Evil Genius: We seem to be struggling with the appropriate way to react to the death of the murdering legendary record producer.

 

Music producer Phil Spector, the man behind decades of pop hits and a convicted murderer, has died at age 81.Spector leaves a legacy of violence and abuse in addition to his work with pop artists.

Spector died Saturday at a hospital of natural causes, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His official cause of death will be determined by a medical examiner, but according to the LA Times, he was hospitalized after contracting COVID-19.

He helped curate the mainstream playlist for decades, with more than 20 tracks that charted on the Billboard Top 40 between 1961 and 1966 — many using his signature "Wall of Sound." He worked with the Beatles, Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, girl groups like the Ronettes and the Crystals, and others.

He effectively retired after putting out his last full record with the Ramones in 1979. In 2003 he killed actor and model Lana Clarkson, who was found dead at his mansion outside Los Angeles after he shot her in the mouth. In 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.

Spector maintained his innocence, saying Clarkson killed herself. He was quoted in Esquire as saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong. … She kissed the gun.”

The first time he went to court, in 2007, it was declared a mistrial. He frequently wore wigs to court. Evidence came forward that Spector had a pattern of pointing guns at women since the ’70s.

He was tried again in 2008. In 2009, six years after the killing, he was found guilty and spent his final years in a Stockton, California, prison.

In a statement on Sunday, Clarkson's mother Donna Clarkson remembered her daughter.

"Lana Clarkson was a warm, compassionate, kind, loving woman who would be 58 years old now," she said. "Her energy, brightness and love of life have sustained her family since her murder 18 years ago in 2003.”

In 2014, Spector's lawyer told the Daily Mirror that he was in poor health and had lost the ability to speak. He would have been up for parole in 2024.

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Murderer, Misogynist, Music Producer: Phil Spector dies at 81

 

Phil Spector and the Ronettes.

Phil Spector, the monumentally influential music producer whose “Wall of Sound” style revolutionized the way rock music was recorded in the early 1960s, died Saturday at the age of 81. Spector’s life was tumultuous and ultimately tragic; as groundbreaking as his studio accomplishments were, those achievements were all but overshadowed by his 2009 conviction for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

Spector’s death was confirmed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “California Health Care Facility inmate Phillip Spector was pronounced deceased of natural causes at 6:35 p.m. on Saturday, January 16, 2021, at an outside hospital,” officials said in a statement. “His official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.”

Spector adopted what he famously referred to as “a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll,” calling the hit records he assembled in the Sixties for artists like the Ronettes, the Crystals, Darlene Love and the Righteous Brothers “little symphonies for the kids.” His productions were dense and orchestral, accumulating layer upon layer of guitars, horns, keyboards, strings and percussion, often with multiple instruments playing the same note in unison. The songs he selected were dizzyingly romantic, typically written by the greatest of the Brill Building songwriters, and his classic recordings relied on the brilliant contributions of a set of musicians dubbed the Wrecking Crew – drummer Hal Blaine’s four-beat intro to the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” is one of the most distinctive song intros in rock & roll history.

Spector’s classic recordings spurred his contemporaries to become more ambitious in the studio. “He’s timeless,” Brian Wilson said of Spector in 1966. “He makes a milestone whenever he goes into the studio and this has helped the Beach Boys evolve.” A decade later, Bruce Springsteen would seek to recapture the grandeur of Spector’s productions on Born to Run. “Phil’s records felt like near chaos, violence covered in sugar and candy … little three–minute orgasms, followed by oblivion,” Springsteen said in his 2012 South by Southwest keynote speech. “And Phil’s greatest lesson was sound. Sound is its own language.

Phil Spector at his trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson.

“A genius irredeemably conflicted, he was the ultimate example of the Art always being better than the Artist, having made some of the greatest records in history based on the salvation of love while remaining incapable of giving or receiving love his whole life,” Stevie Van Zandt wrote on Twitter.

Since 2009, Spector had been imprisoned on second-degree murder charges, with the producer serving a 19 years-to-life sentence following his conviction for the 2003 murder of Clarkson, an actress who met Spector while working as a hostess at Los Angeles’ House of Blues. Clarkson accompanied Spector home to his Alhambra mansion in the early morning hours of February 3rd, 2003; soon after, Spector’s chauffeur, waiting outside the mansion, heard what he thought was a gunshot. As the chauffeur would later testify at the producer’s murder trial, Spector emerged from the mansion and said, “I think I killed somebody.”

Harvey Philip Spector was born in the Bronx on December 26, 1939. His father died by suicide when Spector was nine years old. Spector moved to Los Angeles with his mother in 1953, and within a few years, he was playing in jazz groups.

Spector formed the Teddy Bears in 1958 with high school friends Marshall Lieb and Annette Kleinbard. Spector took the title of his first production, “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” from the inscription on his father’s gravestone. It was a Number One hit, but the group’s subsequent singles, as well as their sole album, The Teddy Bears Sing!, flopped and the group quickly dissolved.

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