Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his “Wall of Sound” method and who he was later convicted of murder, died. He was 81 years old.
California state prison officials said he died Saturday from natural causes at a hospital.
Spector was convicted of the 2003 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 in life imprisonment.
Although most sources indicate Spector’s date of birth in 1940, he was listed as 1939 in court documents after his arrest. His lawyer later confirmed this date to The Associated Press.
AP
Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot in the lobby of Spector’s mansion in the hills overlooking the Alhambra, a modest suburban city on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Until the actress’ death, which Spector claimed was an “accidental suicide,” few residents even knew the mansion belonged to the sole producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital in east of Stockton.
Decades earlier, Spector had been hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the “Wall of Sound” that combined lively vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce pop monuments like “Da Doo Ron Ron.” . “Be My Baby” and “He’s a Rebel.”
He was the unconscious artist of the early years of rock and cultivated an image of mystery and power with its dark nuances and impassive expression.
Tom Wolfe declared him the “first tycoon of adolescence.” Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly replicated his grandiose recording techniques and open-eyed romance, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer in history.”
The secret of his sound: an excessive onslaught of instruments, voices and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result, “Little Symphonies for Kids.”
By the mid-1920s, his “little symphonies” had resulted in nearly two dozen hit singles and turned him into a millionaire. “You Have Lost That Lovin ‘Feeling,” the Righteous Brothers operatic ballad that topped the charts in 1965, has been ranked as the most played song on radio and television (counting the many versions) in the 20th century. .
But thanks in part to the arrival of the Beatles, their success on the list would soon fade. When “River Deep-Mountain High,” a 1966 release with the proper name of Tina Turner, failed, Spector closed his record label and retired from the business for three years. He would continue to produce the Beatles and Lennon among others, but now he served the artists instead of doing it the other way around.
In 1969, Spector was called upon to save the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album, a troubled “back to basics” production marked by dissension within the band. While Lennon praised Spector’s work, bandmate Paul McCartney became enraged, 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,” eliminating Spector’s contributions.
A documentary on the creation of Lennon’s 1971 album “Imagine” showed the former Beatle clearly at the forefront, inciting Spector into a secondary voice, a line that none of Spector’s early artists would have dared to cross.
Spector worked on George Harrison’s acclaimed post-Beatles album “All Things Must Pass,” which co-produced Lennon’s “Imagine,” and the less successful “Some Time in New York City,” which included Spector’s image. about a title that said, “To know him is to love him.”
Spector also had a memorable film role, a cameo as a drug dealer in “Easy Rider.” The same producer 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 contain, 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 stories of his guns waving as he recorded artists in the studio and of threatening women would haunt him again after Clarkson’s death.
According to witnesses, she had agreed, with some reluctance, to accompany him home from the Sunset Strip’s House of Blues in West Hollywood, where he worked shortly after his arrival at the Alhambra on the morning of February 3, 2003. , a driver informed Spector he left the house with a gun with blood in his hands and said, “I think I killed someone.”
She will later tell friends that Clarkson had shot herself. The case was full of mystery and authorities took a year to file charges. Spector, meanwhile, remained free on $ 1 million bail.
When he was finally charged with murder, he attacked authorities and angrily told reporters, “The actions of the Hitler-like DA and his storm soldier minions are reprehensible, unconscious and despicable.”
As a defendant, his eccentricity took center stage. She would arrive in court for preliminary hearings in theatrical costumes, usually high-heeled boots, low-cut dresses, and wild-style wigs. He reached an audience on a Hummer stretch with driver.
Once the 2007 trial began, however, he attenuated his attire. He ended up with a 10-2 deadlock leaning toward conviction. His defense had argued that the actress, discouraged by her faded career, shot herself in the mouth. A new trial began in October 2008.
Harvey Phillip Spector, in the mid-1960s when he was charged with murder, had been born on December 26, 1939 in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City. Bernard Spector, his father, was an iron worker. Her mother, Bertha, was a seamstress. In 1947, Spector’s father committed suicide due to family indebtedness, which 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 edge 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 reserved and insecure, but his musical skills were evident. He had a perfect tone and easily learned to play various instruments. He was just 17 when his group recorded their first single, a romantic ballad written and produced by Spector that would become a pop classic: “To know him is to love him,” he was inspired by the inscription of the tombstone of his father.
A small, thin boy, with big dreams and growing demons, Spector attended for a year the University of California, Los Angeles, before leaving to return to New York. He briefly thought about becoming a French interpreter at the United Nations before coming into contact with musicians in New York’s celebrated Brill Building. The Broadway building was then at the heart of the Tin Pan Alley of popular music, where writers, songwriters, singers and musicians became hit songs.
He began working with star composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who had met at Fairfax High a few years before Spector arrived. Ultimately, it found its niche in production. During this period, he also co-wrote the hit song “Spanish Harlem” with Ben E. King, and played lead guitar on Drifters’ “On Broadway.”
“I had come back to New York from California, where there were all these lawns and green trees, and there was only 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 producer, Philles Records, with partner Lester Silles, where he developed his characteristic sound. It brought together such respected studio musicians as arranger Jack Nitzsche, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, pianist Leon Russell and drummer Hal Blaine, and paused Glen Campbell, Sonny Bono and Bono’s future wife Cher.
In the early 1960s, he had struck after a remarkable failure: the album “A Christmas Gift to You”, tragically released on November 22, 1963, the day he assassinated President Kennedy, the worst possible moment. for such a cheerful 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 radio favorite during the holiday season.
Spector’s domestic life, along with his career, ended up breaking down. After his first marriage, to Annette Merar, broke up, Ronettes’ lead singer Ronnie Bennett became his girlfriend and muse. He married her in 1968 and they adopted three children. But she divorced him six years later, stating in a memoir that he held her captive in his mansion, where he said he kept a golden coffin in the basement and told her he would kill her and put her if any once tried to leave. he.
When the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Spector sent in his congratulations. But in an acceptance speech from his ex-wife, he never mentioned it while thanking many other people.
Darlene Love also confronted him, accusing Spector of not having credited her for her voices on “He’s a Rebel” and other songs, but she did congratulate him when she was inducted into the Hall.
Spector himself became a member of the Hall in 1989. As their marriages deteriorated, record artists also began to stop working with Spector and musical styles came to the fore.
He preferred the singles to the albums, calling the latter “Two hits and 10 pieces of junk”. He initially refused to record his music on multi-channel stereo, claiming that the process damaged the sound. A retrospective of the Spector box set was called “Back to Monkey.”
By the mid-1970s, Spector had largely retired from the music business. Sometimes he would go out to work on special projects, including Leonard Cohen’s album, “Death of a Ladies’ Man” and “The End of the Century” by The Ramones. Both were soiled by reports of Spector’s instability.
In 1973, Lennon worked on a rock ‘n roll oldies album with Spector, only to make Spector disappear with the tapes. The finished work, “Rock ‘n’ Roll”, did not come out until 1975.
In 1982 Spector married Janis Lynn Zavala and the couple had twins, Nicole and Phillip Jr. The boy died at the age of 10 from leukemia.
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. She filed for divorce in 2016.
In a 2005 court statement, he stated that he had been taking medications for manic depression for eight years.
“There’s no sleep, depression, mood swings, mood swings, hard to live, hard to concentrate, just hard; it’s hard to get through life,” he said. “I’ve been called a genius and I think a genius isn’t there all the time and has a limit of madness.”