Famed music producer Phil Spector, who was convicted of murder, has died at 81 - CBS News
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Updated on: January 17, 2021 / 5:34 PM / AP
Phil Spector dead at 81 Phil Spector dead at 8100:35
Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his "Wall of Sound" method and who later was convicted of murder, has died. He was 81.
California state prison officials said he died Saturday of natural causes at a hospital.
Spector was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life.
While most sources give Spector's birth date as 1940, it was listed as 1939 in court documents following his arrest. His lawyer subsequently confirmed that date to The Associated Press.
Music producer Phil Spector sits in a courtroom for his sentencing in Los Angeles, Friday, May 29, 2009. Spector was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, Pool) AP
Clarkson, star of "Barbarian Queen" and other B-movies, was found shot to death in the foyer of Spector's mansion in the hills overlooking Alhambra, a modest suburban town on the edge of Los Angeles.
Until the actress' death, which Spector maintained was an "accidental suicide," few residents even knew the mansion belonged to the reclusive producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton.
Decades before, Spector had been hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the "Wall of Sound" that merged spirited vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce such pop monuments as "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Be My Baby" and "He's a Rebel."
He was the rare self-conscious artist in rock's early years and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark shades and impassive expression.
Tom Wolfe declared him the "first tycoon of teen." Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly replicated his grandiose recording techniques and wide-eyed romanticism, and John Lennon called him "the greatest record producer ever."
The secret to his sound: an overdubbed onslaught of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result, "Little symphonies for the kids."
By his mid-20s his "little symphonies" had resulted in nearly two dozen hit singles and made him a millionaire. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," the operatic Righteous Brothers ballad which topped the charts in 1965, has been tabulated as the song most played on radio and television — counting the many cover versions — in the 20th century.
But thanks in part to the arrival of the Beatles, his chart success would soon fade. When "River Deep-Mountain High," an aptly-named 1966 release that featured Tina Turner, failed to catch on, Spector shut down his record label and withdrew from the business for three years. He would go on to produce the Beatles and Lennon among others, but he was now serving the artists, instead of the other way around.
In 1969, Spector was called in to salvage the Beatles' "Let It Be" album, a troubled "back to basics" production marked by dissension within the band. Although Lennon praised Spector's work, bandmate Paul McCartney was enraged, especially when Spector added strings and a choir to McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road." Years later, McCartney would oversee a remastered "Let it Be," removing Spector's contributions.
A documentary of the making of Lennon's 1971 "Imagine" album showed the ex-Beatle clearly in charge, prodding Spector over a backing vocal, 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," co-produced Lennon's "Imagine," and the less successful "Some Time in New York City," which included Spector's picture over a caption that read, "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 at his peak. He was imperious, temperamental and dangerous, remembered bitterly by Darlene Love, Ronnie Spector and others who worked with him.
Years of stories of his waving guns at recording artists in the studio and threatening women would come back to haunt him after Clarkson's death.
According to witnesses she had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to accompany him home from the Sunset Strip's House of Blues in West Hollywood, where she worked Shortly after their arrival in Alhambra in the pre-dawn hours of February 3, 2003, a chauffeur reported Spector came out of the house holding a gun, blood on his hands, and told him, "I think I killed somebody."
He would later tell friends Clarkson had shot herself. The case was fraught with mystery, and it took authorities a year to file charges. In the meantime, Spector remained free on $1 million bail.
When he was finally indicted for murder, he lashed out at authorities, angrily telling reporters: "The actions of the Hitler-like DA and his storm trooper henchmen are reprehensible, unconscionable and despicable."
As a defendant, his eccentricity took center stage. He would arrive in court for pretrial hearings in theatrical outfits, usually featuring high-heeled boots, frock coats and wildly styled wigs. He arrived at one hearing in a chauffeur-driven stretch Hummer.
Once the 2007 trial began, however, he toned down his attire. It ended in a 10-2 deadlock leaning toward conviction. His defense had argued that the actress, despondent about her fading career, shot herself through the mouth. A retrial got underway in October 2008.
Harvey Phillip Spector, in his mid-60s when he was charged with murder, had been born on Dec. 26, 1939, in New York City's borough of the Bronx. Bernard Spector, his father, was an ironworker. His mother, Bertha, was a seamstress. In 1947, Spector's father committed suicide because of 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 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 abilities were obvious. He had perfect pitch and easily learned to play several instruments. He was just 17 when his group recorded its first hit single, a romantic ballad written and produced by Spector that would become a pop classic: "To Know Him is to Love Him," was inspired by the inscription on his father's tombstone.
