Wallace Sound thing, too, that you were talking about.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally what I was going for was trying to sound exactly like Phil Spector's Be My Baby, which is where we will pick up today.

• 3:50Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm, beautiful.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  After, after this.

• 3:52Robert Evans?

  What an introduction, Jesus.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Ha, nailed it.

• 3:58Speaker 04

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• 4:02Speaker 05

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• 4:33Robert Evans?

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• 5:08Speaker 01

  So, back to our story, back to our pal Philip Spector. His career's exploding, right? This is where we're at right now. His career is exploding. He is the hottest. He is Max Martin in the 90s, right? He just wrote Britney Spears, and now he's working for Christina Aguilera. Yeah. And then he's working for, you know, it's just like, hit after hit after hit after hit. And, like I said before, in the last episode, we talked about, he was the tycoon of teen.

• 5:37Speaker 06

  Hate that. Hate that.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so he's, yes, it's very, it's a very upsetting name in, as in, you know, this, but, to be fair, he is probably only like 20 years old. Like, he is barely not a teen himself at this point. And, this is a very, very peculiar time in history, right? Because most of his competition is like 50, 40, right? They're like, old dudes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, like, in the early days, like, it's very funny, but they talk about this all the time, and like, basically, if you heard a song by a young black girl group, it was written by an old white Jewish man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without fail, that's what, I mean, you know, not quite yet, but very soon, the

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Chess Brothers are gonna have Chess Records in Chicago, and it's gonna be... Everything, you know, everything that exists, you know, and music is gonna come out of there for a little while. It's like, there is absolutely, uh, there is just a, a, a world of old white dudes writing, writing pop music for teenage girls. And Phil Spector is the maverick. He's the young guy. He's, and he's doing it different. He's very different, right? Um, all right, so the studio becomes his creative space. The studio becomes, you know, everything to him. He's using it as part, it's like the, it's, it's really in these moments too, when he's making these, these wall of sound productions.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  It is basically Phil Spector and the studio is the, is the musician. He's bringing in randos from the parking lot to sing backgrounds, like, there's layers of percussion and shit. It was like, if you could keep a beat at all, it was like, cool, go in there and play a, this thing. He would have multiple drums, like, all sorts of stuff going on in these productions. They were, they were, the musicians were interchangeable. The studio was important to him. Gold Star Studios in, in Hollywood, uh, on Vine. And, which is no longer there by the record. It was, it was a shitty studio in the 1960s.

• 7:39Robert Evans?

  I gotta break it here to say, one of my favorite early in our friendship memories was coming to visit you at the studio you were working at in LA for the first time with Lenny. And like cracking a six pack when you're like, putting the finishing touches on something and you're like, you know, this is where they made pet sounds. And I was like, oh, this building. You're like, no, like this room is the room.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, here, yeah, right here. Yeah, which again, uh, I mentioned this, the, the first episode, but, uh, I, you know, part of my love for this whole story is that this is all combined. This story is all one story, which also includes Charles Manson. I don't know if you know that. Charles Manson's in this whole thing too. And I actually have a little bit like, dang, I should pivot from this one. The next one, I, I come over here, I should, I should Charles Manson, Beach Boys.

• 8:28Robert Evans?

  A little bit about the Beach Boys and Charlie Manson, but not as much as the subject deserves. Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Oh my God. It is, I mean, it's, it, we'll get there, we'll get there. That's a. That's a, that's a little special thing for you guys in the future. You'll love it. Um, so yeah, so, uh, you know, uh, Phil is, is working at Gold Star. The, the Beach Boys are, are, uh, Brian Wilson actually is part of these early, like background people, not singers. He, he's like a hanger on. He's like showing up places and being like, oh, Phil's working like, and he's a kid and he just like, oh, I just want to see what Phil is doing because Phil is the guiding force of what would become the Beach Boys, which would then become the Beatles is like whole vibe on how they, they just were not doing the, Phil is the architect of this original sound.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  And it's, you cannot be stressed enough how big of a deal this is. Like he is like as big as, as Dr. Dre is, right? Like when you think of like, oh, like everybody knows Dr. Dre, everybody knows Phil Spector. Right. Across continents, they know Phil Spector. Everybody knows Phil Spector, right? He is after, after the hits that he's crafted already, just he's, he's world, he's worldwide. Mr. Worldwide. He's pitiful himself. Right, right. Yes. He's the first Mr. Worldwide. He, he is also, as I said, only about like five foot three or whatever. And, uh, and he wears heels. He starts wearing heels all the time because he doesn't want people to know how short he is.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  He starts losing his hair, uh, which we'll talk about a little bit. Uh, and so he starts wearing wigs and starts like going, this is the beginning of all this. At this exact, he's like 21 and he's like losing his hair at a, at a, at a crazy rate. He's like, all right, real insecure about it. Really has a lot of self-worth image issues, you know? He really just does not like, he's doing all this because of that. He's trying to go bigger and bigger and bigger because he looks at himself as being just like the worst. Cause you know, mom issues and all that. Yeah. Right. By the mid 1960s, Phil Spector had achieved something few producers had ever managed. He had transformed himself from songwriter into brand, from collaborator into architect. The wall of sound was no longer experimental. It was defining popular music.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  But as his professional authority grew, so did his emotional instability. He got married to a woman named Annette Marar, right? Uh, and uh, it is such a small blip. Like, this is, I should have started with that, but uh, it's such a small blip. He marries her and immediately just starts ignoring her, has no interest in her. He, he love bombs her. He does what we now call love bombing, right? He love bombs the shit out of her, but then, once they get married, because this is like a, a very short courtship. Once they get married, he's like, not interested anymore. Uh, so-

• 11:17Speaker 03

  That gives me major ick.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Sorry, go ahead.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  That gives me major ick, is all I'm saying.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, calm down on hating on people for bad relationship and situations. As we have, well, I, well, I'm hardly one to talk. Yeah, I'm doing the best I can. Look, I figured out, I figured out the problem. It, it's me. Yeah, I'm in the same place. I've locked down- I figured out the problem. The call was coming from inside the house the whole time. 100%. We figured out the problem, but the real, you know, we gotta-

• 11:48Speaker 03

  You're saying you got 99 problems, but you're the bitch and it's you.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  I've got 99 problems and I am all of them.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And I have been nefariously behind every single one of them. Just, ha, ha, ha, this will never come back to me. All my problems are either me or the government, which is why I really focus on hating the government.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  No, alright, so his paranoia is escalating. Uh, his reliance on intimidation is becoming really normalized, right?

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Wait, that's actually kind of interesting. So he love bombs this person. He's obsessed with her, and then they get married, but then he no longer wants to like, control or stalk her?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  No, he literally, he, so, um-

• 12:35Speaker 03

  That's a new behavior.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  He, he basically, it's, it's that classic, like as soon as he gets it, he's not interested anymore.

• 12:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, dog that caught the car.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  As soon as he gets it, it pivots, like the whole thing changes, right?

• 12:46Speaker 03

  But he doesn't wanna control her anymore.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Not, not really, it's more of like, uh, it's more of like, he, I mean, he is still controlling, right? But he just doesn't care at all, you know, like most of the time, he's more interested in his career, in his work, in what's going on in the studio. He builds a studio underneath his house, so that he can just like be down there whenever he's like, anytime he's annoyed or like whatever, he just goes downstairs. So he has the ultimate like escape plan.

• 13:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I'm sure if he were to catch her cheating on him, he'd be pissed, but he's hardly paying enough attention to know.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's very much a, at this point, he's very much interested in Phil. Phil is what's driving him, right?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Um, so what he's looking for this whole time, he keeps talking about, this is a constant reference, he's looking for the voice. He's looking for the voice that perfectly complements his wall of sound. His, his musical compositions, like being all these like big Wagnerian like opuses and everything. He wants a, a person to be that thing, to be that, that front and center for all of this, to make it worth what he's doing. He doesn't feel like he's found that with any of his previous stuff. So in walks, uh, Ronnie Bennett. Ronnie Bennett, um, let's, let's talk about Ronnie Bennett will eventually become his wife, spoiler alert. Uh, I don't know how much, uh, I wrote, so now I just gotta, no, I wrote a lot, I wrote a lot, there's a lot of words in here.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  I-

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Forty-one pages you wrote, my, my friend.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Brief?

