Darlene Love is the latest guest on Lemonada Media’s new podcast Wiser Than Me, hosted Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer chats with the former Seinfeld star about a whole host of subjects, including her early career working as a backup singer for Elvis Presley, working with Phil Spector and more.
Love describes working with Elvis as fun, noting, “He didn’t want to be Elvis, he just wanted to be like a background singer with [us] … we would stay up all night, half the night, singing all these wonderful songs.”
She doesn’t have such happy memories of working with Spector, though. “I got very angry but it never turned into hate,” she says. “I was always the one that would tell him, ‘You’re just using me. What the hell? I don’t get this. I’ve done nothing wrong. I just want to be a singer. I want my career and you can give me that.’”
Love adds, “I think that’s what I really disliked about him – he could have given me a gigantic career … he was that foot that was always in the way, you know that annoying fly?”
Spector died in prison in 2021 while serving time for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Love calls him a “snake in the grass,” who people were scared of, although she never understood why: “I said, ‘That little shrimp! Why are you scared of him?’”
She shares, “We sued him and he was so shocked that I won, because nobody had ever sued Phil Spector and won.”
The Darlene Love episode of Wiser Than Me is streaming now.
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