“ didn’t control me anymore, and that’s what I left in California. I met Paul Schaffer and he got me on “The Late Show with David Letterman,’” she says. I had a wonderful husband and life was great. “Once I moved to New York, I thought I was done with Phil. Love has gone on to a successful career without him as a lead and backing singer and actress, including roles on Broadway. Using his control of the copyrights, Spector effectively blocked Love from singing the songs on which she’d built her career. “If he couldn’t do that, he was going to do everything in his power to keep my talent from shining. “The problem I have with Phil is that he wanted to control Darlene’s Love talent,” she says. She was also relegated to backing vocals on many other Spector hits with lead vocals by unquestionably inferior singers. However, while she describes him as a “fun-loving guy” at the time, his controlling nature showed itself almost immediately: While she sang many of his hits - including “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” from his classic 1963 Christmas album - Spector often buried her name, also releasing what was intended as her debut solo single, “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” as a Crystals song, or putting them out under the group name Bob B. Her powerful voice drove one of Spector’s early classic hits, “He’s a Rebel” - although it was credited to one of Spector’s girl groups, the Crystals - and Love was signed to his label Philles Records.

“Things changed for the good as far as me being a record artist,” Love recalled. Love had been a background singer with the Blossoms when she first met Spector in the early 1960s in Los Angeles. “He changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll - the reason I know this is because Steve Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen and Elton John all told me that.” “The more I thought about it, the sadder I got,” she concludes.

Dream lover phil spectre