Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
looking at a stack of sources that, if you just
glanced at the headlines, would look like a total
scattershot collection. You really would. We've
got Wikipedia entries on a seminal 1960s girl
group, a breakdown of a legendary session band,
the forensic details of the final Beatles album,
and then a review of a David Mamet film from
2013. I mean, it does look like a random assortment
when you lay them all out on the table like this.
You have the Ronettes, you have the Wrecking
Crew, you have... The let it be disaster. And
a murder trial in a castle. And a murder trial
in a castle. Exactly. But the mission today is
to pull the thread that runs through all of this.
Because there is a single, very distinct, very
dark thread connecting the beehive hairdos of
1963 to the forensic evidence of 2003. And that
thread is Phil Spector. That's the guy. He's
the connective tissue. He is the central figure
in all of these stories. Without a doubt. So
we're going to explore the wall of sound. And
I don't just mean it was loud. We need to get
into the physics of what he actually did. We're
going to talk about the brilliant, often anonymous
musicians who actually played the notes that
made him famous. We're going to look at his collision
course with the biggest band in the world, the
Beatles. And then, well, we have to go to the
dark. Final act. It really is a trajectory, isn't
it? It goes from pop perfection to total disintegration
and then finally to crime. And looking at the
sources, Spector's characterized as this figure
of immense contradiction. Attraction and repulsion.
Exactly. He created what he called little symphonies
for the kids, these massive emotional records
that really defined a generation. But the sources
also paint a picture of a man capable of what
they call hostile lethargy, intense manipulation,
and eventually... It's the contrast between the
joy of discovery in the music and the absolute
chaos of his personal life. It's almost a cliche
of the torture genius. But in this case, the
torture was, you know, often inflicted on others.
So let's unpack this. We have to start at the
beginning of the sound. We have to talk about
the Ronettes. The Ronettes are fascinating because
before they were the icons with the eyeliner
and the attitude, they were essentially a family
act. You have Veronica Bennett. who we all know
as Ronnie Spector, her sister Estelle, and their
cousin Nedra Talley. The Darling Sisters, right?
That was one of their original names? That was
one of them, yes. They grew up in Washington
Heights, Manhattan. And the sources describe
this really wholesome, almost storybook beginning.
They were singing at their grandmother's house
on Saturday nights just to entertain each other.
This wasn't a polished industry plant. This was
family. It sounds so innocent, especially considering
where the story goes. But they weren't just singing
hymns. They were looking at acts like Frankie
Lyman and the Teenagers and thinking, we can
do that. Oh, absolutely. But here is the aha
moment for me in their origin story. Yeah. Usually
in these biographies, you hear about a record
executive discovering a group in a church choir
or, you know, a talent show. Sure. The usual
story. With the Ronettes, it was basically a
heist. It was a case of mistaken identity at
the Peppermint Lounge. I love this detail. This
is 1961, the height of the twist craze. The Peppermint
Lounge is the place to be. It's the epicenter
of cool. And the girls, Ronnie, Estelle, and
Nedra, they are desperate to get in. But they're
underage. So they decide to disguise themselves.
And this isn't just putting on a hat. Right.
The sources say their mothers and grandmothers
actually helped them stuff their bras, put on
heavy makeup, and tease their hair up to look
like they were at least 23 years old. Wait, wait.
The grandmothers were in on it. It was a family
conspiracy. They wanted those girls on that stage.
And it worked a little too well. They arrive
outside the club dressed to the nines and the
manager mistakes them for the house dancers who
were supposed to back up Joey D and the star
leaders. He basically ushers them in past the
velvet rope and just throws them on stage. No
way. So they went there to dance and they ended
up performing. That is the definition of fake
it till you make it. They absolutely ended up
performing. And during the show, one of the star
leaders hands the mic to Ronnie during Ray Charles's.
What I say. Now, Ronnie was a shy girl offstage,
but once she had that mic, she just belted it
out. Wow. And that accidental night led to a
permanent gig. They became the dancing girls
at the Peppermint Lounge, making $10 a night.
Which was decent money for a teenager in 1961.
