THE ANGELS– The late music producer Phil Spector was considered a man with two personalities. On the one hand, the rock ‘n’ roll genius who took the genre to a higher level in the sixties with his ‘wall of sound’ and created hits for artists such as the Beatles and Tina Turner. On the other hand, the aggressive man who brandished weapons against artists and was eventually sentenced to prison for murder.
Spector died of natural causes in a hospital Saturday, California state jail officials said. He was 81 years old. He was convicted of the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson at her mansion outside of Los Angeles, and after a 2009 trial, he was sentenced to 19 years behind bars without the possibility of parole.
His death provoked conflicting reactions about his life and his legacy. Some recognized his early contributions to rock, while others struggled to forgive his fleeting past.
Al Jardine of the Beach Boys said it would be nice “to remember him just because of his songs and production skills.” He said the Ronettes song “Be My Baby” co-written and produced by Spector, his friend and fellow Beach Boys inspired Brian Wilson.
Stevie Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band called Spector “a hopelessly contradictory genius.”
“It was the best example that the art will always be better than the artist,” Zandt said on Twitter. He added that Spector “made some of the best recordings ever based on saving love when he could not give or receive love all his life.”
For his part, host Drew Carey called “The Price is Right” Spector, who he called a “murderer and an insulting maniac”.
“I wish he had gotten the psychological help he clearly needed, but he didn’t,” the comedian said on social media. Instead of ‘just’ drawing weapons for people out of anger or entertainment, he killed one of them. He had a good ear for music, I admit. ‘
Spector’s ex-wife, Ronnie Spector, remembered him on Sunday as “a brilliant producer, but a terrible husband.” She was the lead singer of the Ronettes.
“Sadly, Phil could not live and function outside the recording studio,” he wrote on Instagram. “The darkness has been planted, many lives have been affected. I still smile when I listen to the music we made together, and I always will. The music will be forever.”
But Darlene Love, who performed Spector hits like “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love”, took a different approach. Despite her troubled relationship with the producer, she felt sad when she told her about her son after hearing about his death.
“It was sad about what Spector did, the beautiful music he made, and he spent nearly 20 years of his life in prison,” said Love, admitting that Spector tried to ‘master’ his talent throughout his career. She said that Spector was in a dangerous mood at times, but she tries to remember the positive.
“I hope people will remember not only why he spent those years in prison, but also more or less what he did for rock ‘n’ roll,” he added. He changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll. That made me sad. ‘
Clarkson, known for “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot dead in the lobby of Spector’s mansion outside of Los Angeles.
Until the death of the actress, which Spector said was an ‘accidental suicide’, few residents knew that the gruff producer, who spent his last years in a prison hospital east of Stockton, was to blame.
Spector was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. But over time, artists stopped working with him and he didn’t change style much.
“It destroyed itself in the most horrible way,” said David Thompson, author of “Wall of Pain: The Biography of Phil Spector,” published in 2004. “But we must separate the two parts. There are many people who are revered until “We find out. They did something terrible. That wiped out all their achievements. I don’t agree.”
Thompson said Spector’s biography was one of the hardest to write because he wanted to focus solely on the music, but while working on the book, he heard about Spector’s conviction.
“It was difficult to balance,” he said. “I wanted to write about music, what it did, what it created and what it gave us, but I had to balance it with the terrible things it did.”