• 14:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, welcome to my hell.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yes, no, no, no, that's exactly what I was gonna say. You know, I'm on the subreddits, I'm on the Youtubes, I loo-, I read the comments, I read the comments, cause they keep me humble. Because like, I'll be like posting something on the internet and someone will be like, this guy's a fucking loser, and I'm like, alright, cool, you know? Like, I'm never glad like-

• 14:37Robert Evans?

  Yes, I am a loser.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I just, you know, I gotta, I gotta keep it real out there. But sometimes I see comments on there where people will be like, I can't believe Robert did- Fuck you. Fuck every one of you who has ever made a comment like that. Fuck any of you who have ever said anything bad about Sophie 2. I'll slap the shit out of you. This is for the subreddit right now. I'm one of you, and I see the things you say, and I'm disgusted by them sometimes. Because I'm like, God, do you know, this took me a year. This took me a whole year to do this. I'm busy. I'm a busy person. But even whenever I was like, like, you know, I told you like last week, oh, I'm done with this. And I was like, mostly done. But I wrote another like 3,000 words because I was like, well, there's some parts I'm missing and all this stuff. Yeah, you can.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Because everyone will call you out if you miss shit, and you're going to miss shit. Yes, this is hard. And I hear all your little internet comments, like, oh, you said some weird shit. Or what do you... Yeah, I'm doing my best, dude. It's like I'm improvising at the same time while I'm obviously drinking a little bit. And like, you know, you guys gotta cut me a break on the internet. Well, that's load-bearing. You gotta do that. Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  I don't know how anybody else operates, but this is how I do things. Speaking of which, Purchase Greasy Does It Recording Course Taught by Me. Very responsible human being.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  Great plug.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Marketing pivot. Incredible work. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, so yeah, so Ronnie is born into a family shape. She's born in Spanish Harlem, New York City, August 10th, 1943. Four years after Phil was born, just down the street, basically. They probably lived almost in the same area at this time, essentially. All right, so her father, Louis Bennett, was an Irish-American, and her mother was African-American Cherokee. Her father was also a drummer and a drunk, something that can still be found together in massive quantities around the world. You can have a drummer and drinking anywhere you go. It's true. You can find it. It's as prevalent as Coca-Cola, man. It's there.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  So, uh, he's also a failure, right? He, he, he can't, he can't keep a job. He can't do anything. He's just a mess most of the time. So she grows up not... Really down with alcohol, right? This is important for later, but she starts her life-

• 16:55Robert Evans?

  Sure, understandable.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Being traumatized by a little bit by alcohol. She always loves her dad, but she definitely feels like, you know, this is an alcohol thing.

• 17:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  She loves singing. She's really big on like Frankie Lyman. She loves Frankie Lyman. She thinks he's the best ever. Dinah Washington, just voices that were raw and like real, real authentic feeling, right?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  And she also gravitated towards performance. She was always like, you know, like the classic front woman thing, you know? It's like, when she was a little kid, she was always singing into microphones, you know? It's like, that story, right? Her father being a drummer and a failed drummer did not discourage her mother, because her father left pretty early. But it didn't discourage her mother from encouraging Ronnie's musical talent. She didn't just like all of a sudden, I mean, if it was me, like, dude, I had ex-girlfriends that were like, "My ex-boyfriend was a drummer and he failed at music, so you can't possibly make money off of music." And I'm like, you know, maybe you're wrong, I don't know. To be fair, I didn't make a lot of money off of it, so whatever. So yeah, so her mom, her mom supports her.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Her dad's always waxing poetic about his days as a musician. So she grows up as that being like a really important thing.

• 18:09Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  She was always singing at school events, neighborhood functions. She, she got a style, right? That's something that happens when you do a lot of music is eventually at first you're just learning, you're just trying to replicate other people's things, but eventually, once you do it enough, you develop style, right? And for her, she developed a very unique style. It was very raw. It wasn't musically perfect, but it had just a tone that was just beautiful. Everybody recognized it.

• 18:36Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  So her older sister Estelle and her cousin Nedra formed a vocal group called The Darling Sisters. The trio practiced constantly, singing in school hallways, street corners in their apartments. That's like a thing that still happens in this time period. People like out doo-wop and on the corner and everything. Yeah, just singing in public. Bro, if you saw that shit, now you'd be like, "Oh my god, fucking influencers are the shittiest."

• 18:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I was about to say, unfortunately, I would assume it's some like incredibly irritating like TikTok thing or whatever, some fucking viral bullshit or something, yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Some dumb, "I don't want to be a part of your fucking videos, weirdo," you know?

• 19:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I'd be a huge asshole about it.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  I would absolutely. I'd be like, "You guys suck anyways, I don't even want to listen to this."

• 19:16Robert Evans?

  Fuck you for making music in public, I'll kill you.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  So, the group was eventually renamed the Ronettes, a name that captured their identity and Ronnie's emerging role as a frontwoman. You know, Ronnie and the Ronettes. It's very 60s coded. Sure, normal name, absolutely. Yeah, you know.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  But, you know, Ronnie's lead vocals really do become the defining characteristic of this whole thing.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Their early performances were energetic, glamorous, and slightly rebellious. Ronnie developed distinctive stage presence that blended confidence with vulnerability. She wore dramatic eye makeup, teased her hair into towering beehives, and moved with a swagger that contrasted with her petite frame. She was creating an image that felt simultaneously innocent and dangerous, an aesthetic that would later become iconic in 1960s pop culture. Sophie, if you would, please show Phil and the lovely ladies of the Ronettes.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, beautiful woman.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  They didn't invent that beehive hairdo.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's iconic.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  But they're the reason it became popular, right? It was like their, their adoption of it was the thing that made that. You, I mean, that was iconic. My grandmother had one of those when I was a kid still, and it was like the 80s. Like, it, it stayed on for 20 some years, how popular that was. So it's like, their cultural relevance just cannot be understated in any way. They were incredibly important to the look of the early 60s. So, breaking into the professional music industry proved difficult for them. The Ronettes performed at clubs and talent contests, dance venues all throughout New York City, struggling to secure recording contracts or industry attention. Their persistence reflected both ambition and necessity,

• 21:00Speaker 01

  because music was important to Ronnie. Like, she, it was get rich or die trying on this. You know, she was 50 cent and hard right now. Eventually, the group secured opportunities to perform at venues that exposed them to evolving pop and rhythm and blues scene of the 1960s New York. They performed at the Peppermint Lounge and other popular clubs, and, and again, Ronnie driving the way.

• 21:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's so-

• 21:23Speaker 01

  They were starting to get- sorry, go ahead.

• 21:25Robert Evans?

  Just because this is Inspector, and I know what's coming is like, based on just how he treats artists, like the replaceability of them treating him just like another tool. And hearing a story like this that really drives home, just like, no, to get anywhere close to people hearing you on the radio, you have to have been relentless about making this your life. Like absolutely unhinged in your dedication to this career.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Especially at this time, right? Like, and it's a really good point. Like, it cannot, the dedication cannot be understated. It's like, at this point, in order to get a record made, right? That costs a lot of money, you know? Like, for the time, you know, it'd be like a hundred and, or $200 or something like that to record a song at the studio. Like, $200 is like, a whole month's paycheck for people in the 60s.

• 22:12Robert Evans?

