By Steve Marinucci
Published October 22, 1998, San Jose (CA) Mercury News
MAYBE the most fascinating part of Darlene Love's autobiography, ''My Name Is Love: The Darlene Love Story'' (Morrow, $24) is the discography in the back, which the authors readily admit is incomplete. As the book says, ''To list every song she has sung lead on would require an entire volume of its own.''
But what songs Love, recently nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,has sung on! Of course, there are the Phil Spector classics: ''He's a Rebel,'' ''What 'Til My Bobby Gets Home'' and ''Today I Met the Boy I'm Gonna Marry,'' to name just a very few.
But how about a few others she was a part of: ''Rockin' Robin'' by Bobby Day, ''Chain Gang'' by Sam Cooke, ''The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)'' by Betty Everett, ''Goodbye Cruel World'' by James Darren, ''Monster Mash'' by Bobby ''Boris'' Pickett, ''Johnny Angel'' by Shelley Fabares and ''If I Can Dream'' by Elvis Presley.
It would seem that the motto of record producers when they needed a singer was -- to tweak the name of a onetime TV show -- Get Darlene Love.
Love, born Darlene Wright, came from a religious background with a father who was a preacher and a home where rock 'n' roll was frowned upon.
''It was my parents that didn't allow rock 'n' roll in the house,'' she says. ''We listened to other singers, but never real rock 'n' roll or rhythm 'n' blues.'' Artists, she says, such as ''Roy Hamilton, Perry Como, people like that.''
After becoming a singer with the Blossoms and working on sessions for artists including Darren, Bobby Darin and Cooke, she met up with Spector. Her first session with him was ''He's a Rebel'' in 1962. It was Spector who also made her change her name to Love, after gospel singer Dorothy Love.
In her book, Love describes her relationship with Spector as much like a courtship and marriage:
''At the beginning, Phil was very solicitous and complimentary, the equivalent of roses and candy every day. Then I signed the contract, and things started to get ugly.''
Spector's public image was highly eccentric. Was there a nicer side of him? ''That's the only kind of side Phil would allow you to see,'' Love says. But, she says, ''I'm glad I met him for the time I knew him, and I hope he's living a happy life.''
Her favorite record from those years is ''Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).''
And her favorite Spector record on which she didn't sing was Ike and Tina Turner's ''River Deep, Mountain High.'' ''I heard that record before he started producing it and thought he was going to give it to me,'' she says.
She also worked with Brian Wilson during sessions for ''In My Room.'' She said Wilson treated the Blossoms with more respect than Spector did and the group wasn't ''used as instruments.''
Working with Elvis Presley (besides ''If I Can Dream,'' she also sang on ''Rubberneckin' '') was ''unbelievable,'' she says. The King was very shy, and he loved gospel music, she recalls. During breaks in taping his 1968 comeback TV special, she says, they would sit around and sing gospel songs.
Love was also part of the vocal group seen weekly on ABC's ''Shindig'' in the '60s. She says her favorite moments from that show were singing with gospel star Clara Ward, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin before the latter's hit-filled days with Atlantic Records. Singing with Aretha, Love says, ''was like Utopia.''
So how does it feel to be a rock legend? ''I don't know yet,'' she says.
''People think more about us being legends than we do.''
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