For the Little Lost Lamb Hall of Fame, today's nominee is -- Phil Spector:
“It hasn't been a very pleasant life,” Spector told writer Mick Brown in a rare 2002 interview. “I've been a very tortured soul. I have not been at peace with myself.”
The writer says Spector is shy, which makes him drink, which "he does not handle well." That's a little bit of an understatement for a man who reportedly kept recording artists working at gunpoint and often pulled a weapon on women when they were ready to leave before he wanted them to. He also admits to being bipolar, which leads to mood swings and contradictory behavior and ranks him alongside "tormented geniuses, from Beethhoven and Van Gogh to Billie Holiday and F. Scott Fitzgerald." We can be sympathetic to Spector's mental illness and other demons, I think, without overlooking all the destruction in his wake. Like a dead woman. And I want more than overproduced Beatles songs from my tortured souls.
