Phil Spector

A genius in the studio, Spector’s furious madness pushed him towards the extremes in his work but also in his life which ended in horror and in prison. Such is the detestable memory left by Phil Spector, who passed away on January 16, 2021, joined - curious fate - almost a year to the day of Ronnie, his ex-wife, whom he had produced with the vocal trio The Ronettes and later as a solo act. 

Born in New York in 1939, Harvey Philip Spector grew up in Los Angeles as an adolescent on the eve of the rock'n'roll explosion. He was only 19 when he scored a hit with his first band, The Teddy Bears. With the famous duo of composers Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, he trained and participated in the creation of the standard "Spanish Harlem" by Ben E. King. Three years later, he co-founded Philles Records, becoming the youngest American in history to do so, and put his learning, flair and connections to good use. He signed the band The Crystals and began producing artists under his name. He scored a hit with "He's A Rebel'' by the Crystals using the money to buy out his partners on Philles and went on to sign two legendary duos, The Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner, for whom he produced a series of classics. Not only did he use the best songwriters of the moment, but he also surrounded himself in the studio with a collective of musicians, the Wrecking Crew, who were the most talented in Los Angeles. The revolutionary style he developed was called Wall of Sound, reflecting his excessive ambitions. Obsessed with the purity and richness of his productions, he superimposed voices, multiplied the takes of each instrument, as if he wanted his pop-music to benefit from the scale of classical music while flooding the charts.

After working for John Lennon, Spector was recruited by the Beatles to complete their ultimate “Let It Be” with a controversial result that Paul McCartney would erase in 2001 with a version entitled “Let It Be... Naked”, stripped of its post production. All Things Must Pass by George Harrison, other collaborations with Lennon, Death of a Ladies' Man by Leonard Cohen and End of the Century by the Ramones, a New York punk band that he brought to a more pop sound. And then nothing more, except for production attempts for Céline Dion and the English band Starsailor.

Up until his death in prison in 2021, Spector had a series of dramas and health problems, starting with the suicide of his father when he was only 9 years old. Added to the drugs and excesses of all kinds, madness and paranoia won him over little by little. Rescued from a serious car accident in 1974, he miraculously came out alive thanks to serious operations but ended his life in the midst of disease. Bearing a habit of brandishing weapons in the studio, especially in front of Lennon or the Ramones, he committed the unforgivable in 2003, killing the actress Lana Clarkson at home, a murder for which he was sentenced in 2009 to 19 years in prison. As for Ronnie Spector, born Veronica Bennett in 1943, she married Spector in 1968 and divorced him four years later. Her Ronettes recorded a few classics until 1967 when she went solo, but she suffered from Spector's insanity as he sabotaged her career, harassed her and threatened her on a daily basis, even after their divorce. Unfortunately, she could not recapture the success of the golden age of the 60s but remained a revered singer in the pop-rock community by grace of her moving interpretations.