Phil Spector, music producer convicted of murder, dies at 81 after contracting COVID-19 [Los Angeles Times :: BC-SPECTOR-OBIT-1ST-LEDE:LA]
LOS ANGELES Phil Spector, the visionary record producer who revolutionized pop music in the early 1960s with his majestic sound and fierce ambition but spent his final years behind bars after shooting and killing an aspiring actress in his Alhambra mansion, has died in a hospital after becoming infected with the coronavirus. He was 81.
Spector died Saturday of natural causes, said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office will investigate his death, the department said.
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, the visionary record producer who revolutionized pop music in the early 1960s with his majestic sound and fierce ambition but became notorious
Phil Spector, the visionary record producer who revolutionized pop music in the early 1960s with his majestic sound and fierce ambition but became notorious