Special Holiday Edition: The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Record of All-Time Turns 60
A re-post from December 17th
The following article was first published December 17th as part of the regular Sunday post.
Top 5 Records Music Review: The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Record of All-Time Turns 60
You are certainly familiar with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You”. The ubiquitous and beloved Christmas pop song was not received as an instant classic upon its release in 1994. It wasn’t until around 2015 when audiences, increasingly enamored with streaming services, began latching onto it as a holiday favorite. Carey’s song finally hit number one on the Billboard charts in 2019, a full twenty-five years after its release, and has landed at that spot every year since (although the song is still waiting to get there this year, as it’s currently parked at #2 behind Brenda Lee’s 1958 bopper “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”. UPDATE: “All I Want For Christmas is You” is once again the #1 song in the country, topping the charts this week.)
“All I Want For Christmas is You” did not come to us out of the blue, however. It is actually part of a lineage of rock and roll Christmas songs descended from what is widely considered to be the greatest rock and roll Christmas album of all-time, A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector, which was originally released sixty years ago this year.
Before writing anything more about this album, though, the elephant in the room must be addressed: Yes, Phil Spector was a terrible human being. It’s not something to even joke about. Reading his biography can really sap you of your Christmas cheer.
As a record producer, however, Spector was a true innovator, the first auteur of the recording studio. As an artist, he is mainly remembered for creating the “Wall of Sound” in the early, pre-Beatles 1960s. The Wall of Sound is a production technique that uses layers of instrumentation to create dense, orchestral pop arrangements. Spector’s records sound as though they were recorded in tunnels or echo chambers. His songs feature a big rumbling sound that comes barreling out of the speakers, a particularly powerful effect in the pre-stereo days of mono. The result is operatic, turning simple songs about teenaged love into three-minute symphonies. Spector’s most well-known Wall of Sound songs include “Da Doo Ron Ron” by the Crystals (1963), “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by the Righteous Brothers (1964), and the epic “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes (1963).
Spector also produced “River Deep — Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner, Let It Be by the Beatles, All Things Must Pass by George Harrison, and Imagine by John Lennon.
A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector, which features Christmas songs by Darlene Love, the Ronettes (“Frosty the Snowman”, “Sleigh Ride”, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”), Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, and the Crystals (“Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”) did not sell well initially, as it happened to be released the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. When it was re-released on Apple Records about a decade later, however, it was rediscovered by audiences, and many of its songs found their way onto Christmas playlists.
More importantly, though, the album’s Wall of Sound production style became the sound of rock and roll Christmas, rivaled only by the foundational 50’s-era sounds heard on Brenda Lee’s aforementioned rockabilly-inflected “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Chuck Berry’s 1958 Chicago R&B number “Run Rudolph Run”. (That, by the way, is a fun video.) With its layers of drums, guitars, horns, and vocals augmented by layers of strings and bells, all swelling like a stampede of reindeer, a Wall of Sound Christmas song sounds like it’s about to blow the lid off a Christmas Eve service. (Hark, the herald angels sing rock!) You can hear the cathedral-sized sound powering songs like “Step Into Christmas” by Elton John (1973) and “Christmas All Over Again” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1992). Every live version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is an attempt to conjure up the Spectorian wallop of the original, apt for an artist whose breakthrough record Born to Run (1975) was described by Greil Marcus in a Rolling Stone review at the time of its debut as the sound of “a ‘57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals records.” Just listen to Max Weinberg recreate the big boom of those drum beats from “Be My Baby” in the clip below.
And not only does the Wall of Sound fuel Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” (the video below of Carey performing the song is an homage to the Ronettes; just compare it to the video of “Be My Baby” earlier in this piece…)
…but it also fuels descendants of “All I Want For Christmas is You” like “Underneath the Tree” by Kelly Clarkson (2013).
Appreciate for a second what Clarkson gets so right about that performance: The lead singer in a Wall of Sound song should sound like they are about to get blown away by the arrangement, but they stand their ground. They sing from the eye of the maelstrom, corral its power, and match it. Not every singer can do that.
One song from A Christmas Gift For You… has risen above the others to become a Christmas standard: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love (written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector, each of whom were Jewish.) Love had recorded “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” with Spector, who then credited those songs to the Crystals. She did get solo credit for “A Fine, Fine Boy” though.
Love never hit it big as a solo artist in the 60s. Instead, she work as a backup singer throughout the 60s and 70s, which led her to being featured in the 2013 Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. Love was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.
According to Love, Spector asked her to step in to the studio to record “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” after the Ronettes’ lead singer Ronnie Bennett struggled with the song. Love was able to bring the necessary heft to the record, which wasn’t an easy task since the song practically begins at its peak and stays there throughout. Whoever sings it needs to be belting it from the start. (Fun fact: You can hear Cher providing backup vocals on the song, and that’s probably Sonny Bono either shaking the shakers or jingling the bells.) The track didn’t chart when it was released in 1963, but it’s now often cited as the greatest rock and roll Christmas song of all-time.
U2 recorded a version of “Christmas (Please Come Home)” in 1987 that was included on the popular 80s compilation A Very Special Christmas. More than anything else, though, it was Love’s annual performance of the song (beginning in 1986) on David Letterman’s late night show with Paul Shaffer and the show’s house band that cemented its status as a national treasure. Letterman’s show was famously irreverent, but Love’s performance was treated as a cherished tradition, serving as proof the rock and roll ruffians and weirdos did indeed have tuggable heartstrings. The performance was certainly show biz—a grand entry by the saxophone player for his solo, confetti snow for its conclusion—but it was sincere and glorious. Since Letterman retired in 2015, Love has continued this the tradition over on The View, which…OK.
It’s hard to celebrate A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector given its association with its namesake, but when thinking about that album we shouldn’t forget it took numerous performers to create that Wall of Sound, including the many Black singers who provided the main vocals as well as the Los Angeles-based session musicians collectively known as the Wrecking Crew who supplied the instrumentals. Despite playing on many of their era’s greatest hits, most of these musicians toiled outside the limelight or were shunted aside by the record industry. Only recently have they started to receive the recognition they deserved in their time. Phil Spector’s legacy as a record producer has been tarnished by his record as a human being, but we should still listen to the music he produced to honor the talented and diverse group of artists who collaborated in the creation of these songs.
Thank you for reading Reason to Believe. I hope you have a merry Christmas. We’ll see you again in the new year.