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Phil Spector was one of the most famous American record producers of the 20th century, pioneering what musicians, songwriters and listeners came describe as his Wall.
By City News Service
Phil Spector Is Sentenced For Second-Degree Murder
LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Legendary record producer Phil Spector, who was serving a prison term in Stockton for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson in Spector s Alhambra home, died at a hospital Saturday evening, prison officials announced today.
Spector was 81.
Prison officials said he died of natural causes, but he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 several weeks ago and was previously hospitalized before returning to the California Health Care Facility, which is a prison for inmates with medical or mental health conditions, according to TMZ.
Spector was pronounced dead at 6:35 p.m. Saturday at an outside hospital. His official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff s Office.
Phil Spector, music producer convicted of murder, dies at 81 after contracting Covid-19
Music producer Phil Spector looks up during his murder trial in Superior Court July 10, 2007, in Los Angeles. (Gabriel Bouys-Pool/Getty Images/TNS)
LOS ANGELES For all the hit songs he drove up the charts, for all the power and wealth he amassed, for all the admiration he drew as he rearranged the pop music landscape, there was a darkness deep in Phil Spector’s soul that would forever shadow his genius.
Even as anthems such the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin” erupted from radios across America, the acclaimed record producer was a brooding, manic man with a white-hot temper and a fondness for gunplay, all of which would manifest itself on a winter morning in 2003 when he fatally shot actress and nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson in the foyer of his castle-like mansion in Alhambra.