The world adores matt hayward

Not very often does a producer get a mention beyond the liner notes of an album. But somehow Phil Spector became a music legend. From mentoring Brian Wilson, to producing John Lennon, right up to the Ramones, he’s had one of the most enviable, albeit patchy careers in the music biz. Don’t go thinking this book is some ghost written autobiography though. It’s far more scathing than that.

For those who came in late, Spector found himself on a murder wrap in 2001. The reclusive, oddball Hollywood identity with the world’s wierdest wig collection had a woman (Lana Clarkson) in his house for about 10 minutes and somehow she was murdered/suicided with a Colt pistol in her mouth. Stangely, despite no public interviews for at least a decade, Brown managed to interview Spector about a month before the incident occurred.

Brown traces Spector right back from his family origins. First he finds that he was the son of two first cousins and had a history of mental illness in the family. His father had committed suicide and he was subject to acts of humiliation at school because of his small height and features. This kind of thorough detective work makes for a long and sometimes arduous read, but Spector had lived a strange and complex life necessitating it.

Next Spector’s meteoric rise through the sixties music scene is painstakingly detailed. Things like Sonny Bono used to be his studio lacky, doing the rounds with local DJs to promote Spector’s records. At the time apparently Cher was a runaway sleeping on Sonny’s couch. By this stage Spector was nothing if not flambouyant, but eccentricities were beginning to emerge. And Brown captures almost every single one.

For Beatles fans, there’s several chapters on both Lennon and Harrison’s efforts as well as Spector’s work on Get Back covered off nicely. I was heavily dissapointed though as a Ramones fan that there was only a few pages, a chapter at best dedicated to them. Admitedly, they were only in the studio for 3 weeks but there are so many rumours that could’ve been quashed, e.g. Dee Dee Ramone allegedly being forced to record his bass parts at gun point, Johnny Ramone playing the opening chord to Rock and Roll High School 400 times etc.

What this book really dwells on is 20 years of bizarre eccentricity that saw Spector become a showboating, gun toting, raving alcoholic that bordered between straight up wired and plain psychotically dangerous. All culminating in one night when the worst possible case scenario had occurred and a woman paid with their life. There are repeated incidents over decades where Phil would intimidate women with guns, however he’s a free but basically broke man today. Phil is to music what OJ Simpson was to sports. This is one crazy, very highly detailed read.