John Lennon called him the greatest producer of all time – and he was in jail for murder. Phil Spector shaped the sound of a generation. But he couldn’t escape his dark side.
By Marcus Schuler, ARD Studio Los Angeles
Journalist Mick Brown was one of the last people who was still free to interview Phil Spector in 2003. A short time later, the legendary music producer shot the actress Lana Clarkson in his castle-like property in Los Angeles. At the time, Spector told the journalist that he was carrying the devil with whom he was constantly fighting. “I am my greatest enemy and I am very likely insane,” he said at the time.
Spector’s father takes his own life when Phil is just nine years old. His older sister is insane. The family is traumatized and moves from New York to Los Angeles at the time.
At the age of 18 Spector recorded his first hit with the Teddy Bears – “To know him is to love him” – that is also the inscription on Spector’s father’s grave stone. Spector founded his own record label at the age of 21.
Wall of Sound
In an interview with the radio station “NPR”, drummer Hal Blaine remembers what it was like to record a new record with Spector in the studio. “He was standing in the studio and running back and forth, it looked like he was conducting an orchestra. Sometimes he would look at me and that was the cue for me to get started,” Blaine said.
Spector gave his songs a kind of trademark – a wall of sound – a wall of sound like the hit “Be My Baby” by the Ronnetts. The producer was married to their lead singer Ronnie. In an “NPR” interview in 1990, she said the songs were love letters. “We always rehearsed them on our own. That was when this romantic connection arose between my singing and his guidance. That was the best feeling in the world.”
Phil Spector changes in the 1960s, the time of his greatest success, he suffers from fear of loss and sets in motion a spiral of abuse. He buys his wife a glass coffin. If she leaves it, she will end up in it.
Crash in the 1970s
There were 20 top 40 hits between 1961 and 1965. He worked with the Beatles, and directed “Let it be” with the Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner. Their song “River Deep – Mountain High” is Specto’s favorite hit, although it wasn’t a great chart success.
John Lennon calls him the greatest music producer of all time. With him he produced the song “Imagine”. But Spector’s career came to an end in the 1970s. Nobody wants to work with him anymore. He drinks and always has a gun with him. In 1980, when he was in the studio with the Ramones for the album “End of Century”, he allegedly threatened the band with a gun. The collaboration with Celine Dion also fails.
Music journalist Mick Brown says: “He has this incredible musical talent. With it, he managed to make extraordinary recordings. Grandiose dreams of romance, love and escape,” he says. “And that’s exactly what he hurled at the world: his father who had committed suicide, the kids at school who didn’t want anything to do with him, the record industry who thought he was crazy. That was Spector’s revenge. “
And not only that. It was his legacy too.
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