Brilliant record producer and convicted murderer

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Brilliant record producer and convicted murderer

PHIL SPECTOR: 1939 - 2021

Phil Spector, a music producer and songwriter who came to dominate the pop charts in the early 1960s with his bombastic-symphonic "wall of sound" in hits such as Be My Baby and You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, and whose long record of disturbing personal behaviour culminated in a murder conviction in 2009, died January 16 aged 80 or 81.

California state prison officials announced that Spector, who was serving a prison sentence, died at an "outside hospital" but did not provide further details.

Phil Spector record produced behind Wall of Sound.

Phil Spector record produced behind Wall of Sound.Credit: Getty

In his career's twilight, Spector was found guilty of fatally shooting actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his sprawling neo-Gothic chateau east of Los Angeles after a night of drinking. After a mistrial, he was retried and convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.

It was a tragic coda to a life of vast creative accomplishment that had long been shadowed by Spector's reputation for unhinged and abusive behaviour. He produced 18 records that each sold more than 1 million copies and, in an industry interested principally in turning out profitable records, he had broad latitude to indulge jarring habits, which included a tendency to brandish guns in recording studios.

After a bleak childhood marked by his father's suicide, he had emerged as one of the most precocious musical talents and pop tastemakers of his generation. He was a professional singer-songwriter in his teens, had his own music label, Philles Records, at 21 and was a millionaire by 25.

His artistic legacy rested on what was dubbed the "wall of sound", a loud, lush, multilayered musical palette that he achieved by stuffing a cramped studio with pianos, guitars and drums.

Phil Spector in 1965.

Phil Spector in 1965.Credit: Getty

The booming but controlled effect — elaborately and minutely planned for maximum dramatic effect — influenced an array of performers, most prominent among them Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and members of the Beatles. The Beatles coaxed Spector out of retirement to produce their final album, Let It Be, in 1969. Lennon once called him "the greatest record producer ever".

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He was defined in the public imagination as the mercurial genius behind such songs as the Crystals' Da Doo Ron Ron. He also helped shape the sound of performers as varied as Tina and Ike Turner, Leonard Cohen, Dion, Cher and the Ramones.

He discovered a group of New York City high school girls, the Crystals, whose debut single, There's No Other (Like My Baby), reached No. 20 on the charts in 1962. The single He's a Rebel, also credited to the Crystals, topped the charts the same year.

Phil Spector (left) with The Rolling Stones - Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman - and Gene Pitney (front).

Phil Spector (left) with The Rolling Stones - Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman - and Gene Pitney (front).Credit: Getty

He's a Rebel was actually sung by a promising young vocalist named Darlene Love and her group, the Blossoms, because he wanted to rush it out before a competing version hit the airwaves, and the Crystals were unavailable.

Love told the New York Times in 1993 that Spector promised her triple the union wage but no royalties and that she agreed to those terms. "The song was cute," she said, "but I didn't think it would be much of a hit."

In 1964, Spector's label released what many music writers consider his commercial and artistic masterpiece, You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin,'  co-written by Spector, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and sung most indelibly by the Righteous Brothers.

The song topped the charts for weeks in the United States and England, where Cilla Black also had a huge success with the ballad.

Two years later, Spector co-wrote and produced Ike & Tina Turner's River Deep — Mountain High, whose commercial failure in the United States sent him reeling. The recording, which did very well in England, was eventually acclaimed as a watershed of pop soul.

Spector was intrigued by the new sounds emanating from England and, on a visit to London in 1964, wound up in a recording studio with the Rolling Stones playing maracas on their self-titled debut album.

In short order, Motown and the so-called British Invasion spearheaded by the Beatles and Stones eclipsed his wall of sound. He exited the music business for several years but returned to produce Let it Be and Lennon's Imagine in 1971. The Concert for Bangladesh soundtrack, which Spector co-produced and featured George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, among others, won a Grammy for album of the year in 1972.

