Spector versus Wilson

[Banana]

And one more thing, I think Phil could have been an all-around guru like Brian, had he wanted to maybe (well, maybe not quite, but...) After all, he did write The Teddy Bears' To Know Her Is To Love Him. That's not a half bad first song by anyone's standards. I've always wondered why he didn't write more.

He started out wanting to be a musician...but gave up when he realized he'd never be a world-class guitarist (he took lessons from some famous jazz session guitarist).  He just wanted to work in music and he came to the conclusion that with his attention to detail that production was where it was at.  He did receive writing credits on many of his songs...not sure what he added.  I've always thought that Brian really wanted to be more of a Spector figure...the guy behind the glass creating pocket symphonies for other musicians...not as the leader of a working band like he became.

[monicker]

Now that we are at it, has anyone thought how the golden era BB songs would have sounded if they were produced by Spector? In some cases the results would have been glorious (imagine: third attempt at Help me, Rhonda, produced by Spector. It would have been killer), but in most instances it wouldn't have worked. Individual voices and harmony intricacies would have gotten lost in the wall of sound.

Someone here, in the thread about what songs you wish the BB had covered, suggested what if The Ronettes, in 1966, had done Pet Sounds in its entirety with Spector producing, and that thought is...too exciting and tantalizing to handle. I can't really get that fantasy out of my mind since having read that a while back. What an amazing parallel universe scenario to dream about. It would be really odd and hard to get used to, sure, but i bet it would be spectacular and highly enjoyable nonetheless. 

[BJL]

I want to re-iterate what was said above, that Spector wasn't an arranger, and the Wall of Sound was in many respects a collaborative creation with Jack Nitzche, who first worked with Spector, to my knowledge, on He's a Rebel, which is, not concidentally, the first Philles record that really nails the wall of sound approach.  Spector was tireless at promoting his own legend, and taking credit away from others - for example, the song Unchained Melody, not originally intended as a single, was arranged by Bill Medley, a fact which Spector has flat out lied about over and over since it became such an enduring production. 

As a song writer, Spector really did contribute to all those songs, often just a bridge, but he was generally in the room as they were being written, and the songwriters he worked with tend to talk about those songs as genuine collaborations.  That said, he was working with some of the best songwriters in LA, and as a solo song-writer, he had a knack for melody but just couldnt get away from those cliches fifties style doo-wop chord progressions.   

Most important, to my mind, is that Phil Spector utterly failed to see that albums were the future of popular music.  In the mid 60s, Phil Spector was leaving song after song of truly spectacular material in the can, while generally refusing to produce whole albums.  The one time that Spector applied himself to a whole album, it was a christmas album - and even so, it became one of the most influential and enduring albums of all time, which is in and of itself enough to show that had he applied himself to creating albums the way Brian did beginning with, arguably, All Summer Long and Today, the results would have been breathtaking. 

Finally, I agree with most of the posters here that Brian was more talented, more original, more musical, and a better producer, not to mention that he also sang and arranged, neither of which Spector did, and he was one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, which Spector most certainly wasn't.  But still, I think Spector's influence is more prevelent, and his shadow greater on popular music.  Before 1962, there was nothing like the Wall of Sound in popular music.  Be My Baby, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) and the other 1963 Spector hits are musical tour-de-forces which blow everything else on the radio at the time out of the water.  After Spector, and continuing into the present, the bombastic, wall of sound approach is  a huge part of popular music.  It defined the production styles of the 70s and 80s, and continues to profoundly color todays pop music.  They aren't using Spectors technique, but they are wall of sound productions in that the goal is to create intense, many-layered productions that leap off the radio start to finish.  Whether this would have happened without Spector is impossible to know, but the truth is, it happened, and Phil Spector's productions absolutely, in my opinion, revolutionized popular music in a way that Brian simply did not. 

[ontor pertawst]

Still.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKyIZ6h81CI

Surprised Brian didn't try that one for the Disney album.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

(he took lessons from some famous jazz session guitarist)

Howard Roberts.