Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his “Wall of Sound” method and who later convicted of murder, died. He was 81.
Prison officers in California said he died Saturday of natural causes in a hospital.
Spector was convicted of the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson in his castle-like mansion on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Following a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
While Spector’s date of birth is 1940, it was listed in the court documents in 1939 after his arrest. His lawyer then confirmed the date to The Associated Press.
AP
Clarkson, a star of ‘Barbarian Queen’ and other B-movies, was shot dead in the foyer of Spector’s mansion in the hills overlooking the Alhambra, a modest suburban city on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Until the death of the actress, who Spector claims was an ‘accidental suicide’, few residents even knew that the mansion belonged to the secluded producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton.
Ten years earlier, Spector was seen as a visionary for channeling Wagner’s ambition into the three-minute song, which created the ‘Wall of Sound’ that combined the harmonious voices with lush orchestral arrangements around such pop monuments as ‘Da Doo Ron’ Ron ‘to produce. “Be my baby” and “He’s a rebel.”
He was the rare self-conscious artist in the early years of rock and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark shades and unabashed expression.
Tom Wolfe declared himself the first teenager to be a teenager. Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly repeated his grandiose recording techniques and big-eyed romance and John Lennon calls him ‘the greatest record producer ever’.
The secret of his sound: an exaggerated onslaught of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He calls the result ‘Small Symphonies for the Children’.
By the mid-1920s, his ‘small symphonies’ had produced nearly two dozen hit singles, making him a millionaire. ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling ‘, the opera-righteous brother ballad that topped the charts in 1965, is considered the most played song on radio and television in the 20th century – with numerous covers versions counted.
But thanks in part to the arrival of the Beatles, his success on the map will soon fade. When ‘River Deep-Mountain High’, an appropriate 1966 edition featuring Tina Turner, failed, Spector closed his record label and withdrew from the business for three years. He has produced the Beatles and Lennon, among others, but he now serves the artists instead of the other way around.
In 1969, Spector was called in to save the Beatles album ‘Let It Be’, a troubled ‘back to basics’ production marked by disagreement within the group. 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 restored “Let it Be,” which would remove Spector’s contributions.
A documentary about the production of Lennon’s “Imagine” album from 1971 showed that the former Beatle was clearly in control and sang Spector over an accompanying voice, a line that none of Spector’s earlier artists would have dared do not have.
Spector is working on George Harrison’s award-winning triple album “All Things Must Pass” to the Beatles, co-producing Lennon’s “Imagine”, and the less successful “Some Time in New York City”, which includes Spector’s caption which reads, “To know Him is to love Him.”
Spector also had an unforgettable film, a cameo as a drug dealer in ‘Easy Rider’. The producer himself was played by Al Pacino in a 2013 HBO film.
The volume and violence of Spector’s music reflects a dark side he could barely contain, even at its peak. He was precious, temperamental and dangerous, and bitterly remembered by Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector and others who worked with him.
Years of stories about how he waved guns at the recording of artists in the studio and menacing women would haunt him again after Clarkson’s death.
According to witnesses, she, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to accompany him home from the Sunset Strip’s House of Blues in West Hollywood, where she worked shortly after their arrival in the Alhambra in the early morning hours of February 3, 2003. chauffeur reports Spector came out of the house with a gun with blood on his hands and told him, “I think I killed someone.”
He would later tell friends that Clarkson had shot herself. The case was full of mystery, and it took authorities a year to file complaints. Meanwhile, Spector was released on $ 1 million bail.
When he was finally charged with murder, he slammed the authorities and angrily told reporters: “The actions of the Hitler-like DA and its stormtroopers are reprehensible, unscrupulous and contemptible.”
As an accused, his eccentricity took center stage. He would appear in court for trial in theatrical outfits, usually with high heels, dress coats and beautiful wigs. He arrived at a hearing in a driver Hummer.
However, after the trial began in 2007, he took off his clothing. It ended in a 10-2 drawdown leading to a conviction. His defense argued that the actress, discouraged about her fading career, shot herself through the mouth. A retrial is underway in October 2008.
