At this point, the book begins to overflow with not-quite-as-cute effluvia. Borrowing from the sad, lurid memoir of Ronnie Spector, whose career with the Ronettes took a nosedive after she married her producer and disappeared under Spector's possessive wing, it describes a lonely household that became a prison. Not for nothing was Citizen Kane Spector's favorite film at the time. The Manson murders and the disastrous adoptions of three Spector children (later virtually abandoned by their father) only worsened the atmosphere of deterioration. In court testimony, it was alleged that Ronnie Spector drank to "shut out the continuous stream of shrieking by the respondent." Said respondent would go on to pay Ronnie Spector a court-ordered interim support payment of US$1,250 in nickels.
Professionally, he grew to be "like Sherlock Holmes without a case." His magisterial Be My Baby became background music in an advertisement for Cialis, the erectile dysfunction drug. And his attempted comebacks and collaborations (the most successful of which, in Brown's opinion, being John Lennon's Imagine) grew ever crazier. He famously aimed a gun at the neck of the singer Leonard Cohen and declared "Leonard, I love you," prompting Cohen to reply drolly "I hope you do, Phil." Working with Spector, says someone who attended their collaborative sessions, "gave Leonard a chance to perfect his Shaolin priesthood stuff and become one with the universe." That was the degree of patience a Spector run-in required.
While Tearing Down the Wall of Sound, with a title that perfectly describes its subject's gift for self-destruction, does find those who appreciated Spector's brilliance, humor, and occasional wild generosity ("Phil, how can you give a thousand-dollar tip to the waiters but you won't pay over scale to the musicians?"), it mostly traces an upward trajectory of anger and paranoia, fueled by alcohol and made ever more alarming by the Spector arsenal. Whatever the circumstances surrounding the deadly firing of a gun in Clarkson's mouth in the early hours of Feb. 3, 2003, Spector's initial response is as telling as anything that may emerge from his trial. He felt annoyed. He felt put upon. He felt misunderstood. And he felt aggrieved. Clarkson, he said, had had absolutely no right to blow her head off inside his castle.
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