Day 30 – A Wall Of Sound
The continuing adventures of “Eric’s Trip Around the Sun”. One final trip with the iPod.
Musicians are a weird bunch. Out of all the artists that have been mentioned so far, I can admit that it is difficult to find many choirboys amongst the crowd. In the case of today’s story, it’s not the band that is concerning but rather the producer.
Phil Spector is a complicated man. He is currently serving 19 years to live for killing Lana Clarkson. He has been known to stick a gun in places where they probably shouldn’t be such as Leonard Cohen’s neck during the recording of “Death of a Ladies Man”. Talk about a weird partnership.
Yet, I think that you could make a good case that the Phil Spector produced ‘Be My Baby’ by the Ronettes, would have to be in one of the top 10 pop songs ever recorded. In fact, I think if it does not give you goosebumps listening to it then I would check your pulse.
The songs importance, of course, goes beyond just that of the it’s simple message but the means at which it was recorded. The Ronettes were being run at the time by Phil Spector who was incorporating his “Wall of Sound” approach to recording music.
The Wall of Sounds approach was fairly simple and that was to add several instruments in unison playing the same parts which in turn would create a fairly dense recording. ‘Be My Baby’, is the poster child for this recording technique. But while it is the most famous song, Spector’s technique was used with other artists as well as copied by plenty of others. The Beach Boys are the most obvious.
A pop classic.
• Woods – Be All Be Easy
• Massive Attack – Be Thankful For What You Got
• Yo La Tengo – Be Thankful for What you Got
• Belle & Sebastian – Beautiful