Not Fade Away

PHIL SPECTOR

Pioneering ‘wall of sound’ producer (1939-2021)

THE news of Phil Spector’s death by natural causes was confirmed not by a family member, but by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Spector was serving 19-years-to-life for the second degree murder of Lana Clarkson in 2003, a miserable endstop to a career in which his controlling and abusive behaviour had become as much of a signature as his famous ‘wall of sound’ techniques.

Spector was still a teenager when his band The Teddy Bears reached No 1 in 1958 with a song he wrote, “To Know Him Is To Love Him”. Yet its swooning melody concealed a darkness; its title was a tribute to Spector’s father, who had killed himself nine years previously. The precocious songwriter soon realised his future lay on the other side of the studio glass. He co-founded Philles Records and restyled himself as a pop svengali, writing and producing a string of hits for the likes of The Crystals, The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner. His dramatic, multi-layered productions proved hugely influential on the way pop music was recorded from that point onward.

As his hitmaking prowess waned, Spector was hired – controversially – to complete The Beatles’ . Paul McCartney famously cited Spector’s orchestral overdubs on “The Long And Winding Road” as one of his reasons for breaking up The Beatles, although both, and .