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, he died. He was 81 years old.
California State Prison officials said he died Saturday from natural causes at a hospital.
Spector was convicted of killing actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his Los Angeles-like mansion on the outskirts of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years in life.
While most sources indicate the date of Spector’s birth in 1940, it was included in 1939 in court documents following his arrest. His lawyer later confirmed this to The Associated Press.
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Clarkson, the star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot dead in the foyer of Spector’s mansion on the hills overlooking the Alhambra, a modest suburban city on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Until the actress’ death, which Spector claimed to be an “accidental suicide”, few residents even knew that the mansion belonged to the exclusive producer, who spent the remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton.
Decades earlier, Spector was hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating “The Wall of Sound” that combined spirited vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce such pop monuments as “Da Doo Ron Ron ”. “Be my child” and “He is a rebel.”
He was a rare self-conscious artist in the early years of rock and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark nuances and impassive expression.
Tom Wolfe called him “the teenager’s first mogul.” Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly reproduced their grandiose recording techniques and big-eyed romance, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer ever.”
The secret of his sound: an unwanted attack of instruments, voice and sound effects that changed the way pop recordings were recorded. He called the result “Little Symphonies for Children.”
In the mid-1920s, “his little symphonies” resulted in almost two dozen successful singles and made him a millionaire. “You Have Lost That Lovin ‘Feeling”, the Righteous Brothers operatic ballad that peaked in 1965, was listed as the most played song on radio and television – counting numerous cover versions – in the 20th century.
But, partly due to the arrival of the Beatles, his success in the charts would soon disappear. When “River Deep-Mountain High,” a properly titled 1966 version featuring Tina Turner, failed to catch on, 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 he now served the artists, instead of the other way around.
In 1969, Spector was called in to save the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album, a troubled production “back to basics” marked by dissension within the band. 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 remastered “Let it Be,” eliminating Spector’s contributions.
A documentary about the making of Lennon’s 1971 album “Picture” showed the former Beatle clearly responsible, pushing Spector over a secondary voice, a line that none of Spector’s early artists would dare to cross it.
Spector worked on George Harrison’s acclaimed triple post-Beatles album, “All Things Must Pass,” co-produced Lennon’s “Image,” and the less successful “Some Time in New York City,” which included Spector’s image. over a legend that read, “To know means to love Him.”
Spector also had a memorable role in the film, 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 reflects a dark side that he could barely contain even at the top. He was imperious, temperamental, and dangerous, bitterly remembered by Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector, and others who worked with him.
Years of stories about his weapons fluttering at the recording of artists in the studio and the threat of women will return to haunt him after Clarkson’s death.
According to witnesses, she agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to accompany him home from the Sunset Strip’s House of Blues in West Hollywood, where he worked shortly after their arrival in the Alhambra in the morning before February 3, 2003, a The driver reported that Spector came out of the house holding a gun, blood on his hands, and said, “I think I killed someone.”
She would later tell her friends that Clarkson had shot herself. The case was full of mystery and it took the authorities a year to file charges. Meanwhile, Spector was released on $ 1 million bail.
When he was finally charged with murder, he attacked the authorities, angrily telling reporters, “The actions of the Hitler-like DA and his stablemen of storm soldiers are reprehensible, unconscious and contemptuous.”
As a defendant, his eccentricity took center stage. He would go to 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 Hummer stretch, led by the driver.
However, with the start of the 2007 trial, he reduced his stance. It ended with a 10-2 stalemate leaning towards conviction. Her defense had claimed that the actress, discouraged by her faded career, shot herself in the mouth. A trial began in October 2008.
Harvey Phillip Spector, in the mid-1960s, when he was charged with murder, was born on December 26, 1939, in the Bronx neighborhood of New York. Bernard Spector, his father, was a blacksmith. His mother, Bertha, was a seamstress. In 1947, Spector’s father committed suicide due to family indebtedness, 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. For decades, the school has been a source of future musical talent. At Fairfax, Spector played talent shows and formed a group with friends called Teddy Bears.
He was reserved and insecure, but his musical abilities were obvious. He had a perfect tone and easily learned to play several instruments. He was only 17 years old when his band recorded their first successful single, a romantic ballad written and produced by Spector that would become a pop classic: “To know him means to love him”, was inspired by the inscription on his father’s tombstone.
A small, thin child with big dreams and growing demons, Spector continued for a year at the University of California, Los Angeles, before giving up New York. He briefly considered becoming a French performer at the United Nations before joining the musicians at the famous Brill Building in New York. The Broadway building was then in the center of Tin Pan Alley of popular music, where writers, composers, singers and musicians performed successful 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, it found its niche in production. During this time, he also co-wrote the hit song, “Spanish Harlem,” with Ben E. King, and played lead guitar on Drifters’ “On Broadway.”
“I had returned to New York from California, where all these lawns and green trees were and it was just this poverty and decay in Harlem,” he later recalled. “The song was an expression of hope and faith in the youth of Harlem … that better times will follow.”
For a while he had his own production company, Philles Records, with his partner Lester Silles, where he developed his signature. It brought together such respected studio musicians 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, Cher.
In the early 1960s, he hit the hit with a notable flop: the album “A Christmas Gift to You”, tragically released on November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, the worst possible moment of merry recording. “A Christmas Gift”, with Ronettes singing “Frosty the Snowman” and Love’s version of “White Christmas”, is now considered a classic and a favorite perennial on the radio during the holiday season.
Spector’s domestic life, along with his career, eventually fell apart. After his first marriage to Annette Merar, he broke up, leading Ronettes singer Ronnie Bennett became his girlfriend and muse. He married her in 1968 and they adopted three children. But she divorced him after six years, claiming in a memoir that he held her captive in their mansion, where he said he kept a golden coffin in the basement and told her he would kill her and put her in it if he ever tried. to leave. it.
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 confronted him as well, accusing Spector of not recognizing her for her voice in “He’s a Rebel” and other songs, but she praised him when she was introduced to the room.
Spector himself became a member of Hall in 1989. As his marriages deteriorated, recording artists began to give up working with Spector, and musical styles passed him by.
He preferred the singles to the albums, calling the latter “Two Hits and 10 Trash”. He initially refused to record his music in multi-channel stereo, claiming that the process damaged the sound. A retrospective of the Spector box set was called “Back to Mono”.
In the mid-1970s, Spector retired largely from the music business. He appears from time to time to work on special projects, including Leonard Cohen’s album, “Death of a Ladies’ Man” and The Ramones “End of the Century.” Both have been affected by reports of Spector’s instability.
In 1973, Lennon worked on a rock ‘n roll oldies album with Spector, for Spector to disappear with the tapes. The completed work, “Rock ‘n’ Roll”, did not appear 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 of leukemia.
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 a 2005 court statement, he confessed to taking medications for manic depression for eight years.
“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 was called a genius and I think a genius isn’t there all the time and he’s crazy.”