Comments on: Just in case you were wondering . . .

By: MomTFH

MomTFH — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:36:57 +0000

“her ruined” should say “he ruined”. Ehh…

By: MomTFH

MomTFH — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:36:22 +0000

Thank you for this post. Thanks for being thrilled that he is finally being put away.

And less importantly, but still important to me: thanks for saying her ruined Let it Be, and that the Wall of Sound isn’t all that. Adding strings where they don’t belong isn’t all that revolutionary. It made rock n roll sound like Big Band, but wrong.

By: DaisyDeadhead

DaisyDeadhead — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:20:33 +0000

Also, he threatened the Ramones with a gun. He just loved to wave guns around; if there were no women around, he would deign to point them at men, even famous ones.

Ecstatic to hear this news, since my blog threatened to turn into the Phil Spector Trial blog last year. I was very bummed when there was a hung jury. Good riddance to a misogynist, woman-hating pig.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:09:27 +0000

John Lennon was among those threatened with a gun by Spector – Spector killing him is the Point of Departure from our timeline in an essay in one of the Alternate History anthologies

By: Cara

Cara — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:45:27 +0000

Yup. I’ve seen lots of stuff too about how she was supposedly using him to score drugs, etc.

Like . . . I have no idea of that was true. But if it was: so? Seriously, so? Women who do drugs deserve to get brutally slain by unhinged, misogynistic record producers? WTF?

By: Natalia

Natalia — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:41:30 +0000

It’s true that the times he accosted musicians are well-documented. Of course, musicians’ lives are also important – nobody gives a shit about some “groupie.” And Clarkson was posthumously slut-shamed, from what I understand… Like, what was she doing going up to that house anyway? Well, guys, he’s a powerful man in the music business, and she’s struggling with her career. This sort of thing happens all the time, and no, it doesn’t excuse violence and it does NOT make the victim complicit in what happened.

By: Cara

Cara — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:50:46 +0000

You’re absolutely right. Though the man is clearly a misogynist to the extreme, there are also lots of stories out there about him pulling guns on the male artists he was producing, as well. I mean, stories that have not been as well hidden as those by the women recounted at his trial (because of course men are able to talk about it without being deemed hysterical).

But it was always just laughed off. “Hohoho . . . oh that Phil Spector. So eccentric, he is! But that’s just how he works! WALL OF SOUND, PEOPLE, WALL OF SOUND.”

By: Natalia

Natalia — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:42:48 +0000

It’s amazing what kinds of behaviour men can get away with because they’re “brilliant.” I still remember when my aunt’s husband was throwing her down the stairs, and people saying – “but he’s brilliant!”

My ASS is brilliant – and it doesn’t throw people down the stairs or shoot women in the mouth.

By all means, we have to appreciate the talented among us – especially when music and art are derided as frivolous – but that should never give them a pass.

I feel like – Lana Clarkson might never had died had people long ago realized that Spector wasn’t being “eccentric,” that he was acting like a deranged violent asshole.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but there was a ridiculous number of women who had testified to how he had pulled a gun on them in the past at this trial. None of them had the power to put a stop to his behaviour, and this is how it all ended up.