Original subtitles

[music]

[Paul Fournier] The Alhambra Police Department was armed

with limited information.

They just know that a gunshot occurred.

They didn't know anything else-- who was shot.

So, they made a tactical entry,

and then at one point, one of the officers

made a very good, sound decision,

and set a personal tape recorder he had

on the banister, and recorded

what I felt was some pretty telltaling statements

by Spector.

[music]

Daydreaming 'bout you

So glad I found you

I was lost without you

I'll sing a little louder

So glad I found you

I was lost without you

I'll sing a little louder

[helicopter whirring]

[Paul] As an investigator,

our job is to obtain as much information

from every source that we can,

any eyewitnesses that would have been there,

and then collect physical evidence.

[Richard Tomlin] As we walk in through the front door,

we see the actual scene of the shooting.

[Paul] A very beautiful young lady

was lying in the chair, the position that she was in

when she was shot.

She had a purse slung over her shoulder.

Her legs were out, stretched out in front of her,

and the gun was on the floor.

[Richard] At that point, I really didn't know

who Phil Spector was.

I was gonna learn a lot about him.

[man] He seemed like a quiet man.

I really have only seen him

maybe about four or five times

come by in his Prowler.

[man] The Alhambra officers conducted

a very preliminary investigation,

and based on that investigation,

they took Mr. Spector into custody.

[male reporter] He was a ghost, a phantom,

a half-forgotten rock genius.

[female reporter] And he almost never talks to the media,

but just weeks before the incident,

he spoke candidly to a journalist, Mick Brown.

[stovetop clicking]

[Mick Brown] Yeah, I knew a fair bit about Phil Spector.

For people of my generation,

people who care about rock and roll,

he was a legendary figure.

He was responsible for the Crystals

and the Ronettes,

and then the Righteous Brothers, of course,

and Tina Turner.

He produced the Beatles' final album.

For a so-called recluse,

for somebody who'd had this reputation

for being wacko or crazy,

he was extraordinarily candid and extraordinarily honest.

It was almost as if he'd been waiting

for a moment to talk.

And so, I came away from that interview

just thinking this was one

of the most extraordinary interviews of my life.

And as it would turn out,

one of the most fateful.

It was, what, four or five weeks later

that Lana Clarkson was murdered.

I remember getting to Alhambra...

turning into the electronic gate,

and the car stopped.

And the chauffeur, Adriano de Souza,

as I subsequently discovered,

said, "Mr. Spector likes people to walk up."

[gate squeaking]

There's a sort of sense

of sort of baronial splendor about it.

And there was a long, long flight of stairs.

Eighty-eight steps leading up

through these lowering pines and trees...

to the castle at the top.

[doors creaking]

And I set up my tape recorder on the table between us,

and then he started to talk.

Testing, testing, one, two, three, four.

When did you first realize you were different?

[Phil] Very young. Very young.

Very young, yeah, I was...

just always real-- always was different.

[Mick] Phil was born in New York in 1939,

and his father Ben was an iron worker.

Mother, Bertha.

And he had an elder sister called Shirley.

It seems that he was a happy child.

There didn't seem to be any trouble in the family.

But then, when he was nine, this terrible thing happened.

His father drove off to work one morning...

parked on a side street.

[engine starting]

He'd connected a tube from his exhaust

into the car, and self-asphyxiation.

And obviously, this was the bomb

that went off in Phil Spector's life.

[Phil] And I don't like talking so--

I don't like talking about the past.

It's difficult for me. Difficult time.

With, like, losing my dad, it was very, very emotional.

Oh, I was too young to understand

the value of losing my dad, and...

[Mick] But you're old enough to feel the loss and to feel...

[Phil] Old enough to feel the loss, but not old enough

to appreciate the loss until I was much older.

It's very, very, very, very, very painful.

[Nicole Spector] When my dad's father died...

you know, my dad was very much

shaped by that.

And it was a trauma

that I don't think was ever

really hands-on dealt with.

