PHIL SPECTOR DIES AT 81
THE POP PRODUCER JAILED FOR MURDER
PHIL SPECTOR, the producer behind some of pop music’s biggest hits, has died at the age of 81 while serving a prison sentence for murder.
The ‘wall of sound’ creator died in hospital on Saturday, four weeks after reportedly being diagnosed with Covid-19. But California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, where Spector was serving 19 years to life for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson, said he died of natural causes.
‘His official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner in San Joaquin County,’ the department added.
Spector produced 20 top 40 hits from 1961 to 1965, also working with Ike and Tina Turner, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen and The Righteous Brothers.
But his life was blighted by drug and alcohol addiction and he all but retired from the music scene in the 1980s.
In 2009, he was convicted of shooting Barbarian Queen star Ms Clarkson at his mock castle Los Angeles home.
Spector claimed the actress, who he met in a club hours before the shooting, had ‘kissed the gun’ in a bizarre suicide.
But, following an initial mistrial, he was convicted of second-degree murder.
The New York-born music pioneer – inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 – formed The Teddy Bears with three school friends as a teenager. They had a 1958 hit with a song that took its wording from his father’s gravestone – ‘To know him is to love him’.
The band split a year later and Spector, who once said he had ‘devils that fight inside me’, formed his own record label, Phillies, in 1961. He worked with girl groups such as The Crystals and the Ronettes and his signature production technique, the ‘wall of sound’, involved layering pop and classical instruments to give a lush, orchestral sound.
For a time, he quit music and wed Ronettes singer Veronica Bennett, who later alleged he was abusive and made her a virtual captive in their home.
He returned to the world of music in 1969, collaborating on The Beatles’ LP Let It Be and producing John Lennon’s solo album Imagine.
During the 1970s, he became reclusive and disturbing reports of his behaviour became widespread.
He is said to have fired a gun in the studio during a heated session with Lennon.