Phil Spector
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End of the ‘70s: the Ramones Get Spectorized
Book Excerpt by Everett True, Omnibus Books, Fall 2002
An extract from Hey Ho Let’s Go – The Story of The Ramones by Everett True, published by Omnibus Press in 2002. (344pp, currently available ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Roy Carr, Rock's Backpages audio, 1975
A brief clip where Roy Carr listens as a drunk Phil Spector rants.
File format: mp3; file size: 4.3mb, interview length: 4' 29" sound quality: ***
List of articles in the library
The Crystals: New to the Charts — Six Girls With Two Names!
Profile by Alan Smith, New Musical Express, 28 December 1962
SO VAST is the American disc scene that quite often an artist or group can get high into the charts without anybody here knowing much ...
Report by uncredited writer, Record Mirror, 29 June 1963
Rumour Has It That The Crystals, Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans, And Darlene Love Are In Fact One Group. Here Are The Facts... ...
Profile and Interview by June Harris, Disc, 9 November 1963
A two-week British tour is planned for end of January ...
The Ronettes hit and Phil's flips
Profile by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 7 December 1963
BACK IN 1958 Estella & Ronnie Bennett bought a disc between them called 'To Know Him Is To Love Him'. So did their cousin Nadra ...
Now the Ronettes... get the girls screaming, too
Profile and Interview by Maureen Cleave, The Evening Standard, 11 January 1964
IT WAS A bad idea, perhaps, to interview them in a canteen. A great number of suet rolls and custards never got digested that day ...
Phil Spector: Fifteen hits in a row — and if that's not genius, well what is?
Profile and Interview by Maureen Cleave, The Evening Standard, 25 January 1964
THERE WAS a time when Phil Spector would have been Beau Spector and the rage of Bath. His clothes alone would have made him famous. ...
Man Of The Moment Spector Wants To Be Controversial
Interview by June Harris, Disc, 1 February 1964
PHIL SPECTOR checked the gold watch hanging from the chain of his elaborate black brocade waistcoat, and remarked: "It's 6.30 a.m. in Los Angeles, and ...
Phil Spector: The Man Behind America's Big Hits Comes to Britain
Interview by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 8 February 1964
ONE OF the mystery men of the U.S. recording scene is currently here in Britain following the interests of his artistes. His name is Phil ...
'Sorry Cilla,' Said The Righteous Brothers To RM's Norman Jopling, But 'We Don't Like Your Record!'
Interview by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 30 January 1965
"WHAT do we think of Cilla's version of 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling'?" said America's Righteous Brothers when I posed them the question. "Well, we ...
The Supremes, the Righteous Brothers, the Beau Brummels et al: Cow Palace, San Francisco CA
Live Review by Mike Gormley, The Ottawa Journal, 27 February 1965
Righteous Sound Shakes 'Frisco ...
More Spector Magic out of the Hat
Profile by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 11 June 1966
PROBABLY, PHIL SPECTOR was the only person in the world who could have produced a record for Ike and Tina Turner that could make the ...
Interview by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 8 October 1966
...tells, among other things, why he wants to change the act's name, and why he dislikes 'River Deep' ...
Muddy Waters: Electric Mud (Chess); Various Artists: Demand Performance (Decca)
Review by Geoffrey Cannon, The Guardian, 4 February 1969
Muddy Muddy Waters ...
The Musical Guts Behind Spector
Profile and Interview by uncredited writer, Beat Instrumental, January 1970
PHIL SPECTOR is alive and well and living on Sunset Boulevard in his beloved Los Angeles. He's producing records again, having come out of retirement ...
Ronnie — the voice that brought Spector back
Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 1 May 1971
BACK in 1963, the Ronettes were three highly-coiffeured teenage girls who swept up the charts on a furious wave of Spector sound. Their lead singer, ...
Profile by Greg Shaw, Fusion, September 1972
IT'S HARD to remember a time when the role of the producer wasn't considered just as important as that of the musicians in the making ...