A short, skinny kid with big dreams and growing demons, Spector went on to attend the University of California, Los Angeles for a year before dropping out to return to New York. He briefly considered becoming a French interpreter at the United Nations before falling in with the musicians at New York's celebrated Brill Building. The Broadway edifice was then at the heart of popular music's Tin Pan Alley, where writers, composers, singers and musicians turned out 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, he found his niche in producing. During this period 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 from California where there were all these green lawns and trees, and there was just this poverty and decay in Harlem," he would recall later. "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 production company, Philles Records, with partner Lester Silles, where he developed his signature sound. He assembled 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 had hit after hit and one notable flop: the album "A Christmas Gift to You," released, tragically, on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, the worst possible time for such a joyous 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, eventually came apart. After his first marriage, to Annette Merar, broke up, Ronettes leader 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 prisoner in their mansion, where she said he kept a gold coffin in the basement and told her he would kill her and put her in it if she ever tried to leave him.
When the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Spector sent along his congratulations. But in an acceptance speech by his ex-wife, she never mentioned him while thanking numerous other people.
Darlene Love also feuded with him, accusing Spector of failing to credit her for her vocals on "He's a Rebel" and other songs, but she did praise him when inducted into the Hall.
Spector himself became a Hall member in 1989. As his marriages deteriorated, recording artists also began to quit working with Spector and musical styles passed him by.
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 Spector box set retrospective was called "Back to Mono."
By the mid-1970s, Spector had largely retreated from the music business. He would emerge occasionally to work on special projects, including Leonard Cohen's album, "Death of a Ladies' Man" and The Ramones' "End of the Century." Both were marred by reports of Spector's instability.
In 1973, Lennon worked on an album of rock 'n roll oldies with Spector, only to have Spector disappear with the tapes. The finished work, "Rock 'n' Roll," didn't come out until 1975.
In 1982 Spector married Janis Lynn Zavala and the couple had twins, Nicole and Phillip Jr. The boy died at age 10 of 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. He filed for divorce in 2016.
In a 2005 court deposition, he testified that he had been on medication for manic depression for eight years.
"No sleep, depression, mood changes, mood swings, hard to live with, hard to concentrate, just hard — a hard time getting through life," he said. "I've been called a genius and I think a genius is not there all the time and has borderline insanity."
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Crazy guy, and obviously a bad man.
He made some great music though.
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Pop genius Phil Spector was also a terrifying and deranged monster
Phil Spector created the greatest pop music ever recorded.
Hear his songs once and their dense, immense sound, layered with countless harmonies, is unforgettable – Be My Baby by The Ronettes or River Deep, Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner.
Of all the giant hits throughout the Sixties produced by Spector, with his hallmark ‘Wall of Sound’, perhaps the finest is You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ by the Righteous Brothers.
Spector, who died yesterday aged 81 from complications linked to a Covid infection, has been acknowledged in the music business for six decades as a genuine genius.
Yet for almost as long, he has been regarded as the most hated man in pop: a thug, a bullying control freak, an alcoholic, a gun nut, a monster... and a murderer.
When he died, he was serving a jail sentence of 19 years to life for the killing of an actress at his California home.
Phil Spector (pictured in 1978) , who died yesterday aged 81 from complications linked to a Covid infection, created the greatest pop music ever recorded
Spector claimed Lana Clarkson was playfully kissing the barrel of his revolver when it was accidentally discharged, in 2003. A pathologist found bruising on the 40-year-old’s tongue, indicating the weapon was forced into her mouth.
After a murder hearing ended in a mistrial in 2007, Spector was found guilty two years later of second degree murder, the US term for manslaughter.
Few who knew the producer were surprised. He had a reputation for gunplay in the recording studio, threatening musicians and stars at pistol point if they failed to obey his instructions to the note.
Songwriter Leonard Cohen, who recorded with Spector in 1977, said that during one late-night session, an argument about the phrasing of a line became so acrimonious that the producer marched out of his booth and held a gun to Cohen’s head until he performed it to his liking.
That wasn’t the only time the Canadian singer and poet found himself a heartbeat away from being shot.
