Phil Spector

Music Producer

• Born: December 26, 1939
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: January 16, 2021
• Place of death: French Camp, California

American rock producer

As a record producer, Spector established the multi-instrument Wall of Sound style that backed many of the popular songs of the 1960s.

The Life

Harvey Philip Spector was born in the Bronx, New York City. When he was nine years old his father committed suicide, and four years later his mother moved the family from the Bronx to Los Angeles, California. The relocation negatively affected Spector, who became insecure and withdrawn in adolescence. Later, he turned to music as a songwriter after learning to play guitar and piano. His first hit, "To Know Him Is to Love Him" by the Teddy Bears, a group he cofounded, was a relatively simple, teen-themed song recorded in monophonic sound. His career as a performer stalled, but his early success revealed a great aptitude in the studio, and from his late teens he made a career as a songwriter and producer.

By 1966 Spector had developed his Wall of Sound signature production style, based on recording layers of performances and blending them in monophonic sound. With this technique he produced more than two dozen Top 40 hits (thirteen of them Top 10). He brought a more complex, polished, and symphonic atmosphere to the previously raw sound of rock and roll, ushering in a new age of pop music and deeply influencing the world of music production.

Spector was a millionaire by the time he was twenty-one, but rapidly changing tastes in pop music proved challenging. After the 1966 single "River Deep—Mountain High," an Ike and Tina Turner production that he considered his finest work to that point, failed to chart highly Spector temporarily retired. He went into near-total seclusion, with stories appearing about his increasingly bizarre behavior. In 1968 he married Veronica "Ronnie" Bennett, who had sung lead on Spector’s productions with the Ronettes. They divorced six years later.

Spector reemerged in 1969 to produce the album Let It Be for the Beatles, who were experiencing internal friction and invited the producer to turn their recording efforts into a finished work. Spector radically changed most of the songs using his Wall of Sound technique, resulting in a major hit record, though Paul McCartney was not happy with the changes done without his consent. After the Beatles broke up Spector went on to produce notable albums for George Harrison (All Things Must Pass, 1970; The Concert for Bangladesh, 1971) and John Lennon (Plastic Ono Band, (1970); Imagine, 1971). Despite these successes, he became increasingly reclusive and erratic throughout the 1970s. In 1974 he was seriously injured in a car accident. Some of the work he did complete in following years included the albums Death of a Ladies' Man ( 1977) by Leonard Cohen and End of the Century (1980) by the Ramones. Both were somewhat controversial for applying Spector's trademark dense, polished sound to artists who already had signature sounds of their own.

Spector's 1970s recordings were generally successful but became more notorious for being overseen by a producer who exhibited bizarre behavior, including often wielding a gun. He did little from the 1980s to the early 2000s. On February 3, 2003, Spector was arrested on suspicion of murder when the body of Lana Clarkson, an actress, was discovered in his mansion. Four years later, the trial began. Spector’s defense was that Clarkson had shot herself accidentally and that any statements he had made suggesting his guilt were made under the influence of medicine prescribed to combat his bipolar disorder. The case drew considerable public attention due to Spector's fame and reclusive status, and his notoriety was only enhanced by media coverage of the strange wigs he wore in court. A mistrial was declared when the jury announced that it was deadlocked. The retrial began in October, 2008, and in April, 2009, Spector was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to nineteen years in prison. The film Phil Spector (2013) starred Al Pacino as the producer and focused on the murder trial.

The Music

Spector’s music is noted for his Wall of Sound, which he typically generated by recording layered performances of frequently ornate arrangements by large studio ensembles in Los Angeles’s Gold Star Studios and mixing the results in monophonic sound. The core of his ensembles was a small group of studio musicians anchored by the drummer Hal Blaine and known as the Wrecking Crew. As Spector’s recordings grew more ambitious, he augmented the Wrecking Crew with string sections and with multiple musicians playing the same instruments (and parts) in unison.

“To Know Him Is to Love Him.” Spector took the title and refrain of his first production from the epitaph on his father’s headstone, and his transformation of the line into a lover’s pledge helped the song hit number one in 1958. It was performed by the Teddy Bears, a quartet that counted Spector as a member. Recorded for a mere seventy-five dollars, the song was necessarily simple in production value. Nevertheless, its effortless blending of a universal emotion with a memorable melody made the song a significant success.