But more importantly, this is where they developed
the look. The look was crucial. We were talking
about the exaggerated eye makeup, the Cleopatra
eyes. And as the source describes it, enormous
hairdos piled a foot or so over our heads. A
foot high. That's structural engineering, not
just styling. It was a uniform. It was an identity.
Ronnie later said, we didn't want to look like
everyone else. We want to look like bad girls.
They were creating a visual identity that was
just as loud and aggressive as the rock and roll
they wanted to sing. Okay, so they have the look,
they have the gig, but they're still just dancers.
For a while, yeah. Eventually, they get tired
of just being dancers or recording for Colpix
Records without much success. So in early 1963,
Estelle makes a cold call to Phil Spector. And
this is where the central figure enters the story.
Spector was already a hotshot producer at this
point, right? He's the man. He's the boy genius.
Yeah. He'd have massive hits with the Crystals.
He agrees to audition them. And the story goes
that they start singing. Why do fools fall in
love? And Spector literally jumps up from his
seat shouting, that's it, that's it, that's the
voice I've been looking for. He heard the texture
in Ronnie's voice, that specific vibrato, that
sort of crackle. He did. But here is where we
see the first signs, the control dynamics that
would define Spector's entire life. He originally
wanted to sign only Ronnie. He wanted to break
up the group immediately, just strip the sisters
and the cousin away. Instantly. He saw Ronnie
as the star and the others as baggage. But Ronnie's
mother put a foot down. She said it's a group
package or nothing. Good for her. So Spector
agreed, but the manipulation started almost immediately.
The sources mentioned that their first few recordings
with him, tracks like The Twist and The Wawa
Tusi, were actually released under the name The
Crystals. That is so deceptive. So the Renettes
sang them. They did the work, but... The Crystals
got the credit on the label. Exactly. Spector
was just juggling these groups and he owned the
names. He treated the artists like interchangeable
parts in his machine. It kept them insecure.
It kept them wondering where they stood. But
then came July 1963. The big one. Be My Baby.
This is the breakthrough. This is where the wall
of sound truly cements itself. And there's a
fascinating detail in the production notes for
this song regarding the backup vocals. Oh, yeah.
When they were recording, a young woman named
Cher, who was then just the shy girlfriend of
Sonny Bono, who was Spector's gopher, was hanging
around the studio. Cher, as in the Cher before
she was famous. The very same. A backup singer
was a no -show, so they grabbed Cher. She was
terrified, apparently. It was her first time
ever singing on a record. No way. So she's buried
in the background of Be My Baby, just another
brick in the wall. That is wild. You have Ronnie,
Spector, and Cher on the same track in 1963.
But let's talk about that wall. Because... Be
My Baby is the definitive example. People use
the term wall of sound all the time, but the
sources break down how he actually did it. It
wasn't just turning the volume knob to 11. No,
it was a very specific architectural process.
It all happened at Gold Star Studios in L .A.
First, you have to understand the room. It was
small. And Spectre would jam a massive amount
of musicians into it. We're talking three pianos,
five guitars, two basses, all playing at the
same time. So instead of one guitar player, he
has an army of them playing the same chord. Exactly.
It creates this huge, dense sound. Yeah. And
he relied on something that modern producers
try to avoid at all costs. Lickage. Explain that
for us. In modern recording, you isolate everything.
The drums are in a booth. The singer's in a booth.
You want clean separation between every instrument.
Spector did the absolute opposite. He wanted
the sound of the guitars to bleed into the drum
microphones. He wanted the pianos to bleed into
the bass mics. It created this thick, muddy,
cohesive texture where you couldn't really tell
where one instrument ended and another began.
It becomes a single organism of sound. Right.
And then the secret sauce, the echo chambers.
Gold Star had these small, concrete, trapezoidal
rooms in the back. Spectre would pump that muddy
sound from the studio into these concrete bunkers,
let it bounce around, and then record that reverberation.
That's what gives Be My Baby that cavernous,
almost apocalyptic sound. And he insisted on
mono, right? Even when stereo was becoming a
thing. He hated stereo. He said stereo was for
people who wanted to hear the separation. He
wanted to control exactly what you heard from
one speaker. He called it a keyhole. He looks
at the keyhole and you see exactly what he wants
you to see. If you have two speakers... The listener
has some control over the balance. Spectre wanted
total control. There's that word again. Control.
