Tearing Down the Wall of Sound

The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector

By: Mick Brown

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. Yet after his family moved to California, he learned everything he could about music, formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. He was a millionaire by age 21 and owned his own record label by 22. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style and technique called the "wall of sound".

But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music seemed doomed by the "British Invasion", and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior. Though he seemed to improve for a time, and even returned to the recording studio to work, his renascence didn't last, and in 2003, the actress Lana Clarkson was found at his home, dead from a gunshot wound.

©2007 Mick Brown (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

• Nominee, 2008 Audie Award, Biography/Memoir

"Bloodcurdling....This book would feel like a crime story even if its subject were not currently on trial for Ms. Clarkson's murder." (The New York Times)
"[This] uber-detailed study of pop's scariest visionary is just about as good as a music bio can get." (Kirkus Reviews)
"[A] remarkable book about, among other things, fame, obsession, genius, money and madness....This is the definitive study of the man and the myth that engulfed him." (Observer)

Terrific book, narration hit or miss

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

The narrator is irritating. The voices and accents are unnecessary. The bad accents are few enough to overlook, however... When the narrator is reading the part of a woman, they all sound like drag queen voices: overly feminized caricatures.Now that said, when the narrator is speaking about/for Phil Spector, the crazy is palpable. The pace is just shy of an uncontrolled gallop and it makes the book all the more effective in communicating Spector's decades-long descent into madness.

Any additional comments?

The book is terrific. The balance between Spector's musical life and personal life is excellent. I knew a good bit about him musically, but the subtext of his life in between the hits was really informative and helped me get a better, bigger picture of Phil Spector.

Better than Fiction!

Wow, what an amazing life, timely or not. He made or knew anyone who was anyone in the early 60's. The guy was brilliant and knew it, but he had his problems and dealt with them as good as he knew how. A well written/well narrated story that will be enjoyed whether you knew all the music mentioned as I do or not. It's still an amazing story. Listen and Enjoy!

Fascinating book; irritating narrator

Author Mick Brown does a mostly excellent job of capturing rock & roll's early days and the seminal role Phil Spector played (although Brown could have benefited from fact-checking, e.g., Amy Heckerling, not Cameron Crowe, directed "Fast Times at Ridgemont High;" Bobbie Gentry, not Jeannie C. Riley, had a hit with "Ode to Billy Joe.")

But the narrator, Ray Porter, drove me nuts! How can the narrator of a book about rock & roll consistently mispronounce Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner's first name (as though it's the lady's name, Jan)? Worse, he has stock accents and intonations for each character "type": Women are all read in a fast, high-pitched breathless tone; British musicians are all Cockney-accented; British and Irish non-musicians have indeterminate accents that come and go; and German musician and legendary Beatles sideman, Klaus Voorman, is given a flossy British accent (although, on second thought, perhaps it's better that Porter didn't attempt Voorman's German accent). Why do so many audio book narrators feel compelled to act up a storm rather than rely on their natural vocal gifts?

A Long Strange Trip

Part Genius, part Madman. I enjoyed the parts with rock legends such as Brian Wilson, Tina Turner, the Ronettes, and John Lennon. The tabloid tragedy towards the end was too riveting to skip. Recommended to music lovers and true crime readers alike (but more for music lovers).

Recommended

This is a fine book. I found it excellently researched and presented. Go and enjoy it.