by Mick Brown
Finally, the fact that only two of the eleven weapons found were actually registered in Spector’s name would suggest there was no inconsistency in the murder weapon also not being registered in his name. Indeed, Spector’s habit of buying firearms through unrecorded private-party transactions—as he did with Nino Tempo—showed that he was actually more likely to own weapons that, technically, were not registered to him. Fidler, it seemed, did not go all the way to accepting this argument. He ruled that the only weapons that could come into evidence were those containing ammunition that matched the ammo found in the gun that killed Clarkson—i.e., the two Smith Wesson .38-caliber handguns found in the master bedroom.
Fidler also ruled that the state could use in evidence the pump-action shotgun, since it was the same type of weapon that Dorothy Melvin claimed she had been threatened with in 1993, which gave her story credibility.
In another setback for Spector, the judge also refused to grant the defense motion to rule as inadmissible the testimony of two previous incidents involving Spector and guns—the incident in 1972 when he had threatened a woman in the Daisy club on Rodeo Drive, and was arrested; and the incident in 1975 at the Beverly Hills Hotel when he had threatened a valet parking attendant.
The 1975 incident, Sortino argued, was “just the beginning of a long series of events” in which Spector “would resort to firearms-related violence against men and women if he doesn’t get what he wants.”
The prosecution had already been barred from using these incidents in their case-in-chief, but having them as “admissible testimony” meant that if Spector tried to argue from the stand that he was a peaceable man who had always hated guns, they could be used to rebut his testimony.
Everything, it seemed, was now ready to go to trial—but with one hitch. Bruce Cutler was scheduled to appear in federal court on another case, defending two former NYPD detectives accused of being Mafia hitmen. Judge Fidler now set two alternative trial dates: the first, within ten days of January 30, 2006; or alternatively, if Cutler was unavailable, within thirty days of April 24.
Through the spring and early summer of 2005, relations between Spector and his personal assistant Michelle Blaine seemed to go from bad to worse. Blaine was seen at the castle less and less. “It was,” one friend says, “as if Rachelle was taking over.”
In September it became apparent just how bad things had become when Spector launched a lawsuit against Blaine, alleging that she had embezzled money from him. In his declaration to the court, Spector claimed that he had discovered that Blaine was making unauthorized withdrawals from his personal bank accounts, and that she had confessed to erroneously spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his money, and promised to pay him back the “stolen money.” He further alleged that Blaine had gone to his accountant and secured a $425,000 loan from his pension plan without his knowledge and deposited the money into two limited-liability companies she controlled. All told, Spector stated, he believed that Blaine had embezzled “somewhere between $500,000 to $1 million from his various accounts.”
In March 2006 Blaine responded by launching a countersuit, alleging sexual harassment and wrongful termination and claiming more than $5 million in damages. Spector, she claimed, had given her $635,000 to buy a house, and the $425,000 was to be used to help finance a movie, 3:15, “a noble and heartfelt story” about a teacher working with underprivileged children that Spector hoped would “rehabilitate his tarnished image.” He also wanted $102,000 of the $425,000 to buy an RV that could be used as “a mobile lounge and office” during the criminal trial.
Her suit also alleged that Spector had “constantly” asked her to have sex with him and had a habit of asking her to work around him when he was naked. On one occasion when the two were traveling to New York, she alleged, he had asked her to find him a prostitute, and on another he had invited her to join him and a prostitute in his hotel room. Blaine said she had declined. Most damagingly, she alleged that Spector had twice proposed marriage, in order to prevent her testifying against him in court. Blaine claimed that she had tried to leave Spector’s employ, but he had persuaded her to stay by giving her the money to buy the house and offering an employment package that included a $72,000 salary, a $600 car allowance, a retirement plan and a $500,000 life insurance policy. Matters had finally soured, she claimed, when Rachelle Short convinced Spector that Blaine was stealing from him, and he had fired her after she had refused to promise not to talk to prosecutors about what he may have told her about the death of Lana Clarkson. In answering written questions for the suit, Spector said he did not kill Clarkson but invoked his right under the Fifth Amendment not to disclose whether he had discussed her death with Blaine. He also denied offering to marry Blaine or pay her money to keep her quiet.
In a subsequent interview with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, conducted in her lawyer’s office, Blaine described how Spector had become obsessed with the trial, keeping two copies of his “murder book,” the compilation of evidence against him, and reading them constantly. His only regular visitors were his housekeepers, his attorneys and his hairdresser, who came as often as three times a week to groom Spector’s wigs. Blaine’s own duties, she said, had come to focus largely on protecting him from the ensuing media circus and attempting to rehabilitate his image. One idea, she said, was to make a movie or reality television show (working title “Phil Spector’s The Producers”) that would show his “human side.” She also claimed that Spector had tried to dispatch her to music business parties to pass out fliers proclaiming his innocence. She refused to go. In February 2007, however, the case was settled out of court when Blaine agreed to return $900,000 to Spector, at the same time dropping her suit against him.
The money would prove extremely useful. Over the past four years he had employed three of the most expensive criminal defense attorneys in America—Shapiro, Abramson and Cutler—along with their attendant retinues of counsels and advisers. One estimate put Spector’s legal bill at around $1 million a year.
