LOS ANGELES (AP) – Phil Spector was seen as a man with two distinct personas: the late music producer was considered a rock ‘n’ roll genius who elevated the genre with his “Wall of Sound” style in the 1960s and created hits for several Beatles big names to Tina Turner.
But while Spector made his mark as a revolutionary music producer, his stories pointing guns at artists and being convicted of murder overshadowed his art.
California state prison officials said Spector died on Saturday at 81 years of natural causes in a hospital. He was convicted of the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 in his castle-like mansion outside Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
The reaction to Spector’s death revived some mixed feelings about his life and legacy.
Some praised their early contributions to rock music, while others struggled to forgive their volatile past.
Beach Boys musician Al Jardine said it would be “Good to remember him just for his songs and production talents.” He said that the Ronettes’ song “Be My Baby”, produced and co-written by Spector, inspired his brother Brian Wilson.
Stevie Van Zandt, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, called Spector a “hopelessly conflicted genius.”
“He was the definitive example that art is always better than the artist,” said Zandt about Twitter. He added that Spector “made some of the greatest records in history based on the salvation of love, while remaining unable to give or receive love all his life.”
Meanwhile, “The Price is Right” host Drew Carey took aim at Spector, calling him “killer and abusive maniac”.
“I wish he had received the mental health help he clearly needed, but he didn’t,” said the comedian in social media. “And then, instead of (asterisk) just (asterisk) pointing guns at people out of anger or for fun, he murdered one of them. Good ear for music, I admit. “
Spector’s ex-wife, Ronnie Spector, remembered him on Sunday as a “brilliant producer, but a terrible husband”. She was the lead singer of the Ronettes.
“Unfortunately, Phil couldn’t live and work outside the recording studio,” she wrote on Instagram. “Darkness has set in, many lives have been damaged. I still smile whenever I hear the song we did together, and I always will. The music will be forever. ”
But Darlene Love, who sang some of Spector’s hits on “He’s a rebel” and “He’s the boy I love”, took a different approach, despite his troubled relationship with the producer. She felt sad when she heard about Spector’s death for her son.
“It was sad because of what Spector did, the wonderful music he created, and he spent almost 20 years of his life in prison,” said Love, who admitted that Spector tried to “control my talent” during his singing career. She said that Spector had a dangerous temper at times, but she tried to remember the positive.
“I hope people don’t just remember why he spent those years in prison, but more or less what he did for rock ‘n’ roll,” she continued. “He changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll. That was what made me sad ”.
Spector was hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagner’s ambition into the three-minute song, creating “Parede do Som” in the 1960s that mixed lively vocal harmonies with luxurious orchestral arrangements to produce pop monuments like “Da Doo Ron Ron”
Bruce Springsteen and Wilson openly replicated their grandiose recording techniques and eye-popping romanticism, and John Lennon called him “the greatest music producer of all time”.
But Spector’s multiple stories pointing guns at artists in the studio and threatening women would come back to haunt him after Clarkson’s death.
Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B films, was found shot to death in the foyer of Spector’s mansion on the hills overlooking the Alhambra, a modest suburban city on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Until the actress’s death, which Spector said was an “accidental suicide,” few residents knew the mansion belonged to the inmate producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton.
Spector became a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. But, in the end, his artists started to stop working with him and music styles went through him.
“He destroyed himself in the most horrible way,” said David Thompson, author of “Wall of Pain: The Biography of Phil Spector”, released in 2004. “But we have to separate the two. There are so many people who have been revered, so we find that they did something terrible. This erases all of your achievements. I do not agree with this. “
Thompson said Spector’s biography was one of the most difficult to write, because he wanted to focus solely on music. But while working on the book, he found out about Spector’s conviction.
“It was a difficult balance,” he said. “I wanted to write about the song, just what he did, what he created and what he gave us. But you had to balance that with the horrible things he did. “