The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has released a statement saying that Phil Spector died of natural causes at an outside hospital, on the 16th of January at 6:35pm. His official cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.
Phil Spector worked as a music producer between the 1950s and 1970s, and worked with artists such as The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, the Righteous Brothers, and Ike and Tina Turner. He was known for changing the sound of pop music with his “wall of sound” recording style. He was credited with producing twenty top 40 hits between 1961 and 1965. By the end of the 1970s, he had become reclusive, and rarely worked after that.
He was serving a 19-years-to-life sentence for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Clarkson was found dead in Spector’s home in 2003, with a gunshot wound to the mouth. He was convicted of second-degree murder.
Spector was known for carrying a gun. He would often make his gun visible during recording sessions with artists, famously firing a shot in the studio while working with John Lennon.
