Spector’s domestic life, along with his career, eventually came apart. After his first marriage, to Annette Merar, broke up, Ronettes leader singer Ronnie Bennett became his girlfriend and muse. He married her in 1968 and they adopted three children. But she divorced him after six years, claiming in a memoir that he held her prisoner in their mansion, where she said he kept a gold coffin in the basement and told her he would kill her and put her in it if she ever tried to leave him. … [Read more...] about Phil Spector, “Wall of Sound” Producer Convicted of Murder, Dies at 81
How to pass a hard stool
The Burning Question That Drove David Fincher’s Decades-Long Journey To Make ‘Mank’
His sets move fast, so he can afford to go again if he needs to. He says he struggles, sometimes, to communicate his direction, so when he gives six notes and an actor hits four, that’s progress in the right direction. Let’s go again. It is not a process designed to wear his collaborators down. “I have total compassion for what it takes to make oneself entirely vulnerable to 50 or 60 people in a crowded, stinking soundstage,” he insists. “I’m not standing around with a taser going, ‘We’ve got a schedule to make.’ But at the same time, I expect you to show up, ready to throw down. And I’m lucky enough to work with people who all check their lives at the door. I don’t feel I’m deserving of that, but I’m incredibly appreciative of the people who will give me as much of their attention. I want to maximize what can be done in a 10- or 12-hour day; I’ve never been a 14-hour day guy.” … [Read more...] about The Burning Question That Drove David Fincher’s Decades-Long Journey To Make ‘Mank’
Ronnie Spector on Keith Richards, David Bowie and Life After Phil
It sounds like Jimi was different. Did you remain friends?One time, my sister called me up when I’d come back to New York, visiting my parents. She said, “Jimi is dying to see you again.” So I went over to Jimi’s house at Electric Lady, and he has a mattress on the floor, and about four girls hanging around the bed. My sister was sitting in a chair, and he was like, “Ronnie, you’ve got to go on my record. Even if you just say ‘ooh’ or ‘ahh,’ you know, your little ‘oh-ohs.'” So I did that. They had shipped my Camaro to New York, so Jimi and all of us, the girls, got in after recording and we were all crowded in there, and I dropped Jimi off and said, “OK, good night!” … [Read more...] about Ronnie Spector on Keith Richards, David Bowie and Life After Phil
