Credit: Getty
As the creator of the ‘wall of sound’ production style, Phil Spector‘s influence on the foundations of pop music undoubtedly rivals that of the very top tier of pop’s most legendary figures. Yet a long history of abusive and manipulative behaviour, including threatening gunplay, culminated in the 2009 conviction of the murder of actor Lana Clarkson, which saw him die in prison and will justifiably overshadow his many achievements.
Spector – who died today aged 81 – was born Harvey Phillip Spector in New York in 1939. His forays into pop music began in the late ‘50s as a member of vocal group The Teddy Bears, who gave him his first US number one in 1958 with the million-selling ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, a phrase that was carved on his father’s gravestone. At the same time he studied production at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood and, following further success with his co-write on Ben E King’s ‘Spanish Harlem’, began working as apprentice to
AP
By the mid-1970s, Spector had largely retreated from the music business.
LOS ANGELES: Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his Wall of Sound method and who later was convicted of murder, has died. He was 81. California state prison officials said he died Saturday of natural causes at a hospital. Spector was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life. While most sources give Spector s birth date as 1940, it was listed as 1939 in court documents following his arrest. His lawyer subsequently confirmed that date to The Associated Press.
Brilliant record producer and convicted murderer
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January 18, 2021 1.57pm
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PHIL SPECTOR: 1939 - 2021
Phil Spector, a music producer and songwriter who came to dominate the pop charts in the early 1960s with his bombastic-symphonic wall of sound in hits such as
Be My Baby and
You ve Lost That Lovin Feeling, and whose long record of disturbing personal behaviour culminated in a murder conviction in 2009, died January 16 aged 80 or 81.
California state prison officials announced that Spector, who was serving a prison sentence, died at an outside hospital but did not provide further details.
Rock producer Phil Spector, who changed the sound of pop in the 1960s with his "Wall of Sound" recordings and was later convicted of murder, has died at the age of 81 from Covid-19.