Gene
Pitney's Desert Island Discs
Sue
Lawley聮s castaway on this week's Desert Island Discs is singer-songwriter
Gene Pitney and listeners can hear his choice of eight records on
Sunday 2 March at 11.15am on 91热爆 Radio 4.
Gene
talks to Sue about his childhood in Rockville, Connecticut and his
career.
By
the mid Sixties, Gene enjoyed international success with the Bacharach
song Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa.
In
1990 he had his first number one in this country with Something聮s
Got A Hold Of My Heart, a duet with Marc Almond.
Phil
Spector produced some of Gene's songs including Every Breath I Take
and Sue asks Gene what his reaction was when Phil was charged for
murder recently.
"Phil
was and is a very eccentric man," Gene tells Sue.
He
saw Phil at an industry event a year ago and was going to say hello
but he didn't: "I looked and I thought no, there was something
strange about those eyes so I let it go."
"I
am hoping that my theory is correct on what happened... I saw a
close friend of Phil's talking about it on television and he said
that this didn't fit and Phil had been so stable and the eccentricity
had stopped.
"And
then I read that the night it happened he had gone to a bar and
the bar tender said he had a daiquiri - he drinks Diet Coke - then
he went to the House of Blues and had a bottle of champagne with
bourbon chasers.
"Now
I think if the thing that straightened him out was a bunch of psychotic
drugs and then you go and drop that on top of it, then I have a
feeling that he didn't even know what he was doing."
He
recalls how in happier times he and Phil ended up in one of the
Rolling Stones recording sessions in London. His publicist, Andrew
Loog Oldham arranged it as he also worked for the Stones.
"It
was a very unique session... I had stopped in London for one day
on the way home from Paris... the session came off, a little bit
drunken, the Not Fade Away session," says Gene.
"Phil
Spector showed up in a big black limo and I had to laugh because
they give him credit for playing the maracas... when he was playing
an empty cognac bottle with an American half dollar, that was his
instrument."
Gene
picks a variety of music including Nightingale by Norah Jones. For
his luxury he chooses a case of Opus One wine.
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