It’s pret­ty well estab­lished by this point that Phil Spec­tor is dan­ger­ous­ly insane. But once upon a time, he was also insane in the best pos­si­ble way, will­ing to use meth­ods no oth­er record pro­duc­er would to cre­ate his sig­na­ture six­ties “wall of sound” with huge ensem­bles and off-the-wall effects that turned the stu­dio into an instru­ment. And for all his doc­u­ment­ed vio­lence, Spec­tor was also once a sur­pris­ing­ly gen­tle writer, as you can see in his notes to George Har­ri­son, made dur­ing the record­ing of Harrison’s Spec­tor-pro­duced triple-album All Things Must Pass. In his com­ments, Spec­tor coax­es Har­ri­son to work hard­er on his vocal per­for­mances and make his voice more promi­nent through­out the album’s eigh­teen stu­dio tracks.

Although he’d made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to The Bea­t­les as a song­writer, Har­ri­son was eager to do his own thing dur­ing the band’s demise in the late six­ties. All Things Must Pass is gen­er­al­ly thought of as his first solo album, but he had actu­al­ly released two pre­vi­ous records under his name, the 1968 film sound­track Won­der­wall Music and the exper­i­men­tal 1969 Elec­tron­ic Sound. Both of these, how­ev­er, are large­ly instru­men­tal, and Har­ri­son had yet to step out of the The Bea­t­les as a singer in his own right until All Things Must Pass in 1970. Spector’s notes make it clear that Har­ri­son was less than con­fi­dent in his vocal abil­i­ties. In the midst of his tech­ni­cal com­ments, Spec­tor fre­quent­ly refers to Harrison’s voice as “buried” in the mix. The let­ter as a whole is an intrigu­ing glimpse into Spector’s process and, I think, a glimpse of Har­ri­son work­ing to over­come his nat­ur­al ret­i­cence. After his list of notes on each track—some a sen­tence or two, some paragraph-length—Spector ends with a diplo­mat­ic sum­ma­tion that reit­er­ates his desire to put Harrison’s voice front-and-cen­ter.

George, on all the 18 num­bers I just men­tioned, this is what I feel are the most impor­tant items on each. Nat­u­ral­ly, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, of main impor­tance is to get a good vocal per­for­mance by your­self. Also, if you do any of the back­ground voic­es, you should spend con­sid­er­able time on them to make sure they are good…. I think you should spend what­ev­er time you are going to on per­for­mances so that they are the very best you can do and that will make the remix­ing of the album that much eas­i­er. I real­ly feel that your voice has got to be heard through­out the album so that the great­ness of the songs can real­ly come through. We can’t cov­er you up too much (and there real­ly is no need to) although as I said, I’m sure excel­lent mix­es can be obtained with just the prop­er amount of time spent on each one.

The let­ter fin­ish­es on a very warm note:

George, thank you for all your under­stand­ing about what we dis­cussed, I appre­ci­ate your con­cern very much and hope to see you as soon as it is pos­si­ble.

Much love. Regards to every­one. Hare Krish­na,

Phil Spec­tor

Read the full let­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Ravi Shankar (RIP) Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Every musi­cal era has its cau­tion­ary tales, and its vision­ar­ies. The six­ties pro­duced its share of them all, but also a hand­ful of bril­liant mis­fits who were insep­a­ra­bly both, all of them psy­che­del­ic pio­neers. Skip Spence, for example—the bril­liant found­ing mem­ber of Jef­fer­son Air­plane, then Moby Grape, who effec­tive­ly end­ed his career attack­ing his band­mates with a fire axe. Then of course, there’s the found­ing singer/songwriter of Pink Floyd, Syd Bar­rett, whose decline found him onstage, almost cata­ton­ic, with a can of Bryl­creem and a crushed bot­tle of pills called Man­drax drip­ping down his face. When Bar­rett passed away in 2006, most of the reaction—after the shock of learn­ing he’d still been alive—centered on the sequence of psy­chot­ic break­downs dur­ing 1967 that would leave Bar­rett changed for­ev­er. Spence and sev­er­al oth­er, more obscure fig­ures, had sim­i­lar­ly dra­mat­ic, and per­ma­nent, shifts in con­scious­ness, and of all of them the same ques­tion gets asked: was it the drugs?

