Phil Spector

Phil Spector: The Wall of Sound and the Death at Pyrenees Castle

Pop music had producers before Phil Spector. It had never had a producer whose name was the selling point. Spector wrote and produced a No. 1 record at 18, owned his own label outright at 22, and built a sound so dense that the business had to give it a name: the Wall of Sound. His hand is on the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, the Beatles' *Let It Be* and John Lennon's *Imagine*. Then, before dawn on 3 February 2003, an actress named Lana Clarkson died of a gunshot wound inside his mansion in Alhambra, California. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder. He died a prisoner, at 81.

A Headstone in the Bronx

Harvey Philip Spector was born on 26 December 1939 in the Bronx, into a Jewish family. His father, Benjamin, an ironworker, died by suicide when the boy was nine. A few years later his mother, Bertha, took the family west to the Fairfax District of Los Angeles.

Phil finished Fairfax High School in 1957 and took court-reporting classes at Los Angeles City College. Music was the real curriculum. With friends, among them the singer Annette Kleinbard, he paid for time at Gold Star studio in Hollywood and called the group the Teddy Bears. The song he wrote took its title from the inscription on his father's headstone, shifted from past tense to present. "To Know Him Is to Love Him" went to No. 1 in 1958 and sold more than a million copies. Its author was 18.

The Teenage Tycoon

In 1961 Spector and Lester Sill founded Philles Records. Their first signing was the Crystals, and "He's a Rebel," credited to the group, gave the label its first No. 1. In 1962 Spector bought Sill out and owned the company alone. Tom Wolfe dubbed him "the First Tycoon of Teen," and the charts backed the title: between 1958 and 1965 his records reached the Top 10 fourteen times.

The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" arrived in 1963. The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" reached No. 1 early in 1965. Teenagers bought the singers. The trade understood that it was buying the producer.

Building the Wall

The method was excess under strict command. Spector crowded the small Gold Star room with players: as many as half a dozen guitars strumming the same chords, then two, three or more pianos, then layer after layer of other instruments, until no single part could be picked out. The session musicians he relied on became known as the Wrecking Crew. What came out of a transistor radio was less a band than a weather system.

The idea mattered more than the volume. A producer had been the technician who captured a performance. Spector made the record itself the composition and treated the singer as one more instrument inside it. That shift, from recording songs to authoring records, is his true invention.

Silence, Then the Beatles

In 1966 the wall cracked. Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep – Mountain High" stalled low on the American chart, and Spector walked away from the business.

The Beatles brought him back. In 1970 he produced John Lennon's single "Instant Karma," then took the band's unreleased session tapes and shaped them into *Let It Be*. His orchestral treatment of "The Long and Winding Road" drew sharp criticism; the song and the album both went to No. 1 regardless. He produced Lennon's first two solo albums, *Imagine* among them, George Harrison's *All Things Must Pass* and the Grammy-winning *The Concert for Bangladesh*. Leonard Cohen's *Death of a Ladies' Man* followed, and in 1980 the Ramones' *End of the Century*, his last complete album production. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1989.

The Man Behind the Glass

The control he exercised over a session did not end at the studio door. In 1968 he married Ronnie Bennett, the Ronettes' lead singer; they divorced in 1974. Her 1990 memoir, *Be My Baby*, portrayed an intensely possessive husband who kept her at home rather than in the studio and hired servants to watch her. At his murder trials, several women testified that Spector had threatened them with guns.

A Night at Pyrenees Castle

Lana Clarkson was born in California on 5 April 1962. She was a model and actress, best known for *Barbarian Queen* (1985), with small parts in *Scarface* and *Fast Times at Ridgemont High* and television work on *Three's Company*. By 2003 she was working as a hostess at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. In the early hours of 3 February she met Spector there and left with him for his Alhambra mansion, known as Pyrenees Castle.

At about 5 a.m. his driver heard a gunshot. Spector came out holding a handgun. According to the driver, he said: "I think I killed somebody." Clarkson, 40, was dead of a single gunshot wound.

Two Juries

The defense called her death an accidental suicide. Prosecutors called it murder. The first trial opened in 2007 and ended that September in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked. A second trial began in October 2008. On 13 April 2009 the jury convicted Spector of second-degree murder and found that he had personally used a gun. On 29 May 2009 he was sentenced to 19 years to life: 15 years to life for the killing, four more for the firearm. He was 69. He never left custody again.

Trial coverage too often reduced Clarkson to a B-movie footnote. Her mother, Donna, later spoke on camera about the daughter behind the headlines.

Death in Custody

Spector spent his last years at the California Health Care Facility, the state prison medical center in Stockton. He contracted COVID-19 and died at a hospital in French Camp, California, on 16 January 2021, aged 81. The state prison system reported natural causes; his daughter Nicole said he died of complications of COVID-19.

On Screen and in Print

• Phil Spector (2013), HBO television film, written and directed by David Mamet; Al Pacino plays Spector, with Helen Mirren as defense lawyer Linda Kenney Baden. Its makers present it as drama, not a factual account.
• The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector (2008), BBC *Arena* documentary directed by Vikram Jayanti; Spector appears as himself in an interview filmed in 2007, the year of his first trial.
• Spector (2022), Showtime four-part documentary series directed by Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott; it gives Lana Clarkson's life close to equal time.
• Be My Baby (1990), Harmony Books, memoir by Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron.
• Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector (2007), Knopf, biography by Mick Brown.

Why Phil Spector Is Called a Genius

Because the records still prove it. Spector heard a three-minute single as a symphony and then built it, layer upon layer, until the producer rather than the singer became the author of the sound. That leap, from capturing performances to composing records, is why he appears on Geniuses.club. It is also why his story cannot end at the mixing desk. The guns that women testified he had pointed at them were not an eccentric's props. On 3 February 2003 one of them ended the life of Lana Clarkson, a 40-year-old actress who left work with a famous man and never came home. Talent explains the Wall of Sound. It explains nothing about that night, and it excuses none of it.

Achievements

• Wrote and produced a No. 1 hit at 18; "To Know Him Is to Love Him" took its title from the inscription on his father's headstone.
• Put records in the Top 10 fourteen times between 1958 and 1965, and owned his label, Philles Records, outright at 22.
• Created the Wall of Sound with the session players later known as the Wrecking Crew.
• Produced the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" (1963) and the Righteous Brothers' No. 1 "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (1965).
• Shaped the Beatles' unreleased tapes into the No. 1 album Let It Be (1970) and produced John Lennon's Imagine and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.
• Produced the Grammy-winning The Concert for Bangladesh, and later albums for Leonard Cohen and the Ramones.
• Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
• Convicted on 13 April 2009 of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson and sentenced to 19 years to life.