Thursday, June 28, 2007

This week's nominee for the Fifth Beatle - Phil Spector







The Case For: Phil Spector took on the Herculean task of taking hours of recordings from the Get Back sessions in 1969 and assembled the Beatles' final LP release, Let It Be. He went on to produce some of the greatest Beatle solo albums, including George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and Concert for Bangledesh and John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and Imagine.

Pros: The greatest pop music producer ever, his "Wall of Sound" inspired virtually every rock band after 1960, produced epic albums like Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies Man (1977), the Ramones' End of the Century (1980), had a cool cameo in Easy Rider

Cons: Is probably a murderer, is definitely fucking nuts. Wears insane wigs that would make Divine blanch. Kept his first wife a virtual prisoner in their mansion for a decade, even showing her a gold coffin with a glass top and promising that he'd kill her and put her on display if she ever left him. Held a gun to Dee Dee Ramone's head and made him play bass to his exact specifications on End of the Century. Once released a dance record called "Let's Do The Screw!"

Verdict: Some of the Beatles were misogynistic pricks some of the time, but Phil Spector has been a full-time celebrity psychopath for 5 decades. One hopes he gets a justly deserved murder conviction and he gets stripped of that dead animal on his skull before going to the Big House

REJECT

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