For the fact that he is charged with
murder and he arrives to court smiling
like a little happy gay, no comment!
Spector Trial
Cameras can catch/transform to all kinds of gooney looks on people's faces. This one looks gooney, including the look in his eyes. The woman is smiling broadly, too. It seems someone may have just said something humourous. I wonder what could be so humourous as you're entering for your trial for homicide. Trying to demonstrate an air of detachment that would underscore an "I didn't do it... "? If I were falsely accused in such a dire situation, I wouldn't be laughing or smiling. People are so different, aren't they. Maybe someone had commented on his new haircut.
~ Lizzy
~ Lizzy
On the telecast of the trial.... understand that the jury selection, currently underway, was not approved by the judge. Supposedly when the full trial starts... late april.. the tv cameras from Court Tv will be allowed.
If anyone sees earlier coverage, please post here so I can start watching!
The blond mop doesn't look much superior to the "finger in the electric socket" wig. I don''t see anything at all wrong with a mostly bald look
Yes, I resemble that remark....
If anyone sees earlier coverage, please post here so I can start watching!
The blond mop doesn't look much superior to the "finger in the electric socket" wig. I don''t see anything at all wrong with a mostly bald look
Yes, I resemble that remark....
-
John Etherington
- Posts: 2605
- Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2004 10:17 pm
. Really... on the gun on Lennon. If that's true, aside from his own, apparent propensity for it, I can't help but wonder how Spector felt when John was murdered.
I can't remember who said it, but some entertainment correspondent quipped that Spector 'ironed some of the crazy out of his hair'. Seems a fitting comment...
Anything that doesn't kill you only serves to postpone the inevitable.
http://www.myspace.com/madisonblythe
http://www.myspace.com/madisonblythe
Another interesting clip -- no photos:
From The Sunday Times April 1, 2007
Blood-soaked Greek tragedy of the first tycoon of teen
In 1949 a New York steel worker named Benjamin Spector sat in his car outside his house and inhaled carbon monoxide from a hose attached to the exhaust pipe until he died. Nine years later, borrowing the epitaph To Know Him Is to Love Him from his tombstone as a lyric, his teenage son Phil made a million-selling single that was to launch him as the most successful — and tormented — pop producer in the world.
Later this month a Los Angeles jury will consider whether Phil Spector is guilty of murdering Lana Clarkson, a 40-year-old actress found shot through the mouth in the hallway of his turreted castle in 2003. The beauty of the victim, the eccentric reputation of the 67-year-old producer and the suggestion that her rejection of his sexual advances sparked a homicidal rage, could make the four-month trial a theatrical event to rival that of O J Simpson. Spector’s story has elements of Greek tragedy, beginning with overweening pride. From 1961 to 1966, he changed the face of pop music with more than 20 hits by such artists as the Crystals (Da Doo Ron Ron), the Ronettes (Be My Baby) and the Righteous Brothers (You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’). He became a millionaire hailed by the writer Tom Wolfe as “the first tycoon of teen” and lionised by the Beatles.
A piano and guitar prodigy, Spector developed his distinctive “wall of sound” by assembling numerous musicians to produce a dense, layered effect that he called “Wagnerian” — although a former colleague maintained it was simply an accident: “It happened because Phil was too cheap to rent a bigger space.” At any event, it burst like thunder from the jukeboxes and mono players of the day — “emotional music for an emotional generation”, Spector said.
Soon the short, unimpressive backroom boy became a strutting tyrant in Cuban heels. “I think Phil was a very normal person at the beginning of his career,” recalled his former wife, Veronica (Ronnie) Bennett, leader of the Ronettes. “But as time went by they started writing about him being a genius. And he said, ‘Yeah, I am a genius’. Then they would say, ‘He’s the mad genius’. And so he became the mad genius.” His obsession with guns is expected to feature strongly in the trial. The long list of celebrities alarmed by his gunplay is said to include John Lennon during the recording of Imagine, Leonard Cohen (who described Spector’s manner as “Hitlerian” and his love of guns as “absolutely intolerable”) and Stevie Wonder, whose blindness was apparently no bar to the producer brandishing a pistol.