I think growing up back then--

this is like, you know, late '40s--

there wasn't such a thing as, like,

"send your kid to therapy,"

or whatever kind of coping mechanisms

we may promote now.

We don't know why Ben killed himself.

But I think there's a very-- there's some suggestion

there may have been money worries.

But more plausible to me is the idea

that he was suffering mentally in some way,

perhaps was bipolar.

And one thinks that because Shirley,

Phil's sister, then began to manifest a mental illness.

She, in fact, ended up in and out of institutions.

When your emotions control your actions,

it affects not only yourself, but the people around you.

[Mick] The dynamic within the family

was clearly very dysfunctional,

where the mother and the sister

alternately smothered and bullied Phil.

And in a way, it was like a--

became like a tag wrestling team, you know.

"You take Phil on."

"No, no, it's your turn to take Phil on."

And sometimes they'd both be in the ring at him.

It was like birds chirping on a wire,

where you know, they'd be just...

[vocalizing]

Phil, of course, had his own

terrible sort of mental problems.

So, I think there's some suggestion there

of hereditary illness in the family.

They were broke, they were stranded.

They were very much a blue-collar family.

I think my dad's dad worked in construction.

You know, they didn't have resources.

And my dad was very precocious,

a very ambitious young person.

And they moved out to LA, and I think the idea

was he's gonna make it big.

As I lie awake...

[Russ Titelman] Some people call it

the rock-and-roll high school.

Mo Ostin went there, and when I was there,

Steve Berry was there at Fairfax.

And some guy who was in The Safaris,

"Image of a Girl," he was there.

Was the image of the girl

I ought to find

[Phil] You know, timing is the key to everything.

There's an element of luck...

- [Mick] Sure. - [Phil] ...in everything.

In who you are, where you are, what you are.

But I call it timing

that I happened to be in Los Angeles in 1958.

[Russ] I remember the first time I met him.

I must have been around 13.

And as time went on, I became very friendly

and close with Phil.

He was unbelievably charismatic.

You know, very smart, very funny, very charming.

You know, language jokes and things like that,

like really sharp.

And, but then he was also,

you know, he'd lie about things unnecessarily.

Like, I think he had an appointment

to go somewhere, and we were at my house.

He was on the phone, you know, saying,

"Oh, we got in a car accident, so I couldn't make it."

You know, just make shit up.

The truth was vague sometimes.

He was his own creation.

Of all the girls

That I have met

[Phil] I used to think I was missing much

by not being normal,

and it sort of made life complicated for me.

But it made it justified.

"Oh, there's a reason they hate my fucking guts.

"I look strange, I act strange,

I'm making strange music, I make..."

So, there's a reason to hate my fucking guts,

because I felt hated.

I felt completely ostracized.

I never felt like I fit in.

[Mick] I think it was Kim Fowley who once said

that rock and roll is music made by lonely people

for lonely people, in the sense

that rock and roll is made by people in their room.

Phil Spector was very much that person.

He was that person in his room.

Started listening to music,

particularly listened to jazz and R&B stations in Los Angeles,

and became tremendously passionate about this,

and tremendously enthusiastic about this.

He didn't have a musical career,

but he was a very good jazz guitar player.

There was a community of musicians

that he was a part of, and he started writing songs.

To know, know, know him

Is to love, love, love him

Just to see him smile

Makes my life worthwhile

To know, know, know him

Is to love, love, love him

And I do, yes, I do

And I do

And Phil Spector went...

Ba-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah

I remember two different stories from Phil about his father.

One-- he did not talk

a lot about him, but one was

that he shot himself with a gun.

[gunshot]

And Phil found him.

And the other story was that he--

I think the word is "asphyxiated" himself.

I know it affected Phil.

That sort of started him on his journey.

You know, when your father commits suicide and...

It was almost like he was devoid of those feelings,

or whatever feelings he had on those levels,

he put it into his music.

Phil had a social circle,

and he was dating my girlfriend Donna.

And we were in junior high school.

And one day Phil came up to me and he said,

"I love your voice."

Okay.

I mean, I was like 16 and a half.

