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LOS ANGELES (AP) – 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 years old.
California state prison officials said he died of natural causes in a hospital on Saturday.
Spector was convicted of the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson at her castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years of life.
While most sources give Spector’s date of birth as 1940, she was listed as 1939 in court documents after her arrest. His lawyer later confirmed the date to the Associated Press.
Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B movies, was found gunned down in the lobby of Spector’s mansion in the hills above the Alhambra, a modest suburban town on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Until the death of the actress, which Spector said was an ‘accidental suicide’, few residents even knew the mansion belonged to the recluse producer, who spent his last years in a prison hospital 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” which fused lively vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce pop landmarks such as “Da Doo Ron Ron”. “Be my baby” and “He’s a rebel.”
He was the rare self-aware artist in the early years of rock and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark undertones and unmoved expression.
Tom Wolfe has declared him the “first teen tycoon”. Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly reproduced his awe-inspiring recording techniques and wide-eyed romanticism, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer of all time.”
The secret of his sound: an overdubbed attack of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result, “Little symphonies for children”.
By his mid-twenties, his “little symphonies” had resulted in nearly two dozen hit singles and made him a millionaire. “You’ve Lost That Sense of Love,” the Righteous Brothers lyrical ballad that topped the charts in 1965, was ranked as the most played song on radio and television – counting numerous covers – in the 20th century.
But thanks in part to the arrival of the Beatles, its success in the charts would soon fade. When “River Deep-Mountain High,” an aptly named 1966 release that starred Tina Turner, failed to gain recognition, Spector shut down his label and retired from the business for three years. He would continue to produce The Beatles and Lennon among others, but he was now in the service of artists, instead of the other way around.
In 1969, Spector was called in to save the Beatles’ album “Let It Be”, a troubled “homecoming” production marked by dissension within the group. Although Lennon praised Spector’s work, his teammate Paul McCartney was furious, especially when Spector added strings and a choir to McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road.” Years later, McCartney would oversee a “Let it Be” remastered, removing Spector’s contributions.
A documentary on the making of Lennon’s “Imagine” album in 1971 showed the ex-Beatle clearly in command, pushing Spector on a backing voice, a line none of Spector’s early artists would have dared. cross.
Spector worked on George Harrison’s acclaimed post-Beatles triple album, “All Things Must Pass,” Lennon’s co-produced “Imagine,” and the less successful “Some Time in New York City,” which featured Spector’s photo on a legend which 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 producer himself was played by Al Pacino in a 2013 HBO movie.
The volume and violence of Spector’s music reflected a dark side he could barely contain even in his prime. He was imperious, temperamental and dangerous, Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector and others who worked with him recall bitterly.
Years of gun tales of studio artists and menacing women would come back to haunt him after Clarkson’s death.
Witnesses said she had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to accompany him to his home from the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, where she worked shortly after they arrived at the Alhambra in the hours leading up to it. dawn of February 3, 2003, reported a driver. Spector came out of the house with a gun, blood on his hands, and said, “I think I killed someone.
He would later tell friends that Clarkson had committed suicide. The case was shrouded in mystery and it took authorities a year to file a complaint. In the meantime, Spector has been left free on a million dollar bond.
When he was finally charged with murder, he lashed out at the authorities, angrily telling reporters: “The actions of the Hitler-type prosecutor and his storm troop henchmen are reprehensible, unfair and despicable.” .
As a defendant, his eccentricity took center stage. He arrived at court for preliminary hearings in theatrical outfits, usually with high-heeled boots, frock coats and wild-style wigs. He arrived at a hearing in a driver-driven Hummer stretch.
Once the 2007 trial began, however, he softened his demeanor. It ended in a 10-2 stalemate leaning towards conviction. His defense had argued that the actress, discouraged by her declining career, had committed suicide by mouth. A new trial began in October 2008.
Harvey Phillip Spector, in his mid-sixties when he was charged with murder, was born on December 26, 1939 in the Bronx neighborhood of New York. Bernard Spector, his father, was an ironworker. Her mother, Bertha, was a seamstress. In 1947, Spector’s father committed suicide due to family debt, 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 predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the edge of Hollywood. For decades, the school has been a source of future musical talent. In Fairfax, Spector performed in talent shows and formed a group called the Teddy Bears with friends.
He was reserved and insecure, but his musical abilities were evident. He had perfect height and easily learned to play several instruments. He was only 17 years old when his group recorded their first successful single, a romantic ballad written and produced by Spector that would become a pop classic: “To know him is to love him”, is inspired by inscription on his father’s gravestone.
Small and skinny child with big dreams and growing demons, Spector continued his education at the University of California, Los Angeles for a year before dropping out to return to New York. He briefly considered becoming a French performer at the United Nations before falling with the musicians of New York’s famous Brill Building. The Broadway building was then at the heart of popular music’s Tin Pan Alley, where writers, composers, singers and musicians produced hit songs.
He began working with star composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who had met at Fairfax High a few years before Spector’s arrival. Eventually, he found his niche in production. During this time he also co-wrote the hit song “Spanish Harlem” with Ben E. King, and played lead guitar on the Drifters’ “On Broadway”.
“I had come back to New York City from California where there were all these green lawns and trees, and there was just this poverty and this decay in Harlem,” he later recalled. “The song was an expression of hope and faith in the youth of Harlem … that there would be better times to come.”
For a while he had his own production company, Philles Records, with his partner Lester Silles, where he developed his signature sound. He brought together 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, Expensive.
In the early 1960s, he had struck after the fact and a notable flop: the album “A Christmas Gift to You”, tragically released on November 22, 1963, the day of President Kennedy’s assassination, the worst time for such a merry record. “A Christmas Present,” featuring the Ronettes singing “Frosty the Snowman” and the Love version of “White Christmas,” is now considered a classic and an eternal favorite on radio during the holiday season.
Spector’s domestic life, as well as his career, ultimately fell apart. 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 after six years, claiming in a memoir that he was holding her prisoner in their mansion, where she said he kept a golden coffin in the basement and told her he would kill her and her. would put in if she tried to leave. him.
When the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Spector sent his congratulations. But in an acceptance speech from his ex-wife, she never mentioned it while thanking many other people.
Darlene Love quarreled with him as well, accusing Spector of not giving him his voice on “He’s a Rebel” and other songs, but she congratulated him on his induction into the Hall.
Spector himself joined the Hall in 1989. As his marriages deteriorated, the record artists also began to stop working with Spector and musical styles overtook him.
He preferred singles to albums, calling the latter “Two hits and 10 pieces of junk.” He initially refused to record his music in multichannel stereo, claiming the process damaged the sound. A retrospective of the Spector box set was called “Back to Mono”.
By the mid-1970s, Spector had largely withdrawn from the music industry. He occasionally went out to work on special projects, including Leonard Cohen’s album, “Death of a Ladies’ Man” and “End of the Century” by the Ramones. Both were marred by reports of Spector’s instability.
In 1973, Lennon worked on an oldies rock ‘n roll album with Spector, to make Spector disappear with the bands. 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 age 10.
Six months before the start of his first murder trial, 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 court testimony in 2005, he testified that he had been taking medication for manic depression for eight years.
“No sleep, depression, mood swings, mood swings, hard to live with, hard to concentrate, just hard – a tough time to go through life,” he says. “I was called a genius and I think a genius is not there all the time and bordering on insanity.
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Linda Deutsch is a retired Special Envoy for The Associated Press. Spector’s murder trial was one of many sensational cases she covered during her 48-year career as a Los Angeles-based trial reporter.
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