Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown - review by Ian Whitcomb

Ian Whitcomb

Tycoon of Teen

Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector

By

Bloomsbury 512pp £18.99
 

The career of this legendary record producer has already been covered in many books, so do we need another? I myself have written about the eccentric self-styled ‘genius’ who, in the twilight before Beatle sunshine, conjured up a mighty tsunami of sound to be enjoyed on cheap phonographs and car radios by adolescents of body or brain.

‘Little symphonies for the kids’, he said he was making. He called on his arrangers to throw in a little Strauss here and some Wagner there while pushing his engineers to up the volume till stomachs turned and eardrums burst. Somewhere in the swell were girlie-cute black voices, but none

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