  Right. It's a crazy amount of money.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yes, it's a lot of money for a lot of people. So, and it's still kind of that way today. In fact, if you're interested in working with Greasy Will, you can find him at The Grease Factory at Greasy Will.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Anyway, so, um, you know, it's very expensive. So even to just get something recorded is expensive. Then, you have to get it to a DJ, you have to get it on the radio, because the only way you will ever sell anything is if it's on the radio. So you gotta get it on the radio. And then, it has to build local support, and then it has to build regional support, and then it has to build, you know, it's like, sometimes this is like a years-long process to get music to be heard.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  But she's hustling, she's like relentless in trying to get her stuff out there.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  She strongly believed that the right producer would eventually understand how to capture her voice authentically, and she continued performing relentlessly, touring, rehearsing, and refining her stage presence. She saw her career not as a sudden break waiting to happen, but something that she would build through persistence and emotional honesty. So, yes, that's exactly it. She worked. She put in the work from the time she was like 14 years old, just grinded all the time.

• 23:24Robert Evans?

  Um, yeah, it's, I'd say it's the only way to do it, but it's the only, it's not, but it's the only way to do it if like, you're not somebody who's coming from somewhere, you know?

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, there's a lot of nepo babies in the music industry right now.

• 23:38Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  So we don't have to pretend. Um, so, uh, they, they're rising through New York. It's 1963. And there, she's looking for this producer and coincidentally a producer is looking for his voice, his muse, his wall of sound, his girl who will be that for him. And they meet. They, the literally is very funny. Uh, they, they literally just, they just call. You know, it's like, it's like 1963, just like, you just look up in the telephone.

• 24:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  He's like, hey. You wanna, you wanna produce my album?

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, when I think about the old days of how things were done, it's like, what? You just called somebody? I won't even answer a phone call from a number I don't know.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Right. No.

• 24:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. No, you can just pick up the phone and yeah, get a fucking music deal based on that.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Robert Evans?

  You know, it's, assuming your call timed in well with when he'd just done a line, yeah, you, you might be able to fucking make some shit happen.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, yeah, so I was like, all right, so they, they just call him, they just call him. They call him and he's like, oh yeah, I've heard of you guys. Cause they're making a noise in New York, right? Uh, and fill it this time too. Uh, I, there's a lot of geographical confusion with a lot of the stuff that, he is bouncing back and forth between California and New York all the time. Like, it's like, he loves working in Gold Star. So he goes out to California to work at Gold Star, uh, uh, the studio, but he, he doesn't, like the New York scene is still the scene, right? So he's gotta like, go to New York and then he flies back and then he'll work there for a while. So a lot of times it'll like, it might seem like he is just like transporting across the country in the story, but he really is. Um, so.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  He heard Phil in Ronnie, he heard the voice that he had, he'd been waiting for. The emotional landscape that he had spent years construction would, would fit perfectly with her, right? The professional relationship, though, immediately blurs into personal fixation.

• 25:34Robert Evans?

  Well, yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  He starts, he starts spending, you know, extraordinary amounts of time rehearsing Ronnie, rehearsing Ronnie. He's always rehearsing Ronnie. Like, it's like, Ronnie, stay after, we gotta do this. Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie. It's like always Ronnie. And of course, she is the front woman. I'm not saying, you know, that's not important or whatever. But it's like, it's very obvious, right? That he is, that he is. He's trying to isolate her. Isolate her as a great, isolation is began disguised as mentorship. Ah, yes. Exactly, right? Okay.

• 26:05Robert Evans?

  Ah, that's never happened before.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:07Robert Evans?

  You know what else hasn't happened before? Advertisements. We're the first podcast to do that. So yeah, you're welcome.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yes, let's do it.

• 27:12Speaker 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 Dofetilide 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.

• 27:48Robert Evans?

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

• 27:58Speaker 01

  And we're back. We're back into Phil Spector. Actually, I don't know if I like that.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Hated it.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Sophie's face? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So. Yeah. It's easy to portray Ronnie as a victim, and only as a victim, right? But it denies the fact that Phil Spector is Phil Spector at this time. He is a legendary person in the music industry. And she fell into love with him as well. It was not one-sided. It was not just Phil love-bombing her, but it was, in fact, quote, "I already knew I liked him that first day, and I knew he liked me too. It really was love at first sight on both our parts, even though I hardly said three words the whole night. I didn't have to say anything else. We communicated in other ways. Every time Phil put that song back on, I was wondering, I wondered if he wasn't trying to tell me something,

• 28:49Speaker 01

  because it sure did speak to me. I couldn't stop thinking that today I really met the boy I was going to marry."

• 28:55Speaker 03

  And that's from Ronnie's book, Be My Baby.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yes, from Ronnie's book, Be My Baby. Oh, I know where this goes, so I'm so bummed about this.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  He showers her with gifts, attention, grand declarations of devotion. Like, he is just, he's on it, right? Yeah. However, remember I said that Phil has his studio in his house, right? Yes. And he is still married. Oh, cool. And his wife lives upstairs. Cool. Again, this is also from Ronnie's book. She goes to visit him, and she says, quote, "I'd never been in a penthouse before, Phil or anyone else. So naturally, when I walked in, I couldn't resist peeking into all the closets and poking around behind all the closed doors. I opened one door and was surprised to find a bedroom where six or seven pairs of women's shoes were scattered all over the floor." I asked Phil who they belonged to, and he nearly turned pink. "Will you stop snooping around where you don't belong?" he snapped.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  I think it was the first time I ever saw Phil lose his temper. "Okay, honey," I said. "I'm sorry." He must have noticed the hurt look in my eyes because he softened his tone immediately. "Those are my sister Shirley's shoes," he explained. "She stays here sometimes when she's in New York."

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Your sister Shirley, yeah. Bro, getting mad was a distraction to come up with the excuse, right? He was like, "What are you looking around for?" "Oh yeah, sister shoes. Those are my sister shoes." If I'd have thought of that before, I wouldn't have gotten mad first. If I'd have thought of sister shoes immediately, I wouldn't have got mad. Come on. So, uh, you know, he abrupt, defensive, you know, aggressive. This is, this is a pattern that would kind of define the relationship, you know? Curiosity would be met with intimidation, and reality would be replaced with Phil's version of truth. Right, sure.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  He's gaslighting.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  She accepts that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She accepts that as the truth, right? And, and just doesn't even question it.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  She does say that she recognized that Phil, Phil was, had some issues, right? She was like, "He's got some, like, confidence issues." And this is another quote that I think is- Confidence issues, okay? So important, so, so important. Listen to this. Alright, so this is from her book, Be My Baby. Quote, "Phil first started losing his hair around the time we met. In fact, there's a picture that was taken when he signed us in March 1963, which also was the first day I ever saw him wearing a toupee. It was so obvious if you knew him, but he still went to great lengths to hide the fact that he wore wigs, even when we slept together. After we'd do our foreplay, he'd get up from bed and make sure the lights were all out. That way, I couldn't watch him when he took his hair off.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Then he'd stumble into the bathroom in the dark so he could rub this acetone solvent all over his head. It was the smelliest stuff in the world, but I guess it was the only thing he could get the tongue, the toupee glue off his scalp." Oh, man. So he's, he's like 21, and he's like, lost all his hair already. And he is incredibly insecure. He's reacting the worst way possible. The worst way possible. Gluing it to it, ooh. Sir. And everybody knows, everybody around him knows, but like, he's so powerful, you don't say anything.

• 32:00Robert Evans?

  Sure, sure.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  And so it's just like, everybody's just, just kind of accepting that this is a thing that has happened and nobody says anything. And they just let him go on with his little delusion about not being bald, you know? I'm not really bald.

• 32:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, of course, Phil, absolutely. I always wonder with guys like that, do you know that everyone knows? Is this like a power thing? Are you truly deluded?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  I'm so excited that you brought this up and I can't wait for, down the road, when we discuss Phil and his hair, because we have to at some point in time, really get into Phil's psyche about his hair. And spoiler alert.

• 32:36Robert Evans?