He controlled the mix. He controlled the release.
And Be My Baby was a smash. Number two on Billboard.
It influenced everyone. Brian Wilson of the Beach
Boys was so obsessed with it that he apparently
listened to it thousands of times. He wrote Don't
Worry Baby as a direct homage to it. It was the
absolute peak of the wall of sound. But as we
know, the partnership didn't stay strictly professional,
and the control moved from the mixing board to
the living room. It did. As the Ronettes' popularity
started to wane around 1965, partly because the
Supremes and the Motown sound were rising. Spector's
control over Ronnie just tightened. They married
in 1968, but by then he was allegedly refusing
to release their finished songs. This is the
part that drives me crazy. Why would he bury
his own artists? Why record a hit and then just
shelve it? The theory, and what Ronnie later
claimed in her book, was that he was terrified
they would outshine him. He held back songs like
Chapel of Love, which then became a massive number
one hit for the Dixie Cups instead. That has
to be devastating for an artist. To see your
song, your vocal, become a hit for someone else
because your producer, your husband, won't release
it. It creates a sense of utter hopelessness.
And it got so much worse. The group split in
1967. And the sources describe Ronnie's life
in their 23 -room mansion as being that of a
virtual prisoner. I've read about the shoes.
Yes. The sources mentioned he would hide her
shoes so she couldn't leave the house. He installed
intercoms in every single room so he could monitor
her. He had a glass coffin in the basement. A
coffin? A gold glass -lidded coffin. And he told
her he'd put her in it if she ever tried to leave
him. It's like a horror movie. A gothic horror
story. She eventually had to flee in 1972. She
literally ran away barefoot with her mother's
help to escape him. So you see this pattern.
He discovers the talent, he captures the sound,
and then he tries to capture the person. And
while he was capturing that sound, he wasn't
doing it alone. We talk about the wall of sound
as if Spector built it brick by brick with his
own hands, but he had a construction crew. Yeah.
A very specific, very elite group of people.
He absolutely did. And that brings us to section
two of our deep dive. The Wrecking Crew. This
is a group that I feel like the general public
is only just starting to appreciate maybe in
the last decade or so, thanks to the documentary.
But these guys, they were everywhere. They were
the engine room of 1960s pop. The Wrecking Crew
was a loose collective of Los Angeles session
musicians who played on almost every major hit
from roughly 1962 to 1972. When you say loose
collective, what does that mean? Were they a
band? Did they have like a union card that said
a wrecking crew? They were all union musicians,
but they weren't a band in the sense that they
toured together or had a logo. They were the
first call players. And to understand why they
were the first call, you have to understand the
economics of studio time in 1962. Time is money.
Exactly. Tape was expensive. Studio rental was
astronomical. If you hired a garage band or a
young pop act, they might take 50 takes to get
the rhythm right. They might get nervous. They
might drift out of tune. Hal Blaine, the drummer
for the Wrecking Crew, could nail it in one take.
So they were insurance policies. Precisely. They
were the difference between a $500 session and
a $5 ,000 disaster. You hired them because they
were surgical. But where did the name come from?
The Wrecking Crew. It sounds aggressive. A little
dangerous. That is actually a point of major
contention in the sources. It's a bit of a he
said, she said. Hal Blaine, the drummer. claims
he coined the name. He said the old guard of
session musicians, the guys in the blue blazers
who played on Sinatra Records, felt that this
new generation playing rock and roll in t -shirts
was wrecking the music business. So they embraced
the insult? Kind of punk rock. According to Blaine,
yes. But Carol Kay... the bassist and we absolutely
need to talk about her she disputes this entirely
she claims they were never called that at the
time she says they were called the clique the
clique sounds a lot more exclusive but i gotta
say the wrecking crew definitely has better marketing
it has more grit for sure and these musicians
had grit you look at the roster how blaine is
reputed to have played on 40 number one hits
40 40 number ones. That is statistically insane.
That's more than the Beatles and Elvis combined.
