Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his “Wall of Sound” method and who was later convicted of murder, has passed away. He was 81.
California state prison officials said he died of natural causes in a hospital on Saturday.
Spector was convicted in 2003 of the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in his castle-like mansion on the outskirts of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life.
While most sources state Spector’s date of birth as 1940, it was listed as 1939 in court documents after his arrest. His attorney then confirmed that date to The Associated Press.
AP
Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot dead in the foyer of Spector’s hillside mansion overlooking Alhambra, a modest town on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Until the death of the actress, which Spector claimed was an “ accidental suicide, ” few residents knew that the mansion belonged to the reclusive producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton.
Decades earlier, Spector was hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the ‘Wall of Sound’ that fused vibrant vocal harmonies with lush orchestral arrangements to create pop monuments like ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’. produce. “Be My Baby” and “He’s a Rebel.”
He was the rare self-assured artist in the early years of rock and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark tones and unmoved expression.
Tom Wolfe called him “the teenage tycoon’s first”. Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly replicated his grand recording techniques and candid romance, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer ever”.
The secret of its sound: an overdubbed attack of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result ‘Small symphonies for the children’.
By his mid-twenties, his ‘little symphonies’ had resulted in nearly two dozen hit singles and he became a millionaire. ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, ‘the Righteous Brothers operatic ballad that topped the charts in 1965, was tabled in the 20th century as the song that hit radio and television most in the 20th century played – including the many covers.
But thanks to the arrival of the Beatles, his success on the charts would soon fade. When ‘River Deep-Mountain High’, an aptly named 1966 starring Tina Turner, failed to catch on, Spector closed his record label and retired from the company for three years. He would go on to produce the Beatles and Lennon, among others, but now he served the artists, instead of the other way around.
In 1969, Spector was called in to save the Beatles’ Let It Be album, a troubled back to basics production marked by disagreements within the band. Although Lennon praised Spector’s work, bandmate Paul McCartney was furious, especially when Spector added strings and a chorus to McCartney’s ‘The Long and Winding Road’. Years later, McCartney would oversee a remastered “Let it Be,” with Spector’s contributions being removed.
A documentary on the making of Lennon’s 1971 album “Imagine” clearly showed that the ex-Beatle was in charge, and Spector tickled over backing vocals, a line none of Spector’s early artists would have dared.
Spector worked on George Harrison’s critically acclaimed post-Beatles triple album, All Things Must Pass, co-produced Lennon’s Imagine and the less successful Some Time in New York City, which featured Spector’s photo with a caption, “Knowing Him is to love Him. “
Spector also had a memorable movie role, a cameo as a drug dealer in “Easy Rider”. The producer himself was played by Al Pacino in a 2013 HBO movie.
The volume and violence of Spector’s music reflected a dark side that he could barely grasp even at its peak. He was imperious, temperamental and dangerous, bitterly remembered by Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector and others who worked with him.
Years of tales of his wielding weapons to studio artists and threatening women would haunt him after Clarkson’s death.
According to witnesses, she had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to accompany him home from the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, where she worked. Shortly after their arrival in Alhambra in the early morning hours of February 3, 2003, a driver reported to Spector. came out of the house with a gun, blood on his hands, and said to him, “I think I killed someone.”
He would later tell friends that Clarkson had shot himself. The case was full of mystery and it took authorities a year to file charges. In the meantime, Spector remained free on $ 1 million bail.
When he was eventually charged with murder, he lashed out at the authorities, angrily at reporters: “The actions of the Hitler-style prosecutor and his storm troopers are reprehensible, unscrupulous and despicable.”
As the defendant, his eccentricity was central. He would appear in court for the hearings in theatrical outfits, usually wearing high-heeled boots, frock coats and wildly styled wigs. He arrived at a hearing in a driver-driven stretch of Hummer.
When the 2007 lawsuit began, he softened his clothes. It ended in a 10-2 deadlock that leaned towards condemnation. His defense had argued that the actress, despondent over her fading career, had shot herself. A new process was started in October 2008.
Harvey Phillip Spector, in his mid-sixties when charged with murder, was born on December 26, 1939 in the New York borough of The Bronx. Bernard Spector, his father, was an ironworker. His mother, Bertha, was a seamstress. In 1947, Spector’s father committed suicide over family guilt, an event that would affect his son’s life in many ways.