“Be My Baby.” This chart-topping 1963 classic is generally considered Spector’s finest work. Just a year after its release, Brian Wilson was borrowing its distinctive elements (Blaine’s dramatically syncopated drumbeats, lyrics about adolescent romance) to create “Don’t Worry Baby” with the Beach Boys. Wilson’s dreamily falsetto lead vocal, however, did not match the gritty yearning of Bennett’s schoolgirl urgency, a performance so durable that many have credited the reprisal of her song’s refrain on Eddie Money’s 1986 “Take Me Home Tonight” (and her appearance in the accompanying video) with resuscitating Money’s career.

A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. Spector disliked the long-playing record format, a medium he believed shortchanged consumers by mating eight or nine lackluster songs with one or two hits. In spite of this, Spector reportedly put his finest effort into all the songs on this album. Its sales suffered initially because it appeared in stores on the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Over time, however, it has become a perennial favorite. U2 covered the album’s best-known song, Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” in 1987, paying homage to the original by following Spector’s arrangement.

“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” Before they joined Spector in 1965, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield were a talented but little known blue-eyed soul duo whose biggest hit, “Little Latin Lupe Lu,” did not make the Billboard Top 40. With this lushly produced exploration of love grown cold, however, the Righteous Brothers, as Medley and Hatfield were known, became stars, rapidly scoring three more Spector-produced hits (“Just Once in My Life,” “Unchained Melody,” and “Ebb Tide”).

“River Deep—Mountain High.” This 1966 single by Ike and Tina Turner has been cited as a watershed in Spector’s career, and its failure to chart higher than eighty-eight in the United States in 1966, after all of Spector’s efforts, played an important role in his decision to close Philles Records and to reevaluate his relationship with the pop-music world. In retrospect, it seems the single was simply a victim of changing tastes. The record’s use of strings, for instance—which had proved so effective in dramatizing the Righteous Brothers’ recordings just a year before—did not attract listeners, who seemed to prefer the electronic effects of psychedelic music.

Back to Mono, 1958–1969. Released in 1991, this boxed set comprises three discs of Spector’s best-known productions until his work with the Beatles (Let It Be). It also includes A Christmas Gift for You, an elaborate booklet with analytical essays and the lyrics to all sixty songs, and a “Back to Mono” button. The set includes all but one of the singles that Spector produced for his Philles label, a generous sampling of his productions for other record companies, and the Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss).” That single was released in 1962, but it was quickly withdrawn: Its lyrics are sung from a first-person point of view by a woman who regards the physical abuse she endures from her man as a sign that he loves her.

Musical Legacy

The songs that Spector wrote, cowrote, or solicited from Brill Building composers and produced with great success in the studio often expressed innocent, romantic dreams. In contrast, his wife Bennett and such artists as Cohen and Johnny Ramone have given firsthand accounts of the strange and violent behavior exhibited by Spector. Despite his eccentric persona, Spector created the innovative Wall of Sound technique that resulted in Top 10 hits in the 1960’s. Although Spector enjoyed few hits after the early 1970’s, his influence can be heard in the music of the Beach Boys’ Wilson and Bruce Springsteen. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

Principal Recordings

albums (as producer): The Teddy Bears Sing, 1959 (by the Teddy Bears); A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, 1963; He’s a Rebel, 1963 (by the Crystals); Twist Uptown, 1963 (by the Crystals); Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica, 1964 (by the Ronettes); Ronettes, 1965 (by the Ronettes); River Deep—Mountain High, 1966 (by Ike and Tina Turner); All Things Must Pass, 1970 (by George Harrison); Let It Be, 1970 (by the Beatles); Plastic Ono Band, 1970 (by John Lennon); Imagine, 1971 (by John Lennon); Some Time in New York City, 1972 (by John Lennon); Rock ’n’ Roll, 1975 (by John Lennon); Death of a Ladies’ Man, 1977 (by Leonard Cohen); End of the Century, 1980 (by the Ramones); Silence Is Easy, 2003 (by Starsailor).

Bibliography

Brown, Mick. Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print.

Cohn, Nik. “Phil Spector.” The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. Ed. Jim Miller. New York: Random House/Rolling Stone, 1980. Print.

Marsh, Dave. The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. New York: Plume, 1989. Print.

"Phil Spector Biography." Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, 2016. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Ribowsky, Mark. He’s a Rebel: Phil Spector, Rock and Roll’s Legendary Producer. New York: Perseus, 2007. Print.

Spector, Ronnie, and Vince Waldron. Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette. New York: Harmony, 1990. Print.

Unterberger, Richie. "Phil Spector: Biography." AllMusic. AllMusic, 2016. Web. 31 Mar. 2016

Wenner, Jann. “Phil Spector.” The Rolling Stone Interviews. New York: Warner, 1971. Print.

Wolfe, Tom. Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965. Print.