From: Colin Kilgour 
Date: Fri Jan 2, 2004 7:05pm
Subject: This Is My Story: Phil Spector

PHIL SPECTOR (By Colin Kilgour)

A new biography on Phil is due to be published later this month.
This is 'Wall Of Pain: The Biography of Phil Spector
by Dave Thompson (Sanctuary Publishing) £12.99
call [UK] 01256 - 302692

You could sum up Phil's career with the succinct 'Girls, Guns, Music and
Paranoia'

His grandfather, a Russian Jew named Spekter, emigrated to the United States
and his name changed to Spector, at Ellis Island

This piece is extracted from a newspaper article taken
from the forthcoming book

Harvey Philip Spector was born in December 1940 in New York's tough south
Bronx. His life is filled with lurid and unsettling stories about his
paranoia, his bizarre behaviour towards women, his fierce temper and most
ominously, his fixation with guns

This, because of the recent death at his home, of 40 year-old B-movie
actress Lana Clarkson, who had been working as a hostess at a Sunset
Strip (Los Angeles) nightclub, when Spector picked her up a few hours
earlier

Back at Spector's hilltop mansion where a sexual encounter was apparently
planned, Lana died from gunshot wounds and Phil was found wandering around
with a gun in his hand saying "I think I shot her"

Officers at the scene had to deploy a taser stun as Spector flatly refused
to be taken into custody

Phil later claimed the woman's death was 'an accidental suicide' and that
Clarkson had been kissing the gun - which did not belong to him - before it
went off

Police were unconvinced. Last November more than nine months after the
shooting in early February, a forlorn-looking Spector was finally charged
with first-degree murder. He is due back in court in next week

Phil employed renowned attorney Marvin Mitchelson who will pursue his line
that Lana took her own life. If convicted, Spector faces life in prison

He had a habit of pulling a pistol on those who annoyed him. Artists who
endured this treatment include John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Leonard Cohen and
Dee Dee Ramone

Cohen spoke about Spector's habit of changing his clothes four times a day,
selecting a different gun to match each outfit. He also practised his
gun-stripping routine to where he became so adept that he could accomplish
the task with military speed and precision

His divorce from Annette came in late 1965 and second wife Ronnie Spector
tells of her crazy life with Phil. For some years before then, Phil had
been gaining an increasing reputation as a recluse. Some date his
withdrawal from November 1963, when the launch of his famous Christmas
album was wrecked by the assassination of President Kennedy in the same
week (with its inevitable aftermath)

Even when America came out of mourning, the rise of The Beatles - with their
(CK: relatively!) simple twanging and happy-go-lucky instrumentation - made
his opulent 'little symphonies for kids' seem dated

The heaviest blow came in 1966, with the failure of his most ambitious
single, Ike and Tina Turner's 'River Deep, Mountain High'. The record
featured four drummers, four bassists, three keyboard-players, two
percussionists, a brass section, strings and seventy-eight female backing
singers!

Many US Radio stations refused to play the single, ensuring it peaked at
just 88 in the charts. Some observers felt Spector was paying the price for
making so many enemies in the music world

Following Spector's eventual divorce from Ronnie, the first monthly alimony
payment was delivered in a Brinks armoured truck, straining under the weight
of 24,000 five-cent pieces

Whilst recording Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll album, Phil took to arriving at the
studio in fancy dress. One day a karate instructor, the next a doctor etc.
Harry Nilsson recalled him turning up dressed as a cowboy in full western
regalia, waving a pistol above his head

It was loaded and Spector, having taken to swigging bottles of cognac while
working, caused some unease, the team fearing an accident even if not
expecting deliberate foul-play

Lennon was also drinking heavily and chafed at Spector's dictatorial ways,
taunted him about Ronnie's desertion until, eventually Phil had had enough.
He drew his gun, raised it above his head and fired

The report was deafening, shocked the studio to silence and left Lennon
clutching his ears in pain. "Listen Phil, he said, If you're going to kill
me, kill me. But don't f*** with my ears, I need 'em"

Phil and Ronnie had adopted 3 boys and following their split, Phil did find
happiness for several years with one of his secretaries, Janis Savala. It's
not known whether they married but they did have twins, Philip and Nicole

The tragedy that dogged Spector's life (his father took his own life when
PS was just 8 years old), continued when they lost young Philip at the age
of nine from leukaemia, following having spent much of his young life
enduring painful treatment

Spector remained somewhat active, producing Brit band Starsailor on their
album 'Silence Is Easy', the title track earning him another UK top-ten hit
in Sept. 2003. For those interested, check this Starsailor link for some
anti-Spector rants
www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/s/starsailor/silence-is-easy.shtml
I gather the band hired, then fired, our man

In January of this year he admitted in an interview that he had struggled to
function 'as a regular part of society' and had grown up 'crippled inside'
emotionally. 'Insane is a hard word, I wasn't insane but I have devils
inside that fight me'

He felt he had learned to defeat those devils. He had given up drinking and
was spotted on the town with Nancy Sinatra, seeming happier and calmer than
ever before

And then came the shooting of Lana Clarkson (who had a small part in
Pacino's 'Scarface'). One report suggested Spector was upset by Paul
McCartney's revamping of the 'Let It Be' effectively stripping it of Phil's
production work

No one except Spector really knows what happened that fatal February night.
One thing however is certain. It not only destroyed Lana Clarkson's life
but blew away the remnants of Phil Spector's world

Thank you for the music, Phil. Hopefully you will find some peace from
those old demons, in whatever destiny now holds for you

The newspaper article supplemented by some extra lines from this month's
edition (1/04) of the rock and roll bible, Now Dig This, along with my own
fine-tuning and additions

To know his music is to love it

Websites:
http://www.history-of-rock.com/spector.htm
http://www.history-of-rock.com/spector_producer.htm
http://www.spectropop.com/go2/philspector.html
http://home.tbbs.net/~msland/Spector/PSindex.htm
some good links on the last two

Finally, to borrow Dik's listings from his 26/12/02 piece:

Earlier biography: Mark Ribowsky, He's A Rebel. New York : E.P. Dutton,
1989.
Recommended listening:
Back To Mono, 1958-1969. 4 CD-set. Abcko/EMI CDP 79 8063 2.

Colin Kilgour
January 2004