And 140 top 10 hits. The famous drum beat on
Be My Baby, that boom, boom, boom. That's Hal
Blaine. Of course it is. Then you have Carol
Kay. She started as a jazz guitarist and switched
to bass. She was one of the only women in this
heavily male -dominated industry. And she didn't
just survive. She dominated. She played on The
Beat Goes On, right? That bass line is the song.
That iconic sliding bass line. That's her. She
also played on La Bamba, Good Vibrations. Yeah.
She invented bass lines that were hooks in themselves.
Wow. And you had Glen Campbell. Before he was
the rhinestone cowboy country star, he was a
session guitarist for the crew. He played all
over the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. I think people
forget that Glen Campbell was a guitar virtuoso
before he was a singer. A monster player. He
was a workhorse. And Leon Russell was there on
keyboards. Before his own solo career took off.
These were just immensely talented people who
could read music on site. I mean, literally look
at a sheet of paper they've never seen before
and play it perfectly and also improvise instantly.
And this leads to what the outline calls the
ghost players aspect. This is the secret part
of the industry that the labels didn't want the
kids at home to know about. This is the scandal.
Because the public bought records thinking they
were listening to a specific band, but often
they were actually listening to the wrecking
crew. Give us the biggest example, the one that
still shocks people. The Byrds. Mr. Tambourine
Man. Iconic number one folk rock song. Sure.
I can picture the band on the album cover with
their Rick and Becker guitars. Well, keep picturing
the cover because that's just about the only
place they were. The only member of the Byrds
playing an instrument on that track was Roger
McGuinn. on his 12 string guitar you're kidding
me the rest of the band the producer didn't think
they were seasoned enough so the drums the bass
the rhythm guitars that was the wrecking crew
so the band is the face but the wrecking crew
is the muscle precisely the same thing happened
with the beach boys the band played on their
early surf hits for sure But when Brian Wilson
moved into his complex Pet Sounds and Smile era,
he needed an orchestra. He brought in the Wrecking
Crew. They were the ones who could execute those
complex symphonies he heard in his head. So the
other Beach Boys, the touring band, basically
had to learn how to play the songs later to perform
them live. Exactly. And the Monkees. Oh, that
was the famous one. The Monkees were the poster
children for this. The crew played on their first
two albums almost entirely. It wasn't until later
that the band actually revolted. They fought
for the right to play their own instruments on
their own records. It was a huge battle for authenticity.
So how does this connect back to Spector? He
was the ultimate auteur. He used the crew as
his palette. Remember, he didn't want individuals.
He didn't want a star guitar player with a flashy
solo. He wanted a sound. The ranking crew were
professionals who could check their ego at the
door, sit in a room for 12 hours, and play the
same three chords over and over and over until
Spector got his leakage right. They were the
perfect tool for a control freak. Reliable, talented,
and most importantly, anonymous. Exactly. And
for a long, long time, the architect got all
the credit. Okay, so we have the architect of
sound, and we have his elite construction crew.
Now we move to section three. The Collision Course.
Spectre meets the only band that was bigger than
him, the Beatles. This is one of the most controversial,
most debated chapters in all of music history.
The Let It Be album. Right. And context here
is key. It's January 1969. The Beatles are, for
lack of a better word, imploding. Imploding is
absolutely the right word. The project was originally
called Get Back. The whole idea was to return
to their roots. Live performance. No overdubs.
No orchestras. Just a four -piece rock and roll
band playing together in a room. Which sounds
great in theory, a palate cleanser after the
complexity and the tension of the White Album.
In theory. In reality, the sources describe hostile
lethargy at Twickenham Studios. You have cameras
rolling constantly for a documentary, which stressed
everyone out. You have George Harrison briefly
quitting the band because he felt his songs were
being ignored. He felt disrespected. Totally.
You have John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who are inseparable.
And sources note their heroin addiction was taking
a toll on their engagement and creativity. And
then you have Paul McCartney trying to be the
cheerleader, keeping it all moving, but being
seen as bossy and controlling by the others.
It's just a miserable atmosphere. And this all
culminates in the famous rooftop concert. Right.
January 30th, 1969, their final public performance.
They played a few songs up on the roof of the
Apple building. The police came and shut it down.
