Beatles Phil Spector, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound Audiobook Chapter

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


http://www.theguardian.com/m...ar/18/features.musicmonthly4

The coming of the Beatles signaled the beginning of the end of his reign. In the space of a few years, the 'Wall of Sound' had turned into a prison that kept Spector locked firmly in the pop past. At the end of the decade, though, it was the Beatles who opened the door for his return. He received a summons from John Lennon, who wanted him to 'rescue' the Beatles' flawed swan song, Let it Be. Lennon's decision incensed Paul McCartney. It is hard not to see Spector's unnecessarily baroque reworking of McCartney's spartan and plaintive title song as a belated act of revenge.

Lennon, though, remained in awe of Spector, and, for once, the feeling was reciprocated. The Imagine album is perhaps the one and only time that Spector collaborated with anyone in the true sense of the word. One one level, it is the coming-together of two damaged and abandoned children who, when they weren't trying to outdo each other in the alcohol stakes, communicated on some deep, unspoken level that Spector would never find with any other artist. Not even the shock of seeing Spector suddenly pull out a gun and fire it into the studio ceiling dented Lennon's hero worship.