also coming to an end. Lynn had left her parental home and moved into a small apartment in the Valley. She had dreams of becoming a songwriter herself and had struck up a friendship with Lester Sill and his partner Lee Hazlewood. Spector seemed to resent her growing independence and particularly her relationship with Hazlewood. Annette had met Lynn on a couple of occasions with Spector, and could see his infatuation with her. âI think she was really the love of his life. Phil likes women who live life to the full, and Lynn fell into that category, and he was very comfortable around her because of that. He just loved her, loved her, loved her.â
But for Lynn, his jealousy and possessiveness were becoming intolerable.
âHis behavior got too frigging crazy, too absolutely crazy. Where are you? What are you doing? What are you thinking? Where are you going? Controlling.â
Occasionally, she would be out shopping or in a coffee shop and Spector would suddenly appear from out of the blue. She began to suspect he was following her.
âI couldnât understand that at all; it just made me want to run. And I remember saying to Phil, I canât stand it anymore, because I just felt like I was choking. I mean, who could take anybody
constantlyâ¦
â
Finally, she could take no more and stopped seeing him. For Spector, the end of the relationship seemed to encapsulate the growing disenchantment he was feeling with his life in Los Angeles. Since the success of âTo Know Him Is to Love Himâ in the winter of 1958, he had recorded a succession of singles and an album, all of which had been, in commercial terms at least, conspicuous failures. In his conversations with Lester Sill, he began to express a desire to try his luck in New York. Sympathetic to his feelings, and reasoning that it would be in his interests too for Spector to gain more experience elsewhere, Sill contacted his old protégés Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and asked whether they could make use of an apprentice. In the spring of 1960 Spector boarded the plane for New York, and a new life.
4
On Broadway
F lying over the great heartland of America, which had embraced him, and forgotten him, in the space of eighteen short months, Phil Spector would have pondered long and hard at the prospect of now being apprenticed to two men at the very summit of the New York music business hierarchy, and how closely he seemed to be following in their footsteps.
Jerry Leiber had first met Lester Sill in 1950, when Sill was working as the sales manager for Modern Records. Leiber was a student at Fairfax High, who after school worked in Nortyâs, a local record shop specializing in Jewish musicâa white boy who revered black music, selling records by rabbinical cantors. According to Leiber, Sill walked in one day, hawking a new record by the blues singer John Lee Hooker. âI told him, I love the record, but the only thing that sells here is songs for synagogues on high holidays. They will not be buying records by John Lee Hooker.â
When Leiber told Sill that he wrote blues songs himself, Sill asked him to sing one. Impressed by Leiberâs impromptu performance, Sill offered to help circulate his songs and told Leiber to provide him with some lead sheets. âI had no idea what he was talking about. He said, âThose are the sheets where the notes are written down, and under the notes are the wordsââ¦â
Leiber was unable to write music, but shortly afterward he made a serendipitous connection when he was introduced to Mike Stoller, another Jewish boy fatally enamored of black music and already an accomplished jazz pianist. Leiber and Stoller quickly formed a partnership, and with Lester Sillâs help began to make the rounds of what Leiber describes as âthe cottage industryâ of publishers and independent labels in Los Angeles.
They were beating a path that Spector would follow just a few years
But for Lynn, his jealousy and possessiveness were becoming intolerable.
âHis behavior got too frigging crazy, too absolutely crazy. Where are you? What are you doing? What are you thinking? Where are you going? Controlling.â
Occasionally, she would be out shopping or in a coffee shop and Spector would suddenly appear from out of the blue. She began to suspect he was following her.
âI couldnât understand that at all; it just made me want to run. And I remember saying to Phil, I canât stand it anymore, because I just felt like I was choking. I mean, who could take anybody
constantlyâ¦
â
Finally, she could take no more and stopped seeing him. For Spector, the end of the relationship seemed to encapsulate the growing disenchantment he was feeling with his life in Los Angeles. Since the success of âTo Know Him Is to Love Himâ in the winter of 1958, he had recorded a succession of singles and an album, all of which had been, in commercial terms at least, conspicuous failures. In his conversations with Lester Sill, he began to express a desire to try his luck in New York. Sympathetic to his feelings, and reasoning that it would be in his interests too for Spector to gain more experience elsewhere, Sill contacted his old protégés Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and asked whether they could make use of an apprentice. In the spring of 1960 Spector boarded the plane for New York, and a new life.
4
On Broadway
F lying over the great heartland of America, which had embraced him, and forgotten him, in the space of eighteen short months, Phil Spector would have pondered long and hard at the prospect of now being apprenticed to two men at the very summit of the New York music business hierarchy, and how closely he seemed to be following in their footsteps.
Jerry Leiber had first met Lester Sill in 1950, when Sill was working as the sales manager for Modern Records. Leiber was a student at Fairfax High, who after school worked in Nortyâs, a local record shop specializing in Jewish musicâa white boy who revered black music, selling records by rabbinical cantors. According to Leiber, Sill walked in one day, hawking a new record by the blues singer John Lee Hooker. âI told him, I love the record, but the only thing that sells here is songs for synagogues on high holidays. They will not be buying records by John Lee Hooker.â
When Leiber told Sill that he wrote blues songs himself, Sill asked him to sing one. Impressed by Leiberâs impromptu performance, Sill offered to help circulate his songs and told Leiber to provide him with some lead sheets. âI had no idea what he was talking about. He said, âThose are the sheets where the notes are written down, and under the notes are the wordsââ¦â
Leiber was unable to write music, but shortly afterward he made a serendipitous connection when he was introduced to Mike Stoller, another Jewish boy fatally enamored of black music and already an accomplished jazz pianist. Leiber and Stoller quickly formed a partnership, and with Lester Sillâs help began to make the rounds of what Leiber describes as âthe cottage industryâ of publishers and independent labels in Los Angeles.
They were beating a path that Spector would follow just a few years
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