And that was it. The get -back sessions were
over. But they had all these tapes. Just hours
and hours of recording. And nobody knew what
to do with them. They were a mess. They handed
them to their engineer, Glenn Johns. He compiled
multiple versions of the album, trying to honor
that original live concept. So he kept it raw.
Very raw and very rough. He included studio chatter.
False starts. He wanted it to sound like a fly
-on -the -wall documentary of a band at work.
Which totally matches the get -back concept.
It did. But the Beatles rejected his versions.
Multiple times. They just couldn't agree on anything.
So the tapes just sat on a shelf. The band moved
on, recorded the masterpiece that is Abbey Road,
released it, and for all intents and purposes,
broke up. So the Let It Be tapes are just gathering
dust. It's the great lost album. And then in
1970, Alan Klein, their new manager, and John
Lennon invite Phil Spector to save the project.
They basically handed the wall sound guy the
tapes from the Strict Back Roots project. I mean,
it was a philosophical mismatch from day one.
So Spector gets the tapes. What does he actually
do? Because people talk about him ruining it,
but what were the specific changes he made? He
treated the Beatles like they were the Ronettes
or the Crystals. He took Across the Universe,
which was a delicate, almost psychedelic acoustic
track, and he slowed it down to make it sound
more mournful and added a choir. He added snippets
of studio chatter like Bigot and Maggie Mae to
give it this weird, fragmented narrative flow.
But the big controversy, the nuclear option,
was The Long and Winding Road. This is the famous
dispute, the core of the issue. McCartney wrote
The Long and Winding Road as a simple, sparse
piano ballad. He wanted it to be really intimate.
Spector listened to it and decided it wasn't
epic enough. So without asking Paul, He hired
an orchestra. A full orchestra? A 50 -piece orchestra
with strings, brass, and a 14 -woman choir. He
added harps. He layered this massive, schmaltzy
Hollywood production over Paul's simple piano
vocal. And Paul was not happy. Paul was furious.
He was absolutely livid. He felt Spector had
vandalized the song, ruined its integrity. He
didn't even know what was happening until he
received the finished Assipate. He tried to get
it changed, but the album was already being pressed.
But let's play devil's advocate for Spector here.
I mean... We bashed him for overproducing, and
Paul hated it. But didn't Lennon and Harrison
have a point? Those tapes were a mess. They were.
Without Spector gluing them together with those
orchestras and choirs, would Let It Be have even
been releasable? That is the counterargument,
and it's a very strong one. Lennon defended it
vigorously for the rest of his life. He said
Spector was given the shittiest load of badly
recorded shit. Those are his words. And he made
something commercial and listenable out of it.
And frankly, he was right commercially. The album
topped the charts. The single was a number one
hit. So McCartney sees vandalism, Lennon sees
salvage. Exactly. And George Martin, their longtime
producer, he felt completely sidelined and insulted.
His reaction is legendary. He said the album
credits should read, produced by George Martin,
overproduced by Phil Spector. Ouch. That is the
polite British way of saying this is garbage.
The critics pretty much agreed. The NME called
the album a cardboard tombstone. Rolling Stone
criticized the embellishments. But the grievance
lasted for decades. In 2003, McCartney finally
spearheaded Let It Be Naked. Right. This was
a remix project that stripped away all of Spector's
overdubs. He finally got the last word. He did.
It totally validated his original vision. But
it also just highlights how divisive Spector's
influence was. You could take a Beatles album
and make it sound like a Phil Spector album.
It really speaks to the power of the producer.
Spector wasn't just capturing the sound. He was
imposing his will on it, just like he imposed
his will on the Ronettes. The parallel is striking,
isn't it? Whether it was his wife or the biggest
band in the world, Spector had to be the dominant
force. So the 60s end, the Beatles break up,
the wrecking crew starts to fade away. Let's
talk about the aftermath in Section 4, the legal
battles and the financial realities, because
the glamour wears off pretty quickly when you
look at the bank accounts. This is the really
sobering part of the story. In 1988, the Ronettes
finally sued Phil Spector. They were seeking
$10 million in unpaid royalties and licensing
income. 1988, that's 25 years after Be My Baby.
