crystals group annette williams and phil spectre

Days would be spent on the creation of a three-minute pop record aimed at teenagers, but the value of his work was apparent in a richness, complexity and power that enhanced rather than obscured the simple message of the songs. Many of them, such as the Crystals’ He’s a Rebel, Da Doo Ron Ron and Then He Kissed Me, and the Ronettes’ Be My Baby and Baby I Love You, set the appealing voices of New York girl groups against a grandiose background that became known as the “wall of sound”, created through lavish use of instrumental resources.Ī devotee of the sort of creative excess associated with Richard Wagner and Cecil B DeMille, Spector hired guitarists, bassists, drummers, pianists, percussionists and saxophonists by the dozen, rehearsing them and putting them through a recording process involving endless adjustments and retakes. To pop fans who grew up in the 1960s, his name will always be synonymous with recordings that embodied both the music’s early innocence and its increasing sense of adventure.

Even his friends were wary of his sudden, irrational rages, fuelled by alcohol and a neurotic compulsion to repay slights real or imagined, recent or historic. Stories of his manipulative, paranoid behaviour were endlessly recycled: they included the time he ordered a scheduled flight to be stopped on the runway to allow him to disembark, the violent jealousy that made a virtual prisoner of his second wife, the constant presence of silent bodyguards and the habit of pulling guns on the artists whose recordings he supervised.

During his months in court, Spector paraded a succession of increasingly elaborate wigs, his appearance supporting the popular image of him as an eccentric recluse and the real-life model for Z-Man Barzell, the crazed record producer at the centre of Russ Meyer’s film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

Crystals group annette williams and phil spectre