The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.
My dad was a soul fan and a singer himself, and he loved vocal harmony, stuff like the Beach Boys and Motown like the Four Tops, which was a big influence on me.
The first record I was really into was the Drifters' 'When My Little Girl Is Smiling.'
That's one reason why it's pretty worthless, I can't totally buy it, if you think about it, it's things like the Phil Spector records. On one level they were rebellion, on another level they were keeping the teenager in his place.
I'd originally intended 'Stand By Me' for the Drifters.
The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who's very serious about his work; obviously you can tell that because each and everything he's ever done has always been charted.
When 'You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling' hit, we were doing a show called 'Shindig!' and the Righteous Brothers suddenly became big business.
I think, for a long time, people thought I was a figment of Phil Spector's imagination because they knew The Crystals, they knew The Ronettes, they knew Bob B. Sox and the Blue Jeans, but had never had met Darlene Love.
I am so thankful for the genius of Phil Spector, for his recognition of my talent to be the main voice of his Wall of Sound.
I love the Ronettes, the 'do-run-run-run' pop stuff. I love the lyrics, having 'blue, blue blue' being repetitive.
I always say that when I was recording with Phil Spector, he would not let me really sing, you know? And even to make me sound younger, he would speed the track up. He still wanted that real nice, little, quiet, sweet little sound.
I used to play on Phil Spector's records, and he liked to use three pianists.
In 'Kill Rock n' Roll,' the choruses came about at the moment I was listening to a lot of the Supremes, and if you listen to that part, you can hear a melody and a harmony there that's not too far away from what the Supremes would probably be doing, but there's heavy guitars in the back.
When I came back to California in the early '60s I was hanging out with Jimmy Bowen, Phil Spector, and I wanted to be a record producer and work with other artists.
You stayed up on the record business by knowing who was doing what. You watched the Phil Spectors. That's what told you what to do, what was hot.
I think of all the things that I've gotten to do, all the wonderful people that I've played with, being in the recording studio with Phil Spector tops them all. And of course, now he is in prison. I hope to visit him, I still consider him a friend, and what can you say? A terrible way for a guy like that to be remembered.
No one has their own identity like the Ronettes did back in the day.
