Phil Spector, music producer convicted of murder, dies at 81 after contracting Covid-19
Music producer Phil Spector looks up during his murder trial in Superior Court July 10, 2007, in Los Angeles. (Gabriel Bouys-Pool/Getty Images/TNS)
LOS ANGELES For all the hit songs he drove up the charts, for all the power and wealth he amassed, for all the admiration he drew as he rearranged the pop music landscape, there was a darkness deep in Phil Spector’s soul that would forever shadow his genius.
Even as anthems such the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin” erupted from radios across America, the acclaimed record producer was a brooding, manic man with a white-hot temper and a fondness for gunplay, all of which would manifest itself on a winter morning in 2003 when he fatally shot actress and nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson in the foyer of his castle-like mansion in Alhambra.
Phil Spector: Pop producer jailed for murder dies at 81 - January 18, 2021
US music producer Phil Spector has died at the age of 81, while serving a prison sentence for murder.
Spector, who transformed pop with his “wall of sound” recordings, worked with the Beatles, the Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner.
In 2009, he was convicted of the 2003 murder of Hollywood actress Lana Clarkson.
His 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. His official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office,” it said.
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Phil Spector, who has died from Covid-19 aged 81, was a highly gifted record producer and songwriter whose recordings in the 1960s, and later with the Beatles, revolutionised pop music, but whose talents were undermined by a mercurial temperament that would lead to him twice standing trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.
In his heyday in the early 1960s, Spector pioneered what became known as “The Wall of Sound”, producing some of the most exhilarating and uplifting recordings ever heard in pop music, including Be My Baby by the Ronettes and Da Do Ron Ron by the Crystals. In the 1970s he went on to work with the Beatles, producing John Lennon’s anthemic Imagine and George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord.
By Inside Edition Staff
Updated: 11:09 AM PST, January 18, 2021
Phil Spector, the rockstar turned convicted murderer, died over the weekend from natural causes while serving his prison sentence. Spector was 81, according to the California department of corrections
Phil Spector, the rockstar turned convicted murderer, died over the weekend from natural causes while serving his prison sentence. Spector was 81, the California department of corrections confirmed Saturday to CBS News.
Spector was best known for his Wall of Sound method, creating groundbreaking musical masterpieces but all of his musical accomplishments were overshadowed when a jury convicted him of the shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson, who was found at his Los Angeles home in 2003.