He's a Rebel

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Book: Read He's a Rebel for Free Online
Authors: Mark Ribowsky
confidence—but when Phillip was playing music, he had a tremendous aggression.”
    Spencer thought he knew why: “It was perhaps a desire to be independent from his mother. Phil was overly dependent on Bertha when we met, very coddled by her, smothered really. The relationshipthey had was extremely intense, because they were both very emotional people, and Phil’s aggressive personality burst out of there, as a way of compensating for being dependent so much of the time.”
    Spector, Lieb, and Spencer began taking gigs around Los Angeles and ran into bands making the same scene. One was called the Sleepwalkers, a group from Union High School. The rivalry between Fairfax and Union was fierce, and it carried over to the two bands. Spector took to talking himself up, and it was a technique that came easy to him. Without batting an eyelash, Spector told the Sleepwalkers’ drummer, Sammy Nelson, that he had produced several hit records that were on the charts. When Nelson told this to his skeptical bandmates, Bruce Johnston and Kim Fowley—the latter the son of actor Douglas Fowley (“Doc” on television’s “Wyatt Earp”) and the grandson of composer Rudolf Friml—they went to a record store to check the records, seeing if Spector’s name was anywhere on them. It wasn’t, but Spector had already thought of that: he knew he’d be safe because producer’s credits were never given. Still, the Union High bunch was not fooled.
    â€œI guess they lied a lot over at Fairfax,” Fowley said.
    Having sung with a black L.A. vocal group called the Jayhawks, Fowley was not overly impressed with Spector’s unnamed band.
    â€œThe Sleepwalkers were much more creative than whatever Spector was doing,” he insisted. “Both of us played biker parties, bar mitzvahs at the Brentwood Temple, then we’d run across the street and do the Catholics’ lonelyhearts club crap at the CYO. But when those guys played, we’d be out stripping cars in the parking lot and giving beer to kids our age and younger. We got wallflowers to let us use their houses; we’d give ’em money, set ’em up in a hotel with hookers, and we’d have our own house parties. Or sometimes we’d roll queers in Hollywood for beer money.”
    Spector’s group was arrow-straight, clean-nosed Fairfax boys. In time, it grew to include various configurations built around Phil and Marshall and the doo-wop and Everly Brothers songs the two would choose for their gigs. Spector was always looking for people who could sing with him. He joined a Fairfax High music club called the Barons, and out of its ranks he plucked what became a rotating carousel of strong-throated singers to take on gigs, which usually paid less money than what it cost in gas to get there in Marshall’s old Dodge. Among the singing partners were Spector’s next-door neighbor,Steve Gold, as well as kids named Steve Price, Donnie Kartoon, Bart Silverman, and Harvey Goldstein. None but Phil played an instrument well, and Spector would play guitar and sometimes piano if Mike Spencer wasn’t around, at which time Marshall would do a turn on guitar. One gig, by far the most profound for these nice Jewish boys, was at El Monte Legion Stadium, where they managed to place themselves in one of the shows hosted there by Johnny Otis himself. This was in the middle of black and Mexican ethnic L.A., a hotbed of purebred R&B, and while they played to a lukewarm response, Phil and Marshall had a giddy exhilaration simply standing on the hallowed ground of Johnny Otis’s stage.
    In the spring of 1957, Spector could actually swagger up the steps of the Fairfax High auditorium stage and perform on his guitar “Rock Island Line,” the British skiffle tune popularized by Lonnie Donegan, at a talent show. It surprised nobody that Spector won the contest. Not long after, Spector and Lieb went on a

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