"Or maybe it's really just Spector's overcompensating narcissism that we should hear in the grandiosity of that sound. Maybe, in creating a sound that felt as big and deep as an adolescent's nervous longings and sweetness and elation, it was a case of 'if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made'. But I don't think so. That wall, which too briefly stood in the pre-JFK-assassination period as the signature sound of a hopeful American youth culture, was about locking out loneliness. We may not be eager now to find points of identification even with the scrawny, respect-starved young Spector, much less the later respect-demanding, victimizer Spector. But that dread of solitude is one thing a miscreant like Spector and the rest of us at least occasionally have in common. Tom Waits had a phrase for compartmentalizing these better angels: 'innocent when you dream'. Inside those four confined studio walls, with his future, Ronnie*'s and Lana**'s all yet unwritten, the devil was a hell of a dreamer."
Chris Willman, "Phil Spector ***: When a Musical Hero is a Moral Monster",
publ. Variety, Jan 18, 2021 (link)
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* "She said he surrounded their house with barbed wire and guard dogs, and confiscated her shoes to prevent her from leaving; on the rare occasions he allowed her out alone, she had to drive with a life-size dummy of Phil. She stated that Phil installed a gold coffin with a glass top in the basement, promising that he would kill her and display her corpse if she ever left him... She later testified that Phil had frequently pulled a gun on her." - Wikipedia, "Ronnie Spector", Nov 26, 2025 (link)
** "In the early hours of February 3, 2003, Clarkson met record producer Phil Spector... The two were driven in Spector's limousine to his mansion... Later that morning Clarkson was found dead in the mansion. Her body was found slumped in a chair with a single gunshot wound to her mouth... Spector had previously pulled a gun on four women. In each case, he had been drinking and was romantically interested in the woman, but grew angry after the woman spurned him... On each occasion, he pointed a gun at the woman to prevent her from walking out." - Wikipedia, "Murder of Lana Clarkson", Nov 26, 2025 (link)
*** Dec 26, 1939 - Jan 16, 2021
