Died: January 16, 2021.
WRITING in his Bob Dylan Encyclopedia some 14 years ago, author Michael Gray, observing that Phil Spector was very young when his father took his own life, says that that event, more than any other, “explains” Spector’s lifetime “of disturbed behaviour. Mad, inspired record producer; seven-stone weakling; gun-toting paranoiac; teen tantrum king; abusive husband and father: this is Phil Spector on a good day”.
A few years later, in 2009, after a retrial (the first one, in 2007, had ended in a hung jury), Spector was found guilty of the second-degree murder, in 2003, of Lana Clarkson, an actress he had met the previous evening, at his turreted mansion in a Los Angeles suburb. Clarkson had died of a gunshot wound to the mouth. Spector was sentenced to between 19 years and life. In 2014, in view of his declining health, he was moved from the California State Prison to a healthcare facility; he died at the weekend, aged 81, from complications of Covid-19.