Phil Spector turned the record producer into the star behind the hits
At 18, Phil Spector wrote a number one hit whose title came from the words on his father's gravestone. Within three years he co-owned a record label, and by the mid-1960s his dense orchestral Wall of Sound had made him the most successful American producer of the decade and arguably the first producer treated as an auteur.
Born in the Bronx in 1939 to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, Spector lost his father in 1949. His mother moved the family to Los Angeles in 1953, where he learned guitar, played Rock Island Line at a Fairfax High talent show and fell in with young musicians such as Lou Adler and Sandy Nelson. His group the Teddy Bears took To Know Him Is to Love Him to the top of the Billboard chart in December 1958, selling over a million copies, then fizzled and split the following year.
Stan Ross of Gold Star Studios in Hollywood tutored him in production, and an apprenticeship with Leiber and Stoller in New York followed. He co-wrote Spanish Harlem for Ben E. King and played the guitar solo on the Drifters' On Broadway. In late 1961 he and Lester Sill founded Philles Records, its name joining their first names, and he soon had it to himself. When he heard Gene Pitney's He's a Rebel was headed for another singer, he rushed into Gold Star with Darlene Love and the Blossoms, released it under the Crystals' name, and took it to number one.
He guarded his A-sides with a sly trick: throwaway instrumental B-sides, jammed at the end of sessions and named after people like his psychiatrist, so radio could only play the song he wanted. The Ronettes' Be My Baby, a lavish Christmas album and the Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' followed. He considered Ike and Tina Turner's River Deep, Mountain High his finest record, yet it stalled at 88 in America while reaching number 3 in Britain.
Later he produced the Beatles' Let It Be, work by John Lennon and George Harrison, Leonard Cohen and the Ramones, amassing nineteen US top-ten singles and, in 1989, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His influence runs through psychedelia, dream pop and shoegaze. His later life ended in disgrace: convicted in 2009 of murdering actress Lana Clarkson, he died in prison in 2021.
Source: Phil Spector
