Before I knew what a record producer was, I knew about Phil Spector. If you heard the Crystals’ Da Doo Ron Ron or the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ on the radio in the Seventies
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 C
Brilliant record producer and convicted murderer
We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
Dismiss
January 18, 2021 1.57pm
Normal text size
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.