Profile by Richard Williams, Let It Rock, October 1972
ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED MOMENTS IN late-Sixties rock comes at the beginning of 'To Be Alone With You' on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album. ...
Report and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Melody Maker, 31 May 1975
THE OCCASION is Professor Phil Spector's guest lecture at the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College record-producing seminar. Last time Phil talked at the school was in ...
Phil Spector: Upstairs, downstairs and in my mixing chamber
Interview by Roy Carr, New Musical Express, 6 March 1976
DATELINE: MARCH 31, 1974. ...
Report and Interview by Roy Carr, New Musical Express, 20 March 1976
Flourishing a revolver our weird hero enters his dark, refrigerated room to recount strange tales the likes of which may never before have been heard ...
Comment by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 27 November 1976
BY NOW we must all, surely, regard the coming of rock's New Wave as beneficial. Whether the currently fashionable bands prove to be the real ...
Profile by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 25 December 1976
THAT THE Tina Turner-Phil Spector combination should have produced one isolated tour-de-force 45 was perhaps not surprising; after all, Tina more than anyone else was ...
What Happened When Phil Spector Met Leonard Cohen?
Report and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, LA Phonograph, January 1978
LEONARD COHEN – singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet, novelist, and sometime straight faced spokesman of the hilarious ironies of the human condition – walks into the ...
Ronnie Spector Says Goodbye To Hollywood
Interview by John Tobler, Hot Wacks, Spring 1979
PHIL SPECTOR......aah, the magic that name still evokes, but what of the former Mrs Phil Spector. Veronica Benett, better known as Ronnie Spector, this is ...
'I Wasn't Even a Housewife': Ronnie Spector's true confessions
Report and Interview by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 27 September 1980
SHE WAS supposed to be promoting her album, but Ronnie Spector’s first solo album isn’t the kind of thing that’s about to stop the world ...
Book Excerpt by Stuart Grundy, John Tobler, The Record Producers (BBC Books), 1982
WHENEVER THE subject of record producers is discussed by anyone born before 1960, one name will always surface, that of Phil Spector. ...
Phil Spector: To Know Him Is To Love Him
Retrospective by Greg Shaw, The History of Rock, 1982
So much has been written about Phil Spector, yet he still remains an enigma. ...
Darlene Hits Local Scene, Reviving an Old Spector
Profile and Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 18 July 1982
THE FAMOUS sound of Phil Spector will hit Bay Area stages for the next three nights when Darlene Love makes a round of local appearances. ...
Phil Spector: Jack Nitzsche remembers the Wall of Sound
Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Goldmine, 17 June 1988
NOW IN HIS 30th year in the music industry, Jack Nitzsche is one of the great composers and arrangers of our time. In this decade ...
He's a Rebel By Mark Ribowsky (E.R. Dutton, $18.95)
Book Review by Alan Betrock, Rolling Stone, 23 March 1989
Haunted Spector ...
Interview by Alan di Perna, Musician, September 1991
On Phil Spector, waltzing with Elvis Costello and "arm playing" ...
Interview by Tom Doyle, Melody Maker, 3 June 1995
Fifteen years of experience has carried producer JOHN LECKIE from a-song-a-day sessions with John Lennon, to hours spent pouring over the endless noodlings of The ...
Phil Spector and Brian Wilson: The Nutty Producers
Retrospective by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 16 December 1999
Without Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, the 60s would have sounded very different, says Sean O'Hagan. ...
Back to Monomania! The Legend of Phil Spector
Retrospective by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, October 2001
THE WORD IS THAT Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise are set to make a movie about Phillip Harvey Spector, the greatest record producer in the ...
Phil Spector's Ghosts: The Spooky World Of The Greatest Producer In Pop Music
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Slate, February 2003
FOR OBSERVERS of Hollywood, it's been irresistible: life imitating the movies once again. The death of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in Phil Spector's Alhambra chateau ...
