Phil Spector

• 1. Introduction

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  Phil Spector's father chose three words for his own gravestone: "To Know Him Was To Love Him." His son Harvey, nine years old when Benjamin Spector died by suicide in April 1949, turned that epitaph into a chart-topping song. "To Know Him Is to Love Him" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on the 1st of December 1958, selling over a million copies by year's end. Spector was eighteen. He had not yet founded a record label, not yet invented the Wall of Sound, not yet produced the Beatles. He had not yet shot anyone.

  The story of how a teenager from the Bronx became the most successful American producer of the 1960s is also the story of how that same person ended up convicted of murder and dying in a prison hospital in 2021. Both trajectories begin in the same place: an obsessive need to control everything in the room. In the studio, that need produced some of the most celebrated recordings in pop music history. Outside it, the results were catastrophic.

  What was the Wall of Sound, and why did it transform the recording industry? How did Spector end up working with the Beatles? And who was Lana Clarkson?

• 2. The Wall of Sound

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  In a 1965 profile for the New York Herald Tribune, journalist Tom Wolfe dubbed Spector "the first tycoon of teen." That phrase captures something real about him. Before Spector, the role of the record producer was not widely understood as a distinct creative position. He changed that permanently.

  Spector trained under Stan Ross, the co-owner of Gold Star Studios in Hollywood, who tutored him in record production and shaped his emerging style. What Spector developed at Gold Star was a technique he called the Wall of Sound. He employed a large group of session musicians, later known as the Wrecking Crew, playing together in unison. The combined timbre of each instrumental grouping, layered with heavy reverb and echo, produced a densely orchestral texture that Spector described as "little symphonies for the kids." He wanted the sound of Richard Wagner applied to rock and roll.

  His collaborators were essential to this process. Arranger Jack Nitzsche and engineer Larry Levine worked alongside him regularly. The songwriting teams came largely from the Brill Building, including Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Spector viewed his production work as a form of compositional input, a belief he used to negotiate co-writing credits on songs.

  Biographer Mick Brown wrote that Spector's approach consumed "unprecedented" time and resources at a moment when the dominant perception of pop was of a transient commodity made quickly and cheaply. Dozens of imitative Wall of Sound recordings by other producers appeared between 1962 and 1965. Author Virgil Moorefield described Spector's use of the studio as an orchestral instrument as the defining quality of "the quintessential pop-rock producer." Writing in 1981, sociomusicologist Simon Frith identified Spector's self-imposed retirement in 1966 as one of two catalysts for what he called "the rock/pop split that has afflicted American music ever since."

• 3. Philles Records

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  In late 1961, Spector and Lester Sill combined their first names to form Philles Records. Spector was twenty-one years old, making him the youngest U.S. label owner at the time. Sill had been a mentor figure, a former promotion man who had previously guided Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Sill arranged for Spector to apprentice with Leiber and Stoller in New York, where Spector co-wrote the Ben E. King Top 10 hit "Spanish Harlem" with Leiber and played the guitar solo on the Drifters' "On Broadway."

  By the time Philles released "He's a Rebel" at the top of 1962, Sill was out of the company entirely. Spector had heard the Gene Pitney-written song while working at Liberty Records and moved fast. He rushed into Gold Star Studios and recorded a cover version using Darlene Love and the Blossoms on lead vocals, released it attributed to the Crystals, and watched it rise to number one. The move was characteristic: speed, deception, and total creative control, all in service of the hit.

  Philles operated on a logic different from most labels of the era. Rather than flooding the market with singles, Spector released relatively few recordings, but an unusually high proportion became hits. He exerted comprehensive control over every artistic aspect of production. He also maintained strict control over the B-sides, pairing his singles with intentionally inconsequential instrumental tracks improvised at the close of a session. This ensured radio programmers played the A-side. He named these B-sides after various associates, including his psychiatrist, "Dr. Kaplan's Office," and the operator of a hamburger stand outside Gold Star, "Brother Julius."

  At a concert at the Cow Palace near San Francisco on the 28th of September 1963, Spector was conducting the band for multiple acts on the bill, including the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers. He was so impressed with Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield that he bought their contract from Moonglow Records that night and signed them to Philles. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" became the label's second number one single in early 1965.

• 4. Beatles and the Comeback

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  In early 1970, Allen Klein, who had become the new manager of the Beatles, brought Spector to England. Spector's production of John Lennon's solo single "Instant Karma!" went to number 3 and impressed enough that Lennon and George Harrison invited him to salvage the abandoned Let It Be sessions. Released a month after the Beatles' break-up, the resulting album topped both the U.S. and UK charts.

  Paul McCartney's anger over Spector's overdubbing of "The Long and Winding Road" became one of the most discussed disputes in pop music history. Spector's explanation was that he was given, in Lennon's words to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, "the shittiest load of badly recorded shit, with a lousy feeling toward it, ever. And he made something out of it. He did a great job."

  Harrison's All Things Must Pass followed. Spector helped provide what a Rolling Stone reviewer described as a "Wagnerian, Brucknerian" sound, the music of "mountain tops and vast horizons." Health issues kept Spector away from the project after the basic tracks were recorded, and he returned only for the mixing stage. The album reached number one and yielded "My Sweet Lord" and "What Is Life." It was later that same year that Spector co-produced Lennon's stark Plastic Ono Band, a record deliberately stripped of any Wall of Sound extravagance.

  As head of A&R at Apple Records, a post he held for about a year, Spector co-produced Lennon's chart-topping album Imagine, whose title track reached number 3. He and Harrison also co-produced "Bangla Desh," described as rock's first charity single. The Concert for Bangladesh, recorded live in New York City using up to 44 microphones simultaneously, won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 1973 ceremony.