  It's a big deal for him.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  It's a big deal, it's a big deal. He just, flat out does, does, never, never acknowledges that he wears wings.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  It's amazing, alright, so, uh, and that's gonna get even funnier in a couple paragraphs here. Alright, so, Phil brings Ronnie to California, under the promise of expanding her career opportunities, away from her family. She's now, across the country, New York to California away, you know?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  During this whole time, Ronnie claims to have not known that Phil was married. She didn't find out until they had been sleeping together for several months, when a fellow musician finally broke the news to her. She had been in love with Phil and ignored all the warnings, but now it was clear. It didn't change her love, she still loved him, and he still loved her. And, he love bombs her with the house, and they move in together.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she's literally just in like, the bathroom one day, and somebody's like, oh, yeah, because, you know, because his wife. And she's like, wait, what? She's like, yeah, he's married, you didn't know he's married? He's married, what are you talking about? So she's just like, she's hurt, but she's like, uh, you know, I mean, he comes and tells her, of course, you know, naturally, oh, it's not, we're done, we're getting divorced, we don't love each other, it's all thing, right? So, Phil lied to Ronnie's mother about the nature of their relationship too, uh, and tells her that they're married already. Because she's like, you guys can't be living together and shit, and he's like, no, we're already married, it's fine. And she's like- I don't believe you.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  That sucks so bad.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  I don't believe you.

• 34:01Robert Evans?

  Seems like an obvious lie.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I don't believe you, but I do need to like, you know, figure this all out, right?

• 34:08Speaker 03

  How old is Ronnie at this time?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Ronnie is like nineteen years old, like twenty, nineteen, twenty, and Phil is, um, Phil is like twenty-two, twenty-three years old.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Like, uh, he was born in thirty-nine, so twenty-four, he's twenty-four.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  He would have these wild swings between like heavy love and then targeted insults. Uh, one night after a show, he flew into a rage after a cameraman compliments her and he loses his mind. Uh, quote from Ronnie's book, quote, "This was a big thing with Phil. If I lost control in front of a crowd, he hated it because that meant I was out of his control. And on top of everything else, you came in off key. He could only ever criticize my singing for technical reasons because he knew I didn't read music, so I couldn't argue. 'Don't bother coming to the party after the show,' he ordered. 'I don't want to see you there.' I went straight back to my hotel room and cried. I suppose I could have gone to the party anyways, but I never considered it. I just couldn't go against Phil's wishes in those days.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Phil couldn't control what I did once I got out on stage, but that wasn't a problem he had in our personal life." So he is, oh, it's pretty early. They're not married.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  This is very early and he's already taking control. Uh, The Beatles asked them to go on tour with the Ronettes and Phil told Ronnie not to do it. You know, and...

• 35:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah, why would you want to go on tour with The Beatles? That's not like...

• 35:33Speaker 01

  No, not with those guys. He's very, very...

• 35:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that band's not going anywhere.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, fuck those guys. Those, those random blokes from Liverpool or whatever.

• 35:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  No future. So, all right, so following the incident where he was urinated on, Spectre developed an intense obsession with personal protection. This is...

• 35:55Speaker 01

  This is classic Phil, right? He began collecting firearms, frequently carrying them during studio sessions and public appearances. Over time, his guns become more than defensive tools. They become theatrical symbols of authority and intimidation.

• 36:08Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Naturally, right? Like, this guy doesn't just, he loves guns, right?

• 36:14Robert Evans?

  Like, he likes to scare people with guns, a lot, yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  He loves a snub nose, he loves a 38, dude, he just like, that's a pocket gun, like, crazy.

• 36:23Robert Evans?

  It's really easy to just whip it out and wave it in people's faces, you know? That's the perfect, yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  It's the perfect, and also, you can hit him with it, it's very heavy, it's got a, you know, I mean, that's a good-

• 36:34Robert Evans?

  You can hit him with it.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  That's a good pistol-whipping gun, for sure, right?

• 36:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, when you jam it into someone's body, the slide doesn't, you know, get out of battery or whatever, like, you can, you can really just poke people with a 38, very easily.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  And, yes, and let's be real honest, too, when it comes to a 38, like, it's not like a long-distance weapon.

• 36:51Robert Evans?

  It's not an aiming gun, it's not an aiming gun.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  It's not an aiming gun, not at all, alright? He also developed a fascination with martial arts, particularly karate, alright? Now, again, this is 1960s America, we're about to see Elvis get into the same thing, this isn't-

• 37:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he sure was, I probably forget it.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  This isn't, like, out of control, lots of actors are like, okay, but, alright, but Phil's particularly funny. So he's watching television right now, and he sees a guy named Santi Osol break a brick with his hand, and, and he's it, that's it, he's sold, bro, he's sold.

• 37:24Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yes. So he starts taking lessons from this guy, he finds this guy and starts taking lessons from him, right? And he just, like, goes crazy, it's like, every day, and he starts, he starts walking around town in a karate gi.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Just like, "Yeah!"

• 37:42Robert Evans?

  The weebs, like, he's inventing being a weeb, that's amazing, yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yes, and, alright, and again, and again, he doesn't have real hair, so he's, he's wearing a wig, right? He's wearing an obvious wig and a karate outfit, walking around town.

• 37:59Robert Evans?

  Oh my god. But you can't make fun of him, because you know he's also gonna pull that 38 on you if you do.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yes, and probably armed with a gun, so, like, all of the things, right? Alright, this is it, so, um-

• 38:10Speaker 01

  This also gives him access to actual karate practitioners, because he's taken lessons from these guys.

• 38:15Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  So then, he hires them. He hires Santi to be his bodyguard. Because he's like, well, now I got this tough guy, right?

• 38:22Robert Evans?

  He knows karate. Good enough for me.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And so these guys also, I just want to point out, like, I don't know this to be fact, but I just can't stop thinking about this. Because another bodyguard who's a karate guy, he talks about this a little bit. But, you know, you know that they're getting paid a lot of money.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  To be around this guy. And they're making a lot of money off of this guy, right? So, you know they're like, yeah, bro, you killed me with them karate chops, man.

• 38:49Robert Evans?

  Oh, Phil, you've got the most powerful fists.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  You're so dangerous.

• 38:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, just a little push, knocked me right over, Phil. Wow.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 38:58Robert Evans?

  It's also, especially in this period of time, just lying about your martial arts qualifications.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, absolutely.

• 39:03Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, I spent 10 years in China learning Kung Fu from monks. Who's gonna check up on that shit? You learn like 10 words and you're good, you know?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. You could lie about anything back in the day, man.

• 39:15Robert Evans?

  It was so easy. It was so easy.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Even when I was like in high school, you could still lie about things. Like, what am I gonna do? Go to the library and prove you wrong?

• 39:22Robert Evans?

  All of the top billed Native American actors in Hollywood were Italian men.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Italian guys?

• 39:28Robert Evans?

  It was very easy to lie.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  It was so easy. All right. So, Santi bodyguards for him. And then he's like, bro, I don't got time for this anymore. I'm actually getting a legitimate business. Like, so he passes it off to this other guy, Emile Farkas. And Emile felt that Spectre was using his bodyguards as status symbol, but also as a threat to anyone who might get froggy. So he's like, you know, walking around, I got these guys, you know, like, what are you gonna do, kind of shit. Very Jack Dorsey coded. Do you know Jack Dorsey?

• 39:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  The millennial, the young kid, the Zenials or whatever will know who the fuck that is. Anyway, he's, you know, he's doing that. He's going up to clubs on Sunset Strip. Getting in front of everybody, and then when somebody dares to question him, he says, "Fuck you," and they're like, "Okay, well, let's fight," and then from out of, behind him comes some actual karate guys, you know, plus also too, actual karate guys in the 60s must have beat the shit out of everybody, dude, like, they're still in like, the world of like, wild haymakers and stuff.

• 40:26Robert Evans?

  Everyone else is doing like, the Captain Kirk 200 punch. Do you actually know how to hit somebody? Yeah, you're fucking annihilating them.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Doing this thing, you know, and you're like, "What?"

• 40:36Robert Evans?

  Come on now! Jack Johnson and Tim O'Leary, right here.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like, like, actual karate guys, I think about this all the time, like, they must have just mopped the floor, it's not like now, you might actually run into like, a UFC guy, like, or like, an MMA guy right now.

• 40:51Robert Evans?

