Charlie and I recently watched a four-part documentary called “Spector”, a biographical film about the rise and fall of one of Rock and Roll’s most influential geniuses.
Phil Spector, a famous music producer back in the 1960’s, had a troubled life as a child and teen which later manifested itself in his mental illness. He had a chip on his shoulder his whole life, believing that he didn’t get enough credit for his great ideas. He was also a “control freak” and abused his relationships with women.
But the guy knew music.
He started out in 1958 as a teenage songwriter and singer with the Teddy Bears, for whom he penned “To Know Him Is To Love Him”, a Number 1 hit. He went on to become the youngest owner of a record label and the first record producer to control every phase of the recording process.
The musicians from his de facto house band, The Wrecking Crew, worked on fifty Number 1 hits for various artists. Spector’s unique Wagnerian style of studio production, with a room full of talented musicians using the studio as an instrument, became known as the “Wall of Sound”. Some of his most famous clients included the Crystals, the Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Righteous Brothers. He produced the Beatles last album, “Let It Be”, including the Wall of Sound-influenced “Long and Winding Road”. He produced John Lennon’s classic “Imagine” album and George Harrison’s “Concert for Bangladesh”.
Spector got increasingly reclusive and weird over the years. His erratic behavior included holding female acquaintances hostage in his home, carrying a pistol, and threatening people with it. He was a small guy and, when he went out clubbing in Hollywood, would be accompanied by two huge black bodyguards.
In 2003, after a long night of drinking and partying, he shot actress Lana Clarkson, who he had just met that night at the House of Blues, to death in his mansion.
Phil Spector died of Covid-19 while in prison in 2021 a shriveled up scumbag of a human being. What a sad ending.
As Charlie and I watched the four-part documentary, we were intrigued by the “Pyranees Castle” that was Spector’s home where he perpetrated the murder. It was said that the sprawling estate was in Alhambra, California, a place where both my wife and I had extensive family roots.
We could not figure out where this hilltop mansion was until some aerial photography was shown in the TV show.
It turned out that the castle was built in 1925, when my father was a young boy growing up maybe one-half mile to the east. He attended Alhambra High School, very near this place. My wife Charlie grew up on Date Street, which is maybe one-half mile south of the Pyranees. As a teen, she attended Ramona Convent, which is maybe one-quarter mile east of the mansion, and I attended Mark Keppel High School, also in Alhambra, just east of the Convent and adjacent to I-10.
In the mid-Sixties, I attended California State University, which is clearly in view (maybe a half-mile as the crow flies) from the hilltop mansion, and lived in a fraternity house just south of the Pyranees hilltop in Monterey Hills.
None of us had any idea that this mansion existed in Los Angeles bedroom community of Alhambra where we spent most of our time before age 25.
That’s weird.