Ronnie Spector claimed he kept her as a prisoner. Once an old colleague who was playing pool with Spector became aware of a distant thumping sound. “I said, ‘Phil, what’s that?’ And he said, ‘I locked Ronnie in the closet’. And there she was, cowering inside.” By Ronnie’s account, he showed her a gold coffin with a glass top, promising to kill and display her if she ever left him. “I knew that if I didn’t leave [in 1972], I was going to die there,” she said. Three other women are to testify that he threatened to shoot them. Spector later acknowledged his psychological problems. “I would say I’m probably relatively insane,” he told Mick Brown, the author of Tearing Down the Wall of Sound, in January 2003. “I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t say I’m schizophrenic. I have a bipolar personality. I’m my own worst enemy. I have devils inside that fight me.”
He first consulted a psychiatrist in 1960 — to evade the military draft, he admitted. Therapy was not enough, though: “There’s something I’d either not accepted, or I’m not prepared to accept or live with in my life, that I don’t know about, perhaps.” Plagued by chronic insomnia and a fear of being with people, for years he had “waged war” with himself to become “a reasonable man”. He believed he had nearly succeeded. Four weeks later he was arrested for Clarkson’s murder.
According to court depositions, he had been trawling LA’s exclusive watering holes on the night of February 2, 2003, moving from the Grill to Dan Tana’s and then Trader Vic’s before fetching up after 1am at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. He was greeted by Clarkson, the club’s “VIP hostess”, whose failure to recognise Spector led to a scene in which she was instructed by her manager to “treat him like gold”. Later, after settling the bill, he tried to order another drink but was informed the bar was closed. Shortly after 2am, Spector and Clarkson left together. Clarkson, a statuesque blonde who was said to have dated Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, had acquired a cult following in several Roger Corman films, and was known to fans as the Barbarian Queen, her best-known character. However, she was past 40 and down on her luck, having recently been fired from Brentwood Blondes, a play about famous dead blondes in which she was cast as her idol, Marilyn Monroe. She was also recovering from having fractured her wrists in 22 places the previous year.
It appears she accepted Spector’s offer of a nightcap. According to Spector’s chauffeur, at 3am they arrived at the producer’s white castle above the unfashionable suburb of Alhambra. About 15 minutes later he emerged looking “mad” and disorientated. Nearly two hours later the chauffeur heard a soft popping noise. Soon after, Spector appeared with a gun in his hand, to say: “I think I killed somebody.” When the police arrived, shooting Spector twice with Taser electrified darts to make him raise his hands, they found Clarkson in a pool of blood. He told one officer: “I didn’t mean to shoot her. It was an accident.” Later he changed his story, claiming Clarkson had drunkenly “kissed the gun” which she produced and shot herself. “She had no right to come into my f****** castle and blow her f****** head open,” he complained.
Spector was nine when his father committed suicide. He had been born in the New York’s Bronx district to a Jewish couple on December 26, 1939. His manically overbearing mother Bertha, a seamstress, liked to scream, “Your father killed himself because you were a bad child”, while chasing him around the kitchen with a carving knife. Puny, asthmatic, with sensitive skin that reacted badly to sunlight, he was bullied at school. Before embarking on games of Monopoly, he would secrete extra money in his pocket. Even at the height of his success he liked to shoplift tins of tuna.
In 1953 the family moved to LA and he enrolled at Fairfax high school where, after performing Rock Island Line at a talent show in 1953, he formed the Teddy Bears group with three school friends. Their slushy rendering of To Know Him Is to Love Him shot to No 1.
Apprenticed to the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1960 — a period between Elvis and the Beatles when all smash hits seemed to be written by Jewish songwriters based in the Brill building on Broadway — Spector co-wrote the Ben E King hit Spanish Harlem and also worked as a session musician, playing the guitar solo on the Drifters’ song On Broadway. The following year he formed a record company and signed the Crystals, with Darlene Love on lead vocals. His purple patch in Tin Pan Alley lasted the standard five years, culminating in the electrifying River Deep — Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner. But his opposition to stereo recording and LPs — “two hits and 10 pieces of junk” — left him looking past his peak. He had been eclipsed by Berry Gordy, the father of Motown.
