Background

Phil Spector was born on December 26, 1939, in New York City, New York, the United States. When he was nine, his father Ben, an ironworker, committed suicide. His mother, Bertha Spector, then moved the family to Los Angeles in 1953. She worked as a seamstress to make ends meet.

Education

Spector attended Fairfax High School, where he learned to play the guitar and also started writing songs like Don't You Worry My Little Pet. Along with his fellow students, he formed a music group called The Teddy Bears.

During his high school days, he wrote his first number 1 hit song To Know Him Is to Love Him, which helped the group sign a contract with Imperial Records.

Career

During Spector's time at Fairfax, he met fellow students Marshall Leib, Harvey Goldstein, and Annette Kleinbard. Together they formed the music group The Teddy Bears and had a No.1 hit in the United States and the United Kingdom with "To Know Him Is To Love Him", a simple teenage ballad written by Spector, its title taken from his father’s gravestone. Released under the name of the Teddy Bears, it was one of the biggest hits of 1958. The Teddy Bears seemed destined for fame, but their next single, "I Don't Need You Anymore" only reached No. 91 on the charts. But the group was never to be heard from again because Spector had other ideas.

He moved to New York City and served an apprenticeship with the writer-producer team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller before branching out to supervise the recordings of Curtis Lee ("Pretty Little Angel Eyes"), the Paris Sisters ("I Love How You Love Me"), and others.

In 1961, needing to escape the restraining influence of older and more conservative opinion, he formed his own label, Philles Records, and, working at Gold Star Recording Studios in Los Angeles, he began to release a string of records that demonstrated his unique vision of what pop music could achieve in its age of innocence.

With the Crystals’ "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me" and the Ronettes’ "Be My Baby" and "Baby I Love You," Spector blended conventional teen romance sentiments with orchestral arrangements of immense scale and power in what he described as "little symphonies for the kids." Others called it the wall of sound, and the style reached a peak in 1965 with the blue-eyed soul of the Righteous Brothers’ epic "You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’," a huge worldwide hit.

In 1966, he produced Ike and Tina Turner's single "River Deep, Mountain High." Spector considered it his greatest production to date. While it placed at No. 3 on the U.K. pop charts, it peaked at No. 88 in the U.S. Embittered, Spector went into seclusion for two years, during which time there were reports of strange, near-psychotic behavior. He did very little for the rest of the 1960s.

In 1969, Spector returned to work after he was asked to produce George Harrison and John Lennon's solo albums. After successful results, he was asked to turn a series of the Beatles' recording sessions into a marketable album. The resulting work, Let It Be, topped both the U.S. and U.K. charts and yielded the No. 1 single, "The Long and Winding Road." For the next several years, Spector continued to produce successful solo albums for Lennon and Harrison. But as the 1970s progressed, Spector's behavior vacillated between bizarre and reclusive. After several months of tension between Spector and several members of The Beatles, the two parted company.

Spector was absent from the spotlight for most of the next few decades, during which he gained a reputation as a recluse. However, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. He went on to write and produce music until 2003.

Spector then made headlines in 2003, when actress Lana Clarkson was fatally shot at his home. He was subsequently charged with murder, and his 2007 trial ended in a mistrial after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision. At Spector’s retrial, begun in October 2008, the presiding judge ruled that jurors could consider the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter as well as the original murder charge. After six months of testimony and 30 hours of deliberation, the second jury found Spector guilty of second-degree murder, and in May 2009 he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.

Achievements

• Coming to prominence in the early 1960s, Spector became one of the most distinctive producers in the history of popular music. He was hailed in his heyday by Tom Wolfe as the "First Tycoon of Teen." The originator of the famous "Wall of Sound" production technique, Spector was a pioneer of the 1960s’ girl group sound and clocked in over twenty-five Top 40 hits between 1960 and 1965. In later years he worked with various artists, including Ike and Tina Turner, The Beatles, and Ramones with similar success. In 1989, Spector was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer.
  