Pop's Lost Genius: Phil Spector
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, Telegraph Magazine, 4 February 2003
Phil Spector produced some of the greatest pop hits of all time, from 'Be My Baby' to 'Imagine'. Notoriously eccentric in his heyday, his slow ...
The Mad Director: Phil Spector and the Sound of Walls
Guide by Phil Mershon, Perfect Sound Forever, March 2003
HAD PHIL SPECTOR accomplished nothing more than recording The Ronettes singing ‘Be My Baby,’ he would deserve at least one get-out-of-jail-free card. ...
Overview by Robin Eggar, unpublished, April 2003
THE CASTLE PERCHES atop a hill in suburban Alhambra reached after a long and winding climb. The huge iron gates appear to have been shut ...
Retrospective by Joel Selvin, MOJO, May 2003
Phil Spector, the most famous producer on the planet, is currently on bail after an actress was shot dead at his L.A. mansion. To a ...
Column by Steven Wells, playlouder.com, 2 August 2003
The The Stages Of Pop-Man ...
L.A. Proved Too Much For Blake and Spector: Bring On the Trials
Report by Deanne Stillman, New York Observer, 19 April 2004
TWO VERY STRANGE courtroom spectacles are about to unfold in Los Angeles: the murder trials of Robert Blake and Phil Spector. I've been covering these ...
The Ramones: Hey Ho, Let's Go!
Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, MOJO, November 2004
Recording End Of The Century with Phil Spector should have been the Ramones' bid for the big time. Instead, it nearly destroyed them. ...
The Killing Of A Barbarian Queen
Retrospective by Terry Staunton, DVD World, October 2005
It took a scandalous Hollywood shooting to catapult faded B-movie starlet LANA CLARKSON onto the front pages. TERRY STAUNTON looks back on the life and ...
Phil Spector and Tom Wolfe: Joined at the indictment?
Comment by Deanne Stillman, L.A. Observed, 18 March 2007
SIX MONTHS AFTER Lana Clarkson was found dead of a gunshot blast to the face in Phil Spector's Alhambra mansion, Esquire published an interview with ...
Mick Brown: Tearing Down the Wall of Sound/Mark Ribowsky: He's A Rebel
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 1 April 2007
Mick Brown reminds us of Spector's greatness as a music man, in what would otherwise be an unremittingly grim story. ...
Phil Spector's Christmas Album
Retrospective by Johnny Black, unpublished, December 2009
GUNS HAVE LANDED Phil Spector in no end of trouble over the years. Usually, as in his confrontations with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen and the ...
Going Under: John Lennon's Lost Weekend
Retrospective and Interview by Tom Doyle, Q, February 2010
Separated from Yoko, at war with McCartney, his phone tapped by the US government... by 1974 JOHN LENNON was a mess. The solution: hook up ...
Comment by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 8 July 2010
I CAN LISTEN to six hours of Phil Spector recording sessions, some of which amount to take after take of Spector instructing the lead singer ...
The Wrecking Crew Played On All Your Favourite '60s And '70s Songs (Seriously)
Report and Interview by Juliette Jagger, Huffington Post, 19 February 2015
IN THE '60s and '70s, a should-be-legendary group of studio musicians dubbed the Wrecking Crew played on the era's defining songs. ...
Talk of the Town: Phil Spector in London
Book Excerpt by Norman Jopling, 'Shake It Up, Baby!', March 2015
THE RECORD MIRROR office was a four-room apartment above Drum City at 116 Shaftesbury Avenue and employed a total of nine full-time staff and numerous ...
Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, January 2023
THERE WAS no more pathetic sight than the prison shots of Phil Spector, wrinkled and bald, his dignity in ruins, his vanity undone, his arrogance ...
see also Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans
see also Darlene Love
see also Ronettes, The
see also Ronnie Spector
see also Ike & Tina Turner
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