Just in the past couple days I have stumbled on Dion’s “Born to Be With You,” the album he recorded in 1974 with production duties and boozy erratic behavior supplied by none other than Phil Spector.
Columbia execs at the time were horrified by the darkly introspective treatments, but Phil refused their pleas to revamp the material. So the massive and expensive 40-musician project was shelved, and didn’t appear until a UK-only release the following year.
As per allmusic:
“Dion, too, was unhappy — ‘I don’t think we ever really finished that,’ he complained in 2003. It shocked him mightily, then, to discover that names as far apart as Andrew Loog Oldham, Bobby Gillespie, Jason Pierce, and Pete Townshend have pronounced Born to Be With You one of the finest albums ever made. And they were correct.”
Have to wonder about the studio atmosphere, with Phil being Phil and Dion clinging to his then newly declared sobriety. Dion’s been clean for more than half a century, and Phil will die in jail, so I guess there’s your answer, in part at least.
Anyway, this is one of many absolutely glorious tracks.
PS This strikes me as a missed opportunity for Scorsese. The songs on this album would have been perfect for either Goodfellas or Casino soundtracks. Not that they were wanting in any way, just that Dion would have made them better, and would have been a nice tribute to Marty’s fellow Italian-American auteur genius. Just a thought.