10-64     123 - Ronettes-Walking in the Rain/How Does It Feel
12-64     125 Darlene Love-Christmas/Winter Wonderland
1-65     126 Ronettes-Born To Be Together
3-65     127 Righteous Bros-Just Once in my Life
5-65     128 Ronettes-Is This What I Get
5-65     129 Righteous Bros-Hung OnYou
11-65     130 Righteous Bros-I Love You For Sentimental Reasons
4-66     131 Ike & Tina Turner-I'll Never Need More Than This
?-67     136 Ike & Tina Turner-A Love Like Yours
?-64     Phil Spector 1 - Veronica-So Young
?-64     Phil Spector 2 - Veronica-Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love
8-76     Warner-Spector 0409 - Ronnie Spector-Paradise
12-64     Philles LP4005 - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
6-69     A&M SP 4178 - Ike & Tina Turner-River Deep Mountain High (some tracks)
[and the following newly-released Philles vault tracks]
Darlene Love-Run Run Run Runaway;Strange Love;Long Way To Be Happy
Ronettes-Soldier Baby;Girls Can Tell;Woman In Love;Here I Sit;Keep On Dancing;Everything Under The Sun;Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine
April Stevens-Why Can't a Boy and Girl Just Stay In Love
Crystals-Heartbreaker
Bob B. Soxx-But You Don't Love Me
Modern Folk Quartet-This Could Be the Night
[We were talking about the Bonnie & the Treasures record "Home of the Brave." and its credited producer, Jerry Riopelle...]
Phil really took him [Riopelle] under his wing. He was gonna be his new writer. It came to the point where Phil...it was all his conception,those records,but as soon as he got a press agent he would say that he wrote 'em, arranged them, produced them, and told the singers how to sing them. Everybody started to feel a little funny about that-and then Jeff [Barry] and Ellie [Greenwich] went and recorded "Chapel of Love" with the Dixie Cups and it had been recorded with both the Crystals and the Ronettes before and none of 'em came out, so they went and did that. I went to New York one time, my wife and I, and I ran into Jeff Barry and he invited me over. So I told Phil, I'm going to dinner at Jeff Barry's and he said [growls] "What are you gonna do, listen to the Dixie Cups record?" He said, "I really wish you wouldn't do that," and I said, "Why, we're still friends." He said, "I'd like to create the illusion there are 'separate camps'."
    all these writers were saying one after the another that he's taking all the credit, then he started working with people like Jerry Riopelle. Bonnie & the Treasures...Ronnie sang on that.

The Philles Epitaph

Philles 135 [see listing above]
[Although it's commonly accepted that Phil Spector, mortally offended by American rejection of "River Deep Mountain High," immediately quit the record business, in truth the Philles label lasted for five more issues, not to mention limited pressings of the Ike & Tina Turner album and a Lenny Bruce LP. The last record was a track from the Ike & Tina LP, "A Love Like Yours," but the real last hurrah was an all-stops-out Ike & Tina single recorded after the album, Spector's one last irresistable stab at grabbing the gold ring again, "I'll Never Need More than This."]
    That was after "River Deep." I never heard that. That was the last attempt, I think that was the last one he and I ever did together. This is going to be sad. I think that song would be fun to do again. It's so good. I can see why it wasn't a hit though. A little too "pop" oriented [presumably in the sense of MOR-pop], isn't it?

Mid-60's Wrap-Up

6-64     Concords-Should I Cry (Epic 9697) (Co-wr)
3-65     Jerry Cole-Every Window in the City/Come on Over to My Place (Capitol 5394)(Arr.)
4-64     Righteous Bros-Try To Find Another Man/I Still Love You (Moonglow 231)(Arr;pre-Spector)
9-65     Bobby Vee-Run Like the Devil/Take A Look Around Me (Liberty 55828)(Arr.)
?-65     Explosions-?/? (Liberty)(Arr.)
?-65     GeneMcDaniels-?/? (Liberty)(Arr.)
?-67     Suzi Jane Hokum-Same Old Songs (LHI 191)(Arr.)
9-65     Palace Guard-All Night Long/Playgirl (Orange Empire 331)(Arr.) ["Forget it"]
3-66     MFQ (Modern Folk Quartet)-Night Time Girl/Lifetime (Dunhill 4025)(Prod./Arr.)
1-67     Gentle Soul-Tell Me Love (Columbia 43952)(Arr.)(Prod. T Melcher)
9-68     Monkees-Porpoise Song (Colgems 1031)(Arr.)["I love that one"]
10-66     Tim Buckley-Tim Buckley (Elektra EKL 4004)(Arr. strings)
    I don't remember that one [Jerry Cole]. I do remember he came into a session with a submachine gun once. He's really into guns.
    Done on the same session with the Explosions and Gene McDaniels, all on one date [Bobby Vee]. All Joe Saraceno hits.
    I liked that one [MFQ], sort of. I don't like that mix-I didn't do that mix, Lou Adler did.
    Don't have this one [Gentle Soul] either. I don't remember it. Ry Cooder played on a lot of these. I was on that. The Beatles Baroque.