Becoming a recluse who still needed adulation, he threw parties featuring attractive young women who vied for his attention. “Phil would have really liked to be loved for himself,” said Emile Farkas, a former bodyguard.
In 1970 Allen Klein, the Beatles’ manager, tempted him back to produce Lennon’s solo single Instant Karma and convert the group’s abandoned album into the massively successful Let It Be. Paul McCartney, however, was infuriated by his overdubbing of The Long and Winding Road, and later had it stripped of its instrumentation.
In later years he undertook recordings with Dion, Cher, Harry Nilsson and Yoko Ono, dogged by stories of unpredictability. His last project was Silence Is Easy by the British group Starsailor in 2003, but he was fired before it was completed. It was a standing joke that Spector was the only Hollywood personality who needed bodyguards to protect people from him.
Spector may be down, but he’s not out. For the trial’s recent first phase of jury screening, he turned up jauntily in a blond wig on the arm of his new wife, Rachelle Short, a former Playboy model and 26-year-old actress barely remembered for her part in Tigerland, a 2000 film about soldiers training for Vietnam. In a television interview last month, Spector sounded confident: “I had nothing to do with her death and three coroners have stated that.” He may have to give his greatest performance to prove it.
...........
sadly, it seems Spector really does meet the criteria for being labeled "a mental case."
From The Sunday Times April 1, 2007
Blood-soaked Greek tragedy of the first tycoon of teen
In 1949 a New York steel worker named Benjamin Spector sat in his car outside his house and inhaled carbon monoxide from a hose attached to the exhaust pipe until he died. Nine years later, borrowing the epitaph To Know Him Is to Love Him from his tombstone as a lyric, his teenage son Phil made a million-selling single that was to launch him as the most successful — and tormented — pop producer in the world.
Later this month a Los Angeles jury will consider whether Phil Spector is guilty of murdering Lana Clarkson, a 40-year-old actress found shot through the mouth in the hallway of his turreted castle in 2003. The beauty of the victim, the eccentric reputation of the 67-year-old producer and the suggestion that her rejection of his sexual advances sparked a homicidal rage, could make the four-month trial a theatrical event to rival that of O J Simpson. Spector’s story has elements of Greek tragedy, beginning with overweening pride. From 1961 to 1966, he changed the face of pop music with more than 20 hits by such artists as the Crystals (Da Doo Ron Ron), the Ronettes (Be My Baby) and the Righteous Brothers (You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’). He became a millionaire hailed by the writer Tom Wolfe as “the first tycoon of teen” and lionised by the Beatles.
A piano and guitar prodigy, Spector developed his distinctive “wall of sound” by assembling numerous musicians to produce a dense, layered effect that he called “Wagnerian” — although a former colleague maintained it was simply an accident: “It happened because Phil was too cheap to rent a bigger space.” At any event, it burst like thunder from the jukeboxes and mono players of the day — “emotional music for an emotional generation”, Spector said.
Soon the short, unimpressive backroom boy became a strutting tyrant in Cuban heels. “I think Phil was a very normal person at the beginning of his career,” recalled his former wife, Veronica (Ronnie) Bennett, leader of the Ronettes. “But as time went by they started writing about him being a genius. And he said, ‘Yeah, I am a genius’. Then they would say, ‘He’s the mad genius’. And so he became the mad genius.” His obsession with guns is expected to feature strongly in the trial. The long list of celebrities alarmed by his gunplay is said to include John Lennon during the recording of Imagine, Leonard Cohen (who described Spector’s manner as “Hitlerian” and his love of guns as “absolutely intolerable”) and Stevie Wonder, whose blindness was apparently no bar to the producer brandishing a pistol.
Ronnie Spector claimed he kept her as a prisoner. Once an old colleague who was playing pool with Spector became aware of a distant thumping sound. “I said, ‘Phil, what’s that?’ And he said, ‘I locked Ronnie in the closet’. And there she was, cowering inside.” By Ronnie’s account, he showed her a gold coffin with a glass top, promising to kill and display her if she ever left him. “I knew that if I didn’t leave [in 1972], I was going to die there,” she said. Three other women are to testify that he threatened to shoot them. Spector later acknowledged his psychological problems. “I would say I’m probably relatively insane,” he told Mick Brown, the author of Tearing Down the Wall of Sound, in January 2003. “I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t say I’m schizophrenic. I have a bipolar personality. I’m my own worst enemy. I have devils inside that fight me.”
