Music |
Ike & Tina Turner: River Deep Mountain High
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Soul
"River Deep Mountain High" — the song ranked #33 on Rolling Stone’s list of "500 Best Songs of All Time" — is credited to Ike & Tina Turner. But don’t be fooled. It’s l00% Phil Spector.
For those who aren’t of a certain age, some explanation is in order. Ike Turner? Who he? And Phil Spector — that the LA freak who killed a woman?
Gather round, kids, and let me tell you a story. It’s about one song. This:
Once upon a time, when rock was young, a kid named Phil Spector had a sense that his destiny lay in the music business, so he wrote a song: "To Know Him Is To Love Him." (He got the title from his father’s gravestone). The Teddy Bears recorded it. And it was a hit. More followed, with Spector as producer: "You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling," "Be My Baby" and "Da Doo Ron Ron," among many others. The Crystals, the Ronettes, the Shirelles — they were all Spector creations.
What did all this music have in common? Hooks. And hooks make hits. Hit singles, that is; back in the early ’60s, albums were a secondary consideration. Phil Spector — a weird-looking little guy with shaggy hair and tinted granny glasses — made hits like no one else of his time because he not only had a knack of matching song to performer, he had a theory of recording.
Phil Spector loved mono. Hated stereo. Thought it was an artificial way to chop music into parts. Indeed, the whole and entire point of rock ‘n roll was to sound great on a car radio. Over a tiny speaker. And the way to do that was to make the music a fist — a unified wave of instrumentation and voice that hits the listener right in the face. This was the "Wall of Sound," and it was Spector’s signature.
In l966, Ike & Tina Turner were pretty much a touring act. Ike was a monomaniac; he was the star, Tina was the add-on. (Indeed, she had only been Ike’s lead singer for four years, and then only because Ike’s favorite female vocalist failed to show up at a recording session.) There are stories that Ike beat Tina — who knows what’s true?
But in 1966, Spector had a vision, and he had Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich — who had written "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Be My Baby" — write "River Deep Mountain High" for Tina Turner.
The song was, Spector thought, destined to be his masterpiece. [To buy the CD from Amazon and get a free MP download, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
Here, for those who have not heard it, are the lyrics:
When I was a little girl I had a rag doll
The only doll I’ve ever owned
Now I love you just the way I loved that rag doll
But only now my love has grown
And it gets stronger in every way
And it gets deeper let me say
And it gets higher day by day
Do I love you my oh my
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
When you were a young boy did you have a puppy
That always followed you around
Well I’m gonna be as faithful as that puppy
No I’ll never let you down
Cause it goes on and on like a river flows
And it gets bigger baby and heaven knows
And it gets sweeter baby as it grows
Do I love you my oh my
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
I love you baby like a flower loves the spring
And I love you baby like a robin loves to sing
And I love you baby like a schoolboy loves his pie
And I love you baby river deep mountain high
Clearly, those silly lyrics was not what the song was about. The sound was everything, and so you have to imagine Tina Turner screaming the refrain — it is said the recording session was so sweaty for her that she finished the recording in her underwear — over music that was operatic in its dimensions. The ultimate marriage of R&B and rock. Meant to be played LOUD. In mono. Wagnerian. Massive. So totally overwhelming that listeners would have no choice but to jump to their feet, fling themselves about — and go limp when it ended.
Spector hadn’t had a hit for eighteen months. He was obsessed with the production of this one song — for about six months. It was going to be his masterpiece.
Some thought it was. George Harrison called it a perfect record. Brian Wilson was floored. But the kids had moved on. "River Deep Mountain High" was a hit in England — and a total flop in America.
Spector went into seclusion. He emerged four years later to produce a record that couldn’t be less "Wall of Sound" — John Lennon’s "Happy Xmas" (War is Over). He’d go on to other adventures, but the Golden Years were behind him. As were Ike Turner’s. Tina left Ike, recorded "Proud Mary" and had a glorious solo career. She is now an icon — the "soul survivor" of this trio, if you will.
Why did the song fail? Here is Dave Marsh, one of our best rock critics: "The song is mediocre, the lyric absurd; the production is more bombastic than millennial, and in Tina Turner, a harsh, adult blues singer, Spector encountered the most inappropriate object of his production style."
Those words were written decades ago. Doubtful that Marsh would write them today. For "River Deep Mountain High" has taken its place in music history — mad, everything-on-the-table sound that’s like nothing else in rock or soul. As Spector said a few years after its release, "I just wanted to go crazy for four minutes on wax."
There are eleven other songs on this CD, all of them first rate. A bunch of singles, taken together, do make an album — and a classic. Insane that it hasn’t been re-released by an American label. Wonderful that it is, however, available as an import.
River Deep Mountain High" — to know it is to love it.