His income from recordings had dwindled dramatically in recent years. It had been twenty-five years since he had released a new album—the Ramones’ End of the Century; fifteen since the release of the Back to Mono CD box set. That collection remained in print, along with “greatest hits” packages by the Ronettes, Darlene Love and the Crystals. And in a bid to breathe new life into the catalogue, in December 2006 Allen Klein arranged for the release of yet another “best of Spector” package, along with the Christmas album. Added to that were the ongoing producer royalties from his recordings with John Lennon and George Harrison, and the songwriting royalties from radio plays of his old hits. Of these, the biggest revenue earner by far was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” which in 1999 had been named by BMI as the most played song on American radio and television in history—8 million performances, or the equivalent of forty-five years of continuous back-to-back airplay.
Perhaps the most telling indication of Spector’s financial circumstances came, oddly enough, during the TV broadcast of the Super Bowl in February 2005. Spector had always been highly protective of his music being used in advertisements, and had poured contempt on others—notably Berry Gordy—who allowed theirs to be. It came as something of a surprise, then, to hear probably his most famous song, “Be My Baby,” being used to sell the male sexual aid Cialis during one of the Super Bowl’s innumerable commercial breaks.
Nor, at this point, it seemed, could Spector rely on any of the money that he was seeking to recoup in his lawsuit against his original lawyer Robert Shapiro. In October 2005, Shapiro’s twenty-four-year-old son Brent died from an accidental overdose of Ecstasy. Two months later, Spector dropped his suit against the attorney.
But in January 2006, Judge Fidler ruled that Spector’s deposition in the Shapiro suit, which he had given the previous July, should be made available to the prosecution in the Clarkson case. Fidler noted that he had read the material but had found “no smoking gun” in the testimony.
For the deposition, Spector had been cross-examined by Shapiro himself, whose intention was clearly to establish just how important his services had been to Spector at the time of his arrest. Spector’s answers provided a fascinating insight into his psychological condition.
Responding to Shapiro’s questioning, Spector stated that he had habitually been taking five medications daily, for “sleep and emotional stability” for the previous eight years. A psychiatrist, he said, had diagnosed him with “manic depressiveness,” which had manifested in “no sleep, depression, mood changes, mood swings, hard to live with, hard to concentrate, hard…just hard.”
Medication, Spector said, had helped him “immensely” with his problems. Pushed on whether he had ever drunk while using the medication, Spector replied “occasionally,” but never more than three drinks. His favorite tipple was vodka and orange. Shapiro then asked whether Spector had discussed his mental condition with any newspaper reporters since the death of Lana Clarkson.
Spector, apparently referring to my meeting with him, but forgetting that it had taken place before the killing, said he had—with “a gentleman from London.” At this point amnesia seemed to envelop Spector.
Question: Did you ever tell the reporter that you had mental disorders?
Answer: No, I don’t think I used that word, but I…it’s possible.
Q: Did you ever tell the reporter that you sometimes felt you were insane?
A: No, but I might have. It’s not…I might have…He might have concluded that, but I don’t recall saying that, no.
Q: So what would be the basis for him concluding that?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Did you ever tell the reporter that you were borderline insane?
A: I don’t recall saying that.
Q: Have you ever said that to anyone?
A: I might have jestingly said that, yes.
Q: But not in seriousness?
A: I don’t know what insane is, insanity, so I don’t know how I could say it knowingly.
Q: What does the term mean to you?
A: Somebody who’s not there all the time.
Q: And would you describe yourself as not being there all the time?
A: Yeah, because I’ve been called a genius and I think a genius is not there all the time and has borderline insanity.
Q: And would you say that would be your…The description of yourself on the day of Lana Clarkson’s death?
A: No.
Spector’s forgetfulness even extended to the name of his driver, Adriano De Souza, on the night of Clarkson’s killing. “Le…something is his last name. I never knew what his name was when…he came to call. I used to call him ‘Tony,’ but that wasn’t his name.”
He had evidently forgotten too that he “owned a lot of weapons” until the police told him after the killing. “They were locked away.”
However, his memory apparently sharpened up in recollecting his alcohol consumption on the night of the killing. Contradicting police evidence about the amount of alcohol he had consumed that evening, and testimony from Adriano De Souza and various police officers about his inebriated condition, Spector maintained that he had actually drunk no alcohol at the Grill, despite the fact that it had been brought to the table. Nor, he claimed, had he ordered or drunk anything at Dan Tana’s, despite the bartender sending over “something which he wanted me to try.” Spector said he had a habit of ordering “a lot of stuff that I don’t consume, food and alcohol.”
Shapiro then pressed Spector on the gratuities he had left during the evening—a hundred dollars each to the “five or six” waiters at Trader Vic’s; a $300 tip at Dan Tana’s.
“Would you describe yourself, in the circumstances, at least, of being in a restaurant, as being overly generous?” Shapiro asked.
“Extraordinarily,” Spector replied.
“And would you describe yourself as being that way in most things in your life?”
“Yes, especially with you.”