And he said, "I'm gonna write a song for your voice,

and you can be in our singing group."

About two weeks later the phone rings, and it's Phil.

We went in the recording studio.

Before I started to sing, Phil came up to me

and he said--

He was even a producer then.

This was the first thing he ever did.

He said...

"Sing it like you have-- to a boyfriend."

I said, "But I don't have a boyfriend."

He said, "Then think of your father."

[music playing, applause]

Ba-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah

To know, know, know him

Is to love, love, love him

Just to see his smile

Makes my life worthwhile

To know, know, know him

Is to love, love, love him

And I do...

So, we're at rehearsal at "The Perry Como Show,"

and when I went to go for the high note,

'cause it's at the top of my range,

my voice cracked.

And I was mortified, just absolutely mortified.

Phil put me up against the wall and he said,

"If you fuck up my song, I'm gonna kill you."

Ahh!

And then when we went to sing the song,

if you look at the show,

there is a moment before I go for the high note

that I think a look of,

"Please, God, please let me hit this note."

Do (And I do, and I, and I do, and I)

Why

Can't he see

How blind can he be

It was a very high note, but I hit it.

Someday...

The record went on to become the number-one record

in the world.

It was on the charts longer than any other record in 1958.

We were in the number-one spot

for I think about four weeks or five weeks.

To know, know, know him

Is to love, love, love him

It was sort of ironic that he would tell me

to sing it to my father,

because he took off his father's epitaph,

"To know him was to love him,"

and turned it into a teenage lament,

"To know him is to love him."

And I do (And I do, and I)

Ooh (And I do, and I)

I do (And I do, and I)

Yes, I do

When somebody's father or parent kills themself,

a child at a young age--

because the child is the center of their own universe,

the child takes on the burden of responsibility.

You know, "I'm-- I must be responsible for this

"in some way, it must be my fault,

you know, that I've been abandoned."

So, there's this sense of abandonment,

and there's this sense of guilt, and these two things going on.

So, I think that was a weight for him to carry.

[Phil] I was motivated by a sense of destiny.

I heard something different.

I saw a different kind of music coming out.

When the Teddy Bears went to New York,

when they were on tour, Bertha decided that Shirley

should manage Phil, manage the group.

Shirley became our manager.

Thank you!

I mean, she was-- that's, you know,

so she would travel with us at times.

Just what I needed.

He listened to his mother and his sister.

They were very involved

in Phil's "To Know Him is to Love Him" Teddy Bear days.

They used to fight. I didn't know about what,

but they yelled and screamed.

They had a rather contentious relationship...

that was explosive.

[Carol] Our agent got to a point where he could not deal

with Shirley Spector.

Could not deal with her.

She was scary.

I wasn't used to that type of, you know,

constant, you know, anger.

I just, I wasn't used to it.

This was a complete nightmare.

I mean, it was the brother and sister

squabbling and arguing,

and all of Shirley's incipient sort of mental instabilities

coming out.

I've never heard such a cacophony of noise in my life.

Screaming, screaming, screaming.

I mean, I remember, like, I would always--

I couldn't bear the screaming.

It was so intense.

It was like they didn't--

[shrieking] It was always up here!

[in normal voice] Instead of talking normally.

[Mick] After the Teddy Bears had become a hit,

you know, he was desperate to get away

from this stifling dysfunctional family setup.

Phil was still living at home with Bertha and Shirley,

with the tag wrestling team.

Obviously, very anxious to get away from that.

Phil actually moved out, and goes back to New York

to work as the apprentice, as it were,

to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller,

who at that point were probably the most successful producers

in pop music.

[Jeff Barry] I remember him coming around to the offices,

and I was introduced to him then,

and that's when we started to collaborate.

We had a lot of fun.

I mean, there's nothing to be not fun

about writing songs

and being in your early 20s.

It wasn't a hobby.

It was serious and dedicated, for sure.

By this point, Phil is-- he's really beginning

to feel his way, and he's really beginning

to believe in himself.