Young Upside Down

1-67     Buffalo Springfield-Expecting to Fly (Atco 6545)(Co-prod;co-arr.)
1-69     Neil Young-Neil Young (Reprise 6317) (wr;arr. "String Quartet From Whiskey Boot Hill", worked on some other tracks
2-72     Neil Young-Harvest (Reprise MS 2032)(Prod/Arr. "A Man Needs a Maid", "There's A World".)

    I met Neil through Charlie & Brian.
[Was "Expecting to Fly" intended as a Neil Young solo single?]
    Yeah, I was the evil one in that. Stephen never wanted Neil to sing and I thought Neil could do it by himself. Stephen would say, "He's got that funny shaky thing in his voice." I said, "That's the thing I think is interesting."
    I loved that record [Young's first and in some ways best solo LP].
    I set that up with Warners for him to be a solo singer. He asked Denny [Bruce] once when I was going to do the record and Denny said I had the name down in my book, and he said, "I'm not a name in a book. I'm Neil Young!" Neil wanted to be a star.

Crazy Horse

4-71     Downtown/ (Reprise 1007)(Co-prod)
7-71     Dance Dance Dance/ (Reprise 1025) (Co-pr)
9-71     Dirty Dirty/Beggar's Day(Reprise 1046)
3-71     Crazy Horse (Reprise RS 6438)(Co- prod)

    [Nitzsche played in Neil Young's back-up band Crazy Horse in early 1970, and was prevailed upon to join the group when they got a solo deal with Reprise. Their first album (1971), with any number of brilliant Danny Whitten songs, guest Nils Lofgren's chilling "Beggar's Day," and two remarkable songs by Nitzsche and Russ Titelman ("Gone Dead Train," a disturbing rocker earlier cut by Randy Newman for the Performance soundtrack, and a delightful girl-group styled ditty called "Carolay" which is ripe for recutting), holds up extremely well today and is one of the best rock & roll albums of the fallow early 70's.]

    Neil was working with them and he asked me to play piano. Did you really see that tour [a fairly legendary series of warm-up gigs at small California junior colleges, my occasion being a brilliant show at Palomar JC 30 miles north of San Diego] That was a good tour, that one. The last one [ca. 1974] was horrible.
    there they wanted to make an album of their own. Elliott Roberts became my manager and Neil's and they said if I produced it [Crazy Horse] and became part of the group, that it would work, and I did that, for one album... They're not really musicians - they'll give anyone the faith to become musicians. That album was okay. I don't like any of the Nils Lofgren stuff on the album. He's another of them that wants to be a star so bad...

Finagling With The Tubes

?-71     Ron Nagle-Bad Rice (WB 1902)(Prod.)
6-76     Tubes-Don't Touch Me There(A&M 1826)(Arr.)

    Ron Nagle-that's the best undiscovered talent around [an opinion shared by a number of rock writers]. He's super. He's real good at making records.
    Nagle brought me in [on the Tubes session; Nagle having written the song, a satirical gril-group number]. They did miss the point on that record. It's just an imitation, a bad one. Not just the singing [is off], but the whole thing. They wanted that sound as a put-on but they didn't understand it at all. It'd be a lot funnier if they were more serious.

Modern Times Wrap-Up

5-69     Marianne Faithfull-Sister Morphine /Something Better (London 1022)(Arr.)
9-70     Randy Newman-Gone Dead Train (Reprise 0945)(Prod/co-wrote)
4-70     Randy Newman-12 Songs (Reprise 6373)(Co-prod "Let's Burn Down the Cornfield")
7-72     Buffy St.Marie-She Useta Wanna Be a Ballerina (Vanguard VSD 78311)(Co-prod)
4-74     Mac Davis-Stop & Smell the Roses (Columbia 10018)(Arr.)
8-74     Mac Davis-Rock & Roll(Columbia 10070)
4-75     Mac Davis-If You Add All the Love in the World (Columbia 10111)(Arr.)
9-73     Ringo Starr-Photograph (Apple 1865)(Arr.)
Nitzsche also did the music (produced and arranged) for Performance and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and worked on the music for many other films including Candy, Greaser's Palace, Sticks & Bones, and The Exorcist.
[In recent years Nitzsche has been involved in a number of varied projects, many of which he has not enjoyed-he had little to say about working with Mac Davis, for example, and did not seem especially enthusiastic about Cuckoo's Nest.]
    [His future plans seem unsettled...]
    I don't have any. There's a movie that I think is going to be real good, Bob Downey's new movie called Jive.
[Nitzsche has scored that film. He would also like to work with Ronnie Spector again, and at press time there seems to be at least a slight hope that it could happen. Jack Nitzsche is obviously an independent type, one who had and probably will again have trouble fitting smoothly into the banal everyday record biz routine and its prevailing attitudes. The unimaginative souls who account (in more ways than one) for a large proportion of the industry today have trouble pigeonholing Nitzsche, which in part explains his rather patternless track record of the past few years. But looking over the record of his accomplishments from 1960 to 1976, it's impossible not to be awed, and it seems a certainty that this supremely gifted man will continue to create musical monuments in the future.]