COVER STORY : Tearing Down the Wall of Silence : Pop legend Phil Spector is talking comeback a decade after drawing the curtain on his life

For the better part of the ‘80s, legendary rock producer Phil Spector lived in seclusion behind the walls of his Beverly Hills mansion. While his classic hits from the ‘60s were still celebrated, the pop world whispered stories about the reclusive record producer’s eccentric behavior, past and present--tales that led some to call him the Howard Hughes of rock.

In the early ‘60s, Spector’s records captured teen dreams with such a big , complex musical sweep that his style became known as the “Wall of Sound.”

Among his biggest ‘60s hits: the Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel” and “Then He Kissed Me”; the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”; Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans’ “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ ” and “Unchained Melody.”

In the early ‘70s, Spector went on to work with the Beatles on the “Let It Be” album and then with John Lennon and George Harrison after the group broke up.

During the mid-’70s, however, the producer became increasingly eccentric and reclusive and essentially disappeared in 1980.

The Wall of Sound had become the Wall of Silence.

Now, more than a decade later, Spector, who will turn 51 next month, is sitting in an elegant 25th-floor hotel suite overlooking Central Park, playing the perfect host.

Leading his guest past the door with a “privacy” sign on it, Spector tours the elegant and tidy three-bedroom suite.

Classical music plays softly in the background. Trays on the coffee table in the living room are filled with candy, including Tootsie Pops and chocolates, as well as an array of fresh fruit. There’s enough liquor and soft drinks to stock a bar for a small wedding reception.

Spector’s smile is relaxed, and he’s eager to talk--a bit surprising, since this is his first formal interview in 14 years.

Why now? He has a lot of reasons for breaking his seclusion and silence. The practical reasons include the release of a four-disc box set of his biggest hits and to announce his intentions to make a comeback by returning soon to the studio to make some new music. But this particular Sunday evening Spector dwells on a more personal reason for talking now: the wild tales that have circulated about him, some of them starting before he slipped behind the curtain of his Beverly Hills mansion walls in 1980.

During the last few years Spector had become increasingly concerned that his musical accomplishments would be overshadowed by bizarre tales about gunshots in the studio, public drunkenness and wife-beating--many of which were finding their way into books in the late ‘80s.

He saw all this happen in the ‘60s to his close friend Lenny Bruce, who may be better known today for the sordid way he died than for his vast comedic talents. A drug overdose victim, Bruce was found nude on the bathroom floor of his Hollywood home, a needle in his arm and narcotics paraphernalia beside him.

“I started asking myself, ‘Do they remember Lenny Bruce as the philosophical genius and great comic mind--or do they remember him as some sick, stupid morphine addict?’ ” Spector says, speaking rapidly, a Diet Coke on the table in front of him.

The stories about Spector didn’t get as dark as that, but the “Sunset Boulevard” image particularly haunts the record producer: Some people imagined during Spector’s reclusive time that he was stuck away in his cavernous living room listening to his old hits, just as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) watched her old silent movies in her Sunset Boulevard mansion in the classic 1950 film.

Spector is eager to dispel that image.

“That wasn’t me,” he says, forcefully. “I wasn’t this guy sitting in the big house listening to all the old records. In fact, I hadn’t heard them until I went back in the studio to work on the box set.” Spector has spent most of this year putting together the set--”Phil Spector: Back to Mono (1958-1969).” The collection, which will be released this week, features 60 of his most famous recordings plus his landmark 1963 Christmas album.

“The reason I (went into seclusion) is that I needed to get a focus. . . . For a long time, I just didn’t know how I wanted to spend my life. . . . It was after Elvis died and John (Lennon) . . . and there was all that disco, and you just sort of lose interest for a while. . . .

“I guess if I wanted to write a book, I could sell 10 million books by saying it was some sort of religious awakening that made me decide to (straighten my life out again). But I just said, ‘I’m going to turn this around.’ Cause if I really am any kind of genius, I should be able to do (at least) that.”

“Do I have regrets?” he says when asked about his “lost” years. “Sure, lots of them . . . from people I married to records I could have done. I have a lifetime of regrets. I should have gone on a lecture circuit. I should have done something to teach, to talk to people about the music. . . . I should have not wasted all those years. . . .

“Eventually, (being) reclusive becomes an addiction. I never went to the store for years . . . never went out, never did anything. It’s safer hiding away because you don’t have to commit yourself to anything. It’s a (shield) just like the drugs or the drink; only it’s much more painful because you are alive and well and you see everything around you.”

Normally in pop, the singer is the artist--the one who supplies a record’s musical vision. But Spector was the artist on his records, usually involved in virtually every step of a record’s production, from co-writing the material to coaxing the best vocals out of the singers.