  There's guys who actually do that now, just walking around.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  But these are just karate guys walking around, you know, anyway, so, so yeah, so he, um, he basically is just antagonizing people in, in, purposefully to cause problems, and then has his bodyguards beat the shit out of him, which is super fucked up. So Emile, though, he says, this is from, uh, Breaking the Wall of Sound, quote, "Specter had never quite got the hang of karate. He might have worn a black belt tied around his gi, and he might have boasted to journalists that, 'In case of real trouble, I could totally kill a guy,' but according to Emile Farkas, he just play-acted. He'd do a lot of chopping his hands in the air, but he was nowhere near a black belt."

• 41:33Robert Evans?

  He's like, "What, a chopping his hands in the air? If the thing someone's going for is a chop, you can kinda guess the rest." He's like, "I got it." I know you can really hurt people that way, but generally... Boom!

• 41:46Speaker 01

  He's hitting him with the "Hi-yah!"

• 41:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, it's, it's hilarious to picture, like, in your brain, right? I just always have to remind myself, because he's a giant in the world, but he is a 5'3" man, he's a tiny little dude out here karate chopping.

• 42:03Robert Evans?

  Incredible.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Wearing a karate gi.

• 42:05Robert Evans?

  He's a 5'3" man who believes he's a martial artist.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Like, god, uh, but, alright, but what he was good at was playing pool. Apparently, he was pretty good at playing pool. And so he hired this pro player, Willie Moscone, and paid him $175,000 a year to hang out at his house and teach him how to play pool.

• 42:25Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 42:27Robert Evans?

  That's kinda cool, yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  And then, hold on.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Hold on. Then, he would go to pool halls and hustle people with him. And then when people got mad, he'd have his bodyguards beat the shit out of them.

• 42:44Robert Evans?

  He's really, he's really scraping all of the fun you can have when you're rich enough for bodyguards. It's like, I just have a posse of dangerous men that have to beat people up if I'm, if I'm a dick. I am surprised more rich guys don't do this, to be honest.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  I, honestly, I, I, I'm gonna be honest, man, if I ever get that kind of money, like, walking around with bodyguards money? Oh, that's all I'm gonna do.

• 43:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  That's all I'm gonna do.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  So he would throw crazy parties and then disappear. He's a weird dude right now. He's, he's like, uh, he, he'd throw these crazy parties and then disappear the whole night, and then reappear, right, as people are about to leave, and he would get super mad if the girls wanted to go home. Super mad.

• 43:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  He has got real, he, he hates to be alone, first of all, and he establishes this. But he also just has, like, specifically when women want to leave, he is, he gets upset every single time.

• 43:45Robert Evans?

  Not cool with him, yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Phil would, this is from Emil Farkas again, uh, from Breaking Down the Wall of Sound. Phil would get very upset if women walked out on him, Farkas says. He would rant and rave. "You'll never work again. I'll get you fired, whatever." But then again, you'd have this thing at parties where you might have 20 girls each, and each one would try to last out the other to see who was going to stay the night with him. "But the feeling I got was that Phil sort of realized that most of these people were around for the external rather than the internal, and he would have preferred that he wasn't liked for the limousines and the money and all that. He would have really liked to be loved for himself. And there were girls who liked him for that. I think the problem was that Phil could never believe that these people could love him for who he was."

• 44:27Robert Evans?

  I'm not surprised he had trouble believing people could love him for who he was because he's a dick.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Robert Evans?

  I mean, it's sad, but I'm also, yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is very strong, like, like, uh, like, yeah, dude, of course nobody, like, Stifler, right? It's like Stifler, like, yeah, of course no one likes you, bro.

• 44:44Robert Evans?

  You're a giant prick to everyone, man. Like, yeah, you're not liked.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  You know who won't get mad when you try and leave their parties in the middle of the night? These, these sponsors.

• 44:58Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  These people who pay money.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  I was gonna say me because my parties don't go that late, so.

• 45:03Robert Evans?

  But the party of capitalism, that one keeps on going forever.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 08

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• 45:41Robert Evans?

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• 46:04Speaker 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 Dofetilide 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.

• 46:40Robert Evans?

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

• 46:50Robert Evans?

  And we're back. Okay. Will, take it away.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yes, so, uh, it's 1964. The Ronnets toured England with the Beatles. They go, they do actually go to the Beatles, uh, to tour with the Beatles. And Phil insists on being there. He, he is super jealous of it. He does not like it. You gotta keep in mind too, the Beatles are the next evolutionary step in this chain. We went to, now producers are, and bands are gone, and Phil Spector represented the most important version of that. But it's 1964 and the Beatles are about to cross over in America. And Phil Spector is incredibly threatened by them. They have been tearing up the charts and kind of pushing him out, very much so. So, when the Ronnets are asked to go on tour with the Beatles, he's like, mm.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  And so he goes to, uh, England to supervise. You know, he has to go over and watch and make sure no one's putting the moves on the old girl, you know? He said, from Ronnie, this is from Be My Baby, Ronnie's book. "Phil never came out and said it, but I could tell he didn't like the idea of us spending too much time with the Beatles. I don't think his ego could stand the competition. The Beatles were leaving to start their first US tour in a few days, and when John asked me if we wanted to fly back with them on their chartered jet, I didn't have the nerve to ask Phil if it was okay, so I had my mom make the suggestion. You know Phil, she told him, it might be good publicity if the girls went back on, on the jet with the Beatles. No, he told her, I've already bought their tickets." And that was all that's said.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  So he tells him, "Nah, man, I got tickets for you already. You can't fly back on the plane with the Beatles, are you crazy? I'm just gonna let my girlfriend get on a fucking plane? A private plane with a bunch of rock stars? Hell no, that's a horrible idea." Yeah, hell no. So he buys them, he buys them private, or, uh, commercial flights back, right? She says, uh, she continues. "My mother," and they landed the next day at JFK, and she says, "My mother and I watched the whole thing on TV. We were amazed at how many kids showed up at the airport screaming and carrying banners. But what surprised me even more was something that happened after the plane landed. The jet was on the ground and the cameras zoomed in on the door that was about to open up to give America its first glimpse of the Fab Four.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  But when that hatch finally did swing open, who do you think was with them? I almost fainted when I looked at the TV and saw Phil Spector following the Beatles." Fucking boo! Out of there.

• 49:16Robert Evans?

  You dick.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  So, so he's like, "You can't fly back with the Beatles!" And then he flies back with the Beatles.

• 49:22Robert Evans?

  But I wanna be back, I wanna fly back with the Beatles, absolutely.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So like, there's like, thousands of people greeting him at the airport and they're like, "And there's Phil Spector!" And they're like, "That dick!"

• 49:33Robert Evans?

  Fucking asshole.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Amazing pettiness.

• 49:36Robert Evans?

  He's such a huge dick.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  That is, that is Tom Petty right there, dude. That's amazing.

• 49:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's like a grand level of dickery. Like, it's spectacular.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  You can't ride with the hottest band that's going on in the world right now. But I can. And you have to take a shitty commercial.

• 49:52Robert Evans?

  I'm definitely gonna be there.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so funny. So Ronnie's life keeps, like, it's more and more confined. She's starting to get like, kinda more trapped by Phil and everything. And Phil starts working repeatedly at this studio, Gold Star. I mentioned it before, it was like the scene of his wall of sound. And it's really important, like, it is kind of like a big deal. It's, it's hate Ashbury for the hippie movement.

• 50:16Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Or, you know, or, or Woodstock. It's, it's an important moment in time where a bunch of people come together for a thing that is like, significant. And, and Gold Star is there. Gold Star is where the Wrecking Crew kind of was born. It's where Phil was doing all these hits. And it's a shithole for the record, but Phil loves it. He turns it into his fortress, right? He just like, like, he, no one's allowed to come in unless he says so. He's booking so much time there, like, he lives in this studio. And at this studio, he, uh, he is working with Sonny Bono and Cher. Sonny Bono-

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Side-bastard Sonny Bono, Sonny Bono. We're gonna side-bastard Sonny Bono. Sonny Bono is a, is a big giant dick. And we, first of all, bro, he is like the most, first of all, first of all, I mean, the Copyright Protection Act that he did just so Disney could keep Mickey Mouse in fucking, in their, in their, that, that sucks, right? But also, how do you go from being Sonny and Cher, like this whole, like, they, they sang on,

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Mama's and Papa's songs and stuff.

