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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Phil Spector was seen as a man of two distinct characters: the late music producer was seen as a rock’n’roll genius who elevated the genre with his ‘Wall of Sound’ style over the years. 1960 and premiered hits for several big names from the Beatles to Tina Turner.
But while Spector made his mark as a groundbreaking music producer, stories of him waving guns at record artists and being convicted of murder have eclipsed his art.
California State Prison officials said Spector died on Saturday at 81 years of natural causes in a hospital. He 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.
The reaction to Spector’s death resurrected mixed feelings about his life and legacy.
Some have praised his early contributions to rock music, while others have found it difficult to forgive his volatile past.
Beach Boys musician Al Jardine said it would be “It’s good to remember him just for his songs and his talents as a producer. He said the Ronettes song “Be My Baby,” produced and co-written by Spector, inspired his brother Brian Wilson.
Stevie Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band called Spector a “genius irreparably in conflict”.
“He was the ultimate example of art always better than the artist,” Zandt said on Twitter. He added that Spector “made some of the greatest records in history based on the salvation of love while remaining unable to give or receive love his entire life.”
Meanwhile, “The Price is Right” host Drew Carey has targeted Spector, calling him a “murderer and abusive maniac.”
“I wish he had received the mental health help he so clearly needed, but he didn’t,” the comedian said. social media. “And so instead of (asterisk) just (asterisk) shooting guns at angry people or for fun, he murdered one of them.” Good ear for music, I’ll give you that.
Spector’s ex-wife Ronnie Spector remembered him on Sunday as a “brilliant producer, but a terrible husband.” She was the main singer of the Ronettes.
“Unfortunately, Phil couldn’t live and function outside of the recording studio,” she wrote on Instagram.. “Darkness has set in, many lives have been damaged. I always smile every time I hear the music we made together, and I always will. Music will be forever. ”
But Darlene Love, who sang some of Spector’s hits of “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” took a different approach despite her problematic relationship with the producer. She felt sadness after learning of Spector’s death from her son.
“It was sad because of what Spector did, the wonderful music he created, and he spent almost 20 years of his life in prison,” said Love, who admitted that Spector had tried. to “control my talent” during her singing career. She said that Spector had a dangerous temper at times, but she tried to remember the positive.
“I hope people don’t just remember why he spent those years in prison, but more or less what he did for rock ‘n’ roll,” she said. for follow-up. “He changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll. This is what brought me to sadness.
Spector was hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the ‘Wall of Sound’ in the 1960s that merged lively vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce pop landmarks such that “Da Doo Ron Ron”.
Bruce Springsteen and Wilson have openly reproduced his grandiose recording techniques and wide-eyed romanticism, and John Lennon has called him “the greatest record producer of all time.”
But the multiple stories of Spector waving guns at studio artists and threatening women would come back to haunt him after Clarkson’s death.
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. .
Spector became a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. But eventually his recording artists started to stop working with him and the musical styles overtook him.
“He self-destructed in the most horrific way,” said David Thompson, author of “Wall of Pain: The Biography of Phil Spector,” published in 2004. “But we have to separate the two. There are so many people who were once revered that we find that they have done something terrible. It erases all their accomplishments. I don’t agree with that.
Thompson said Spector’s biography was one of his most difficult to write, as he wanted to focus solely on music. But while working on the book, he discovered Spector’s conviction.
“It was a difficult balance,” he said. “I wanted to write about music, just what he did, what he created and what he gave to us. But you kind of had to balance that with the horrible things he did.
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