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Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector. By Mick Brown. New York: Vintage Books, 2008, 484pp (paperback). Illustrations, Notes, Selected Bibliography. ISBN 978-1-4000-7661-1. $16.95
The final chapter in Phil Spector's spectacular rise as a hit-making record producer and equally sensational fall as an alleged murderer hadn't played out yet when British journalist Mick Brown's superb biography of the music legend went to press. Now it has: Spector was convicted of murder the second time around in the death of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson, bringing the final curtain down on one of the most grotesque incidents in a very bizarre life.
The Bronx-born Spector was previously the subject of Mark Ribowskys full-length 1989 biography, He's a Rebel. Much has transpired in the diminutive Spector's uncommonly strange existence over the last two decades, most of it not positive, and Brown's book does a far meatier job of delving into the muck than its predecessor, which certainly wasn't without its charms. Brown began his Odyssey...