And his vision was so expansive that he often brought an army of musicians and singers into the studio to help build his Wall of Sound. He used guitarists, bass players, pianists, drummers and percussionists to achieve a bombardment of sound--but not just power in the harsh rock ‘n’ roll concept of the ‘60s. Instead, Spector wove the competing layers of sound into textures so winning and exhilarating that the records could make your heart skip--the way a first kiss does.

His impact on pop music has been such that his style has echoed in countless pop artists over the years. Bruce Springsteen saluted Spector while inducting Roy Orbison into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 by saying that he dreamed as a youngster of writing songs like Bob Dylan, singing like Roy Orbison and making records like Phil Spector. (Two years later Spector was inducted into the hall.)

Unlike rival producers in the ‘60s who would sometimes knock out a whole album in a couple of days, Spector would often spend weeks or months on individual tracks. If he wasn’t satisfied in the end, he would just keep the recordings in the vault. After all, he owned the record company, Philles (pronounced Phil-les and named after Spector and original partner Lester Sill).

Many of the most respected session players in pop and jazz played on Spector’s records--as well as many young musicians or backgound singers who would go on to stardom on their own. The latter ranged from Sonny and Cher (who would echo parts of the Spector sound on such hits as “I Got You, Babe”) to Leon Russell and Glen Campbell.

Making those records wasn’t easy. It was a 24-hour process; Spector was so obsessed with making the perfect record that he literally, he says, taught himself to become an insomniac. The term Svengali was often applied to him. To many, his style was arrogant and dictatorial, and some writers and vocalists later complained that he just used them.

Those resentments frequently pop up in books about Spector, including autobiographies in the last two years by Ronnie Spector--his second wife and the lead singer of the Ronettes--and Sonny Bono, who was a Spector aide in the early ‘60s.

“You’ve got to remember that these people (who talk in the books) have personal reasons,” Spector says, when asked about the books. “You won’t see (longtime friends) David Geffen in there or Dennis Hopper or Jack Nicholson or Tina Turner. . . . You’ll see the same people who do the same interviews all over the place.”

Agitated, Spector pauses.

“You know what bothers me about the books?--Ronnie’s, the one by Sonny Bozo, all of them,” he finally adds. “There is absolutely no humor . . . even though the times they spent with me were probably the best times of their lives . . . certainly were the best of mine. And I’m sorry that they aren’t happier . . . that their future is in their past. I’m sorry that they all didn’t become Diana Ross, but neither did the Marvelettes.”

Spector was born Dec. 26, 1940, in New York, but he moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1953, five years after his father died. He went to Fairfax High School, and like millions of other teen-agers during rock ‘n’ roll’s explosion, he loved the music of Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Fats Domino.

He dreamed of making his own records. He was 17 and still at Fairfax when he wrote and produced his first hit for the Teddy Bears, a vocal trio he put together with two schoolmates. The song was a sweet, disarming ballad called “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” Its title was borrowed from the tombstone of his father, Ben.

Even though Spector had sung on that record, he instinctively knew that his success was going to come as a writer and producer. After the first hit, he headed to New York, where he worked on a variety of projects, trying to get experience and build a name for himself. He co-wrote “Spanish Harlem” with Jerry Leiber, then produced such hits as “Corrina, Corinna” with Ray Peterson, “Every Breath I Take” with Gene Pitney and “I Love How You Love Me” with the Paris Sisters.

In early 1962, Spector had enough experience and clout to start his own record company, Philles--and that’s where his genius flourished. From March, 1962, through December, 1965, he had 21 hits in the Top 50.

Believing that he had brought his Wall of Sound as far as he could at the time of Ike & Tina Turner’s “River Deep--Mountain High” in 1966, Spector closed Philles Records and began looking for new challenges. He was only 25.

After a brief period of withdrawal during which he produced some records released by A&M;, Spector found a project worthy of his talent at the start of the ‘70s: the Beatles.

He produced John Lennon’s hit single “Instant Karma” in early 1970 and then began assembling the “Let It Be” album after members of the then-feuding quartet had thrown their hands up in frustration.

Spector continued producing albums with Lennon and George Harrison, most notably Lennon’s “Plastic Ono Band” (1970) and “Imagine” (1971)--two of the most acclaimed albums of the rock era. He also produced the Grammy-winning album “The Concert for Bangladesh” in 1972.

It was at the end of this period that Spector’s eccentric behavior got worse. The stories abounded: The 5-foot-7 producer would show up apparently drunk in restaurants and, flanked by bodyguards, sometimes verbally abuse friends or challenge strangers to fights. And then there were those tales of gunshots in the studio.

