Larry Levine

May 15 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE are always stars, but behind them are the people who make them shine – or, in this case, throb, soar, rumble and then pierce the heavens in glorious layers of music.

They called it the Wall of Sound and, if you can sense the idea in that description, he laid the cement for the bricks, though the magnificently exciting orchestrations, which accompanied the great singers, will always be associated with Phil Spector.

Larry Levine was the engineer, who gathered in the ambitious tones and riffs, swelling and swirling in Spector’s head, and made them happen on records, spinning on the gramophones in the bedrooms of teenagers across the world.

Most famous of all those productions, engineered by Levine, was You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, superbly performed by The Righteous Brothers to Spector’s arrangement and the most played record on US radio.

During this wonderful period of collaboration, Spector and Levine also released Da Doo Ron Ron for The Crystals, Be My Baby for The Ronettes and River Deep Mountain High, for Tina Turner.

The job of the recording engineer is to mix the sounds coming from the various musicians and singers until your have the whole – a huge task, as Spector packed his players shoulder-to-shoulder in the studio, trying to realise the music in his head.

Levine was born in New York, but brought up in Los Angeles. He served in the Army during the Korean War and then teamed-up with his cousin, Stan Ross, co-owner of the Gold Star Recording Studios in Hollywood, where he learned his trade.

There he recorded some classic rock and roll, including Eddie Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock, Summertime Blues and C’mon Everybody.

In 1958, Levine met Spector, then a singer with the Teddy Bears, who scored a big hit with To Know Him Is To Love Him.

Their first record together was He’s A Rebel, a big seller for The Crystals. “He made Spector a genius by applying the simple logic of using an echo chamber,” Stan Ross later said of Levine.

Levine, married with three sons, also worked with great success on recording by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, collecting a Grammy for his work on their 1965 hit, A Taste of Honey.

He then worked with Brian Wilson on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

Larry Levine, recording engineer; born May 8, 1928, died May 7, 2008.