That is a long time to wait for a paycheck. And
the statistic that came out during the trial
was just, it was shocking. Despite having these
chart -topping world -famous songs, despite being
icons whose look inspired Amy Winehouse and whose
sound inspired Springsteen, the Ronettes had
earned less than $15 ,000 in royalties. Wait,
hold on. Say that again. $15 ,000 total. $15
,000. Over decades. That is criminal. How is
that even possible with hits that are played
on the radio every single day in movies and commercials?
It comes down to the contract. And this is a
warning to every young musician out there. The
court actually found their plight sympathetic.
The judge acknowledged that the women had been
shortchanged, that it was unfair, but legally.
The judge ruled that the 1963 contract they signed
as teenagers gave Spector unconditional rights
to the master recordings. So the piece of paper
won. The contract held. They got some back pay
for other things, but the core injustice of the
royalties was upheld because they signed that
deal when they were essentially kids desperate
for a break. That is just a harsh, harsh lesson
in the music business. Talent doesn't equal leverage.
What about the Wrecking Crew? Did they fare any
better? Their decline wasn't legal. It was technological
and cultural. In the 70s, the whole vibe changed.
Bands like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or the
Eagles. They wanted to play their own instruments.
You didn't want a ghost player anymore. You wanted
authenticity. The band became the unit, not the
producer. And recording technology changed too,
right? We talked about Spectre jamming everyone
in a room to get that live feel. Right. With
the advent of 8 -track and 16 -track and eventually
24 -track recorders, the whole philosophy of
recording changed. You didn't need 20 people
in a room praying for a perfect take anymore.
You could record the drums on Monday, the bass
on Tuesday, and the strings next week. You could
isolate mistakes and fix them. So perfection
stopped being a collective act and became an
editing process. Exactly. And that made the Wrecking
Crew's specific magic, that live, tightrope walk
performance, kind of obsolete. Plus, just plain
burnout played a factor. Bill Pittman, one of
the guitarists, described the 15 -hour days.
Moving from studio to studio, eating vending
machine food day after day, it was exhausting.
They burned the candle at both ends for a solid
decade. So the golden era fades. The Renettes
are fighting for pennies, the wrecking crew is
disbanding, and Phil Spector, he becomes a recluse.
He retreats into his mansion. The eccentricities
that were once seen as genius quirks, you know,
the guns in the studio, the wigs, the erratic
behavior, they start to look much, much darker
without the hits to justify them. Right. When
you're making number ones, people tolerate the
madness. When you aren't, you're just mad. That's
a perfect way to put it. And that leads us to
the final tragic act, section five, the murder.
And I want to be careful here because we are
dealing with a real victim, Lana Clarkson. Of
course. February 3rd, 2003. Lana Clarkson, an
actress, is found dead in Spector's mansion,
the Pyrenees Castle in Alhambra, California.
She was shot in the mouth. And Spector's defense
was unusual, to say the least. He claimed it
was an accidental suicide. His phrase was that
she kissed the gun. Which is a horrifying phrase.
And honestly, it sounds like something a screenwriter
would invent. It took two trials. The first one
ended in a mistrial, a deadlock jury. But in
the second trial in 2009. he was convicted of
second -degree murder. But we're not just looking
at the trial today. We're looking at how this
was portrayed in the media, specifically the
2013 HBO film written and directed by David Mamet,
because this film is a fascinating case study
in how we mythologize genius. This film... simply
titled Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino and Helen
Mirren, is a very, very controversial piece of
the puzzle. It opens with a disclaimer that is
incredibly bizarre. It is. The disclaimer says,
and I'm quoting here, this is a work of fiction.
It is not based on a true story. But then it
uses the real names of the real people involved
in a real murder trial. This isn't a true story,
but here's Al Pacino playing Phil Spector. It
feels like a massive cop -out. David Mamet, the
writer and director, was very open about his
philosophy here. He viewed Spector as a mythological
character, like a minotaur in a labyrinth. He
actually admitted in interviews that he didn't
give a shit about the facts. He literally said
that. Didn't give a shit about the facts. He
did. He said he wanted to write a drama about
the concept of reasonable doubt, not a docudrama
about what actually happened. He was using Spector
as a vessel for his own ideas about the legal
system. But when you're dealing with a real victim,
playing fast and loose with the facts seems...
