The Boy Who Cried Freebird Read Free

microphone and cranking up the echo and reverb beyond anything that I had ever heard before.
    â€œPhil used two drummers for the first time, as well as two percussionists. We were falling all over each other, but the sound was huge; there were saxophones, trumpets, and trombones. Phil threw them all together until the instruments reverberated into one giant roar. Later, he would add an entire string section and a battalion of backup singers.
    â€œOf course, the whole thing was done in mono—and nobody made mono recordings like Phil Spector.
    â€œTina tried doing her vocals that day, but she just wasn’t ready for the total Spector experience. So, Phil rehearsed Tina for another week before finally recording her vocal track. That day, there was hardly anyone in the studio—just Phil, Larry, and me. The lights were low and Tina was wearing headphones with Phil’s tremendous sound booming in her ears.
    â€œSpector was relentless, and he kept making Tina sing the song over and over until the sweat came right through her blouse. Finally, she said, ‘Okay Phil, one more time.’ Then she pulled off her shirt, stood there in her bra, and nailed it. She matched Phil’s majestic production punch for punch. It was fantastic.
    â€œWe all figured ‘River Deep’ was headed straight for number one but a funny thing happened…the record bombed. Some said it was overproduced, others thought it was just too far ahead of its time. Besides, Phil had alienated a lot of people in the music industry and many of them were happy to see him fail.
    â€œIn any case, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ flopped, and Phil took it real hard. He became reclusive and hardly made any records at all for about three years. Of course, he rebounded in the ’70s, producing albums like George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s Imagine .
    When the song on the jukebox ended, Harvey the K stood up andsaid that he had to get going. As we said good-bye, I noticed a button on his jacket that read, “Back to Mono.” Then he was gone.
    I was so intrigued by Harvey’s story about Phil Spector that I contacted the American Federation of Musicians Local Union 47 on Vine Street in Hollywood. Sure enough, they had a contract listing for a recording session using twenty-three musicians on March 7, 1966, working on a song entitled “River Deep.”
    The funny thing is, no one named Harvey was listed on that recording session. Not only that, there was absolutely no mention of anyone playing a glockenspiel.

HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL
    It all started out innocently enough. I was trying to get some work done while listening to Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings .
    To tell the truth, I was well into the second CD before I started writing. I’d been unproductive that day and spent hours on the phone before typing a single word. By the time I’d finally gotten into a decent work groove the music on disc 2 had ended and I wrote in silence for about twenty minutes.
    I’d forgotten all about the music when suddenly, Robert Johnson’s blues-ridden wail started coming out of the speakers again. “That’s funny,” I thought. “The disc player isn’t on auto-repeat and there aren’t supposed to be any bonus cuts on this CD.”
    I went into the living room and looked at the digital display on my disc player. The machine read TRACK 30 but when I checked, the CD box listed only twenty-one tracks. The song ended, so I programmed the machine to play track 30 again. No such luck. The song seemed to have vanished.
    I examined the entire CD, track by track, but it only went up to twenty-one. I went backward and forward, but there was nothing elseto be found. I even plugged the damned thing into my computer and read all the existing data. Still no go.
    Feeling confused, I called some people who I thought might have the Robert Johnson collection. After a few