Phil Spector seated in the courtroom on March 23 2009, the last day of the prosecution rebuttal in the case of People v Phil Spector
On another night, Spector weaved across the studio with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other. He flung an arm across Cohen’s shoulder, pulled him tight and shoved the gun barrel against his neck. ‘I love you, Leonard,’ he said.
‘I hope you do,’ Cohen replied.
Cohen was not the only one unnerved by the svengali’s habit of pointing weapons at anyone who displeased him, included John Lennon and The Ramones.
Lennon was recording his 1975 covers album Rock ‘n’ Roll when Spector pulled his revolver from its hip holster and fired a shot inches from the ex-Beatle’s head, into the control room ceiling. A shaken Lennon snapped: ‘Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. But don’t f*** with my ears. I need them.’
Punk bass player Dee Dee Ramone tried to leave the studio after a 12-hour session during which Spector refused to record anything but one chord, played endlessly. The producer aimed his revolver at the bassist’s chest – then deftly stripped and reassembled the gun without ever breaking eye contact.
It sometimes seemed that Spector had pulled a gun on every leading artiste in the business.
Spector had a habit of pointing weapons at anyone who displeased him, included John Lennon and The Ramones. Pictured: Phil Spector with John Lennon
When Blondie’s Debbie Harry approached him about producing a comeback album for her, he took out a handgun, stuck it into the top of her boot and said: ‘Bang!’ After that, Harry said, she couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.
Spector claimed his obsession with firearms began in his teens, after he was beaten up by a gang.
The guns were for protection, he said. But that was far too simple an answer for a man of deep and complex insecurities, who wore two-inch heels to boost his 5’5” height and took medication for schizophrenia even though he had not been diagnosed with the illness.
Days before the killing of Lana Clarkson, he gave his first interview for 25 years and blamed his mental instability on the fact that his parents were first cousins.
‘I would say I’m probably relatively insane, to an extent,’ he said. ‘I have a bipolar personality which is strange. I’m my own worst enemy.’
Born in New York on Boxing Day, 1940, he moved with his family to Los Angeles as a toddler.
Phil Spector (sitting) with George Harrison and the Ronettes
Tragedy struck when he was eight: his father Ben set off for work as usual one morning, but pulled off the road, fed a hosepipe from the exhaust to the driver’s window, and gassed himself to death.
Ben’s gravestone bore the words: ‘To know him was to love him’. Lying in bed and grieving, the boy heard the line in his mind as the refrain of a song.
He formed a high school rock ‘n’ roll band, The Teddy Bears, and recorded it, landing his first No1 hit in 1958. The song became a cover favourite, recorded by artists from Nancy Sinatra and Emmylou Harris to The Beatles and Amy Winehouse.
Spector sang harmonies on that original version, but he soon realised his talent was for shaping sounds, not making them.
After a brief career as a Tin Pan Alley songwriter (co-writing Spanish Harlem, a hit for Cliff Richard and Ben E King), he set up a record company to develop his distinctive, symphonic soundscape – a densely-packed tsunami of music, as if three orchestras and a choir were combining.
Soon he was a phenomenon, the producer as star-maker, dubbed ‘the first tycoon of teen’ by journalist Tom Wolfe.
He began with The Crystals, a gospel-influenced girl group with a string of hits: He’s A Rebel, Da Doo Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me.
Aged 22, he signed The Ronettes. Their lead singer was a statuesque woman with beehive hair and eyeliner like an Egyptian queen. Her name was Ronnie Bennett and Spector became obsessed with her.
They recorded Be My Baby, the song becoming mixed up with the producer’s all-consuming sexual passion for the singer. In bed, he kept leaping up every two minutes and 45 seconds, to put the single on again.
Ronnie didn’t realise at first that Spector was already married, to Annette Merar. When she noticed women’s clothes at his home, he told her they belonged to his sister.
The Colt revolver found near Lana Clarkson's body is seen here in an evidence photo presented during the trial
He insisted on keeping their affair secret, which caused an embarrassing incident at a New York hotel when the house detective assumed Ronnie was a prostitute and tried to throw her out.
A ferociously jealous man, Spector landed The Ronettes a gig as the support act on a Rolling Stones tour – then forced the band’s management to sign legal papers pledging that Mick Jagger and the other Stones would not fraternise or even speak with the girl band.
Ronnie eventually married Spector in 1968 after divorcing his first wife – when his greatest success was already over – and his eccentricities were multiplying.