Spector now says the stories were exaggerated, but he does acknowledge some wild times. He says that even he can’t articulate the reasons for his behavior other than to say he was finally letting his hair down after all the hard work in the ‘60s and early ‘70s.

“What people couldn’t understand was that just because there were drinking stories in the ‘70s they assumed that it existed in the ‘60s,” he says, sitting in the hotel suite. “That’s what was so funny about the scene with me and the coke spoon in ‘Easy Rider’ (1969). Everybody assumed that was what I really was doing all that time.

“I ran a company all that time (in the ‘60s). I wouldn’t drink, do drugs, nothing. I lived and died with every record. I felt invincible and scared at the same time. I was working 24 hours a day. I thought sleep was a waste of time. I didn’t even think about drugs, and I never had alcohol (to any extent) until 1972, when I went to England to work with George Harrison on his album and I started getting bored.”

It’s easy to see why John Lennon and Phil Spector hit it off. They both had common musical heroes (Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry) and immense talent. At the time of their teaming, they also were ready to party.

In fact, the making in late 1973 of Lennon’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” album, a collection of oldies, was, by most accounts, one long Southern California party.

“What happened is that John came out to California, and for the first time I started living that rock ‘n’ roll (fast-lane) thing,” Spector says now. “Even during the ‘60s, I was very low-key, never went out, never did. There were very few pictures of me. By the time of the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ album, we were two guys having fun. Instead of making a recording session as serious as possible, I would make it somewhere between Damon Runyon and Fellini.

“And the problem was we let everyone see it. It was amazing how John could attract people. Every night he could have a thousand people around him. And everybody went away with a different version of the truth.”

After working with Lennon, Spector signed a deal with Warner Bros. Records to release a greatest-hits package as well as new work.

Though he worked during the period with Cher and Dion, none of the assorted records convinced the industry that Spector was back as a producer. More often, there was talk about those sessions--especially the ones with Leonard Cohen in 1977.

In interviews late that year, Cohen was clearly confused and shaken by his weeks with Spector during the making of the album “Death of a Ladies Man”--a work so intense and dark that it finished in some critics’ Top 10 lists that year and in some critics’ Bottom 10. Cohen told the New York Times at the time: “I’d just heard he was a genius who knew how to make records--I had no idea of the ordeal of a session with him. I never thought I’d give up that much control.

“But it’s very hard to fight him--he just disappears. He was in possession of the tapes; his bodyguard took them back to his house every night. I knew he was mad, but I thought that his madness would be more adorable, on the ordinary, daily level. I love the guy, but he’s out of control.”

Earlier in the year Spector himself surfaced for an interview with the Los Angeles Times in connection with the release of his own greatest-hits package and talked about the craziness inside and outside the studio.

“It had to stop,” Spector said at the time. “I realized it was detrimental. . . . I’m ready for anything now. Nothing frightens me. I feel I can do more now than I could ever do. I feel extremely ready musically. . . . I don’t want my sessions to be circuses anymore. . . . It’s time to get serious again.”

When the words from that 1977 interview are read back to him, Spector is subdued as he sits in his New York hotel suite in 1991.

“I probably wanted to believe that, but as I finally realized, I was not ready,” he says softly. “I felt I belonged in the studio, should be working, but I felt I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I stopped and paid back Warner Bros. all the advance they had given me.”

Spector achieved a minor victory when he produced the Ramones’ 1980 album “End of the Century,” which was cheered by critics and reached No. 44 on the charts--the highest an album by the good-natured punk group had registered at that point. But the sessions did not go easily, and Spector dropped out of sight.

Quips Spector about the years following: “I just sat and emulated what I thought the great kings of the past did--or what Howard Hughes did.”

The elegant suite he sits in today has been Spector’s New York home since the ‘60s, and he thinks he’ll spend more time here in the future.

He enjoys the city’s compactness and the late-night restaurants like Elaine’s and local jazz clubs like Condon’s, where he frequently spends Monday nights with David Letterman sidekick Paul Shaffer, listening to big bands.

“The truth is I probably never really liked L.A.,” Spector says, smiling at the admission as he sits in a limo on the way to Elaine’s for a late dinner. “I’m in a minority, I know that . . . but I like season changes, and if I have to go overseas, I like going from here. Besides, there’s something very uneven about L.A. . . . maybe it’s just the memories.”

The memories. . . .

It’s easy to imagine the pressures on Spector during the ‘80s. Here was the man who once seemed invincible in the studio sitting in Beverly Hills and passively watching his empire and reputation slowly drain away.

