By sheer serendipity, Mick Brown conducted a rare and long interview with Phil Spector in 2002, shortly before the architect of The Wall of Sound was arrested on suspicion of murdering a nightclub hostess in his gothic Los Angeles mansion. This grisly coda to a career that ended in the 1970s refocused attention on a character whose brilliance as a record producer has been almost eclipsed by his bizarre antics, such as waving handguns at many of the most famous names in rock, including John Lennon. As well as being the most current account of an extraordinary, troubled life, Brown’s book is also the most sympathetic and balanced. Spector’s supposed misogyny – memorably summed up by his former PA as, “Phil loves women, but he just doesn’t know what to do with them” – never displaces the author’s fanlike awe at the manner in which a scrawny, messed-up Jewish kid once turned Tin Pan Alley pop ditties into music of timeless, towering beauty.

TEARING DOWN THE WALLS OF SOUND: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown
Bloomsbury £18.99

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