He wasn't 21 yet, and he wanted to have his money

to start his record company, but his mother

wouldn't allow him to have the money

because he wasn't 21.

So, I had to go to court with Phil,

and I was gonna be one of the people

speaking out in his favor

that he should have the money.

And his mother got on and started talking,

and talking, and talking.

"He can't be trusted, that we need the money,"

and just nasty, degrading, so to speak.

And the judge is shaking his head,

and finally the gavel came down.

- [gavel striking] -"I've heard enough

of this," he said.

"Give him the money. He's smart enough

to earn the money. He should have the money."

[Carol] I think that Phil, after the success

of "To Know Him is to Love Him,"

realized that he had to control everything.

And that's what he did.

The record industry at that point was--

a lot of the people who were powerful in the business

were slightly older.

They didn't want their territory encroached on.

They certainly didn't want some young whippersnapper,

as Phil Spector was, coming in

and encroaching on their territory.

He went on to start his own record label.

Philles, it was called, if I'm not mistaken.

Before 1950, kids, teenagers,

weren't a market.

They didn't have money.

So, no one was creating music for them,

only creating music for adults.

Young people started writing for young people.

Yeah, I met Phil Spector when I was 13,

'cause we-- Phil was recording us in New York.

I loved the way he dressed, I thought it was cool.

I remember him going down in his seat

in the studio when he was thinking

with the music, like in a trance.

[Phil] I wanted to be in the background.

I wanted to be in the background,

but I wanted to be important,

and I wanted to be the focal point.

And I was not afraid or concerned

about doing anyone else's material,

rewriting it, I didn't care.

I concerned myself with the finished product

and the art, because I had this sound in my head.

By this point, Phil, he's got this sort of stable of artists,

with the Paris Sisters,

the Crystals, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans.

And he's shopping around for another Crystals song,

and a songwriter and artist named Gene Pitney

has written a song called "He's a Rebel."

Phil immediately wants to record this,

but he makes the decision that he wants to record it

back in Los Angeles.

[music]

[Darlene Love] I met him at Gold Star.

He introduced himself

and said he had this group called the Crystals,

but they were very young

and they couldn't come out

to California to record.

So, he was looking for a group and a singer

to record this song that he wanted me to do.

He's my guy

And he came in in a suit, number one,

and he had on a tie, and he had on heels.

So, we went into the studio,

he taught me the song "He's a Rebel."

But when he told me he wanted me to sing lead,

I said, "Well, it'll cost more for me to sing lead."

He's a rebel and he'll never, ever be...

I thought it was a cute song, I didn't think, you know.

All the songs during that time were cute little--

well, we call 'em bubblegum songs.

The Crystals were doing a gig. It was five of us.

It was five, I think, five of us, yeah, at the time.

And we were doing a gig,

and you know, we always put on the radio

so we can hear, and-- the top 10, or whatever.

And we hear "He's a Rebel."

He's not a rebel, oh, no, no, no

To me

Nobody thought of anything.

And the guy says, "The Crystals."

We were like, "Huh?"

It was not my song, and I knew that the whole time.

That's why I never really got upset about it,

or felt I was cheated, or anything like that.

I knew when I went into his studio

to record "He's a Rebel," it was not gonna be my record.

I'm very good on stage.

They won't like me after today

And I'm very powerful.

And I can take Darlene's voice and make it mine,

but nobody would be dissatisfied.

So, I wasn't worried about being secure.

I just was pissed because the Crystal name

was underneath that, and we were established.

There was no way in heck

that we could not have done that song,

especially with my voice.

Oh, no, no, no

He's not a rebel, oh, no, no, no, to me

It upset us when he did that.

It upset us a lot. It upset us.

No, no, no, no, no, no

No, no, no

We had a manager, Joe Scandore.

Joe Scandore was no joke, 'cause he knew he was mafia,

you know, was-- had connection, and that's who managed us.

So, Joe Scandore was furious.

One day when I went to his office,

he's laughing with Jim, this big bouncer,

and he said-- with his Italian accent,

he said, "Jim, tell La La what you just did."