Many of his most trusted friends--including Lennon, Lenny Bruce and journalist Ralph J. Gleason--had died. And the one thing in his life that once gave him the most comfort and self-confidence--the recording studio--held no attraction.

It wasn’t until 1988 that Spector began to think seriously about trying to make a comeback.

For most of the decade, Spector had not paid careful attention to business matters, and after the death in 1988 of longtime attorney-adviser Marty Machet, he turned to Allen Klein, the tough New York business manager who had put Spector together with the Beatles.

Around that time, he had also begun to toy with the idea of becoming more public again in the industry. The opportunity presented itself in October, 1988.

Spector was to be honored at a country music awards dinner in Nashville, Tenn., for “To Know Him Is to Love Him”--which had been named country song of the year by BMI after a new recording of the tune by the team of Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.

The warm reception and standing ovation he received that night gave him the courage to attend another dinner the following January--for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where for the first time in more than a decade he would be in the company of his rock ‘n’ roll peers.

For good luck, he wore the same tuxedo he had worn in Nashville and brought the same bodyguards. He even entered the Waldorf Astoria Hotel ballroom on the same schedule (10 minutes before the dinner) as in Nashville.

But that’s where the similarities ended: His glorious re-entry into the pop aristocracy turned into an excruciatingly painful evening.

There was considerable tension in the room as this pop legend and exile, accompanied by the bodyguards, began walking to the stage. You could hear the gasps in the room when Spector stumbled on the way to the platform (he tripped on a stage wire) and then stood frozen before starting to ramble on. Many in the room surely thought he was drunk.

“That night verified for many people everything they had heard about me, everything they had read in the books,” he says, shaking his head at the memory. “It disqualified everything else. I don’t know what happened up there. I don’t know why I had bodyguards with me. Who was I afraid of? Ahmet (Ertegun, the head of Atlantic Records and longtime Spector booster who started the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)?

“All I know, it was the first time in my life that I was publicly inarticulate, that I had ever disappointed myself (at such an occasion), and it was the worst time to have done it.”

But, once back in Southern California, in the weeks afterward, he decided not to withdraw again but to fight back.

Spector remembers feeling ill around this period so he went to see a doctor.

“I didn’t even say two words to (the doctor before) he asks, ‘Are you depressed?’ I asked what he meant, and he said I didn’t (look like) I felt good about myself. And he was spot on. I realized for the first time why someone could commit suicide and get physically ill over emotional health. (Depression) can make you physically ill. And I said, ‘That’s it.’ I’m not going to let them scare me away. I was always scared, but I was always able to function. I never had (felt the need to) hide behind anything.”

With Klein’s help, Spector straightened out some tangled business matters, and he sent out a signal that he wasn’t going to sit back and let the rumors about the “wild days” continue to escalate.

He filed a $30-million defamation suit in 1989 against writer Mark Ribowsky over “He’s a Rebel,” a Spector biography published by Dutton. The suit charged that the book contained “false and defamatory statements.” The New York Daily News reported in September that an out-of-court settlement was worked out under which certain passages will be eliminated in any paperback edition of the book.

A lawyer representing Dutton acknowledged that a settlement had been reached but declined to discuss the details, because under the settlement terms neither the publisher nor Spector is supposed to talk about the matter. A source indicated that the passages involved allegations of wife abuse, child abuse, racism and forcing writers to share credit with Spector if their songs were to be used on his records.

Spector’s music may be known worldwide, but his face is not readily known outside of music-biz circles. There have been few photographs taken of him since the ‘60s and--except for the Teddy Bears--he was the producer, not the artist, so you wouldn’t see his photo in stories about the records.

With his short stature and Prince Valiant-style hair, it’s easy to mistake him for Dudley Moore. He didn’t seem at all fazed during dinner a few weeks before the New York interview when a fan walked up to his table at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge and asked “Mr. Moore” for an autograph.

Spector took the mistake well, but later, during the New York interview, he mentioned how he enjoyed cultivating a flamboyant image in the ’60 to draw attention to himself.

“One of the reasons I wanted to live in the house (in Beverly Hills) that Woolworth owned was because I wasn’t an artist, out on the road and visible,” he says. “I wasn’t Paul Simon or Bob Dylan. The house was a way of certifying the importance. The same with the bodyguards, all that stuff.

“In the ‘60s, I didn’t care what they said about my bodyguards. It didn’t bother me when they wrote about the chains and the gates around the house, because that told people I was important.”

It’s not easy for Spector to talk about the difficult times, and he knows that it will take time--and some deeds--before he effectively erases the images from some of the stories that have circulated over the last two decades.

What did he do in the Beverly Hills mansion all those years?