Of course we’re ask­ing if the drugs cre­at­ed the men­tal ill­ness­es or just exac­er­bat­ed the inevitable, but we’re also ask­ing if the drugs cre­at­ed the music. It’s a worth­while, if some­what uncom­fort­able, inquiry that’s prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to answer. But I must admit, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the first incar­na­tion of Pink Floyd with­out Barrett’s heavy exper­i­men­ta­tion. The short film above implies a direct con­nec­tion and takes us to Syd’s psy­che­del­ic incep­tion. Sim­ply titled Syd Barrett’s First Trip, the first part of the film, “Gog Magog Hills,” fol­lows a clean-cut Bar­rett and sev­er­al com­pan­ions as they frol­ic in a field on LSD. As you prob­a­bly gath­ered, it’s his first time. Then the film cuts abrupt­ly to “Abbey Road Stu­dios,” to footage doc­u­ment­ing Pink Floyd in Lon­don after hav­ing just signed their first con­tract with EMI in 1967. It’s the begin­ning of the end for Barrett’s career and men­tal health, but the inau­gu­ra­tion of the band as mass-mar­ket phe­nom­e­non.

Accord­ing to the film­mak­er, Nigel Lesmoir-Gor­don, the film “just hap­pened…. It is an unself­con­scious film. It was not planned.” Of the ’66 footage, shot by his wife Jen­ny, he writes on the film’s IMDB page:

I shared the flat with some close friends from Cam­bridge, includ­ing Syd Bar­rett, who was busy becom­ing a rock star with Pink Floyd. A few hun­dred yards down the street at 101 Cromwell Road, our preter­nat­u­ral­ly cool friend Nigel was run­ning the hip­ster equiv­a­lent of an arty salon. Between our place and his, there passed the cream of Lon­don alter­na­tive society–poets, painters, film-mak­ers, char­la­tans, activists, bores and self-styled vision­ar­ies.

These are the char­ac­ters in Syd’s entourage in this “raw, unedit­ed footage,” which was orig­i­nal­ly silent, though many peo­ple have added music such as the new age‑y ambi­ent sound­scape in the ver­sion above. I hap­pen to think it’s a nice com­ple­ment, but if you find it intru­sive, turn the vol­ume off. The images, as the film­mak­er admits, are still “stun­ning.”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

Peter Gabriel’s cov­er album, Scratch My Back, came out in ear­ly 2010, and it fea­tured Gabriel’s quite orig­i­nal remakes of songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Regi­na Spek­tor and oth­er major artists. Now comes the fol­low-up: Set to be released on Jan­u­ary 6, the new album,  And I’ll Scratch Yours, flips the con­cept of the pre­vi­ous album. This time around, artists like Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, Paul Simon and Feist record some of Peter Gabriel’s biggest hits — songs like “Games With­out Fron­tiers,” “Mer­cy Street” and “Biko.” The albums can be pur­chased togeth­er here, but, hap­pi­ly, you can stream them online for free — but only for a a lim­it­ed time — on NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Peter Gabriel Plays Full Con­cert in Mod­e­na, Italy (1994)

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

They make an unlike­ly duo—the one­time lead singer of the hard­est-par­ty­ing rock band in the world and the soft-voiced con­tem­po­rary blue­grass singer and fid­dler. And yet some­how, the pair­ing of Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss makes per­fect sense, if not on paper then cer­tain­ly on the stage and in the stu­dio. They’ve been col­lab­o­rat­ing for years and won five Gram­mies for their 2007 album Rais­ing Sand, which appeared on some of the most promi­nent crit­i­cal best-of lists that year. And Plant has gone on record say­ing that his work with Krauss per­ma­nent­ly altered his musi­cal direc­tion and helped him recon­nect with his own Eng­lish coun­try music back­ground.

Both Krauss and Plant get to explore sev­er­al Amer­i­can roots avenues in Rais­ing Sand, an album of songs by such lumi­nar­ies as Sam Philips, the Ever­ly Broth­ers, Townes Van Zandt, and Doc Wat­son. But in the videos above, the pair—backed by a coun­try band—mosey through two old Led Zep­pelin songs renowned for their thun­der­ous loud­ness and sweep­ing gui­tars. “Black Dog” (orig­i­nal here) begins with Jim­my Page’s unmis­tak­able intro riff picked out on a ban­jo while Plant goofs around and attempts a two-step. It feels like we’re in for a nov­el­ty act, but when the two start singing har­monies, the strength of their musi­cal bond is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent, even in what some might con­sid­er a butcher­ing of an icon­ic tune. Krauss takes the lead vocal in “When the Lev­ee Breaks” (orig­i­nal here) while Plant hangs back and strums a gui­tar. She turns the song into straight coun­try, and most­ly sells it, save the band’s thin, unin­spired instru­men­tal break­downs and gui­tar solos that only vague­ly recall the orig­i­nal. All-in-all it’s an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment in genre trans­po­si­tion, though I think we’re lucky to have been spared an album of Plant and Krauss re-invent­ing clas­sic Zep­pelin as con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­cana.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness