September 10, 2007

Phil Spector's Murder Trial Goes To the Jury. Spector, a famous American record producer, is no stranger to controversy. Will he be found innocent or guilty?

During sessions for John Lennon's [...] oldies covers album, Rock And Roll, Spector and Lennon out-drink each other, spar verbally, and scream at each other over the din of Phil's wacked-out production. Samples from this infamous session can be heard on Lennon's Anthology box set and on bootlegs. During these sessions, Spector is also seen to wave a handgun around, threatening longtime Beatles roadie and associate Mal Evans with it and eventually shooting it into the air. A frazzled Spector soon disappears with the session tapes, which took Lennon months to retrieve. (1973) To be fair - it was 1973.

posted by petebest 17 years ago
  • GUILTY You heard it here, first!
  • Guilty as sin.
  • His album Death of a Ladies' Man was produced by Phil Spector, the reclusive genius of girl-group pop. "I was flipped out at the time," Cohen said later, "and he certainly was flipped out. For me, the expression was withdrawal and melancholy, and for him, megalomania and insanity and a devotion to armaments that was really intolerable. In the state that he found himself, which was post-Wagnerian, I would say Hitlerian, the atmosphere was one of guns - the music was a subsidiary enterprise ...At a certain point Phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, 'Leonard, I love you.' I said, 'I hope you do, Phil.' I would assume that one can only wave around a gun for so many decades before one shoots somebody, intentionally or not. From the circumstantial evidence I've heard, I think it's fairly likely. But what do I know?
  • Guilty! of having AWESOME hair!
  • He should be imprisoned behind a wall of sound.
  • He shot a woman in the face.
  • I wonder what she said that made him see himself in her. Too bad his aim was NOT true...or else we would have buried this bad thing already.
  • He shot a woman in the face. If this is a crime... uh-oh...
  • Remember, this trial is in Los Angeles, where no Celebrity Crime goes unpunished. Interestingly, I just got a Jury Summons from L.A. County, even though I moved to San Luis Obispo County over a year ago. There was a brief questionnaire: (1) Are you an American citizen? (2) Have you been convicted of a felony? (3) Do you own any albums produced by Phil Spector?
  • His biographer made the excellent point that for a guy who's renowned for waving guns and threatening people, he was extraordinarily unlucky to take home a woman who had to kill herself in his house. Also, his chutzpah in not taking the insanity plea will likely reappear at a later time to masticate his glutes.
  • mmmm....gluteal mastication... /homer simpson
  • I would LOVE to wave a .45 around. Can you fix it for me, Jim?
  • What's really amazing is that someone as seriously disturbed as this man has remained at large for so long. If some minimum-wage, rent-paying dude repeatedly threatened others with a firearm he'd've been locked up years ago as a menace to society. Amazing what you can get away with in this country if you have the money. Guilty or not? Based on past behaviors, I'd be stunned if he weren't. Fes is right, though. His hair is an amazing thing. It went so well with the high heels. Also, nice one, rocket88. Definitely, if the jury goes with guilt, the sentence should be imprisonment behind a Wall of Sound.
  • Domestic violence folks can be fairly interesting. I was meeting with a client last evening who is charged with shooting his girlfriend twice with a BB gun (he said that it was a .22, and that the bullets can break the skin -- I know nothing of guns). He told me he didn't do it, and that she must have shot herself. Then he said, "Why she gotta be disrespecting my aim?" I answered, "You mean, you couldn't have shot her because your aim is so good that she would have been killed?" And that is exactly what he meant. Perhaps Spector can try the "Disrespecting My Aim" defense. In his case, he would argue that if he would have shot her, then she would not have died because his aim is good enough to allow for her survival.
  • Wow, bernockle. How you keep from becoming terminally cynical is beyond me.
  • I like to think I am terminally cynical.
  • There's no way that won't work as a defense. Kudos to your client. I never got a hole-in-one, but I did hit a guy . . and that's way more satisfying. You're supposed to yell "fore" but I was too busy mumbling, "there ain't no way that's gonna hit him" --Mitch Hedberg
  • Next she'll be shooting herself with a bow and arrow.
  • Very apropos, petebest. Man I loved Mitch Hedberg, he made me laugh like a lunatic.
  • A producer of a television show that makes money off of the Spector murder trial is allowed to be on the jury? Are you kidding me? He has a direct financial interest in the outcome of the trial, and he is on the jury? How is that possible?
  • That's what I thought too, bernockle. Perhaps Dateline NBC needs to turn the cameras on itself?
  • From what i read, it seemed that he was a producer with the show, but wasn't a producer of that segment. I'm not cynical enough to imagine the judge knew he'd worked on the segment about Phil Spector, and let him sit on the jury but warned him not to watch it. Almost, but not.
  • Spector jury is hung... LA Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler said he may instruct the jury to go back and try to reach a verdict on a reduced charge of manslaughter.
  • Spector jury is hung But alas, not a single boytaur among them!
  • Always gotta work blue, don't ya Koko. You're better than that.
  • Who are you, and how did you get pete's password?