Shapiro then moved on to question Spector about going to the House of Blues, meeting Lana Clarkson and what had occurred after that. Invoking the Fifth Amendment, Spector refused to answer.
Deciding that this deposition could be included by the prosecution in the trial was one thing; deciding when that trial should actually take place, quite another.
The first date set by Judge Fidler—January 2006—passed, and in March he agreed to a further postponement, noting that prosecutors and defense attorneys had scheduling conflicts. Bruce Cutler was still involved in his case in New York; prosecution attorneys, in the case of Michael Goodwin, who had been charged with the 1988 shooting of racing driver Mickey Thompson and his wife.
Spector’s trial was rescheduled for September, but in June, Fidler ruled that it should be postponed for the third time, until January 2007. That date too would later be moved back to March. At the same time, the wrongful-death lawsuit was also postponed, until after the criminal trial.
In September 2006, Spector married Rachelle Short in a private ceremony at the Alhambra castle. Only a handful of guests attended, among them Spector’s bodyguard.
Spector didn’t get out much anymore. Secluded behind high walls with his lawyers and his hairdressers, he fretted and agitated about his forthcoming trial. The jukebox in the music room was silent. It was a long time since he had played his old hits. They seemed to belong not just to another era, but to another lifetime. Now that they were married, Rachelle seemed to spend less and less time at the castle. Friends said she was planning to record an album, and maybe Spector would produce—after the acquittal. It would, they said, be the comeback to end them all.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help of Caspar Llewellyn Smith who, as commissioning editor on the Telegraph magazine, was complicit in initiating my interview with Phil Spector in December 2002. I am indebted to Caspar, Michele Lavery, editor of the Telegraph magazine, and Kathryn Holliday, deputy editor of the Telegraph magazine, for all their support, enthusiasm and friendship throughout the project.
Special thanks are due to the redoubtable Harvey Kubernik, authority on Los Angeles music, for spiritual traffic-cop duties; to Denny Bruce, Michael Spencer and to Carlton Smith, who has written his own compelling account of the Lana Clarkson case and who has been extraordinarily generous with his advice and help on this book. I would also like to thank Isabel Albiston, Myra Amorosi, Robert Sam Anson, Eugen Beer, Graham Boynton, Tim Burrows, Tony Calder, Robert Chalmers, Rachel Coat, Bobbi Cowan, Hamish Dewar, Dominick Dunne, Andy Greenacre, Richard Havers, Barney Hoskyns, Simon Jameson, Dan Kessel, David Kessel, Eric Lee, Susan Leibowitz, Roderick Lindblom, David May, Jeremy Marre, Frank and Catherine Mazzola, Cheryl Newman, Ajesh Patalay, Dave Platel, Martin Roberts, Scott Ross, Francesca Ryan, Chris Salewicz, Krishna Sheth, Brian Southall, Peregrine and Catherine St. Germans, Professor Lloyd Utan, Richard Williams and Blake Xolton. I owe particular thanks to Naomi West for all her sterling help.
I am grateful to Gary Fisketjon, my editor at Knopf, for all his unstinting encouragement and enthusiasm, and to Liz Van Hoose at Knopf for all her patience and help. I am particularly indebted to Maria Massey, Hugo de Klee and Patty Romanowski for their painstaking and meticulous copyediting.
I would particularly like to thank my agent Kate Jones at ICM in London, who has been a tower of strength and wise counsel throughout the writing of this book and beyond, and Amanda Urban at ICM in New York for all her support, encouragement and advice. Above all, I owe thanks to my wife, Patricia, for everything.
Notes
1. “Mr. Spector Likes People to Walk Up”
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Ahmet Ertegun, Don Kirshner, Larry Levine, Phil Spector.
BOOKS
Smith, op. cit.
Tynan, op. cit.
Wolfe, op. cit.
OTHER MEDIA
Cohn, art. cit.
Brown, “Found: Rock’s Lost Genius.”<
br />
County of Los Angeles, Search Warrants and Affidavits, February 2003.
2. “It Was Phillip Who Was Moving Fastest”
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Susan Cooder, Cary Cooper, Kim Fowley, Bruce Johnston, David Kessel, Annette Kleinbard, Annette Merar, Ron Milstein, Burt Prelutsky, Phil Spector, Michael Spencer.
BOOKS
Finnis, op. cit.
Gillett, The Sound of the City.
Ribowsky, op. cit.
Smith, op. cit.
Thompson, op. cit.
Williams, op. cit.
OTHER MEDIA
Office of Chief Medical Examiner, NYC.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, NYC. Priore, art. cit.
3. “To Know Him Is to Love Him”
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Lynn Castle, Kim Fowley, Jimmie Haskell, Bruce Johnston, Annette Kleinbard, Jerry Leiber, Larry Levine, Annette Merar, Stan Ross, Phil Spector, Michael Spencer, Russ Titelman.
BOOKS
Boyd, op. cit.
Finnis, op. cit.
Picardie and Wade, op. cit.
Ribowsky, op. cit.
Thompson, op. cit.
Williams, ibid.
OTHER MEDIA
www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/scandals/chessman.htm: Caryl Chessman website.
www.carolconnors.com
www.goldstarrecordingstudios.com