Revolutionary music producer and tortured soul who was jailed for murder

Phil Spector, who has died from Covid19 aged 81, was a highly gifted record producer and songwriter whose recordings in the 1960s, and later with the Beatles, revolutionised pop music, but whose talents were undermined by a mercurial temperament that would lead to him twice standing trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

In his heyday in the early 1960s, Spector pioneered what became known as ‘‘The Wall of Sound’’, producing some of the most exhilarating and uplifting recordings ever heard in pop music, including Be My Baby by the Ronettes and Da Do Ron Ron by the Crystals. In the

1970s he went on to work with the

Beatles, producing

John Lennon’s anthemic Imagine and George

Harrison’s My Sweet Lord.

Spector’s work was to prove enormously influential on such figures as Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who claimed that he listened to Be My Baby every day in search of inspiration, and Bruce Springsteen, whose multimillion-selling album Born To Run was an explicit homage to the Wall of Sound.

Yet for all the transcendent beauty of his music, Spector was a man who seemed to magnetise darkness. His controlling behaviour over his artists left a legacy of bitterness and lawsuits; and fame served only to inflame his incipient insecurities, leading to him withdrawing from the music business, a troubled and reclusive figure sequestered behind a screen of barbed-wire fences and Keep Out: Armed Response signs.

In an interviewin December 2002 Spector talked of his psychological and emotional difficulties over the years, stating that ‘‘to all intents and purposes I would say I’m probably relatively insane, to an extent ...’’

But the worst, he stressed, was behind him; he was now trying to be ‘‘a reasonable man. And being reasonable with yourself. It’s very difficult, very difficult . . .’’

Six weeks later, in a Hollywood club called the House of Blues, Spector met an actress named Lana Clarkson. He invited her to his home in the nondescript Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra. Two hours later, Clarkson was killed by a single gun shot to the mouth.

In 2007 Spector stood trial for murder, but the jury was unable to reach the unanimous verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. The following year he was tried again and found guilty. He was sentenced to 19 years to life in the California state prison system.

Harvey Philip Spector was born into a working-class Jewish family in the Bronx, New York. When Spector was 9, his father Benjamin, an ironworker, committed suicide, leaving his son to be brought up by an overbearing mother, Bertha.

Spector, his mother and an elder sister, Shirley, moved to Los Angeles, where Bertha worked as a seamstress and Spector attended

Fairfax High School. Small, pale and scrawny, with watery eyes and an adenoidal voice, he was the playground outsider, and frequently bullied. But he found his salvation in music.

In 1958 he enlisted two school friends in a group called The Teddy Bears, and wrote and produced his first recording. Its title had been inspired by the words on his father’s gravestone ‘‘To Know Him Was To Love Him’’; Spector needed to make only one change of tense – To Know Him Is To Love Him – to disguise the epitaph as a love song.

The record went to No 1 in America, selling more than one million copies. But Spector was unable to consolidate his success with The Teddy Bears, and in 1960 he moved to New York. He served as an apprentice to the illustrious producers and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and with Leiber cowrote Spanish Harlem, a hit for Ben E King. More than just a producer, Spector was a visionary who dreamed of creating a sound never before heard in pop music, as rich in depth and texture as symphonic music.

Working on primitive two-track recording equipment in the cramped confines of Gold

Star studios in Los Angeles, Spector would assemble a small army of musicians to build a formidable Wall of Sound which would be garnished with liberal dosings of echo. He described his recordings as ‘‘little symphonies for the kids’’.

For a short period in the early 60s, he was the most successful producer in pop, shaping an unbroken flow of hits for such artists as the Crystals, the Ronettes, and the Righteous Brothers, whose No 1 hit You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ would become the most played record ever on American radio, exceeding even The Beatles’ Yesterday.

Dictatorial, quixotic, driven by an unswerving belief in his own brilliance and an apparent determination to avenge every slight, real or imagined, that he had ever received, Spector became, uniquely, a bigger star than any of the artists he produced.

He played the part to the hilt. A tiny man with a disproportionately fiery temper, he dressed in high dandified style, habitually wearing sunglasses, and adopting a progressively more improbable series of hairpieces to disguise his baldness.

He acquired the obligatory Beverly Hills mansion, a retinue of bodyguards, and a reputation for wayward eccentricity.

But by 1966, Spector’s reign at the top of the US charts was over, his Wall of Sound an anachronism. When his most grandiloquent and extravagant production, Ike and Tina Turner’s River Deep Mountain High, reached only No 88 in the American charts (although it reached No 2 in Britain), he was crushed.

He retired to his mansion to brood; married his protege Ronnie Bennett, the lead singer of the Ronettes, and, consumed with jealously, kept her a virtual prisoner at home. It seemed his career was over, but in 1970 it was given a new lease of life when he was invited to finalise production on the Beatles’ valedictory album, Let It Be. He went to coproduce four albums by John Lennon, including Imagine, and George Harrison’s multimillion-selling All Things Must Pass.

But it was to be his last hurrah. Through the 1970s, Spector worked only intermittently, producing albums by Leonard Cohen, Dion DiMucci and, finally, in 1979, the Ramones.

By now his reputation for waywardness threatened to eclipse any acknowledgement of his extraordinary accomplishments as a producer. Stories abounded of his out-ofcontrol behaviour, his drinking jags, of scenes in restaurants and, most ominously, of his predilection for guns.

Spector could be immensely charming and amusing company. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of all forms of music, was a vivid storyteller, and his habit of leaving $500 tips ensured him a warm welcome in many Hollywood restaurants.

He was married three times, to Annette Merar, to Veronica (Ronnie) Bennett, and to Rachelle Short. All three marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by a daughter and three adopted sons. A son predeceased him.

– Telegraph Group

‘‘To all intents and purposes I would say I’m probably relatively insane, to an extent . . .’’