Four years later, Spector’s mother moved the family to Los Angeles, where Phil attended Fairfax High School, located in a largely Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Hollywood. For decades the school has been a source of future musical talent. At Fairfax, Spector performed in talent shows and formed a group called the Teddy Bears with friends.
He was reluctant and insecure, but his musical skills were evident. He had perfect pitch and learned to play various instruments with ease. He was only 17 when his group recorded its first hit single, a romantic ballad written and produced by Spector that would become a pop classic, “To Know Him is to Love Him”, was inspired by the inscription on his father’s gravestone.
A small, skinny kid with big dreams and growing demons, Spector attended the University of California, Los Angeles for a year before dropping out to return to New York. He briefly considered becoming a French interpreter at the United Nations before interacting with the musicians in New York’s famous Brill Building. The Broadway building was then the heart of the Tin Pan Alley of popular music, where writers, composers, singers and musicians turned out to be hit numbers.
He began working with star composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who had met at Fairfax High a few years before Spector arrived. He eventually found his niche in producing. During this time he also co-wrote the hit “Spanish Harlem” with Ben E. King, and played lead guitar on the Drifters’ “On Broadway”.
“I had returned from California to New York, where there were all those green lawns and trees, and there was nothing but poverty and decay in Harlem,” he would later recall. “The song was an expression of hope and confidence among the youths of Harlem … that better times would come.”
For a time he had his own production company, Philles Records, with partner Lester Silles, where he developed his signature sound. He gathered respected studio musicians such as arranger Jack Nitzsche, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, pianist Leon Russell and drummer Hal Blaine, and gave early breaks to Glen Campbell, Sonny Bono and Bono’s future wife Cher.
In the early 1960s he had hit after hit and a remarkable flop: the album ‘A Christmas Gift to You’, which was tragically released on November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, the worst possible time for such a joyous record. “A Christmas Gift,” featuring the Ronettes singing “Frosty the Snowman” and Love’s version of “White Christmas,” is now considered a classic and a perennial holiday radio favorite.
Spector’s domestic life, along with his career, eventually fell apart. After his first marriage to Annette Merar broke up, Ronette’s lead singer Ronnie Bennett became his girlfriend and muse. He married her in 1968 and they adopted three children. But she divorced him after six years, claiming in a memoir that he held her captive in their mansion, where she said he kept a golden chest in the basement and told her he would kill her and put her in it if she ever would try to leave. him.
When the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Spector sent his congratulations. But in a word of thanks from his ex-wife, she never mentioned him while thanking countless other people.
Darlene Love also argued with him, accusing Spector of not mentioning her for singing on “He’s a Rebel” and other songs, but she did praise him when she was recorded in the Hall.
Spector himself became a Hall member in 1989. As his marriages deteriorated, artists also began to stop working with Spector, and musical styles passed him by.
He preferred singles to albums, calling the latter “Two hits and 10 pieces of junk”. At first, he refused to record his music in multi-channel stereo, claiming that the process had corrupted the sound. A retrospective of a Spector box set was called “Back to Mono”.
By the mid-1970s, Spector had largely retired from the music business. He occasionally showed up to work on special projects, including Leonard Cohen’s album “Death of a Ladies ‘Man” and The Ramones’ “End of the Century.” Both were marred by reports of Spector’s instability.
In 1973 Lennon worked with Spector on an album of rock and roll oldies, but Spector disappeared with the tapes. The finished work ‘Rock’ n ‘Roll’ was not released until 1975.
In 1982 Spector married Janis Lynn Zavala and the couple had twins, Nicole and Phillip Jr. The boy died of leukemia at the age of 10.
Six months before his first murder trial began, Spector married Rachelle Short, a 26-year-old singer and actress who accompanied him to court every day. He filed for divorce in 2016.
In a lawsuit in 2005, he stated that he had been on manic depression medications for eight years.
“No sleep, depression, mood swings, mood swings, hard to live with, hard to concentrate, just hard – a hard time getting through life,” he said. “I’ve been called a genius and I think a genius isn’t always there and has madness.”