Phil Spector Dead at 81

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One of my favorite movies is Phantom of the Paradise, 1974. In it Paul Williams plays an evil music producer named Swan whose only passions are greed & power. He literally has a deal with the devil. Williams & director De Palma based the character on Phil Spector. Even way back then his reputationView attachment 61841 was legendary, not always in a good way.
I love that movie and the soundtrack. My roommate in college had it. I wish I had it now. It was sort of a little Rocky Horror although not as campy.
 
Wall of hair. Is it real, or is it Memorex? :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

phil.jpg
 
Boy you guys are a hard crowd here. :(
Phil brought some of the best rock-soul-blues recorded to music lovers over 3 or 4 decades.
A very eccentric person who lost his lives direction to drugs and alcohol just like so many others in
the industry. Really don't understand the negativity towards him here, I could quickly name a dozen
others who have gone down similar paths that many here idolize.
RIP Phil. Thanks for all the great music and times I grew up with.

The vast majority of the others didn't wave guns around and threaten people, however. He should have been put away back when he first did that.

Doug
 
The story about him firing a gun in a vocal booth because he thought it would be a funny prank to damage a musician's hearing was the line for me. Threatening homicide and then actual homicide is a close 2nd. (I just can't get over someone clearly so thick and worthless as to not even understand the gravity of intentionally damaging a musician's hearing. I don't mean to sound like a psychopath myself for putting the murder thing 2nd! There's just a special place in hell for something like that.)

A broken clock is right twice a day. Even if it was all wrongs adding up to something creatively interesting, I'd still like to give credit for the wall of sound thing he stumbled on with the girl groups. It was a creative approach when proper sound reproduction wasn't an option and you had to get creative to get some vibe across.

The ego gone wild apparently blinded him to even recognize that he stumbled on something creative and maybe even give him a jumping off point to continue down that path. He was allowed to shit all over what would become some historical work and damage it forever. Some of the songs were so strong they survived anyway. They're still missing limbs as it were.

Listen to the George Martin produced mix for Across The Universe vs his remix for an example of his ability. The master tape is running slow to the point of hearing wow and flutter artifacts emphasized from it. He completely missed the meters moving on the backing vocal tracks apparently because those faders were never touched and those vocals are MIA on his remix. A VERY important element of the song! Then overdudding the cheesy elevator muzak style chord pads with a crude unmusical hand.
Listen to the Martin produced single on that benefit album again next to the abomination of a remix. That's how much better all the Lennon albums should sound. And All Things Must Pass and a bunch of others.
 
It is a tough decision, and a personal one, to decide where to draw the line regarding the music we listen to and the people involved in its creation.

Phil was a huge influence on the early music scene but also quite the piece of shit. His death of natural causes while in prison for murder will not cause me to shed a tear.

Jim Gordon killed someone as a result of mental illness well after the release of Layla. I am not a fan of the album, but it is easy to separate the two so I do not judge anyone for making a decision either way.

Roman Polanski on the other hand continues to produce movies without ever facing his own actions; I will not support him as a result.
 
One "OH, SHIT!!!" will undo ALL of the "Atta Boy!!!"(s) and just his shooting that woman dead was an "OH SHIT!" that will undo many a lifetime of sainthood...he could have reinvented the recording industry for all I care but he can rot in hell...
(tell me how you REALLY feel, kap'n!!!)
 
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I loved the "wall of sound" perfect for the mono hit records of the time, but his approach didn't translate all that well to Quad. Tragically like many of the most talented people he had to become so messed up.
Mono was fine for AM radio when those records were released initially, but I always thought they sounded too "busy" in mono. Unfortunately, whoever did the stereo mixes didn't do that great a job. I've heard some DES treatments of some of his productions that sounded better than the original stereo mixes. I realize the main target for these records was teenagers, most of whom still had only mono record players in their rooms, but even those records could have sounded better.
 
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