Music guru turned into cold killer
Phil Spector Record producer BORN DECEMBER 26, 1939 – DIED JANUARY 16, 2021, AGED 81
ASELF-MADE millionaire by the age of 21 and perhaps the most influential record producer ever, Phil Spector’s pioneering “Wall of Sound” production techniques should have assured his legacy. His unique use of strings, multi-tracked choirs and layers of echo created a swirling orchestral backdrop on scores of hits, including The Ronettes’ Be My Baby and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling by The Righteous Brothers.
Instead, Spector, who died of Covid-19 in prison, will be remembered for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, 40, shot dead in his 33-room mock-gothic mansion in Los Angeles in 2003. It was a predictable tragedy; with plenty of warning signs about the gun-toting maverick’s unstable behaviour put down to eccentricity or ignored because of his celebrity. In fact, fame served to exaggerate his volatile nature and mood swings.
While recording an album with John Lennon, Spector fired a gun in the studio. “Listen Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me,” the former Beatle told him. “But don’t **** with my ears. I need them.” He did it again, while producing an album for Leonard Cohen, shooting in the direction of a backing musician who had annoyed him. After Cohen sacked him, the producer hijacked the master tapes and refused to return them.
An asthmatic, introverted child, Harvey Phillip Spector was born in 1939 into a middle-class family in New York’s Bronx neighbourhood. His father Ben took his own life when his son was nine and, aged 12, he moved with his sister, Shirley, and their seamstress mother Bertha to Los Angeles.
He became interested in music at school, learning the piano, guitar, drums and French horn and, by 1960, had moved to New York to work with the songwriting partnership of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Within a year he had set up his own record company.
Spector’s first marriage to singer Annette Merar was destroyed by his jealousy. He notoriously told second wife Ronnie Bennett, lead singer of The Ronettes, he would display her corpse in a glass coffin he kept if she cheated on him.
Unable to conceive, the couple adopted a boy, Donté, in 1969. Two years later, without consulting Ronnie, Spector also adopted six-year-old twins, Gary and Louis.
Later he had a daughter, Nicole, and son, Phillip Jr, from a relationship with Janis Savala.
In February 2003, having met Lana Clarkson in a Hollywood bar, he invited her to his mansion. An hour later, after the sound of a gunshot, her body was found with a fatal wound to her mouth. Spector blamed “accidental suicide” but evidence revealed that he had pulled a gun on four other women who rejected his advances.
After six years and two trials, he was convicted of murder and jailed for life. In 2006, he married Rachelle Short while on bail but filed for divorce a decade later while he was in prison. Phillip Jr died of leukaemia in 1991 and he is survived by his other children.