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Phil Spector's long and winding road.

Morpheus

23:13 / 22.09.03

So did this girl "kiss the gun"? I never thought this guy was right, but he did play in a band called the Teddy Bear's, so how bad can this man be. The Beatle's trusted him.
Imagine

Not Here Still

18:58 / 23.09.03

The Beatles trusted him to get the apostrophe's in the right place, did they?

Phil Spector may or may not have killed Lana Clarkson, but he's certainly fucked up enough to have done it. It is very sad, but Phil isn't a well man.

Hey, maybe he was near David Kelly too....

rizla mission

08:17 / 24.09.03

Did Phil Kill?

Given his habit of threatening musicians with loaded guns and his reputation as having gone a bit mad, I'm saying: probably.

rosie x

10:17 / 27.09.07

A hung jury has put an end to Phil's recent trial in Los Angeles: read here for details.

Am I the only person who thinks this whole story sounds like some kind of imaginary David Lynch film? A down and out, B-movie actress, worn down by a Hollywood dream that never came to be, takes a job as a waitress in a touristy blues club to make ends meet. One evening she meets an aging pop svengali, who lures her back to his 23 room mansion in the hills (The Pyreneese Castle). Three hours later she is dead from a gunshot wound through the mouth. Bizarre.

I'm at work on a script proposal...

johnny enigma

13:36 / 27.09.07

He seems like one of those classic fucked up geniuses. I haven't done enough reading about this case to even hazard a guess as to whether he actually killed her or not, but there's loads of stories of crazy behaviour envolving firearms. I think it was Johnny Ramone who claimed that he threatened them with a gun when the Ramones were recording with him.

doctorbeck

12:33 / 28.09.07

i'd be more interested in discussing his production work though, anyone else a fan of the wall of sound?

i really like his underrated 70s stuff too, the rock and roll lp with lennon and the dion / born to be with you lp in particulr, which is a smacked out monster of an lp with ballads so big you could destroy a planet with them. and which set the stage for pretty much everything spiritualised have ever done.

rizla mission

13:52 / 28.09.07

For reasons entirely unrelated to the court case, I've had the "Back To Mono" box set on heavy repeat recently, and yeah, it remains utterly astonishing.... just some of the best pop music ever made in every respect; a few of the more doo-wop type numbers and the stuff with male singers has dated badly, but every Crystals or Ronettes song is still like a lightning bolt straight down the spine.

Ask me half way through any of them, and I'll be hoping they take it easy on Phil, despite his status as a psychotic, trigger-happy, wife-imprisoning, probably-murdering, Starsailor-liking, Ramone-abusing fiend.

Mark Parsons

01:56 / 29.09.07

I live in LA and have been following the case with one eye. IMO, Spector is guilty and, as did OJ and Blake, he could afford a big legal team with fancy experts (some costing 100K per appearance, or so I read in LA Weekly (free alt.paper which has a column for the trial). Fame + Money = Gaming the Legal System.

I think that the re-trial demonstrates how serious the DA is about Spector's provable guilt.

Mark Parsons

01:59 / 29.09.07

Heard the late Johnny Ramone on 103.1's ace show "Jonesie's Jukebox" (Steve "Sex Pistols" Jones eccletcic local slot). Johnny was telling the story about how Spector would not let them leave his party and pulled a gun on them. Johnny's response was "Whattaya gonna doo Phil, shoot me?" Indeed.

Then again, I read a remak by Markie Ramone in the paper: he's a pal of Spector's and was pleased with the hung jury/mistrail.

doctorbeck

07:01 / 01.10.07

got to agree with rizla that the back to mono box set is one of the most spine tingling sets of music ever collected in one place, pure perfect pop music as dreamed of by wagner. and the spector christmas lp is just the perfect soundtrack to the season (is it too ealry to mention christmas, my local co-op has mine pies in and the spector lp is generaly the highlight of christmas week, even the motown one doesn't copme close).

i wonder if phil being a murderer will take the tarnish from it this year though? probably not.

rizla mission

08:51 / 01.10.07

I think the music is sufficiently disconected from Spector's life/personality to survive unscathed.

I mean, if he was up at the front of the stage singing what was on his mind it might be a different matter, but as a backroom guy making pop music that was definitively formulaic (in the best possible way), we can stand in awe of his craftsmanship and the unnameable magic of the sounds & techni-colour emotions, at the same time as recognising that he was/is a pretty weird and unpleasant human being...

...actually, Wagner makes a pretty good comparison in that respect!

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