Phil Spector

August 14, 2017
Music producer Phil Spector’s story is already very familiar and was covered so thoroughly in Mick Brown’s 2007 Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector that MacLeod’s adoring fan’s notes lack any startling revelations or new material. MacLeod (Leaders of the Pack: Girl Groups of the 1960s) dutifully chronicles Spector’s life and work from his early years and his growing love of music to his technical wizardry, work with the Beatles and John Lennon, and crash into disgrace after he was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. MacLeod stitches together a pastiche of quotations from other books and articles, and his generalizations about music and culture—such as Spector’s music bringing about more racial awareness—are unconvincing. MacLeod’s thin book certainly reminds readers of Spector’s musical genius and his lasting contributions to rock and roll and pop music, and it serves as a helpful introductory survey to the best work on Spector, but it lacks the depth and the insight to make it anything other than a superficial appraisal.

October 15, 2017
The American music scene was in rough shape at the end of the 1950s. Elvis was in the army; Buddy Holly was dead; Chuck Berry was in prison; Little Richard had retired. There was a big hole in pop music, and music producer Phil Spector filled it in the 1960s and '70s, with girl bands, new sounds, and big hits (the Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' and the Beatles' The Long and Winding Road, to name but two). In this insightful book, the author traces Spector's career from fame to obscurity to eccentricity to seclusion to imprisonment (he was convicted of murder in 2009). MacLeod's approach is to look at Spector's life as a whole and not to focus on the legal case; he's out to give Spector his due as a musical genius, a man who richly deserved his legendary status. Those interested only in the sensationalistic side of Spector's fall from grace may be disappointed, but music fans will be fascinated.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)