Phil Spector flanked by his lawyers Doran Weinberg (L) and Tran Smith looks at the jury as it they arrive before the verdict was read at Los Angeles Criminal Courts April 13, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.

Phil Spector flanked by his lawyers Doran Weinberg (L) and Tran Smith looks at the jury as it they arrive before the verdict was read at Los Angeles Criminal Courts April 13, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.Credit: Getty

Even as he amassed such accolades and successes, Spector became increasingly erratic. While producing Lennon's 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll, he fired a gun into the ceiling. He threatened Leonard Cohen at gunpoint during a recording session for Death of a Ladies' Man (1977). "Leonard, I love you!" he reportedly said, with Cohen uttering the rejoinder, "I hope you do, Phil."

Spector's first wife, Annette Merar, described him as a womaniser prone to fits of rage. His second wife, Ronnie Bennett, the lead singer of the Ronettes, claimed that he kept her a virtual prisoner in their Alhambra, California mansion. She escaped in 1972 by running barefoot from the hilltop estate. Several of his children, from whom he was estranged, said he abused them.

When Spector was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, he clambered onto the stage with burly bodyguards, spoke incoherently about the inauguration of President George H.W. Bush and quickly exited.

On February 3, 2003 he was arrested in the fatal shooting of Clarkson, a 40-year-old nightclub hostess and struggling actress who had starred in the low-budget movie Barbarian Queen (1985).

Spector had met Clarkson at her workplace, the House of Blues in Hollywood, the night before her death and invited her to his mansion. She was found slumped in a chair in the foyer of his home, with a gunshot wound to her mouth.

Phil Spector during a court hearing in  2004.

Phil Spector during a court hearing in 2004.Credit: AP

Spector had come out of his house and, according to police records obtained by the Los Angeles Times, told his driver: "I think I killed somebody." He posted the $1 million bail and, while awaiting trial for second-degree murder, told Esquire that Clarkson was drunk and suicidally despondent over her career. "She kissed the gun," he said. "I have no idea why — never knew her, never even saw her before that night. . . . There's no case. She killed herself."

Authorities alleged that Spector ordered Clarkson to sit down, pressed the barrel of the gun against her head and shot her.

The trial began in March 2007 and ended that September in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked twice. The prosecution witnesses had included five women who testified that Spector had threatened them with firearms.

Spector did not take the stand. Throughout the trial, he called attention to himself by appearing in various wigs, some of which appeared to defy gravity perched atop his wispy frame.

The retrial began the next year and ended in April 2009 with his conviction.

Weeks before Clarkson's death, Spector sat for an interview with British journalist Mick Brown for the biography Tearing Down the Wall of Sound, published in 2007. Asked about rumours of his alcohol abuse and paranoia, Spector said he had not been well for years.

"I was crippled inside," he said. "Insane is a hard word. . . . I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. But I have a bipolar personality, which is strange. I have devils inside that fight me. And I'm my own worst enemy."

Harvey Philip Spector was born in the Bronx on December 26, 1939, according to his biographer Brown, although prison officials say he was born in 1940. His father, an ironworker, died by suicide when Spector was 9. His mother moved Phil and his older sister to southern California in 1953 and worked as a seamstress and later a bookkeeper.

At school he struggled to fit in. He became obsessed with music, especially rhythm and blues. In high school he began writing songs and organising singing groups among his classmates, including a trio he called the Teddy Bears.

Just after graduation in 1958, he, Marshall Leib and Annette Kleinbard recorded Spector's song To Know Him Is to Love Him. The title came from a tribute etched on his father's gravestone. The song became a million-selling hit and sat on top of the charts for 23 weeks.

Spector's first marriage ended during his affair with Bennett, whom he wed in 1968. They adopted three children before divorcing in 1974. With his longtime girlfriend Janis Zavala, he had twins. Their son Phillip Jr. died in 1991, at 9, of leukemia, sending Spector into a depressive tailspin.

He married actress Rachelle Short in 2006 and filed for divorce a decade later, accusing her of squandering his fortune while he was in prison. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

The Washington Post

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