And he said, "Yeah, La La,"

he said, "I just flew from California."

He said, "Yeah, I ran Phil around the effing table."

He said, "And I told Phil if he didn't record you girls,"

he said, "I was gonna, you know, kill his mother

and cut his effing legs."

Phil got scared, and from that day on

Phil carried bodyguards with him every place he went.

- That other bar's the same? - Yeah, we'll...

[Darlene] After we did "He's a Rebel,"

Phil wanted to do something special for me.

So, we were getting ready to do a Darlene Love song.

I started learning "Doo Ron Ron,"

and that was supposed to be another song

that was supposed to be mine and not the Crystals.

[La La] Phil never wanted to use Darlene

on "Da Doo Ron Ron" because she had a woman's voice.

Listen to the lyrics.

It's for a child, a young person.

That's number one.

Number two, he was not putting Darlene

on another track of the Crystals.

All I could think about is Jim and Joe Scandore.

Phil never told me, even when I saw him.

And many a day I saw him in California

putting down the music.

He never took me to the side and said, "You know, La La,

guess what Joe Scandore did to me?"

So, you know, I don't know how it crushed Phil,

how it had an impact on him, why he kept quiet.

And I think the reason why Phil didn't give an explanation

is because he flew me out to California,

I recorded "Da Doo Ron Ron,"

and he had one of the biggest hits.

I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still

Da doo ron-ron-ron, da doo ron ron

Somebody told me that his name was Bill

Da doo ron-ron-ron, da doo ron ron

Yes, he looked so fine

Yes, I'll make him mine

And when he walked me home

Da doo ron-ron-ron, da doo ron ron

Yeah, yeah...

[Darlene] I'm coming home from a session,

and I'm driving down the street,

and the disc jockey on the radio

said, "The next song by the Crystals."

Da doo ron ron, yeah...

It was the same one, it was the same key,

same arrangement, the same thing,

he just didn't have my voice on it.

The records that he's making, they're not Crystals records,

they're not Darlene Love records.

They're Phil Spector records.

The producer becomes bigger than the stars,

you know, the producer becomes bigger than the hits,

the producer is the hit.

And he's dominating the American music scene

with the wall of sound.

There really wasn't any particular artist

we were writing for.

Whoever was next up for a release of a single

would get the next song.

And he asked me if I wanted to dance

[Russ] That's what made him such a big star,

that he was the creator of this sound.

The wall of sound was having the cacophony

of four piano players playing the same part,

and five guitar players playing the same part,

but expanding it.

And I used to say, "We're the mud of his records."

We were at a studio called Gold Star,

and Gold Star had an echo chamber

that was one of the keys to their sound there.

And if you knew how to use it right--

and he did-- it just expanded the sound, you know, tenfold.

Phil would say, "Well, let's try this,

"let's bounce this over here

to this track, or bounce it here."

And we'd go in the booth and listen to the playback,

and it was amazing what he was able to do

with those tracks.

And then he kissed me

All those hit records have that full, almost symphonic sound.

He was like the master of that style.

[Jeff] I believe in a way he was on stage.

It was his theater.

I mean, you have to have control

as the director of a project.

He revered the musicians, he respected the musicians.

The singers, who essentially were kids,

you know, they were--

La La Brooks I think was 15, 16,

when she recorded "Then He Kissed Me."

Then he asked me to be his bride

He certainly was the one

who demanded attention, and he got it.

I almost cried, and then he kissed me

Maybe that's what he was doing, trying to outshine the artist,

and try to control them contractually

in every other way,

and that he was the star and not them.

He was never really that rude with the musicians.

He could be a bit terse, but we had a sense of humor

and we'd give it back to him, you know.

But sometimes the way he spoke to some of the girl singers,

he was really rude, you know, which really used to bother me.

They didn't like it, but they would take the rudeness

because he knew-- at the bottom line,

they were getting paid.

And then he kissed me

[Jeff] It was kind of mean, tell you the truth.

He really wasn't treating them as artists.

They were tools.