  The collaboration ended badly. Harrison recalled having to climb down from the roof of Spector's central London hotel room to get him to attend sessions for Living in the Material World, and that his co-producer would need "eighteen cherry brandies before he could get himself down to the studio." During the chaotic 1973 sessions for Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll covers album, Spector brandished handguns and fired a shot while Lennon was recording. In December, Lennon abandoned the sessions. Spector withheld the tapes until June the following year, when Lennon reimbursed him through Capitol Records.

• 5. Later Work and Isolation

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  On the night of the 31st of March 1974, Spector was thrown through the windshield of his car in a crash in Hollywood. He was admitted to the UCLA Medical Center with serious head injuries that required several hours of surgery and more than 300 stitches to his face, with over 400 to the back of his head. Biographer Dave Thompson identified this accident as the most significant reason for Spector's accelerating withdrawal from public life. Thompson also suggested the head injuries explained Spector's later habit of wearing outlandish wigs.

  He established the Warner-Spector label with Warner Bros. Records and later the Phil Spector International label with Britain's Polydor Records in 1975. Neither venture produced major commercial success. The 1977 Leonard Cohen album Death of a Ladies' Man was fraught: after Cohen laid down practice vocal tracks, Spector mixed the record in studio sessions without allowing Cohen any role in the mixing process. Cohen described the result as "grotesque" but also "semi-virtuous." Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg appeared in the background vocals on the track "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On."

  The Ramones album End of the Century, produced in 1979, peaked at number 44 on the Billboard Hot 200, making it the band's highest-charting album. Johnny Ramone later said of Spector's approach, "It really worked when he got to a slower song like 'Danny Says' - the production really worked tremendously. For the harder stuff, it didn't work as well." Rumors circulated for years that Spector had threatened band members with a gun during the sessions. Dee Dee Ramone claimed Spector pulled a gun on him when he tried to leave. Drummer Marky Ramone, recalling the sessions in 2008, said, "They were there but he had a license to carry. He never held us hostage. We could have left at any time."

  Spector's last released project before his arrest was Silence Is Easy by Starsailor in 2003. He had been scheduled to produce the entire album but was fired owing to personal and creative differences. The Spector-produced title track reached the UK top 10.

• 6. Personal Life and Violence

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  Spector married Ronnie Bennett, the lead singer of the Ronettes, in 1968. In her 1990 memoir Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts And Madness, Ronnie Bennett alleged that Spector had imprisoned her in his California mansion and subjected her to years of psychological torment. She wrote that Spector sabotaged her career by forbidding her to perform, and that she escaped barefoot with her mother's help in 1972. In their 1974 divorce settlement, she forfeited all future record earnings and surrendered custody of their adopted children. She alleged this was because Spector had threatened to hire someone to kill her.

  Spector's son Donté told The Daily Mail in 2003 that he and his brother Gary were kept captive as children and described specific acts of sexual abuse. Gary later rejected his brother's account, saying of their father, "He was not a people person... but he shows in his own way that he cares."

  In 1982, Spector had twin children with his girlfriend Janis Zavala: Nicole Audrey Spector and Phillip Spector Jr. Phillip Jr. died of leukemia in 1991. On the 1st of September 2006, while on bail awaiting trial for murder, Spector married his third wife Rachelle Short. He filed for divorce in April 2016 and the marriage ended in 2018.

  At a 2005 court deposition, Spector testified that he had been treated for bipolar disorder for eight years, saying, "No sleep, depression, mood changes, mood swings, hard to live with, hard to concentrate, just hard - a hard time getting through life. I've been called a genius and I think a genius is not there all the time and has borderline insanity."

• 7. Murder, Trial, and Death

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  On the 3rd of February 2003, actress Lana Clarkson was shot in the mouth at Spector's mansion, the Pyrenees Castle, in Alhambra, California. Her body was found slumped in a chair. The emergency call was made by Spector's driver, Adriano de Souza, who quoted Spector as saying, "I think I killed somebody." De Souza told police he saw Spector come out of the back door of the house with a gun in his hand. Spector told Esquire in July 2003 that Clarkson's death was an "accidental suicide" and that she "kissed the gun."

  Spector's murder trial began on the 19th of March 2007 before Judge Larry Paul Fidler in Los Angeles Superior Court, where proceedings were televised. On the 26th of September, Fidler declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked ten to two in favor of conviction. The retrial began on the 20th of October 2008 and was not televised. The case went to the jury on the 26th of March 2009. Eighteen days later, on the 13th of April, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Spector was also found guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a crime, which added four years to his sentence. On the 29th of May 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life in the California state prison system.

  Appeals filed in 2011, 2012, and 2016 were all unsuccessful. By October 2013, Spector had been transferred to the California Health Care Facility, a prison hospital in Stockton. In September 2014, it was reported that he had lost his ability to speak, due to a condition called laryngeal papillomatosis. Spector was diagnosed with COVID-19 in December 2020. He was taken to San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, California, on the 31st of December and intubated the following month. He died on the 16th of January 2021 at the age of 81. His daughter Nicole attributed the cause to complications of COVID-19.

  Upon his death, the 2022 Showtime docuseries Spector, directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce, dedicated equal focus to Clarkson and Spector, with participation from Clarkson's family, Spector's daughter Nicole, and his former associates. Session player Carol Kaye remarked of the musicians' long association with him: "a piece of us were on trial, too."