• 51:24Robert Evans?

  They were huge, yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were, how do you do that and then become a Republican senator? You know, like, that's like the ultimate betrayal of a human being.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  He wasn't nice to Cher.

• 51:33Robert Evans?

  Sonny Bono ended as a, yeah, Republican senator.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  He wasn't nice to Cher.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  A Republican sellout senator.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Fuck her.

• 51:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  He was the one, and also, the subject of one of my favorite Eminem lines, Sonny Bono skis horses and hitting some trees. Oh! I love that, great. So, um, so Ronnie develops a close relationship with Cher, who became one of the few people that Ronnie could confide in because she is also living very similar situation at this time. Sonny and Cher is about as famous as Ike and Tina, about as famous as Ronnie and Phil. Ironic that they would all work together with Phil. Very strange. Uh, and it's really interesting too, because in all of these situations, it shows that the men in these situations, who are very dominant to their women, also are all subservient to Phil.

• 52:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Sonny Bono bends over for Phil, like, completely, like, he is, he is, absolutely.

• 52:29Robert Evans?

  Interesting.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yes, he is, he is, he lets, uh, I mean, he, I mean, Phil is the, the god at the time. Sonny Bono is nobody. He's a gopher, he's a runner at a studio. And Phil treats him like a runner at the studio. He is horrible to him. He treats him awfully. Uh, side note, this is a really funny story. When Ronnie first met Cher, she thought she was a hooker. She like, she like met this girl, she's like... Yeah, she thought Cher was a hooker, she was like, oh, this must be Sonny Bono's hooker. Oh my god. And she just, she just says that, which is really funny.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  Feminist icon Cher.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  There's a lot of things in these like interviews and books and stuff that I've read like I I love Phil Spector, so I've read many books on him. I watch every documentary. I love, I love Phil Spector and I'm so interested by him. So when I watch and read all these things, it's insane to see like how open and honest people are about the horrible things that they think and say out loud. It's so crazy. Why did you write this in a book? You wrote that you thought Cher was a hooker? Why would you tell anyone that? You didn't need to say that. That was, it was totally free to shut the fuck up. It cost no money. No one was gonna call you on it. No one's gonna be like, hey, man, do you ever think Cher was a hooker? Right. Like you just, yeah, okay.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  So funny. So anyway, um, so they got a complicated relationship, Sonny and Phil, and it blossoms into this very like subservient relationship where Sonny just does everything that Phil asks. He, he, he like, whatever Phil tells him, like, hey, don't let the girls do this. He's like, okay. And he becomes like an enforcer for Cher and Ronnie Bennett's relationship in a lot of ways. And it's very, again, he's like getting other people to carry out his like possessive weird details of his life and stuff. It's very strange.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Gives me the ick.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  All right. So Phil has had a killer career, right? He's had a killer career. Things have been going good for him. The Beatles come to America. Things start to change. He does, he still has some hits. Things are going good or whatever, but we're about to hit 1966. And in 1966, uh, he, he produced River Deep, Mountain High for Tina Turner.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Tina Turner.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Yes. And he, to him, he says this was the greatest thing he ever did. It was the ultimate realization of the wall of sound. It was, if you listen to this song, it is

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Such a phenomenal song.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  It's phenomenal. It's a cacophony of sound. It is Yeah, absolutely. It is, I mean, it's like you cannot tell, other than Tina's voice, you cannot tell a single thing that is happening in the background. You can kind of hear like a guitar riff in the beginning of, but that could be anything, right? It's like the whole sound is so amorphous. It has no shape. It has no body. It's so drenched in reverb and it's just noise behind what's going on. It's so brilliant and so beautiful and it's Yeah. It, it does rip. And it's very reminiscent of like modern day, like shoegaze type stuff is like this, you know, it's got a really cool. Atmosphere. It's all atmosphere and emotion.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Even notoriously shitty side bastard. Side bastard. Notoriously shitty side bastard Ike Turner. Bowed.

• 55:50Robert Evans?

  It is a, it is a music industry episode. We're gonna have a lot of side bastards.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  I just really like the side bastard sound effect.

• 55:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we may have to steal that from you.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  As well, by the way. Yeah, I definitely, I think it should make it into the regular rotation.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  I do too. I have a soundboard, I need it.

• 56:07Robert Evans?

  There we go.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  It's so good, it's so good. Um, yeah, so notoriously shitty side bastard Ike Turner.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Revered Phil, let him be in control. You're talking about a band Ike and the Ikeettes, right? Featuring Tina Turner, like, like, we're talking Ike is the control freak of control freaks.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  But why are they submissive to this weird little guy?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Sophie, in the beginning, we asked, we asked this question.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Why do we allow people to be horrible and shitty? And just because they can make a really cool, it's the same, it's the same world. Why, why do those people allow this other person who's also shitty to, to, to, to get away with being in control of them? Because the music industry, because you can write a good song, you're, you can get away with murder, sort of. Not, not completely. Spoiler alert.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  I mean, like, do people, like.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  He is visibly wearing wigs.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's my point.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Visibly wearing wigs. Nobody is confused about this. And he is wearing platform shoes. He is five foot three, he's wearing platform shoes that barely make him five five, which is still really, really short.

• 57:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  You know? No offense, short case.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 57:23Robert Evans?

  No, there's nothing wrong with it, but it clearly is fucking with him.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  I mean, this is what, this is what pops up when I searched Phil Spector in 1966.

• 57:32Robert Evans?

  Okay, let's see him.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Look at the hair.

• 57:33Robert Evans?

  Wow, oh, no, the, the glasses, the sideways diamond glasses. Sophie, you're amazing.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  This is a little early for this.

• 57:41Robert Evans?

  Those glasses honestly whip.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Uh, but, but I, I wanna share this picture real quick, uh, because this is also very important. Yeah, Robert, oh my God, I, I have been waiting to show you this picture.

• 57:53Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  I can't wait, this is so good. All right, so, uh, this is Phil Spector in 1966, around the same time, around the same time.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  This is him with his, his security guard, George Brant.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 58:04Robert Evans?

  So they're, they're sitting in some sort of old timey van and George Brant, like Phil is in George Brant's lap. He looks like a child.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  He looks like a child.

• 58:15Robert Evans?

  Cause Phil's holding a gun and pointing it out the window and he's got like a fucking, like a, what's that kind of cap called?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  It looks like a Labrador or like, yeah, like, like a, a dog, like what, a poodle, like a poodle hair situation going on in his head.

• 58:30Speaker 03

  It's a sherpa hat. It's like a, it's a blue clay, it's a blue clay hat.

• 58:34Robert Evans?

  And his bodyguard has his arm around Phil and is like holding him in place and his hand is like, is big as both of Phil's hands put together, like one hand, like you, this contrast between the two men is jarring.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  It's the, like the flappy hair hats. It's incredible.

• 58:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  As a lover of hats myself.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  It is so incredible. I cannot believe that he took that picture and was like, yeah, print that shit.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  It's so funny. He's, he's a tiny person. That really gives you like a perspective.

• 59:13Robert Evans?

  He's a tiny person and he looks very silly posing with a gun.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  George Bran, this is George Bran and George Bran is a kind of big. He's like 6'1" or something like that, but he's not, that's not huge. That's me. I'm six foot, you know? He's like my size.

• 59:27Robert Evans?

