Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector (Vintage) by Mick Brown Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector (Vintage)
Book Review: Troubled man becomes 1960's musical icon
Summary: 5 Stars
This fascinating account of the life and music of Phil Spector, legendary music producer and murder suspect, reveals much about the music industry during the 1960's and the changes in our society from the 1950's through the present day. I have been following Phil Spector's career since his association with the Beatles, notably John Lennon and George Harrison. I found the book revealing and absorbing, the author brought us all of the aspects of this troubled musician's life and times. Anyone with a passing interest in music, the music industry or the process of creating recorded music would find something worthwhile here. I have picked up a few music biographies only to put them down after a few chapters, but this compelling story had me turning the pages right up until the tragic ending when Lana Clarkson dies in Phil Spector's mansion. Phil Spector's first trial ended in a mistrial, the prosecution plans to retry him for the murder of Lana Clarkson. He is now 67 years old, I imagine that he will change attorneys and use other delaying tactics in order to move his second trial as far into the future as possible. I doubt that he will spend one day in prison for the murder of Lana Clarkson. Book Review: Essential Reading
Summary: 5 Stars
For those who wonder about the bewigged little man on trial for murder, this tome will leave nothing unanswered. Except maybe whodunit? Spector, a Learean tragedy if ever there was one, is little known to the public, but a legend in music for his sound and his hits and his gun-toting propensities. The book is an epic, fully researched and replete with interviews with Spector, completed just before Lana Clarkson died in his suburban LA castle. This is fabulous music history. But, though it's clear that Spector went through life improperly medicated for bipolar disease, much of the book is spent quoting his friends and lovers who profess little understanding of what really drove him. Hello? Mental illness drove him. Manic depression. Bipolar I, maybe II. The recent hung jury in his murder trial means the story's ending has yet to unfold, but this book is essential to understanding Spector's accomplishments and where he fits in music history. A fantastic work of journalism.Book Review: Phil needs some real mental help
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who doubt's Phil Spector's guilt in the death of Lana Clarkson should read this book. The man is clearly distubed and has been his entire life. He has a long history of craziness, a very crazy family, and many people in the music business who loathe him. Why he was allowed to purchase guns is beyond belief. He's also had several run ins with the law for waving guns and threatening others with guns.
Regarding his music. The word "genius" is tossed around way too much. Arrogance suits the short little napolean more appropriately. Brian Wilson-McCartney and Lennon-Holland-Dozier-Holland-spell genius. Most of Spector's stuff today....is forgotten. A definite read.
Book Review: Journalistic biography of famed record producer
Summary: 5 Stars
Phil Spector has been the subject of profiles and biographies ever since Tom Wolfe's essay, "The First Tycoon of Teen" was published in 1964. Subsequent volumes have included Richard Williams' 1972 "Out of His Head: The Sound of Phil Spector," and Mark Riboswky's 1989 "He's a Rebel: The Truth About Phil Spector - Rock and Roll's Legendary Madman." Each provided a view of Spector that was shaped by the author's background and the times in which the biography was written. Of the four, Brown's is the most journalistic, though given the story he had to tell, it still turned out sensationalistic.
Wolfe began the Spector profiling with a hyperkinetic magazine article (reprinted in the anthology "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby") that read like a souped-up press release. Spector's troubled childhood, particularly his father's suicide, was omitted, and the whole psychological foundation of his behavior was left unexplained. Wolfe's portrait found Spector reaching the crest of fame that would sustain his legacy. Williams, writing in the early '70s, profiled Spector after he'd produced the grand failure of "River Deep, Mountain High," and resuscitated his legend with "Let it Be," and solo albums by George Harrison and John Lennon. Like Wolfe, Williams didn't expose the intimate detail of Spector's childhood, nor report on Spector's outrageous behaviors, resulting in more of a caricature than a portrait. The book became quite scarce (trading at $100 or more) until it was reprinted in 2003.
Williams' portrait stood until 1989, when Ribowsky wrote an explosively detailed biography. Ribowsky explored the details of Spector's childhood, including the family dynamics and the lifelong impact of Ben Spector's suicide. Ribowsky laid bare many of the incidents for which Spector became infamous, including details of his marriage to Ronnie Spector, his troubled adoptions, and his tumultuous encounters with artists and business associates. The Spector that emerged was significantly more complex than earlier profiles, alternately brilliant, obstinate, generous, petty, charming and bitter. The book was dishy, but filled with new detail.
Fast forward nearly fifteen years, and British journalist Mick Brown scored a rare in-person interview with Spector. Just weeks after conducting the interview, Lana Clarkson was shot dead in the foyer of Spector's Alhambra, California home, and the interview became the lead-in to a much larger effort. Brown published his interview, and then decided to research and write a full Spector biography. Though the book was grounded in lucky timing, Brown's journalistic skill keeps this from feeling opportunistic, even as he refracted the story of Spector's life through the prism of Clarkson's death.
Readers can't help but read this as a chronicle that foreshadows Clarkson's shooting. It's hard to discern whether Brown gave the violent aspects of Spector's story an unusually heavy emphasis or if the endless news cycles on Spector's trial have simply sensitized readers, but either way, Spector's brutishly insecure behaviors and reoccurring gun-play stand out as highlighted threads holding the rest of the story together. Brown's talent as a journalist allows this to remain an historical biography, just one that heavily portends its concluding event. The writing style is fluid, and the research deeper than any that's gone before, providing enlightening details of Spector's work in the studio and in business.
The megalomania that formed the basis of Spector's grandest productions had been described in earlier biographies, but Brown's more clearly explains its genesis and operation. His narrative effectively sews together accounts from numerous interviews, weaving together Spector's remembrances with those of others. More importantly, he's let disagreements between parties stand, providing multiple angles on situations that shade the parties' veracity and leave the reader to decide who's right. Spector emerges from the analysis more as the on-going, lifelong product of childhood traumas than as someone intentionally inflicting drama on everyone around him.
Where Brown falls short - where all the biographers before have also failed - is in explaining how Spector was repeatedly able to overcome his reputation to gain new associates and land new jobs. The descriptions of Spector's charisma, artistic brilliance, and the proven genius of his recordings fail to balance the stories of craziness. Perhaps that's just an artifact of condensing fifty years of events into 464 pages: Spector's charisma remains an enigma to those who haven't experienced it first hand.
Spector's life is as engrossing as his records, and Brown's done the best job yet of separating the story from the purpose-built legend. It's well worth reading all of the Spector biographies in chronological order to see how biography writing's changed over the decades, and how a writer, a rock critic and a journalist each approach the task. But if you're only going to read one, this is it. [©2007 hyperbolium dot com]
Book Review: Placing the genius and his undoing in context
Summary: 5 Stars
All I can say is WOW! Mick Brown not only did amazing research, conducted exhaustive interviews, but he made the result an infinitely satisfying and readable story about a man gone awry. I've listened to the results of his work for years, and now I listen to it with a new understanding and appreciation of the (mad)man who made it happen.
You'll see the man and some of the people whose lives he touched (positively and otherwise) in a new light. By turns fascinating and revolting, you'll have a hard time putting it down.