Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
About this audiobook
Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1939, 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, originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes, a millionaire by twenty-one, and the owner of his own record label by twenty-two. He scored hit after hit using a new technique called the "wall of sound."
But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop culture seemed doomed by the "British Invasion," and he spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior. Though he seemed to improve for a time, even returning to the recording studio to work, it didn't last—in 2003 the actress Lana Clarkson was found dead in his home, killed by gunshot.
About the author
Mick Brown was born in London in 1950 and has interviewed Salvador Dali, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Don DeLillo, Richard Ford, Ravi Shankar, and the Dalai Lama. He has written several books as well, on Richard Branson, the movie Performance, and a guide to America through pop songs.
Ray Porter is a prolific voice actor that has recorded for over 100 audio books and dozens of television series, video games and video shorts. Among his wide variety of audiobook credits are The Silver Linings Playbook, The Black Hole War, and the Joe Ledger series. He claims, “With every book I’ve done, I have found that the author has a voice and if I can just do my best to stay out of the way of that voice, then the writer will convey what he’s trying to put across. So for me, it’s really more about enabling the text and what the author is trying to say.”
