Phil Spector

“We wish you the very merriest of Christmases and the happiest of new years“: with this wish, Phil Spector bid farewell to listeners on the final track of the album he had produced in anticipation of Christmas 1963. Fate, however, would have it go very differently: on the very day the album hit store shelves, November 22nd, came the shocking news that President Kennedy had been assassinated. America suddenly found itself facing a joyless Christmas, and it was decided to pull "A Christmas Gift For You" from the market: its commercial success was irreparably compromised, but not its posthumous fame.

Thirteen tracks, including twelve great classics and one previously unreleased song, performed by four artists/groups from the producer's "stable": Darlene Love, the Ronettes, the Crystals, Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans. This was Spector's project, and it stood as one of the peaks of his talent. A precocious talent, his, one that had made him a legendary figure at just twenty-one years old. By the end of 1963, in fact, Phil Spector had already racked up quite a few milestones: he had launched his girl groups, the Crystals and the Ronettes, he had topped the charts with the untouchable "Be My Baby", he had founded his own label, Philles Records. But above all, he had launched a major revolution in the music industry: he was the first producer to make his role an extremely creative one, as well as being the author of many of the songs he produced. The names of his groups and "artists" were, generally speaking, mere record labels' front, but the true creator was him. With Spector, rock'n'roll was elevated to a work of art, yet without its original spirit being distorted: his songs represented its highest expression before it morphed into something else. He called them "little symphonies for the kids", and they were tracks charged with an emotional tension that at times bordered on overwhelming, in which rock'n'roll matured musically in order to express teenage themes with even greater intensity.

The secret lay in having introduced a symphonic quality and a complexity of arrangement that were, at the time, unheard of in the world of pop music: Spector had a full orchestra at his disposal, doubled up instruments, threw in percussion of every kind, and, through overdubbing, blended it all into his famous "wall of sound", an admirable fusion of Wagnerian symphonism and rock'n'roll. The thematic backdrop of his songs was the celebration of adolescence, yet it seemed to be portrayed not merely as a stage of life, but as an inner condition: a golden age in which emotions are stronger and more sincere, perhaps even more mature than in adulthood. Phil Spector not only gave voice to the joys and sorrows of teenagers, being himself barely older than they were, but did something more: he staged, and left to posterity, a true saga of American youth, almost a story told in episodes. And where, if not in a Christmas setting, could another memorable chapter be written?

In previous years, there had already been a few attempts at bringing together rock and Christmas carols, such as Elvis Presley's "Christmas Album" from 1957. But Phil Spector's genius went well beyond that: right from the first track, the classic "White Christmas", the Spectorian take was not simply a somewhat original rendition of traditional carols, but rather a deeper and more intimate harmony between the spirit of rock'n'roll and the spirit of Christmas. As the producer himself explained in the liner notes, the album's aim was to "treat twelve great Christmas songs with the same excitement as today's pop material, have them sung by four of the nation's greatest pop singers, and produce them with the same feelings and the same sound as these artists' own songs; all without losing, for a single moment, the spirit of Christmas". The songs, even today, decades on, still sound lively and sparkling, at times almost exuberant. The Spectorian production musically recreates the magic and excitement of Christmas, and the young voices of its performers, who seem to be acting out characters from a stage play, reconcile innocence and euphoria. Special mention goes to "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)", the only previously unreleased track, also co-written by Spector: it stands as not only one of the album's peaks but, without exaggeration, one of rock's finest moments altogether; a spine-tingling Darlene Love performs a small drama of extraordinary impact and great emotional tension, in which the anxious anticipation of Christmas coincides with the almost messianic wait for a loved one.

The making of the album took several months, and some were lucky enough to witness the sessions at the time: Brian Wilson was struck beyond measure by Spector's project and still considers it the greatest album of all time. "A Christmas Gift For You" not only had a decisive influence on the Beach Boys' Christmas album (released for Christmas '64), but more broadly on Brian Wilson's great creative season, the one that would lead him to the unchallenged heights of "Pet Sounds". If simply attending the album's sessions was enough to influence Wilson so deeply, we can perhaps imagine what the impact would have been had "A Christmas Gift For You" received, at the time, the promotion it deserved. And yet, had things gone differently, perhaps today we wouldn't be talking about it as an album magically out of time, the protagonist of one of the most legendary chapters in the history of rock.

Note: the cover credit to Phil Spector only appeared starting with the 1972 reissues.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

18/01/2007