He first consulted a psychiatrist in 1960 — to evade the military draft, he admitted. Therapy was not enough, though: “There’s something I’d either not accepted, or I’m not prepared to accept or live with in my life, that I don’t know about, perhaps.” Plagued by chronic insomnia and a fear of being with people, for years he had “waged war” with himself to become “a reasonable man”. He believed he had nearly succeeded. Four weeks later he was arrested for Clarkson’s murder.
According to court depositions, he had been trawling LA’s exclusive watering holes on the night of February 2, 2003, moving from the Grill to Dan Tana’s and then Trader Vic’s before fetching up after 1am at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. He was greeted by Clarkson, the club’s “VIP hostess”, whose failure to recognise Spector led to a scene in which she was instructed by her manager to “treat him like gold”. Later, after settling the bill, he tried to order another drink but was informed the bar was closed. Shortly after 2am, Spector and Clarkson left together. Clarkson, a statuesque blonde who was said to have dated Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, had acquired a cult following in several Roger Corman films, and was known to fans as the Barbarian Queen, her best-known character. However, she was past 40 and down on her luck, having recently been fired from Brentwood Blondes, a play about famous dead blondes in which she was cast as her idol, Marilyn Monroe. She was also recovering from having fractured her wrists in 22 places the previous year.
It appears she accepted Spector’s offer of a nightcap. According to Spector’s chauffeur, at 3am they arrived at the producer’s white castle above the unfashionable suburb of Alhambra. About 15 minutes later he emerged looking “mad” and disorientated. Nearly two hours later the chauffeur heard a soft popping noise. Soon after, Spector appeared with a gun in his hand, to say: “I think I killed somebody.” When the police arrived, shooting Spector twice with Taser electrified darts to make him raise his hands, they found Clarkson in a pool of blood. He told one officer: “I didn’t mean to shoot her. It was an accident.” Later he changed his story, claiming Clarkson had drunkenly “kissed the gun” which she produced and shot herself. “She had no right to come into my f****** castle and blow her f****** head open,” he complained.
Spector was nine when his father committed suicide. He had been born in the New York’s Bronx district to a Jewish couple on December 26, 1939. His manically overbearing mother Bertha, a seamstress, liked to scream, “Your father killed himself because you were a bad child”, while chasing him around the kitchen with a carving knife. Puny, asthmatic, with sensitive skin that reacted badly to sunlight, he was bullied at school. Before embarking on games of Monopoly, he would secrete extra money in his pocket. Even at the height of his success he liked to shoplift tins of tuna.
In 1953 the family moved to LA and he enrolled at Fairfax high school where, after performing Rock Island Line at a talent show in 1953, he formed the Teddy Bears group with three school friends. Their slushy rendering of To Know Him Is to Love Him shot to No 1.
Apprenticed to the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1960 — a period between Elvis and the Beatles when all smash hits seemed to be written by Jewish songwriters based in the Brill building on Broadway — Spector co-wrote the Ben E King hit Spanish Harlem and also worked as a session musician, playing the guitar solo on the Drifters’ song On Broadway. The following year he formed a record company and signed the Crystals, with Darlene Love on lead vocals. His purple patch in Tin Pan Alley lasted the standard five years, culminating in the electrifying River Deep — Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner. But his opposition to stereo recording and LPs — “two hits and 10 pieces of junk” — left him looking past his peak. He had been eclipsed by Berry Gordy, the father of Motown.
Becoming a recluse who still needed adulation, he threw parties featuring attractive young women who vied for his attention. “Phil would have really liked to be loved for himself,” said Emile Farkas, a former bodyguard.
In 1970 Allen Klein, the Beatles’ manager, tempted him back to produce Lennon’s solo single Instant Karma and convert the group’s abandoned album into the massively successful Let It Be. Paul McCartney, however, was infuriated by his overdubbing of The Long and Winding Road, and later had it stripped of its instrumentation.