Harvey Phillip Spector, in his mid-60s when he was charged with murder, was born on December 26, 1939 in the Bronx borough of New York. Bernard Spector, his father, was an ironworker. His mother, Bertha, was a seamstress. In 1947, Spector’s father committed suicide due to the guilt of the family, an event that would shape 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. The school has been a source of future musical talent for decades. At Fairfax, Spector performed in talent shows and formed a group with friends named Teddy Bears with friends.
He was reticent and insecure, but his musical abilities were evident. He had a perfect pitch and easily learned to play various instruments. He was just 17 when his band recorded his 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 the tombstone of his father.
A small, skinny kid with big dreams and growing demons, and Spector attended the University of California, Los Angeles for a year before returning to New York. He briefly considered becoming a French interpreter at the United Nations before ending up with the musicians in the celebrated Brill building in New York. The Broadway building at the time was the core of the Tin Pan Alley of popular music, where writers, composers, singers and musicians performed striking songs.
He began working with star composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who met a few years before Spector’s arrival at Fairfax High. Eventually he found his production niche. During this time he also co-wrote the hit song “Spanish Harlem” with Ben E. King, and played lead guitar on the “On Broadway” of the Drifters.
“I was from California back to New York where all these green lawns and trees were, and there was just this poverty and decay in Harlem,” he would later recall. “The song was an expression of hope and faith in the young people of Harlem … that there would be better times ahead.”
For a time, he had his own production company, Philles Records, with partner Lester Silles, where he developed his distinctive sound. He has brought together such respected studio musicians as the arranger Jack Nitzsche, the guitarist Tommy Tedesco, the pianist Leon Russell and the drummer Hal Blaine, giving early blows to Glen Campbell, Sonny Bono and Bono’s future wife, Cher.
In the early 1960s, he had one hit after another hit and one notable 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 joyful record. A Christmas present, in which Ronettes sings ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and Love’s version of ‘White Christmas’, is now considered a classic and a lasting radio favorite during the holidays.
Spector’s domestic life, along with his career, finally came apart. After his first marriage to Annette Merar broke up, Ronie Bennett, the singer of Ronettes, became his girlfriend and muse. He married her in 1968 and they adopted three children. But she was divorced from him after six years and in a memoir claims that he kept her prisoner in their mansion, where she said he kept a gold coffin in the basement and told her he would kill her and sitting in it if she ever tried him.
When the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Spector sent his congratulations along. But in an acceptance speech from his ex-wife, she never mentioned him while thanking numerous other people.
Darlene Love also quarreled with him, accusing Spector of not acknowledging her for her singing about ‘He’s a Rebel’ and other songs, but she praised him when she was admitted to the hall.
Spector himself became a Hall member in 1989. As his marriages deteriorated, recording artists also stopped working with Spector and musical styles passed him by.
He prefers singles over albums and calls the latter ‘Two hits and ten pieces of junk’. He initially refused to record his music in multi-channel stereo recordings, claiming the process damaged the sound. A flashback of the Spector box was called ‘Back to Mono’.
By the mid-1970s, Spector had largely withdrawn from the music industry. He would occasionally appear to work on special projects, including Leonard Cohen’s album, “Death of a Ladies ‘Man” and The Ramones’ “End of the Century”. Both were damaged by reports of Spector’s instability.
In 1973, Lennon worked with Spector on an album of rock ‘n roll oldies, only to make Spector disappear with the tapes. The completed work, ‘Rock’ n ‘Roll’, first appeared in 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 ten.
Six months before his first murder trial begins, Spector marries Rachelle Short, a 26-year-old singer and actress who accompanies him to court every day. He filed for divorce in 2016.
In a court case in 2005, he testified that he had been using medication for manic depression for eight years.
“No sleep, depression, mood swings, mood swings, hard to live with, hard to concentrate, just hard – it’s hard to get through life,” he said. “I was called a genius and I think a genius is not there all the time and has insane madness.”