Cry Me a River: Phil Spector ‘terrified of being done in’ in prison…

Guilty as sin. Caged like the killer he is. Yay. Cry me a river you rat bastard. Our previous post on Lana Clarkson’s tragic death here

The Sun reports Phil is still living in his own private Idaho of the mind:

In rambling letters to a pal, Spector, serving life for murdering a B-list actress, moaned: “Imagine sending me to the same prison – shows how low they can go.

“They’d kill you in here for a 39-cent bag of soup!”

The twisted Wall of Sound genius said he was terrified of being done in by other lags and that being kept locked in his 3ft by 7ft cell was better than having to mix with them at mealtimes.

Spector also described the “Darwinian blessing” of a visit by his ex-Playboy model wife Rachelle, 29, to the jail in Corcoran, California.

But he whinged that a “mean and nasty” guard made her change her clothes to conform to the dress code….

Speaking of rivers, now that Phil is behind bars I feel better purchasing some of my faves from itunes knowing he will never enjoy a penny. After all Darlene Love and the other acts who propelled his fortune got ripped off big time (he was a musical genius yeah but they worked their axxes off at times in the studio for hour after hour day after day with raving Phil having ‘one of his turns’, often with a gun)(Darlene also worked hours laying tracks on Tina and Ikes River Deep Mountain high)

Not that working with producers was always that simple, particularly since several years of her work came with Phil Spector. While Love writes in her book that Spector was a musical genius, she also deems him mercurial, evasive and overbearing toward many people, including his then-sweetheart and later wife, Ronnie Bennett.
On the business side, Love recently won a back-pay lawsuit against Spector for several hundred thousand dollars. That verdict is now on appeal.

When she talks about Spector, she shakes her head on questions like why she thinks he promised to push her as a solo artist, then backed off. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think there’s any way of knowing what goes on in his head.”

In March, a New York Supreme Court jury awared her more than $250,000 in unpaid royalties from Phil Spector, who produced hit records by her, with and without the group the Crystals, in the 1960s. Kicking off a nearly month-long series of shows at Rainbow and Stars Tuesday night, she beamed as she recalled her triumph.

“Love For the Holidays” is all the more compelling for the autobiographical tidbits Ms. Love drops in. She mentions a court case involving Mr. Spector in which she won back “a little of what he owed me.” Not many years after her hits, she recalls, she found herself cleaning houses in Beverly Hills. Then one day she heard herself on the radio and determined to return to show business. Today she may be a 56-year-old grandmother, but her soaring delivery sounds as youthfully optimistic as it did 30 years ago.

My theory has always been that when the news came out IIRC also in February 2003, that he Beatles final album Let It Be, was about to be rereleased with the remastered sound with Phil’s work taken out as Let It Be- Naked, and was hailed by critics, it pushed his ego over an edge, having done the last Beatles album was a big deal for Phil don’t doubt it:

…Another striking difference is in McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road“. The last recorded take was chosen over the rough early take Phil Spector had chosen for the original album. (The unadorned take from the Let It Be album can be found on the compilation album Anthology 3.) Naturally, the …Naked version is devoid of Phil Spector’s orchestral and choral overdubs. In addition, one line from the song reads, in the studio version, “anyway, you’ll never know, the many ways I’ve tried”. In …Naked it reads, “anyway, you’ve always known, the many ways I’ve tried.”

The studio dialogue from the original album was removed, as was the dialogue from the rooftop concert that had originally closed the album. Additionally, the running order is quite different from the Let It Be album.

After the release of Let It Be… Naked in 2003, critics referred to this CD—with its simpler song versions—as being the “de-Spectorized” version of the original Let It Be album…

With Phil he seems to have such a complex about his Dad’s suicide, being abandoned (ie any woman who tried to leave after a date when he was drunk) being a small man, he constantly waived guns around, and got away with it b/c of ‘who he was’ until he finally killed a lovely human being ..

Lana Clarkson - God Bless

…During the 60’s and 70’s, the producer’s patented Wall of Sound production technique routinely employed threats of gun violence in order to achieve the highest possible sound quality. In fact, it is reported that a .45 caliber handgun was in plain view during the recordings of both You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, by the Righteous Brothers and River Deep – Mountain High, by Ike and Tina Turner (the latter, an already tumultuous session in its own right). George Harrison of Beatles fame was once quoted as saying “Phil is a seriously crazy motherfucker… but damn if he doesn’t get the greatest sound outta his artists, man…”

So speaking of rivers….

Tina Turner courtesy of tinaturnerfan84

*Julie London in The Girl Can’t Help It courtesy of vagabondsole

*The Wall scene courtesy of Epicbob101