They weren't people that could stand up to him

in the way that musicians could.

They weren't people that could answer back to him.

You know, the Paris Sisters,

which were a copy of me,

Phil played them "To Know Him is to Love Him"

and said, "I want you to do whatever, you know, she did.

That is what I want to capture."

The very sweet, gentle...

I love how your eyes close

I love how your eyes close

Whenever you kiss me

The first time I heard it,

I was driving and it was raining,

and I had the radio on.

For one split second in time, I thought it was me.

I really thought it was me.

And then reality came in.

Pulled off to the side of the road

and started to cry,

because I knew he had the formula...

and I was not a part of it.

[clicks tongue]

Ooh

[Phil] Being comfortable and reasonable,

very important to me, very important to me.

Because I don't feel comfortable with myself a lot,

and I don't feel reasonable a lot.

I feel comfortable in the studio.

So, I sat back and said, it's like those records.

They were the greatest love of my life

when I were making them.

I lived and breathed those records.

That's why I never had relationships with anybody

that could last.

They were my life.

They were more important to me than anything.

My songs, my records, my li-- they were my life.

You know, nothing competed with them.

[music playing]

[male reporter] Never in the history of popular music

has the recording industry been so completely in the grip

of America's teenagers.

This new type of music has been described

as the teen feel, and the dumb sound.

These new songs are usually about broken romances

and unfulfilled love.

The lyrics are simple-minded and repetitive.

The sound is loud, weird, and driving as possible.

The singers are young and often inexperienced.

The new generation has turned Tin Pan Alley

into "Teen" Pan Alley.

[music continues]

My next guest, Mr. Phil Spector,

former member of the teenage rock and roll group

the Teddy Bears.

Mr. Spector is 23 years old

and one of the most successful songwriters in the business.

His famous songs include "Spanish Harlem,"

"Secondhand Love," "Da Doo Ron Ron,"

and many others.

Mr. Spector is the sole owner of Philles Records,

which is expected to gross

two and a half million dollars this year.

Now, I submit, Mr. Spector...

- [Phil] Help me. - ...that in the long history

of American popular music, this is not likely to endure.

[Carol Connors] You must give the devil his due,

and Phil was brilliant.

He had everything in the palm of his hands,

and God, I still think today that, as I said,

I do think he was a genius when it came to music.

He would make little symphonies and-- you know, of songs,

and they became like little vignettes

that all of us teenagers--

I mean, "He's a Rebel," all of them.

You know, they-- "Be My Baby."

["Be My Baby" playing]

The night we met, I knew I needed you so

The Ronettes did "The T.N.T. Show."

And if I had the chance, I'd never let you go

Oh, what a beautiful song,

we just loved that song.

It was a glorious song.

"Be My Baby," what a fantastic song that is,

and an enormous hit for Phil Spector.

And the beginning of a, you know, of a good run

of Ronettes hits.

Be my baby, be my little baby

Ronnie was always the smallest,

so she had to be the loudest.

She had to be in the middle, you know, so she could hear

everything that was going on around her.

I'll make you happy, baby, just wait and see

When I heard Ronnie's voice, she just blew me away,

and her sisters.

I saw you, I have been waiting for you

I loved the Crystals' stuff, "He's a Rebel"

and "Da Doo Ron Ron."

But Ronnie took it to another place.

So won't you be

Be my, be my baby, be my little baby

And so, in short order, the Crystals

get rather pushed to one side,

and the Ronettes become the center of his attention,

and particularly Veronica Bennett,

who becomes better known eventually as Ronnie Spector.

[Nedra] Phil had his eye on Ronnie from the beginning.

I didn't have a problem.

Don't look at me. [laughing]

That's-- I remember what I was thinking.

Just don't even look this way.

But, you know,

unfortunately he was married, so...

And the first night we walked in,

it was just him sitting at the piano.

And he looked at me, and I looked at him,

it was like eye contact,

and he says, "Well, sing me some song."

And I started singing...

Why do birds sing so gay

And Phil stopped, he said,

"That's the voice I've been looking for!"

