Phil Spector - Part "I" (sounds like eye) - "The Later Productions"
LEONARD COHEN: [[From Wikipedia)
By the mid-1970s, both Cohen and Spector were on a downward slide commercially. Although he remained quite popular in Europe, Cohen had never managed to achieve the success in the United States that Columbia Records had hoped for. Spector, who had created scores of hits like "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" with his Wall of Sound production technique in the 1960s, had experienced a rebirth of sorts in the early seventies by producing albums by John Lennon and George Harrison but, as the decade wore on, the always eccentric producer's behaviour became increasingly unhinged. The craziness would escalate when Spector reunited with Lennon to record a rock and roll oldies project called "Roots", which would eventually come out in 1975 under the title "Rock 'N' Roll". The sessions took place in a chaotic fog of drugs, booze, and hangers-on as the equally troubled Lennon drank his way through his infamous "lost weekend." In the 2003 book Phil Spector: Wall of Pain, biographer Dave Thompson recounts one famous incident when Spector, a notorious gun nut, fired off a pistol in the studio. "Listen Phil, if you're goin' to kill me, kill me, " Lennon remarked dryly, "but don't fuck with me ears. I need 'em." Such behaviour did Spector's reputation no favors, and as the hits dried up, he was viewed more and more by the rock press as an oldies act.
As Ira Nadel notes in the 1996 Cohen memoir Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen, stories differ as to how Cohen and Spector became collaborators:
The liner notes on the album state that Marty Machat, who was Spector's lawyer as well as Cohen's, introduced them. According to Cohen, this occurred backstage after one of his performances at the Troubadour in L.A.. Spector had uncharacteristically left his well-protected home to see Cohen, and at the show was strangely silent. Spector then invited Cohen back to his home, which, because of the air-conditioning, was very chilly -- about "thirty-two degrees," Cohen recalled...Spector locked the door and Cohen reacted by saying, "As long as we are locked up, we might as well write some songs together." They went to the piano and started that night. For about a month they wrote [[and drank) together and Cohen remembers it as a generous period, although he had to wear an overcoat almost constantly to work in Spector's freezing home.
Biographer Anthony Reynolds writes in the 2010 book Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life that friend and fellow Canadian songwriter Joni Mitchell tried to warn Cohen about working with Spector, Mitchell having witnessed some of the insanity between Spector and Lennon in L.A., but initially - at least at the songwriting stage - the pair worked well together. Songwriter John Prine, who had also witnessed the producer's bizarre antics when he had been invited to his house to compose a song together, later marveled to Paul Zollo of BluebirdRailroad magazine that as soon as Spector "sat down with an instrument, he was normal." Things would change once Cohen and Spector entered a studio, with the producer's paranoia taking over and Cohen becoming increasingly disengaged from the project.
Warner Brothers WB M5 3125 [[Released 11/1977) [[Later reissued on Columbia)
LEONARD COHEN
"Death Of A Ladies' Man"
All tracks written by Leonard Cohen [[Words) & Phil Spector [[Music)
Producer: Phil Spector
Side A:
1) "True Love Leaves No Traces" [[w/Ronee Blakely)
https://youtu.be/FT3Fg2TtmlI
2) "Iodine"
https://youtu.be/9FY80bxTvCY
3) "Paper-Thin Hotel"
https://youtu.be/rN6H3B42j1k
4) "Memories"
https://youtu.be/cGPlzD7EEbs
Side B:
1) "I Left A Woman Waiting"
https://youtu.be/6AQFKPCCaxs
2) "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On"
https://youtu.be/AxQ7YJH0vxg
3) "Fingerprints"
https://youtu.be/0NUca6Ruul0
4) "Death Of A Ladies' Man"
https://youtu.be/_RzPxX0msFg