His Wall of Sound reached its zenith with You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ and another Righteous Brothers classic, Unchained Melody (though pop historians argue over whether he really did produce that song, originally destined to be a B-side).
When River Deep, Mountain High by the Turners flopped on its first release in 1966, an aggrieved Spector retreated to his Hollywood mansion, filling it with memorabilia. For most of the rest of his life, he favoured early-Sixties styles, including a velvet jacket and elevator boots.
He wore toupees and, following a car accident that threw him through the windscreen and left his scalp scarred, a series of bizarre wigs fixed in place with extra-strong glue. At night, Ronnie said, the bedroom reeked of solvent.
Lana Clarkson who was foundshot dead inside Phil Spector's house in LA
Ronnie was forbidden to have friends. He kept her ‘as a beautiful object,’ said one friend. She couldn’t bear children, so he ordered her to wear a cushion under her dress and fake pregnancies, before adopting three babies including a pair of twins.
Their nine-bedroom house, known as Pyrenees Castle, was surrounded by chain-link fences, with guard dogs roaming the grounds. On rare occasions when she was allowed out alone, she had to keep a mannequin dressed up as Spector on the passenger seat of her car – to deter rapists, he said.
After a terrifying row in 1972, she announced she was going shopping with her mother. In-stead she dashed to LA airport and took the first flight to New York. ‘I knew if I didn’t leave, I was going to die there,’ she said. Spector went on to marry again, briefly, in the Eighties.
Despite his unhinged behaviour, many musicians regarded him as a mercurial genius. In 1968, John Lennon and George Harrison asked him to dust his magic brush over the disjointed Let It Be sessions – although Paul McCartney never did forgive Spector for over-dubbing a full orchestra on to his ballad, The Long And Winding Road.
Stories of his strangeness became legend. One journalist, invited to his house, was shown into a blacked-out room by a servant and told to wait. The man sat in darkness for two hours, until he could stand it no longer and opened a curtain.
The first chink of light revealed Spector in an armchair. He had been there, motionless and silent, the whole time.
In 2003, he met an out-of-work actress at the House of Blues club in Hollywood and tried to befriend her, plying her with drink. She told him her name was Lana, that she was a Marilyn Monroe fan, that she was six feet tall, that she had a bit part in the Al Pacino movie, Scarface. They went back to his mansion.
Previous visitors to the house later told the trial that Spector sometimes tried to prevent people from leaving by force, locking doors and waving guns.
Exactly how Lana died will never be known, but Spector called a friend in panic and said: ‘I think I killed somebody.’
The first trial, at which the producer was represented by a ‘dream team’ of attorneys and forensics experts from the OJ Simpson trial, ended in deadlock, with the jury divided. During the hearing, Spector sported a huge Afro hairstyle.
At the second, which lasted six months, he opted for a blond Beatle wig. The jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to a minimum of 19 years. Yet that was not the end of his bizarrely intertwined romances and musical career.
In 2003, shortly after killing Miss Clarkson, he met a 22-year-old waitress and aspiring singer called Rachelle Short. He attempted to launch her as a star and, when that failed, made her his fourth wife in 2006.
After he was jailed, she went on an alleged spending spree that included a private plane, an Aston Martin and a Ferrari, jewellery and properties. Spector filed for divorce in 2016 and agreed to put Pyrenees Castle up for sale at £4million, splitting the proceeds with his ex.
Their divorce was finalised in 2019. The house where Lana Clarkson died is still on the market.
I met Phil Spector one time, briefly, and he was definitely a crazy guy. He did turn out to be a bad man. However, he produced some of the greatest music ever.
His drummer, the incredible musician, Hal Blaine, was a very close friend of mine for almost 40 years until his death in March 2019 at age 90.
He merely produced the music. The artists made the music great.
Actually , he was a songwriter, and has a songwriter credit on many of his biggest hits ( dont know what his actual contribution was ) but had limited musical ability of his own.
Here is Phil Spector singing on a demo record doing a song that was later a hit record for The Righteous Brothers
TODAY I MET THE BOY I'M GONNA MARRY - Darlene Love
WALKING IN THE RAIN - The Ronettes
HE'S SURE THE BOY I LOVE - The Crystals
JUST ONCE IN MY LIFE - The Righteous Brothers
STAND BY ME - John Lennon
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE - The Beatles
WHAT IS LIFE - George Harrison
That wig tho!
High school and college in the 60s. I heard that ''Wall of Sound'' a LOT!