Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector

A stunning biography of “pure self-interest and cruelty, tempered only slightly by the great musical achievements of Mr. Spector’s golden age in the early 1960s” ( The New York Times ). He had a number one hit at eighteen. He was a millionaire with his own record label at twenty-two. He was, according to Tom Wolfe, “the first tycoon of teen.” Phil Spector owned pop music. From the Crystals, the Ronettes (whose lead singer, Ronnie, would become his second wife), and the Righteous Brothers to the Beatles (together and singly) and finally the seventies punk icons The Ramones, Spector produced hit after hit. But then he became pop music’s most famous recluse. Until one day in the spring of 2007, when his name hit the tabloids, connected to a horrible crime. In this “bruising portrait of legendary music producer Phil Spector” ( Entertainment Weekly ) , the last journalist to interview him before his arrest tells the full story of the troubled genius.