Phil Spector: How The A-List Feed On Everyone Else

What you have here is the tawdry tale of a dangerous man who was allowed to continue to be a danger to everyone with whom he came in contact. A man whose actions by any standard were dangerously insane but because of our cult of celebrity was allowed to continue off the rails until someone died.

As a self-proclaimed “rock chick” photographer, Stephanie Jennings was overwhelmed when she met the veteran record producer Phil Spector while snapping celebrities at a New York party.

Spector was full of intimate stories about working with the Beatles and Leonard Cohen. He was charming and funny. But when he started drinking, she claims, he pulled a gun on her and held her against her will for 48 hours.
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This week Jennings, who is in her mid-thirties, is expected to tell the jury how Spector could “flip” from being a colourful raconteur - recalling how he created the “wall of sound” as heard on Ike and Tina Turner’s hit River Deep, Mountain High, or the Beatles album Let It Be - into a possessive gun-wielding bully.

This, the prosecutors claim, is how Spector ended up killing Lana Clarkson, a blonde 40-year-old B-movie actress, as she tried to escape from his Los Angeles chateau four years ago. Spector, now 66, says she shot herself while playing a game called “kissing the gun”.