In later years he undertook recordings with Dion, Cher, Harry Nilsson and Yoko Ono, dogged by stories of unpredictability. His last project was Silence Is Easy by the British group Starsailor in 2003, but he was fired before it was completed. It was a standing joke that Spector was the only Hollywood personality who needed bodyguards to protect people from him.
Spector may be down, but he’s not out. For the trial’s recent first phase of jury screening, he turned up jauntily in a blond wig on the arm of his new wife, Rachelle Short, a former Playboy model and 26-year-old actress barely remembered for her part in Tigerland, a 2000 film about soldiers training for Vietnam. In a television interview last month, Spector sounded confident: “I had nothing to do with her death and three coroners have stated that.” He may have to give his greatest performance to prove it.
...........
sadly, it seems Spector really does meet the criteria for being labeled "a mental case."
Last edited by dick on Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yes, he certainly does, Dick. With that history, he's likely to be exonerated based on that very same thing. This woman, who apparently had much more than astonishingly good looks, is unfortunately dead.
"To Know Him Is to Love Him" ~ I remember being totally enchanted by this song, when I was in the 6th grade; and, it was the first song that I recall as being the very one that fit and described perfectly my feelings for the boy who later became a man and still later became my husband and is now simply my friend. I still feel an indescribable reverie when I by pure chance hear the song now.
~ Lizzy
"To Know Him Is to Love Him" ~ I remember being totally enchanted by this song, when I was in the 6th grade; and, it was the first song that I recall as being the very one that fit and described perfectly my feelings for the boy who later became a man and still later became my husband and is now simply my friend. I still feel an indescribable reverie when I by pure chance hear the song now.
~ Lizzy
April 20, 2007
Jury Sworn In For Eccentric, Trigger-Happy Record Producer's Murder Trial
And away we go.
The jury has been sworn in to kick off Phil Spector's murder trial .
http://tinyurl.com/2qswyj
He's accused of shooting B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in his manse. And let me tell ya this much, if bad haircuts were the charge - he might want to consider an insanity plea. He went from huge Marie Antoinette-type wig pile to frosted Beach Boy bangs. How did he not get the shit smacked out of him in the lockup?
A jury of nine men and three women was sworn in Thursday after four days of questioning, in which the 100 or so remaining prospective jurors were quizzed down by both the prosecution and the defense in order to root out bias, personal feelings and other preconceived notions in order to ensure that Spector receives a fair trial. (As much as is possible when you're dealing with human beings, of course.)
For instance, one of the selected jurors has been identified as an NBC producer who admitted to being knowledgeable about the case but said that he feels he can still be fair in determining whether Spector murdered Lana Clarkson on Feb. 3, 2003, in his Alhambra home.
More Phil Spector goodness after the jump.
The Wall of Sound creator pleaded not guilty and has been free on $1 million bail since being arraigned in November 2003.
Oh, and by the way - this took four years to get to trial. Justice is a slow process. If you ever get a chance, check out the Malcolm McDowell-narrated documentary "The Compleat Beatles". There's a part that talks about how Spector took over the producing chores on "Let It Be". They show one photo of him where he's in his studio, staring at the camera and he looks so scary that I wouldn't doubt for a second that he'd be blowing heads off. I had to fast-forward. A scary photo does not a killer make, but they have a good case with charging him with being BAAL, EATER OF CHILDREN! *shudder*
Jury Sworn In For Eccentric, Trigger-Happy Record Producer's Murder Trial
And away we go.
The jury has been sworn in to kick off Phil Spector's murder trial .
http://tinyurl.com/2qswyj
He's accused of shooting B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in his manse. And let me tell ya this much, if bad haircuts were the charge - he might want to consider an insanity plea. He went from huge Marie Antoinette-type wig pile to frosted Beach Boy bangs. How did he not get the shit smacked out of him in the lockup?
A jury of nine men and three women was sworn in Thursday after four days of questioning, in which the 100 or so remaining prospective jurors were quizzed down by both the prosecution and the defense in order to root out bias, personal feelings and other preconceived notions in order to ensure that Spector receives a fair trial. (As much as is possible when you're dealing with human beings, of course.)
