Phil Spector

Harvey Phillip Spector was born December 26, 1939, in the Bronx, New York City. The record producer, and songwriter, is best known for his innovative recording practices in the 1960s along with his two trials and conviction for murder in the 2000s. Spector developed the Wall of Sound, a production style that is characterised by its diffusion of tone colours and dense orchestral sound. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in pop music history and one of the most successful producers of the 1960s.

In April 1949, Spector’s father, who was deeply in debt, died by suicide; on his gravestone were inscribed the words “Ben Spector. Father. Husband. To Know Him Was To Love Him.” The aspiring musician moved to Los Angeles while still a teenager. At the age of 19, he co-founded The Teddy Bears and wrote and sang on their 1958 number-one hit “To Know Him Is to Love Him” inspired by the epitaph on his father’s tombstone.

In the 1960s he became known as a musical auteur, who sought control over every aspect of how a record was made through his label Philles Records. He produced acts including The Ronettes, The Crystals and Ike & Tina Turner. Spector co-wrote the Ben E. King Top 10 hit “Spanish Harlem” with Jerry Leiber and also worked as a session musician, playing the guitar solo on the Drifters’ song “On Broadway”.

On September 28, 1963, the Ronettes appeared at the Cow Palace, near San Francisco. Also on the bill were the Righteous Brothers. Spector, who was conducting the band for all the acts, was so impressed with Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield that he bought their contract from Moonglow Records and signed them to his label. In early 1965, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin‘” became a number 1 single.

In 1963 he released a Christmas album, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, which remains a perennial festive favourite. Over 50 years since its initial release in December 2018, the album entered the main Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time eventually peaking at No.12 three weeks later. During sessions Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys attempted to contribute piano to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”, but Spector rejected him for poor playing.

In 1965, the Ronettes were voted the third-top singing group in England behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. They opened for the Beatles on their 1966 US tour without their lead singer. Spector had forbidden his wife to tour with the Beatles, so her cousin Elaine stood in as a third member. Ronnie alleged in her 1990 memoir that following their marriage, Phil subjected her to years of psychological torment and sabotaged her career by forbidding her to perform. She said he surrounded their house with barbed wire and guard dogs, and confiscated her shoes to prevent her from leaving. On the rare occasions, he allowed her out alone, she had to drive with a life-size dummy of Phil. She stated that Phil installed a gold coffin with a glass top in the basement, promising that he would kill her and display her corpse if she ever left him.

In their 1974 divorce settlement, Ronnie forfeited all future record earnings, alleging that Phil had threatened to have a hit man kill her. She received $25,000, a used car, and a monthly alimony of $2,500 for five years. She later testified that Phil had frequently pulled a gun on her during their marriage and threatened to kill her unless she surrendered custody of their children.

Spector’s final signing to Philles was the husband-and-wife team of Ike & Tina Turner in April 1966. Spector considered their single “River Deep – Mountain High” his best work, but it failed to reach any higher than number 88 in the United States. The record, which featured Tina Turner without Ike Turner, was successful in Britain, reaching number 3.

In early 1970, Allen Klein, the new manager of the Beatles, brought Spector to England. After impressing with his production of John Lennon‘s solo single “Instant Karma!“, Spector was invited by Lennon and George Harrison to take on the task of turning the Beatles’ abandoned Let It Be recording sessions into a usable album. Spector also worked on Harrison’s multiplatinum album All Things Must Pass.

As the 1970s progressed, Spector became increasingly reclusive. The most probable and significant reason for his withdrawal, according to biographer Dave Thompson, was that in 1974 he was seriously injured when he was thrown through the windshield of his car in a crash in Hollywood. Spector was almost killed, and it was only because the attending police officer detected a faint pulse that Spector was not declared dead at the scene. He was admitted to the UCLA Medical Center on the night of March 31, suffering serious head injuries that required several hours of surgery, with over 300 stitches to his face and more than 400 to the back of his head. His head injuries, Thompson suggests, were the reason that Spector began his habit of wearing outlandish wigs in later years.

Spector began to reemerge later in the decade, producing and co-writing a controversial 1977 album by Leonard Cohen, titled Death of a Ladies’ Man. He also produced the much-publicized Ramones album End of the Century in 1979.

Spector remained inactive throughout most of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. In early 1981, shortly after the death of John Lennon, he temporarily re-emerged to co-produce Yoko Ono’s Season of Glass. He attempted to work with Céline Dion on her album Falling into You but fell out with her production team. His last released project was Silence Is Easy by Starsailor, in 2003. He was originally supposed to produce the entire album but was fired owing to personal and creative differences.

Spector was married three times. He married his first wife Annette Merar in 1963, and while still married to her began an affair with Ronnie Bennett of the Ronettes. They married in 1968 and she was widely known as Ronnie Spector for the rest of her life, despite his mistreatment of her. She was held captive until June 1972, when she escaped and fled into the night barefoot, Spector having taken all her shoes.

On February 3, 2003, Spector shot actress Lana Clarkson in the mouth while in his mansion (the Pyrenees Castle) in Alhambra, California. Her body was found slumped in a chair with a single gunshot wound to her mouth. She was working as a hostess at the music venue the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, which is where she met Spector. Hours later his driver heard a gunshot before Spector exited his house through the back door with a gun. The driver testified that Spector said: “I think I just shot her,” although the producer later claimed that Clarkson had committed suicide when she “kissed the gun.” These claims were dismissed in his second trial after a series of women testified that Spector had a habit of locking his dates inside his home and threatening them with a loaded gun until they did what he wanted. In February 2003 Spector was found guilty and on May 29, 2009, was sentenced to 19 years to life in the California state prison system.

The police who attended the crime scene reported that the mansion was dimly lit with rats and mice running around the rooms. They also stated that some rooms in the mansion hadn’t been occupied for years.

In 2006, a month before he was charged with Clarkson’s murder, Spector married his third wife Rachelle Short. At the time he was 67 and she was 26. He filed for divorce in 2018, complaining that while he lived on an allowance of $300 a month behind bars, she was lavishly spending his fortune on expensive jewellery, two homes for her mother, a Ferrari, an Aston Martin and a $350,000 private plane.

Phil Spector died on January 16, 2021, at the age of 81. He had been an inmate at a prison hospital, the California Health Care Facility, since 2013 but had been moved to San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, California, at the time of his death. He was pronounced dead of natural causes, later attributed to complications caused by COVID-19. He was still serving his 19-year sentence for Clarkson’s murder at the time of his death, and would have been eligible for parole in 2024.