  But he looks like a giant compared to him.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  He looks like he's holding his child.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  And he has Ike Turner and Sonny bowing to him in submission. That's crazy.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  That's crazy.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  But that's the power of a hitmaker. That's the power of a hitmaker.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  It's pretty cool. It's like kinda culty.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  That is what being somebody who's controlling the industry and that kind of power is. But as I said, uh, this, this, uh, well, I didn't say it, but spoiler alert, uh, it doesn't last long. Uh.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  He produced this, uh, River Deep Mountain Diet High for Tina Turner and he spends enormous amount of money. This is signed to his label to the Phyllis Records, uh, and he, he spends a ton of money, right? Emotional energy, just everything, time. He puts everything. This is his magnoopus. This is his, his, his thing, right? He, he thinks it's the best thing he's ever done. Massive orchestration, intricate layering, one of the most powerful vocal performances ever recorded. Spector later described it as the greatest work of his career.

• 1:00:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  In the United States, it failed miserably.

• 1:00:30Robert Evans?

  That's so wild.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  It fails horribly. Now, Spector says, Spector's belief, and, and a lot of people's belief, I've, I've heard a lot of opinions on this, but the belief is generally, it was too white for black audiences and too black for white audiences. It was that rare moment of in-between, it had orchestration, but it had Tina, but it had wall of sound mud, but it had Tina, but you know, it's like, it's like, it was so confusing for DJs at the time, because you either played race records or you played white records. And that was it. Like, it was like, where does this fall? We don't know. Phil Spector is taking this to a logical, like, conclusion, but it, it just doesn't hit.

• 1:01:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  This, uh, it did, it did have success in the United Kingdom. In the UK, it did chart, uh, but the domestic rejection just devastated him. For a man who had created control with emotional safety, the failure felt deeply personal. If he could not guarantee success through perfection, then his entire identity as a producer was suddenly unstable, right? So, this, this breaks him. Like, this is the breaking point. It, he, he takes out a full-page ad in a newspaper in America saying Benedict Arnold was right.

• 1:01:45Robert Evans?

  Whoa.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, because England liked it and America didn't.

• 1:01:50Robert Evans?

  Whoa, that's nuts. That's a crazy place for your head to go.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  What in the fuck?

• 1:01:57Robert Evans?

  Benedict Arnold was right?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Robert Evans?

  Okay, bro.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  So after that, everybody's like, okay, well, we're not spinning this record anymore. This dude just called us all traitors. Like, he said, he said, England should have won the war.

• 1:02:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Fuck that guy.

• 1:02:13Robert Evans?

  That's a little much.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  So Phil's failure with River Deep, Mountain High caused him to pull out of music completely. He announced his retirement from music and spent the days wandering around his mansion, despondent and depressed. This is a common theme with Phil as well. He spends a lot of time wandering around his mansion depressed.

• 1:02:31Robert Evans?

  Well.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Dennis Hopper was actually chronicling the process of making River Deep, Mountain High. He was doing like a documentary film on the process. And because he'd been around, he saw this and how it reacted to Phil. He offers Phil a job playing a drug dealer in Easy Rider, which is an amazing, amazing film, amazing role.

• 1:02:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  They said, literally, they're like, yeah, we gave him a, we let him be an Easy Rider. The story I read framed it as like, oh yeah, you know, like it'll pick him up. It'll make him feel better.

• 1:03:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  But then when you actually hear like the Dennis Hopper interview, he's like, yeah, he had a Rolls Royce and he would let us use it if we put him in the movie.

• 1:03:10Robert Evans?

  We couldn't afford it otherwise. It was Easy Rider, you know?

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it was made for like $25,000.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  So other than that, other than his time on Easy Rider, he spent most of his time playing pool and often hanging with his friend Lenny Bruce. Are you familiar with Lenny Bruce?

• 1:03:27Robert Evans?

  Oh, my God, yeah, of course. Lenny Bruce was like, I mean, Lenny Bruce was the inspired George Carlin. He's kind of the, he's not.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  He's like the first.

• 1:03:35Robert Evans?

  First stand up guy.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  He's like the first shock comic.

• 1:03:38Robert Evans?

  Some people say the first really good stand up comedian, but um, yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Robert Evans?

  He was a big dude, yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Phil loves him, right? Phil just idolizes him. He thinks he's amazing. He's Phil Spector, so he's big enough to just be like, yeah, I'll just hang in. Lenny Bruce is, by the way, in his personal life, a massive piece of shit, basically.

• 1:03:58Robert Evans?

  Not a nice guy and horrible drug problems, you know?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yes, horrible drug problems, horrible everything problems. Lenny Bruce is a mess. And for, for, for those of you who are not familiar with Lenny Bruce, if you look it up, you're going to be a lot, there's a lot of N word Lenny Bruce rants is what I'm saying.

• 1:04:17Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  A lot, a lot.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  They also tried to like fictionalize, romanticize him in that marvelous Mrs. Maisel show that was on. Amazon, they make him a, a character in that and they make him like this like.

• 1:04:28Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, they.

• 1:04:29Robert Evans?

  Because he's.

• 1:04:32Robert Evans?

  A lot of ways rightfully beloved because of his influence on like comedy from a freedom of speech standpoint, which he really did take a stand and pay for.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:40Robert Evans?

  But that they also whitewash a lot of like, he was, he was a messy motherfucker among comedians. And stand up comedians are almost all messy sons of bitches.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  There's a lot of stories about him showing up at Phil's house and like, and like, you know, Phil having to like, basically kick him out and be like, and apologize to his guest. Phil, Phil, the guy who held people at gunpoint, waved guns around. Had to be like, yeah, guys, sorry, Lenny's messy.

• 1:05:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Hey, listen, Lenny's messy, guys, you know, like what he's saying.

• 1:05:13Robert Evans?

  My friend doesn't always use the right terms. He can be kind of inappropriate.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Alright, so the two men bonded over a shared sense of being misunderstood. Outsiders navigating industries that simultaneously rewarded and rejected them, which is.

• 1:05:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Extremely valid. They're both kind of outsiders while also being like praised and glorified.

• 1:05:35Robert Evans?

  Also kind of at the top of their, their careers or kind of at the top of their field.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Very strange. Bruce admired Spectre's musical intensity and Spectre appeared to be drawn to Bruce's defiant rejection of authority and social norms. Uh, he quotes Lenny Bruce all the time. He'll be like, Lenny Bruce says, you know, it's like always how he goes. He loves Lenny Bruce. He loves Lenny Bruce so much that Phil keeps a blown up image of Lenny Bruce above his bed.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:06:03Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:06:04Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Ronnie, Ronnie.

• 1:06:07Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 1:06:10Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 1:06:13Robert Evans?

  Okay, so we're a step beyond.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, this is weird.

• 1:06:17Robert Evans?

  Guys who like been wasted together. Okay.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it's weird.

• 1:06:21Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  I, like, when I wrote this, I literally had this like funny mental image of me having, me having a Robert Evans above my bed. And like, you're shirtless, you know, like, just like, like, just like, you know, over the shoulder kind of look, you know? Just like, I just, I, I was like, yes, dude, that's how I want my relationship with Robert to be is like, like, like quasi-sexual in nature.

• 1:06:44Robert Evans?

  Bruce relationship? Sure, absolutely.

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  My goodness.

• 1:06:49Robert Evans?

  So.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  So Spector get, he gets his belief that he's existing outside of conventional society. By hanging out with Lenny Bruce, it validates that for him.

• 1:06:58Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  And that society just didn't understand him.

• 1:07:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  This is why River Deep, Mountain High failed. It's just like Lenny Bruce, right? It's like, society just doesn't get how important this is.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  But then, but then Lenny, Lenny dies.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  But then Lenny Bruce does die, doesn't he?

• 1:07:16Robert Evans?

  You don't have a long life expectancy as a Lenny Bruce type.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  On August 3rd, 1966, Lenny was found on the floor of his bathroom with his pants around his ankles and a needle stuck in his arm.

• 1:07:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  That's how that, that goes, right?

• 1:07:31Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  He died of an overdose, he died of an overdose on the toilet, which is very Elvis and sad. Very, I mean.

• 1:07:38Robert Evans?

  Very Lenny Bruce, yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, very Lenny Bruce. Yeah, Lenny Bruce was the original. Lenny Bruce, the OG died on the toilet.

