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By Root 727 0

that has no meaning, and all I mean by that is free activity. Play. Activity that has nothing in it except just what it is. No repercussions. No motivation. Free . . . activity. I think there should be a national carnival much the same as Mardi Gras in Rio. There should be a week of national hilarity . . . a cessation of all work, all business, all discrimination, all authority. A week of total freedom. That’d be a start. Of course, the power structure wouldn’t really alter. But someone off the streets—I don’t know how they’d pick him, at random perhaps—would become president. Someone else would become vice president. Others would become senators, congressmen, on the Supreme Court, policemen. It would just last for a week and then go back to the way it was. I think we need it. Yeah. Something like that.

This may be insulting, but I have a feeling I’m being put on . . .

A little bit. But I don’t know. People would have to be real for a week. And it might help the rest of the year. There would have to be some form of ritual to it. I think something like that is really needed.

You’ve twice said that you think you successfully manipulated the press. How much of this interview was manipulated?

You can’t ever get around the fact that what you say could possibly turn up in print sometime, so you have that in the back of your mind. I’ve tried to forget it.

Is there some other area you’d like to get into?

How about . . . feel like discussing alcohol? Just a short dialogue. No long rap. Alcohol as opposed to drugs?

Okay. Part of the mythology has you playing the role of a heavy juicer.

On a very basic level, I love drinking. But I can’t see drinking just milk or water or Coca-Cola. It just ruins it for me. You have to have wine or beer to complete a meal. [Long pause]

That’s all you want to say? [Laughter]

Getting drunk . . . you’re in complete control up to a point. It’s your choice, every time you take a sip. You have a lot of small choices. It’s like . . . I guess it’s the difference between suicide and slow capitulation.

What’s that mean?

I don’t know, man. Let’s go next door and get a drink.

PHIL SPECTOR

by Jann S. Wenner

November 1, 1969

You worked at Atlantic, a white-owned company, dealing primarily with black music. Was there any resentment from the artists?

Oh yeah, man, “We bought your home, goddamn, and don’t you forget it, boy. You livin’ in the house we paid for, you drivin’ a Cadillac we got, man. It’s ours. You stole it from us.”

You heard that from the beginning of time. All the Drifters were gettin’ was $150 a week and they never got any royalties. It wasn’t that Atlantic didn’t pay them; it was that everybody screwed everybody in those days. I mean I was in the Teddy Bears and what did we get—one penny a record royalties!

What has disappeared completely is the black groups, other than what you have comin’ out of Motown and your other few—and I don’t mean Stax-Volt because I don’t consider that what I’m talking about. The group on the corner has disappeared. It’s turned into a white psychedelic or a guitar group, there are thousands of them. There used to be hundreds and hundreds of black groups singin’ harmony with a great lead singer and you’d go in and record them.

You used to go down to Jefferson High or 49th and Broadway and could get sixteen groups. Today you can’t find them; they’re either involved in the militant thing or they just passed, like it’s not their bag anymore, or like it’s just disappeared. It’s not the big thing to get together after school and harmonize. And it used to be a real big thing. It was very important. I guess they just got tired of knocking on record doors, and they saw that a whole new regime had taken over.

This is why you have the music business dominated in the black area by just two companies. Because there is just really no place for them to go. They’ve just sort of disbanded. Other than Motown you don’t see any groups, colored groups. The Dells happened for a while on that Cadet label from Chicago or whatever.