Be my, be my baby, be my little baby

My one and only baby, ohh

[Mick] At this point Phil wasn't entirely without female company.

He had got married in New York,

this very pretty elfin-looking young girl

called Annette Merar.

He obviously loved Annette greatly.

And after he'd betrayed her terribly, of course,

she still spoke about him

with a tremendous sort of affection.

[Annette] Phil had the other qualities

of charisma, and charm, and humor,

and I've always liked geniuses, and poets,

and things like that, because I need that.

I don't know why.

He made my soul just fall in love.

[Mick] And listening back to the tapes,

it sort of struck me, God, she was still--

even though she'd obviously made her own life,

and married, and had a family,

there's a part of her that's still--

was still in love with Phil, you know,

had never fallen out of love with Phil.

And it's a sign of the love he had for her

that on the runout groove of the records

he would put "Phil + Annette."

And the first record that that didn't appear on

was "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes.

[Nedra] When I found out he was married, I was like,

this is wrong.

We just grew up with certain things you don't do.

God-- you don't get blessed when you do wrong.

The way he acted toward his wife,

I just felt bad.

Phil was not even Ronnie's type.

He had a lot of insecurity

because of his stature and things like that.

So, why would you look,

except you see something that you can get out of it?

[Mick] Ronnie I think wanted to be a star.

She wanted to be famous, she wanted to be successful.

And Phil Spector was her passport to that.

[Nedra] If somebody's got their eye on you,

and they're older than you,

and they're saying, "I can do all these things,"

you could see where that's a big pull.

But you don't know what you're getting pulled into.

[Mick] In Phil Spector's case, the selfishness,

the way he handles these situations,

I think this sort of shows a pattern.

It was pretty common at that point

and recurred throughout.

You know, there were people who were useful to him,

who he could use and then dispense with.

This, I think, goes to one of the most unpleasant traits

Spector would exhibit throughout his life,

is seeing people as disposable.

Women, in particular.

[Phil] I controlled everything in this instance.

I was a control freak.

You have to conquer yourself, you know,

you have to really... control your own self.

I have devils inside that fight me,

and I'm my own worst enemy.

For all intents and purposes, I'd say I'm probably

relatively insane.

[Mick] It felt extraordinary.

It felt almost as if I was at a confessional in some way.

I mean, he hadn't spoken for--

not given a formal sit-down interview

for 20, 25 years.

And the last thing I'd expected

was that he would speak with quite as much candor

and quite as much honesty as he did,

and with a sort of revelation of really naked, naked emotion.

At the end of the day as the sun was going down,

I came away from that interview just thinking

this was-- this was just extraordinary.

You know, my final sort of words really there

with Spector's personal assistant...

you know, "We'd love to see a copy of the article

when it comes out," and so I said, of course.

As soon as the early binds came into the office,

I had some FedEx-ed over to Spector's house

so that he would be able to read it at the same time

as it was being published in Britain

on the Saturday morning.

The Monday afterwards, I happened to be

in the telegraph office,

and somebody came down from upstairs and said,

"What did you write to upset Phil Spector?"

I said, "Why, what do you mean?"

"Well, turn on the television."

We turned on the television,

and there was the sort of--

the classic sort of helicopter shot

of the Pyrenees Castle where I'd interviewed him

four or five weeks earlier,

this time bound round with yellow police tape,

squad cars with their lights, you know, flashing on top,

detectives in boxy suits

sort of moving in and out of the house,

and the news that an unidentified woman

had been found shot dead in Phil Spector's home.

And I looked at Casper,

the editor who'd commissioned the piece,

and he looked at me, and we both had exactly the same thought.

My God, he's read the piece, the piece has set him off,

and he shot his personal assistant.

That was our thought, that he'd sort of just gone--

that he'd flipped reading this.

[Nicole] I was in a class about magical realism.

We were reading something,

and I don't know what it was.

I wish I could remember.

But there was this line

that she kept repeating.

She kept saying, "They took my father.

They took my father."