• 1:07:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  So, um, Phil was devastated to lose his friend. He's so sad about this. And again, mopes around the house for days, you know? Uh, but a few days later, a cop shows up at his, I think it was his lawyer's house. It was, might have, it was either his friend or a lawyer, but cop shows up and says, "Hey, I got, I got these pictures of Lenny Bruce from the crime scene. Either you buy them or I'm selling them to the tabloids," right? And so Phil spent 5K of his own money, just, he purchased them, spent $5,000 of his own money, which at that time is like a house.

• 1:08:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  You know, uh, spends $5,000 of his own money to purchase those photos to keep them out of the press. He also paid for Lenny's funeral. And then after Lenny's funeral, he locked himself in his house for weeks on end and didn't talk to anybody because he was so depressed at the loss of his friend.

• 1:08:41Robert Evans?

  Fuck me.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  It's one of those real.

• 1:08:43Robert Evans?

  It's weird that he is capable of deeply caring for someone and it's Lenny Bruce.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's like, it's, it's a really weird moment. Cause you're like, oh, that's sad, but also.

• 1:08:56Robert Evans?

  This is the first really human emotion we've gotten. Uh, and like, yeah, okay. Interesting.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  But also, huh, you know? Um, back to Ronnie, right? Ronnie's mom finally is like, you guys aren't really married, right? So, so she's like, you're not living with somebody if you're not married to them. She like loses her mind over the whole thing.

• 1:09:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  She's like, you guys need to get married, right? So Phil, uh, he, you know, he, he still lies to her. He tries like lying, but she comes out to California and she's like, nope, don't believe you. And so she takes Ronnie and makes her move back to, to New York, which is again, very crazy. This is like an era where being 21 is actually what's considered an adult at this time. I mean, it kind of still is a little bit, but in the manner of like, if you were under 21, you could actually be told what to do by your parents.

• 1:09:44Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Still, you know?

• 1:09:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah. You're not really an independent person.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Have no money and all sorts of shit. Anyway, so, um, she forces her to move back to New York. Ronnie hates being in New York. She hates being around her relatives. She feels like they're all like gold diggers, kind of. And, um, she wants to get back to California. So Phil comes and rescues her and takes her back to California. Uh, but as soon as they get back, he gets right back into being jealous, you know? And it wasn't until she threatens to leave him that he finally does commit to marrying her.

• 1:10:14Robert Evans?

  Aw, well.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  They're planning to be married on April 14th, uh, but MLK was shot and killed on April 4th. And Phil goes into a despair. Uh, it's super common with Phil. Anytime somebody famous dies that he has had any association with at all, which does happen a lot, uh, you know, sixties and all. He falls into like these horrible depressive states where he just like mopes around. He was just playing MLK speeches on repeat in his house at like top volume, which I'm sure he had a killer stereo, right? He's Phil Spencer. So he's just blasting MLK speeches at like top volume in his house and like crying in the living room.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  It's like super crazy, which brings me to a, a point about Phil that I think is super interesting for all of Phil's flaws. Racism is never one of them. Not once, not ever. He is always, I, when we look at these relationships, it's like, it is always black girl groups that he's like, you know, doing this abuse to. But black is never really like a consideration. It is women that is the consideration.

• 1:11:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he has an issue with women, right?

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  For as awful as he is, he's never awful about uh, uh, black people. He loves black people. In fact, uh, Ronnie thinks that he wished he was black. Uh, and he, he, he cried, cried tears when L K died.

• 1:11:33Robert Evans?

  Given his, like, the industry he's in at the time, yeah. Okay, yeah, that makes sense, actually.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  So, he eventually snaps out of his depression and they return to their wedding plans. They get married on the 14th. The marriage itself was performed at a justice of a peace ceremony. They know for a millionaire record producer, he doesn't, he half asses the hell out of it. He does justice to the peace. And as someone who's done a couple of justice of the peace marriages, you know, I get it, right? Sometimes you just wanna get it over with, you know? I got stuff to do today. Yeah, I've done one. His chauffeur's brother was his best man. Um, after the wedding, they celebrated by going to a concert. And then Phil sent Ronnie and her mother home with his driver and went to visit his mother out of guilt of not having told her about the wedding. So he feels bad. He's like, oh, actually, I can't believe I didn't tell my mom about the wedding.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  I should've told her about this in the city.

• 1:12:25Robert Evans?

  I got in trouble for that, too.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  So I probably should've done that. So he goes, right? And Ronnie and her mom go back to the house, right? Ronnie goes home, she puts on some lingerie. She gets wedding night, bro. We wedding night, you know? She gets all up and, uh, she waits and waits and waits and waits. Hours go by, Phil does not come back. And she's like, uh, okay, well, what the hell? Finally, he returns home late as hell, drunk as hell, and he's mad. "He walked into our room," she says. This is from her book, Be My Baby. Quote, "When he walked into our room, I could tell the last thing he was interested in was my body." Remember, she's wearing lingerie and everything. "He was a completely different person than the man I had sat with at the concert three hours earlier. 'You bitch,' he shouted.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  I couldn't believe how mad he looked and worse than I'd ever seen him. He was raving so loud that the veins in his neck were bulging blue. 'I know your game, Veronica,' he shouted. 'You just want my money. That is it, isn't it? I was so scared that I got up and ran out of the bedroom and into the hallway. If Phil was going to kill me, I wanted him to do it where there might be witnesses." What's wrong, Phil? What did your mother tell you? The truth, he panted. That this whole marriage is about one thing: my money. He was so mad, he could barely catch his breath now. Ronnie and her mother locked themselves inside a bathroom for hours, hiding from Phil's rage and unpredictable behavior. Quote, "My mother and I had been living on that pale blue carpet for over an hour when Phil finally wore himself out and went to bed.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  After that, we got kind of drowsy ourselves. I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard my mother sigh. Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, what did you marry? I moved in close to her and I started to cry. Isn't this something I sniffed? Here it is, my wedding night, and I'm spending it curled up on the bathroom floor with my mother."

• 1:14:11Robert Evans?

  Geez. Wow.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  So, it is her wedding day, her wedding day, her wedding day. He goes to a show and then he comes home drunk, drops her off, comes home drunk, screaming and threatening her. An hour, he spent an hour banging on the bathroom door, threatening her, screaming at her. With her and her mom just in the bathroom, cut it up on the floor, crying.

• 1:14:37Robert Evans?

  Wow.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  And that extremely happy moment

• 1:14:40Robert Evans?

  Cool.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Is where we will leave this episode.

• 1:14:44Robert Evans?

  Great, that's part two, baby.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Part two done. I am Greasy Will. You can find me all over the internet. I have lots of things for sale if you ever want to buy them. And it is the same thing. You're supporting people's, you're supporting people's livelihoods.

• 1:15:00Robert Evans?

  That's right, their dreams.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Yes, my assistants, they're drug-free. So you know, when I pay them money, it's not going to drugs.

• 1:15:09Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  That is super courteous. That's the best you can say about anybody.

• 1:15:13Robert Evans?

  That's right, that's right. Whereas I take all of my profits and hand them out underneath a bridge so that people can buy drugs, not me.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  You might as well pay me in heroin, you know? Like, just pay me in heroin.

• 1:15:24Robert Evans?

  Just pay the strangers I give money to in heroin.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  You are Robert Evans, my good friend and founder of I Write OK on the internet.

• 1:15:36Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  And also here.

• 1:15:38Robert Evans?

  Yes, that's true.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  And on Netflix, on Netflix. You might be watching this on the Netflix. Bro, this is the closest I will ever come to success.

• 1:15:45Robert Evans?

  You could watch this and then watch another one of Netflix's classic hit shows, like, um, whatever movie is out now.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  That one about that pervert guy that kidnaps people and keeps them in their basement.

• 1:15:57Robert Evans?

  Sure, you could be watching The Pervert next.

• 1:16:00Speaker 09

  Wow.

• 1:16:04Speaker 09

  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/behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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• 1:17:39Speaker 11

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• 1:18:45Speaker 04

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.