The infamous case of Phil Spector: What caused his urge to kill?
Most of the time, when someone kills a person, the culprit is someone you’d never in a million years imagine murdering another human being. Then you get Phil Spector, a man responsible for why the term “it’s always the people you most suspect” exists in the popular lexicon.
It wasn’t enough for Spector, a violent, bullying psychopath with a pathological need to control people, to look like a murderer for his entire adult life. The man also had to wave guns around with the kind of frequency that characters in Harry Potter wave around wands. Sure, he was responsible for some of the best music of the entire 1960s, but he was also a raving lunatic. Moreover, his great music was directly responsible for him having the kind of clout that covered up his violent behaviour.
To be a man who treated women particularly badly in the 1960s is one hell of a high bar to clear. While many men have been warped by success into being evil, by the sounds of it, Spector was that kind of man long before fame found him.
Spector’s childhood was troubled. His father committed suicide when Spector was nine, as he wasn’t able to crawl out from under a mountain of debt that he had left his family in.
That would change a person and leave them desperate to stay in control of their surroundings. It seems that Spector was changed for the worse by the toxic combination of a desperate need for control, along with the money and success that came to him very early in life.
After all, Spector had written a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 by the time he was 19. Perhaps this is yet another example of a man whose inability to grow up turned him into a monster.
Horrifyingly, every person who had a romantic relationship with him, from Ronnie Spector onwards, testifies to Spector pulling a gun on them the moment they begin to do something he doesn’t like. As did many artists he worked with in the studio, as well.
Seemingly, Spector saw himself above everybody else, who were just simply there to sell his genius to the world, and if they knew what was good for them, they would do as he said.
For a number of years, it seemed that the only person to ever call Spector on his bluff was Cher. The producer pulled a gun on her, a friend of his going back over a decade, when she took him to task for releasing a record she’d made without her consent or knowledge. He started trying to intimidate her with a revolver, but she instead went on the offensive. Telling her where to get off and to take the single off the market. He backed down.
Unfortunately, that was the last time that the producer threatened a woman at gunpoint in his home without intending to go through with it. On February 3rd, 2003, Lana Clarkson had been taken home by Spector in his limousine, and didn’t survive the night. It stands to reason that she told Spector no, and he finally did what he’d been threatening to do his entire life.
“It’s always the ones you most suspect” sounds like a decent enough joke, but there’s a tragedy to it, too. No matter what inspired Spector’s murderous desires, they weren’t taken seriously enough until it was too late. Something that can be said for many, many other men who have abused and murdered women.