Like, she kept being like, "I want you to feel this line."

And this woman showed up.

She, like, ducked into the classroom

and pulled me out.

And my immediate thought was that one of my parents was dead.

I was very attached to my parents.

I was shaking, I was so scared,

'cause I-- that was always my biggest fear.

And first, she was like, "Your mom's okay,

your dad's okay."

And I was just like, "Oh my God, thank God."

And then she says, "But, like, something happened.

"A woman died at your dad's house,

"and it's all over the news.

"We need to get you out right now.

"We don't know who it was, we don't know anything yet.

"But you know, like, you should probably

stay out of school for now."

You know, I'm like, "Where's my father?"

And they're like, "They took your father."

And I'm like, just thinking, like,

"They took my father, they took my father,"

from this class, this line my professor kept reciting.

So, she took me to a coffee shop.

The news was on, and it was like

this, like, big circus was happening

at my dad's house,

and I was just like in total disbelief.

It was just very surreal.

It was-- it was bad magical realism.

[Paul] We anticipated it was gonna be a media show.

We knew that going into that.

It was a media circus, it was insane.

[Charles Gibson] Phil Spector, who helped define

rock and roll music, was arrested Monday

shortly after a dead woman was found...

[reporter 2] Known as much for his bizarre behavior

as for his musical genius.

[Richard] We were receiving phone calls

while we were in the midst of our investigation

that this thing was on all the news channels.

At the time, the general feeling in Los Angeles

was that no celebrity

would ever be convicted of anything.

You know, you're on the heels of the OJ trial,

you're on the heels of the Robert Blake trials.

You know, he's someone also who's always used

to being in charge.

Coming into this, that was at the top of my mind--

some big producer right now that is--

they're looking at for murder.

So, here we go, here comes the next OJ trial.

The interesting thing was, we did not know

who the victim was.

We later on received a phone call

from an individual from the House of Blues

who stated that he had seen Phil Spector

leave with his coworker, Lana Clarkson.

[reporter] The victim, a beautiful B-movie actress

named Lana Clarkson, with 17 movie appearances

and her own website.

[reporter 2] Lana Clarkson was writing a book,

according to reports, about the men

she's known in Hollywood.

First reports say she and Spector

hadn't met before.

That is now in doubt, some sources saying

they had known each other for some time.

[Nicole] The next day of the event,

my dad called me and was like, "Hey, I'm okay,

"you know, I'm fine.

Don't worry about me, you know, keep your chin up."

He just wanted me to know he was okay,

everything was gonna be okay,

there was this huge misunderstanding,

and it was getting worked out.

I didn't-- I didn't have any questions for him

other, like, than, "Are you okay?"

It never seemed a possibility

that he would have actually murdered someone.

We would sometimes have conversations

where he'd be like, "I don't know what the fuck's going on,

"like, this woman came into my house.

Apparently, she shot herself," and, you know,

he was baffled.

We have to be fair to Phil Spector

and his allegation.

We have to go through Lana Clarkson.

[Paul] There were pieces of her teeth

that she had-- her two front teeth

had been blown out during this gunshot,

and they were found on the floor,

and I believe a piece was even all the way to the stairway--

again, maybe 10, 12 feet away.

There was a couple of bloody towels.

One was actually-- it turned out to be a diaper.

Ultimately it was collected.

Ultimately it was turned over to the crime lab.

There was a lot of evidence,

but there was no definitive proof of anything.

Now, again, you have to look at someone's--

you know, that day, their past,

how they've been, their moods, what occurred at work.

You know, you gotta go with all these little bits and pieces.

Is someone suicidal, are they not?

Like, how do you determine that?

It has to be by what they call

this forensic look at her life.

I'm sorry that I met you

Now I only just regret you

I remember the night

When you first held me tight

Ohh, now I'm sorry that I met you

I was lost in the hurricane

La-la-la, la-la-la

All my friends thought I was insane

La-la-la, la-la-la-la

You knew me when

We were both just friends

But I knew that I'd love you till the end

I'm sorry that I met you...