Larry Levine, 80, record engineer
LOS ANGELES - Larry Levine, the recording engineer who helped translate the grandiose sonic vision of record producer Phil Spector into some of the biggest-selling and most influential recordings of the rock era, died May 8, his 80th birthday, at his suburban Los Angeles home.
No cause of death was given, but Mr. Levine had suffered from emphysema and heart ailments, his cousin Stan Ross said.
If Spector was the visionary architect of the "Wall of Sound" that defined such 1960s hits as the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron," and the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," Mr. Levine was the nuts and bolts contractor charged with making it all work.
Inside the cramped studio A of Gold Star Studios in Hollywood, Mr. Levine applied his skill to capturing and shaping arrangements that often encompassed three or four guitars, several pianos, brass, percussion, and other instruments, not to mention the vocals.
"He made Phil Spector a genius by applying the simple logic of using echo chamber," Gold Star's co-owner Ross said Monday of Mr. Levine. "Phil had a tendency of overbooking the room, and there were more musicians than there should have been in the studio.
"It began to saturate the walls, and you couldn't make it happen unless you get some separation, and the only way you could do that is by getting some echo and making the room sound larger. . . .
"I showed him how you work this echo chamber thing and he got into it, and sure enough it worked. . . . If Phil had gone into another place to do it, it would have been a normal record without any wall of sound. . . . It gave it dimension; it sounded like it was a football field."
Mr. Levine was born in New York and grew up in Los Angeles. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he learned the craft of recording from Ross, who had opened Gold Star with Dave Gold in 1950.
Though Mr. Levine might be most strongly associated with Spector, he had a distinctive résumé beyond that partnership, from the early rock 'n' roll records of Eddie Cochran to recordings by the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, Wings, the Carpenters, Dr. John, and Herb Alpert, among others.
Mr. Levine won a Grammy for best engineered recording for Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's 1965 hit "A Taste of Honey."