Deeply problematic. Let's look at the specific
discrepancies mentioned in the sources. The gun
evidence is the big one. Right. The film argues,
very persuasively, because it's a well -made
movie, that if Spectre had pulled the trigger,
there would have been blood spatter all over
his white jacket. And since the film claims there
wasn't massive spatter, he couldn't have done
it. Reasonable doubt. That sounds convincing
in a movie. Where is the blood? It's a classic
defense trope. But the reality... According to
the source material, specifically the reporting
by Mick Brown and the actual court transcripts,
is that the film just ignores the forensics.
The prosecution presented evidence of something
called high -velocity impact spatter. Which isn't
a splash like in a horror movie. No, it's an
aerosol, a fine mist of blood. It's invisible
to the naked eye until you look very closely
under a microscope or use a chemical like luminol.
And that mist was found on Spectre. It was all
over the hem of his white jacket. So the physical
evidence put him right there at arm's length.
Yes. That mist pattern is consistent with him
standing within inches of her when the gun went
off. There's no standing across the room when
you're covered in that mist. The film conveniently
ignores the mist to focus on the lack of big
drops. What about his sobriety? The film makes
a point about that too, painting him as this
sober man pushed to the brink. The film claims
Spector had been cold sober for 10 years. In
reality, testimony showed he had been drinking
heavily for two months prior to the murder. He
was not sober that night. And the chauffeur,
the guy who drove them there, he's the only other
witness on the property. In the film, they invent
the whole conspiracy theory that the chauffeur
was coerced by the police, that his testimony
was unreliable. In reality, the chauffeur never
wavered. He testified that Spector came out of
the back door of the house with a gun in his
hand and said, quote, I think I killed somebody.
I think I killed somebody. That's pretty damning.
It's hard to spin that as she kissed the gun.
It is. And that's why critics called the film
an act of advocacy and a moral mess. It just
ignored the hard evidence to play a philosophical
game about how we treat eccentrics. It brings
us right back to that tension we talked about
at the very beginning, the attraction and the
repulsion. Mamet was clearly attracted to the
myth of the genius being persecuted, so he ignored
the reality of the violent man. It asks the viewer
to separate the art from the artist, but then
it goes a step further and tries to separate
the man from his actions entirely. It tries to
say he's too special, too weird, too brilliant
to be a common murderer. So where does this leave
us? We've traveled from the Peppermint Lounge
to the rooftop of Apple Tour to a courtroom in
Los Angeles. It's a tragedy of control. If you
look at the trajectory, Spector's genius was
always, always about control. Controlling the
acoustics of the wall of sound. Controlling the
wrecking crew's notes so they had no individual
identity. Controlling Ronnie's career and life
by hiding her shoes. Controlling the Beatles'
final album by drowning it in strings against
their wishes. And when he couldn't control the
narrative anymore, when the hits stopped and
the world moved on, the violence that was always
there just... It turned inward, and then it turned
outward. Exactly. We remember the wall of sound,
and we should. It's a monumental achievement
in music history. Be My Baby is still a perfect
pop song. But we have to remember the cost. And
we have to remember the people who actually built
that wall. The Wrecking Crew, the Ronettes, the
people whose immense talent was used as raw material
for Spectre's vision. They're the ones who made
the music human. Spectre provided the architecture,
but they provided the soul. Without Ronnie's
voice, without Hal Blaine's drums, without Carol
Kay's bass line, Spector is just a guy in a room
with an echo chamber. The HBO film asks us to
think about the difference between innocent and
not guilty. It wants us to consider reasonable
doubt. But when you look at the entirety of this
deep dive, the pattern of domination, the isolation
of Ronnie, the manipulation of the music, and
the physical evidence of the murder, it raises
a question. Does the genius defense hold any
water at all? Or was the pattern of destruction
visible from the very beginning, hiding in plain
sight, just behind the wall of sound? That's
the question. That's it for this deep dive. Thanks
for listening, and we'll catch you next time.