  No doubt a result of a combination of his contribution to the world of music and great production skills, and his rumored oddball behaviors, Spector was voted the sixty-third Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Artist of all time by Rolling Stone.

Works

More photos

• music

  • The Teddy Bears Sing! 1959
  • Twist Uptown 1962
  • He's a Rebel 1963
  • Zip A Dee Doo Dah 1963
  • Christmas Gift for You 1963
  • Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes 1964
  • River Deep-Mountain High 1966
  • Love Is All We Have to Give 1969
  • Let It Be 1970
  • All Things Must Pass 1970
  • Plastic Ono Band 1970
  • Some Time in New York City 1972
  • Living In The Material World 1973
  • Rock 'N' Roll 1975
  • Born to Be With You 1975
  • Death Of A Ladies' Man 1977
  • End of the Century 1980
  • Menlove Ave 1986
  • Back to Mono 1958-1969 1991
  • Silence Is Easy 2003

Views

Quotations: "Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage."

"The youth of today are so disappointing. They talk about nothing except themselves."

Personality

When Spector was a young man, the eccentric producer claimed that he had been able to train himself so that he only needed to sleep for around two to three hours a night.

Spector's father committed suicide when Phil was only nine years old. On his tombstone were the words: "To Know Him Is To Love Him", which he eventually used as the title of one of his most famous songs.

Physical Characteristics: In 1974, Spector met with a serious car accident. He was about to be declared dead at the spot when the attending police officer detected a faint pulse. He was admitted to the hospital with serious head injuries and underwent several hours of surgery.

Since October 2013, Spector has been ill and admitted to a prison hospital. He suffered from laryngeal papillomatosis in 2014 and has since lost his ability to speak.

Interests

• Music & Bands

  Elvis Presley

Connections

Phil Spector’s first wife was singer Annette Merar. After their divorce, he married singer Veronica Bennett, aka Ronnie Spector, in 1968. The couple, who divorced in 1974, had adopted three children - Donté Phillip Spector, Louis Phillip Spector, and Gary Phillip Spector. He also had twin children - Nicole Audrey Spector and Phillip Spector, Jr. with his girlfriend Janis Zavala. Phillip Jr. died of leukemia in 1991.

Spector married Rachelle Short in September 2006. He filed for divorce in April 2016.

ex-spouse:

Annette Merar

ex-spouse:

Ronnie Spector

Over seven years of marriage, Phil set up his 23-room mansion with chain-link fences, barbed wire, and intercoms in every room, making it nearly impossible for her to leave. He also put an inflatable version of himself in the passenger seat of her car, so she would never seem to be alone, drove her to alcoholism and threatened to get a hitman to kill her if she left. Eventually, she found a way out, and with the help of her mother, left for “a walk” - with no shoes on her feet. He kept those from her, too.

Son:

Donté Phillip Spector

Son:

Louis Phillip Spector

Son:

Gary Phillip Spector

ex-girlfriend:

Janis Zavala

Daughter:

Nicole Audrey Spector

Son:

Phillip Spector, Jr.

"Little Phillip", as his father called him, passed away from leukemia on Christmas Day 1991.

ex-spouse:

Rachelle Short

colleague:

Tina Turner

While producing Ike Turner and Tina Turner in the mid-1960s, Spector actually worked only with Tina, Ike was reportedly paid $10,000 not to attend the sessions.

colleague:

John Lennon

colleague:

Yoko Ono

colleague:

Cherilyn Sarkisian

Spector gave Cher her first recording experience at 16 after Sonny Bono proposed his "girlfriend" as a session singer.

References

• The Official Phil Spector Site
• Phil Spector: Out Of His Head
  2003
• Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
  2007
• Phil Spector: Wall of Pain
  2003
• He's a Rebel
  1989
• Little Symphonies: A Phil Spector Reader
  2011