Music producer Phil Spector died today (Sunday) at the age of 81, after contracting the corona virus. Spector was known as one of the most influential and successful record producers in the world. Spector, burst into consciousness in the 1960s after composing hits for a significant number of bands. Spector’s well-known work is probably the “sound wall” that characterized many of the music hits of those years.
His death has been confirmed by California authorities, where Spector has been serving a prison sentence since 2009, after being convicted of murdering Anna Clarkson, a nightclub host, whom he brought to his home in 2003. According to the announcement, Spector died outside the prison, in an outpatient hospital. The cause of Spector’s death was not specified in the announcement.
Phil Spector in court (Photo: REUTERS / Robyn Beck / Pool / File Photo)Spector’s first success came in his youth, when he and his two friends in the band “The Teddy Bears” released the ballad “To know him is to love him”, which sold over a million copies. Spector then moved on to work as a record producer, a role in which he became a legend in the field of music. “There were producers before him who wrote songs, but no one was the complete package like an elephant,” music producer Jerry Lieber told the Rolling Stones magazine in 2005.
The “Sound Wall” was invented and incorporated by Spector at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, where he worked with engineer Larry Levin, music processor Jack Nietzsche and a number of other musicians. The sound, which consists of the sound of guitars, basses and keyboards being mixed together, has become one of the sounds most identified with the pop and rock hits of the 60s.
“Records are built like Wagner’s opera,” Spector said in a 1964 interview. “They begin simply and end with a dynamic force with intentional meaning,” he said at the time.