I Eat Music

Songwriter Ellie Greenwich has died aged 68 from a heart attack, following a bout of pneumonia, her niece told reporters yesterday.

Born in Brooklyn in 1940, Greenwich, with her husband Jeff Barry, became known as one of the most successful pop songwriters of the 60s, working out of the Brill Building in Manhattan, which also provided working space for other songwriters, including Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Phil Spector.

Amongst a string of hits, she and Barry penned songs such as ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and ‘Then He Kissed Me’ for The Crystals, ‘Chapel Of Love’ for The Ronettes (written with Phil Spector), ‘Doo Wah Diddy Diddy’ for Manfred Mann, and ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ for Ike & Tina Turner. One of the couple’s most famous songs was ‘Leader Of The Pack, a collaboration with producer Gordon ‘Shadow’ Morton, which was a hit for The Shangri-Las in 1965. The couple were inducted into the US Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1991.

Greenwich had begun writing songs as a teenager, and her first commercially released work was ‘Silly Isn’t It’ in 1958, which she performed herself under the name Ellie Gaye for RCA. She released her first solo album, ‘Ellie Greenwich Composes, Produces And Sings’ ten years later, as an early project for Pineywood Music, the writing and production company she set up with Mike Kashkow in 1967, following her divorce from Barry. She also provided backing vocals for artists such as Dusty Springfield, Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra in the 60s and 70s and continued to produce other artists, including Neil Diamond.

In 1984, many of her 60s songs were given a new lease of life by the musical ‘Leader Of The Pack’, written by Anne Beatts, with a story based on Greenwich’s life. It transferred to Broadway’s Ambassador Theater in 1985 and ran for 120 performances.

Greenwich is survived by a sister.

Phil Spector’s publicist has revealed that the noted producer and murderer isn’t having much fun in prison because there’s not a lot to do. Turns out it’s not like a holiday camp, after all.

Hal Lifson told the BBC 6 Music: “He’s doing fair, at best, if not worse than fair. He’s not doing great. He’s in a horrible situation with virtually nothing to do all day. Phil Spector was always a highly productive, creative person and now he’s in a five by nine foot cell with no windows and maybe a half hour outside to walk around. It’s essentially solitary confinement. He doesn’t have computer access, he only recently got a little TV. It’s a terrible existence for a millionaire record producer who lived in mansions and most recently in a castle, a 35-room home. It’s a huge, huge change of life for Phil Spector and a devastating turn in his life”.

Yeah, he’s got a point. Celebrities should probably be allowed to go to a special, more fun celebrity prison, or just serve their sentences at home.

Lifson also said that Spector was worried about reports in the press that he had been contacted by that other murdering chap Charles Manson about a possible musical collaboration. Quite rightly, he thinks that an association with Manson might not cast him in the best light when he comes to appeal his sentence next year. The publicist said: “Phil Spector has been very, very alarmed and scared at the notion of Charles Manson contacting him for any reason. He is very worried that any association be made between himself and Charles Manson. He mentioned that he used to get phone calls from John Lennon and Tina Turner and now it’s Charles Manson calling, so he said, ‘Go figure’. It was kind of a dark humour comment”.

Speaking about the producer’s appeal, he said that he will take his case to state court next year. If that appeal fails, he will go to the federal court of appeal in Washington.

What would a new week be without some kind of tally of the biggest selling singles and albums in the UK? It would be nothing, that’s what, so it’s pretty lucky there is one.

First, on with the singles, where The Saturdays have got themselves to number two with a healthy combination of charity and young ladies in their pants. Yes, indeed, following the success of The Spice Girls’ pant-infused video for their Children In Need single, The Saturdays have taken their lead and gone with a theme irrelevant to the charity they’re raising money for in the video for their cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. But even that’s not enough to stop the onslaught of Flo Rida, who has elbowed them right out of the way, showing no regard for charity or underwear, and plonked himself down on the number one spot with his new single, ‘Right Around’.

As for the rest of the top 10, it’s just the normal shuffle around, although it’s worth mentioning that Lady GaGa still has two singles in that bracket. Please make it stop. And when it comes to the remaining 30 places on the chart, frankly, everyone should try harder. Chipmunk is a new entry at 21, with ‘Chip Daddy Chip’, Kings Of Leon rise up from 55 to 29 with ‘Revelry’, Beyonce makes a similar move from 88 to 40, and U2’s woeful single ‘Get On Your Boots’ continues its plummet down the chart, settling this week at 30.

U2’s single might have received a vote of no confidence, but the same cannot be said for their album, which has been bought in droves. In the UK anyway. But with the amount of publicity it’s had from, er, all those publicly-owned broadcasters, you’d kind of hope it’d do well. And it has, because it’s not only knocked The Prodigy down to number two and seen U2 equal The Rolling Stones and Madonna for the third highest amount of number one albums (10 of them in all), but it also sold more this week than rest of the top five put together. Apparently lazy songwriting is excusable, I was wrong.

You’d think with all that excitement there wouldn’t be any room for any more new entries this week, but you’d be wrong. Red Light Company have gone in at 13 with their debut album, ‘ Fine Fascination’, Tina Turner’s ‘Platinum Collection’ follows at 14, and then down at 25 Irish rockers The Answer hop in with their new album, ‘Everyday Demons’, thanks in part to being AC/DC’s tour support, but mainly it’s down to being featured on BBC Breakfast last week, I reckon.

And that’s it for the charts this week, which are deftly cut and pasted together by tiny elves at The Official Chart Company.

This article originally appeared in CMU Daily on 9 Mar 2009