For instance, one of the selected jurors has been identified as an NBC producer who admitted to being knowledgeable about the case but said that he feels he can still be fair in determining whether Spector murdered Lana Clarkson on Feb. 3, 2003, in his Alhambra home.
More Phil Spector goodness after the jump.
The Wall of Sound creator pleaded not guilty and has been free on $1 million bail since being arraigned in November 2003.
Oh, and by the way - this took four years to get to trial. Justice is a slow process. If you ever get a chance, check out the Malcolm McDowell-narrated documentary "The Compleat Beatles". There's a part that talks about how Spector took over the producing chores on "Let It Be". They show one photo of him where he's in his studio, staring at the camera and he looks so scary that I wouldn't doubt for a second that he'd be blowing heads off. I had to fast-forward. A scary photo does not a killer make, but they have a good case with charging him with being BAAL, EATER OF CHILDREN! *shudder*
Unfortunately for Mr Spector,
it's not only women who say that
"he was brandishing guns around them".
it's not only women who say that
"he was brandishing guns around them".
9.stmBBC NEWS
Spector's ex tells of gun threats
A former girlfriend of music producer Phil Spector has told his murder trial that she was threatened with two guns after he became drunk.
Dorothy Melvin told the Los Angeles court she fled Mr Spector's house when he brandished a pistol and shotgun after a night's drinking in 1993.
She claimed she had been struck twice in the face and ordered to strip but also admitted to not pressing charges.
Mr Spector denies shooting actress Lana Clarkson at his home in 2003.
Ms Melvin told the court how Mr Spector, 67, became violent after a row.
Cross examination
"He took his right hand that was holding the revolver and smacked me on the side of the head, and at that point I knew I was in trouble," she said.
Ms Melvin added that Mr Spector then ordered her to leave the house but she found the gate locked.
"Then I saw Phil coming down the driveway and I heard the pump of a shotgun," she said.
"He was screaming... and I was screaming, 'The gate won't open.'"
She returned with police but admitted under defence cross examination that she had maintained contact with Mr Spector for years afterward.
'Scientific fact'
Defence lawyers had earlier said scientific evidence will prove the producer's claim that Ms Clarkson shot herself.
Bruce Cutler, defending, said forensics would show the fatal shot was "a classic self-inflicted type of injury".
He was too far away to be holding the gun and get GSR (gunshot residue) on his clothes
Defence lawyer Linda Kenney-Baden
"The gun was in her mouth, put there by her," Mr Cutler said.
"There's no evidence that a gun was forced in her mouth. There were no broken teeth in," he added.
Co-counsel, Linda Kenney-Baden said evidence showed Mr Spector was too far away from the actress to have killed her.
"The science will tell you that Phil Spector was not holding the gun in the decedent's mouth, that he was not close enough ... to hold the gun in the decedent's mouth," she said.
She explained that "a lot" of gunshot residue had been found on Ms Clarkson's hands and jacket, but that police had found none on Spector's shirt and the right sleeve of his jacket.
"It proves that this means he did not shoot that gun. He was too far away to be holding the gun and get GSR (gunshot residue) on his clothes," she said.
"It's not supposition, it's not hypothesis, it's scientific fact."
'Sinister and deadly'
Wearing platform shoes and a dark three-piece suit, Mr Spector showed no emotion during the morning's proceedings.
Previously the prosecution had told jurors that Mr Spector had a history of violence against women.
Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson described to the court a pattern of behaviour in Mr Spector, where he would get drunk, take a woman home, and threaten her with a gun if she refused to stay.
Mr Jackson said Mr Spector was someone "who, when he's confronted with the right circumstances, when he's confronted with the right situations, turns sinister and deadly".
He suggested that the actress "was simply the last in a long line of women who fell victim to Philip Spector over the years".
Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler has allowed five women to testify about Mr Spector brandishing guns around them between 1988 and 1995, despite objections from Mr Spector's lawyers.
A jury of nine men and three women was sworn in last week for the trial, which is being televised and is expected to last up to three months.
It is not clear whether Mr Spector, who has shunned the public eye for decades, will testify at the trial.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/e ... ent/659792