late-night television program on KTLA called âRocket to Stardom.â Sponsored by an Oldsmobile salesman named Bob Yeakel, and broadcast from Yeakelâs showroom, the program was a showcase of young amateur talent in Los Angeles. Spector and Lieb performed âIn the Still of the Nightâ and won the nightâs competition. There were many talented people in Spectorâs circle now, but he was fulcrum; his moves were the ones all the others were watching.
âWe all were moving, with our own ambitions,â Michael Spencer said. âBut it was Phillip who moved fastest.â
Phil Spector, Marshall Lieb, and their loose conglomeration of soulmates continued gigging after graduation day at Fairfax High in June of 1957, but the world was smaller now, less open to flights of fancy. In the fall, Phil and Marshall enrolled at Los Angeles City College, and Michael Spencer was at UCLA. Marshall chose political science as a major, but Phil was undecided. With Paris-born Bertha as an influence and tutor, he had taken French in high school, and studied it with such a frenzy that he was now fluent in the languageâfomenting what Michael Spencer thought was âa tremendous desire to master something, anything, to prove to himself he could do it.â A more functional outlet for that urge in college became court reporting, a natural dalliance for fingers as nimble as his. With his usual abandon, Spector rapidly progressed; practicing at home, he spent every afternoon in front of the television, watchingDick Clarkâs âAmerican Bandstandâ and transcribing the dialogue onto his stenotype machine.
During the winter months, it grew more evident that the last link in Spectorâs music chain had to happen now or be lost forever. Phil Spector knew heâd have to cut a record.
Everything was organized in a way that on the first run-through weâd do this, on the second weâd do these parts, on the third these parts. All those things we did took on names years later, like stacking and overdubbing. We innovated all that
.
â MARSHALL LIEB
In the late spring of 1957, kids all over Los Angeles were descending on recording studios in such numbers that this buffalo run had emerged as the hub of the West Coast rock scene. The western record labels were mostly shoestring operations; they signed kid acts by the truckload, on the cheap, hoping for one record that would click. The demos the kids were coming in with were frequently sent out as-is to radio programmers. Major rock-and-roll record sessions were atypical in L.A., and most of the records produced didnât have the tight, clean sound of the expensive union sessions in New York and Memphis. In the mid-fifties, L.A.-based labels began issuing hits that were the product of a few instruments rattling around in adrafty studio. The echoey, muddy sound, though an accident of deprivation, was effectively a musical duplication of the wide, smoggy expanse of California, and people began imitating and extending it using artificial echoes and tape overdubsâboth of which became staples of the newborn âWest Coast sound.â
Phil Spector, as was his habit, was knee-deep in the industry trends and techniques. He had begun to show up at studios around town, introducing himself and saying whatever would enable him to be allowed to watch sessions. A favorite haunt was Gold Star Sound Studios on Vine Street in Hollywood. This was the hot studio in town. The Hi-Los recorded at Gold Star, and the Four Lads, and their lushly echoed harmonies were a primer on the white-and-light sound. Gold Star had not one but
two
echo chambers, built with great foresight by the studioâs owners, Stan Ross and Dave Gold, in 1950. That, too, was an accident of fate. Renovating an old store into two small studios, Ross and Gold had to conform to the storeâs dimensions, including a very low ceiling, fourteen feetâmost studios cleared twenty
Kate Kelly, Peggy Ramundo