Relay: Words And Music

I’ve been in the presence of Phil Spector twice, so I can say with a measure of confidence that I am very lucky to be alive.

A long time ago — 1991 — I was in a restaurant in New York, where the legendary (and legendarily volatile) record producer was seated with the late Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records, and two female companions. One foolish and at least a little tipsy member of my group mistook him for the late actor Dudley Moore, and as the music industry giants passed our table on their way out, he made a spectacularly ill-advised comment about the movie “Arthur.” Mr. Spector, who is serving a 19-years-to-life sentence for the 2003 murder of the actress Lana Clarkson, did not shoot us.

I remembered this chance encounter last Thursday morning when the Phil Spector-produced version of “The Long and Winding Road” played on the radio. That memory spurred another, of a second encounter with the man, on June 25, 2002, at the Russian Tea Room, where ABKCO Records was holding a launch party for “The Rolling Stones Remastered” series of CDs. Well into the evening, a skeletal Mr. Spector, sporting sunglasses and a wig befitting a heavy-metal musician, stopped all conversation with his wordless entrance, again accompanied by two female companions. All eyes were on the reclusive genius, who uttered not a word but did make the sound of one hand clapping — against his thigh — upon hearing an example of the Stones’ remastered catalog. Once again, I had unknowingly cheated death.

But I thought a lot more, upon hearing “The Long and Winding Road” and — on the same radio station, later that day — “Thirteen” by the band Big Star, about Timothy White.

Tim was a wonderful guy. I had the honor of working for him at Billboard for just under two years, until his sudden passing, at 50, less than 48 hours after we’d chatted at that party at the Russian Tea Room.

I’m almost as old as he was now, and my interest in what passes for rock ’n’ roll today has faded almost to oblivion. But, like most people seem to, I still dig the stuff I grew up with and probably always will, and I still like to write about it, or try to.

Tim was a master of that realm. The author of definitive biographies of Bob Marley, the Beach Boys, and James Taylor; of many cover stories and interviews in Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy, and of a consistently brilliant Billboard column called “Music to My Ears,” he was unfailingly insightful, witty, and, notably, courageous. In one such column, he delivered a harsh rebuke to the insufferable rapper Eminem, and by extension his record label — a major advertiser — in bluntly stating that the “main themes” of his latest album “include drugging, raping, and murdering women.” (The “artist” responded in a subsequent recording called “Bitch Please II,” but I won’t waste more ink with his rhymed retort.)

I didn’t often go to the office on Fridays, but did stop in briefly on the morning of June 27, 2002, before heading uptown to a lunch at Sony Music. I saw Tim from the corner of my eye, but we didn’t speak. At Sony, I met with a group that included Jody Stephens, the drummer of Big Star.

Back at home in the afternoon, I cursed the distant ringing telephone as I changed in the bedroom. It was a publicist from Sony, who had been at the lunch.

“Is it true?” he asked.

“Is what true?”

“Timothy White is dead?”

“What? Of course not. I just saw him a few hours ago.”

I called the office. “Is everything okay?” I asked. No, everything was not okay.

As I said, rock ’n’ roll doesn’t excite me as it used to, nor should it. It’s a young man’s game, for those with too much energy and too little experience. But that song “Thirteen” really gets me. For all the tentative awkwardness of its teenage narrator, it is perhaps the most achingly articulate telling of a first crush and its attendant vulnerability. “Won’t you let me walk you home from school?/Won’t you let me meet you at the pool?/Maybe Friday I can/Get tickets for the dance/And I’ll take you.”

Tim probably liked that one, too, and I’m sure he would have written beautifully about it. He was one of the good guys.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.