Their biggest hit, 1964’s “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” is supposedly the most played song in the history of American radio, according to music licensing company BMI. Two decades later Medley scored another monster hit—and a Grammy—in 1987 with “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,” a duet with Jennifer Warnes for the movie “Dirty Dancing.” Now Medley, 67, has released a new album called “Damn Near Righteous.” Album highlight: Medley teams up with old friends Brian Wilson and Phil Everly (of those other brothers) on a cover of “In My Room.” The last song on the disc, “California Goodbye,” is a tribute to his other Righteous half: Bobby Hatfield suffered a fatal heart attack in 2003 following an overdose of cocaine while the pair were on tour.
Medley spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Jac Chebatoris about his righteous past, working with Phil Spector and the “great white whale” of a song that almost got away. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Is that your real name? Bill Medley: Medley? Yeah, it is.
Well, didn’t that work out? That worked out pretty dang good! My mom and dad had a band when they were young. My mom was a piano player and my dad was a saxophone player, but when they started having the children, they put the band away so we weren’t heavily influenced by our folks being in a band.
How did you and Bobby Hatfield get together? He was from Orange County, too, and he had a little rock-and-roll band, and I had a little rock-and-roll band, which was somewhat unusual in 1960 and 1961. I’d heard that, boy, this kid from Anaheim sings his rear end off, and vice versa. A mutual friend of ours who went to school with Bobby’s older brother put us together. It was five of us, but Bobby and I, the minute we got together, just started doing all of these R&B duets and it was just so much fun. Then a friend of mine who owned a local record company came in to see me and I said, “You know I wrote this song, ‘Little Latin Lupe Lu’ and me and Bobby sing it. Why don’t you listen to it?” And he said, “Man I love that song, why don’t we record it?” But we were the Paramours when it was five of us.
Well, thank goodness for those Marines in the audience, as the story behind the Righteous Brothers name goes. The only black guys in Orange County were the Marines that were stationed in El Toro, and they would come in and see Bobby and I. We were doing rhythm and blues. Once in a while they would yell out after a song, “Righteous, brothers!” We wish they would have yelled out, “Beatles,” but it worked good enough.
Sure beats “The Paramours”? Ouch. It meant “lover of married women.” It never worked.
How did you get into the soul and R&B sound? We weren’t trying—and it certainly was not a smart or commercial thing for two white guys to try—to sound black because nobody was going to play it: black stations weren’t going to play it because they didn’t play white guys; we sounded too black and too hard for white stations. So we were just doing out of ignorance what we loved to do, and it never dawned on us that we would have hit records because we knew we were going against the grain. We thought maybe we could end up in a lounge in Las Vegas somewhere.
Jimmy Webb described “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” as the “great white whale.” When I interviewed him about songwriting, he said, “Everybody wants to write a song like that. It’s the prototype of a great song.” It was amazing because of Phil Spector—he leased the remainder of our contract. Bobby and I were doing what was considered hard rock-and-roll then. So Phil went to [songwriters] Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and said, “I’m going to record the Righteous Brothers, write them a song” and they wrote “Lovin’ Feelin.” When Phil and Barry Mann sang it to us, they got done and I said, “Well, that’s a great song for the Everly Brothers.”
No … [I said,] “It’s a beautiful song. But that isn’t what we do.” And he said, “Well, let’s try it.” The really funny thing is that when we started learning it, it was in a higher key so it was like [starts singing the first line of the song] “You never close your eyes anymore …"—but I couldn’t ever get to that high note: “You’ve lost that lovin …"—you know? So they would lower it and lower it and we finally got down to the baritone thing and it just kind of became an entirely different vibe for the song. We finished the record—and Phil Spector obviously did a remarkable job—but Bobby and I didn’t think it was a hit. Phil said, “Absolutely, it’s a smash hit.” But it was too long. In those days you made a record that was two minutes and 20 seconds, that was it. This puppy was about four minutes long.
That was epic back then. And literally the first time Barry Mann, and his wife, Cynthia, heard it, he thought it was on the wrong speed! [Laughs.] I think everything that was wrong with it became real right. It’s kind of like everything you love about Bob Dylan is maybe what you would think wouldn’t have gotten him into the business.
Is it true that Cher sings backup on it? Yeah, she sings, and I think Sonny’s playing tambourine.
What’s your take on Phil Spector? I haven’t talked to Phil in 30 years … 35 years. In those days he was a little eccentric but nothing apparently like what he walked himself into, you know? But I don’t know anything about Phil or what happened there. I think it’s all tragic.
Success back then and success now seems so different, but yet a lot still comes down to being in the right place at the right time, like you meeting Bobby Hatfield and then Spector. How much has the idea of what success is now changed do you think? I think the hopes of longevity are certainly a lot tougher now. I’ve been in the business successfully since ‘62, so, 40-some years, and I don’t know that you’re going to be talking to a lot of people that started last year that you’re going to still be wondering what they’re doing 40 years later. Success is a real odd thing, and the one cool thing about success is that you can’t shove it down the public’s throat.
You must still have a real drive to keep doing this. When people say, “When are you going to retire?” I say, “I would have to get a job first.” This isn’t work. The cool thing about my age and being around this long is that you just do stuff that you love because you don’t have to do anything.