Spector is vague when asked about those days. All he cares to share is that he watched TV, read, studied languages--and turned down overtures from friends who tried to contact him.

“I’m seeing people again that I missed,” he says. “It was stupid of me to cut people out of my life completely. I’ll still keep somewhat private. I have certain people that I see, but I don’t go out of my way to be public. There has to be a difference between privacy and reclusiveness. It’s not that I can’t go anywhere. It’s just that I choose not to.”

His relief was palpable when the talk turned away from the troubled years. He’s an engaging conversationalist who livens up many of his stories by imitating--quite uncannily--the accents of some of the people in the stories, from John Lennon to Ike Turner.

Spector apparently keeps a casual eye on the pop scene--and insists that he’s not intimidated by any of the changes that have taken place since his peak years. He mentions (favorably) a lot of acts, including U2. He’s intrigued by some of the things going on in rap, and he thinks that Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose has an amazing voice. But Spector says he’s never been all that influenced by what’s on the charts.

The twice-married Spector is now single but has five children, from age 9 to twins in their 20s. He moved out of the Beverly Hills mansion about three years ago and has lived in recent years in a house in Pasadena.

He also keeps a suite at a Beverly Hills hotel in addition to the one in New York. He enjoys hotel living, he says. To reach him by phone at the hotels, you have to use code names. Indicative of his good humor, the code words at both hotels are childhood heroes--in one case a comic book character.

One night, just before leaving the hotel to go take in a big band at Condon’s jazz club, Spector relaxes and chats as he waits for the limo.

He enjoys it when his guest asks about some of the photographs in the living room.

There’s one of Spector with Al Pacino. “Recognize that expression?” he says, expectantly. “Someone came (up to) us with a camera at a party and Al was just looking normal, so I tell him, ‘No, I gotta have the Godfather look,’ and he goes into that look in a second. You see it? . . . Tell me that’s not Michael Corleone.”

But the one that he speaks the most about is the one with Tom Wolfe, taken at this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner--where Spector gave an eloquent induction speech for Ike & Tina Turner that helped erase some of the embarrassment of the 1989 appearance.

Wolfe, the author of “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” tabbed Spector the “tycoon of teen” in a famous 1963 New York Herald Tribune article that is reprinted in the new box set.

The pair have kept in touch over the years, and Spector’s admiration is obvious.

“Tom caught a perspective of what was going on at Philles. He saw the humor, the music, the genius, whatever that was going on. Most importantly, he saw the sense of destiny . . . that I wasn’t just trying to make records to compete with whatever else was out at the time. I was trying to instill in everybody who worked with me that we were a serious art form no matter what (TV commentator David) Susskind or the others said.

“People were saying, ‘Rock ‘n’ roll? You kidding? Write a book, do something important.’ But I always believed that what we were doing was important, and I tried to tell the musicians and singers that, whether it was Ronnie or Tina.”

At Condon’s, the room is almost empty as Spector and his party of five take a table by the edge of the stage. Spector moves his head with the rhythm and applauds politely at the end of each solo. He seems to be genuinely enjoying himself. There is still the studio challenge, however.

He hopes to enter the studio early next year, but he’s not mentioning what artists he might work with.

There have been reports that he offered to go into the studio with some major figures--including Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, Linda Ronstadt and Tina Turner--to cut a track that would only be included on an album if the artist approved the final product. He has already written some songs, collaborating with Hal David, among others.

“Sure, you worry about the Babe Ruth syndrome,” he said back in his suite, standing by an electronic keyboard that is placed by a window so that he can look out at Central Park while he composes. “You know there are some people out there who’ll be waiting for you to strike out, but you’ve got to go up to the plate anyway.

“I feel I belong in the studio. I don’t want to mention words like God and Providence , but that’s where I feel at home. What burned inside of me most of the time (in the ‘80s) was that I didn’t know what to do with my life . . . and other people did. I realized these guys like Nicholson and Spielberg and Scorsese and Coppola are making films. They’re doing what they do better than anyone else, and what am I doing? I haven’t forgotten anything. I should be out there, too.”

At one point during the interview in his hotel suite, Spector reminisces about taking off on his own to New York in the late ‘50s, determined to make a name for himself in the record business after his first success with the Teddy Bears.

So what was the 18-year-old Spector like?

“Oh,” the 50-year-old Spector says, smiling at that image. “He was piss and vinegar . . . arrogant . . . a real, I-could-do-it-all person. I used to record people for nothing, just to get into the studio.”

If he had a chance to go back and give that kid a bit of advice, what would it be?

He smiles again and says without hesitation: “Watch out for 1980.”