Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Bookseller Created
Fairewaves: Remixed Music
Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale!
Shop the sale
Send as gift
Add to Wish List
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop the sale
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowTearing Down the Wall of Sound
The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
Narrator
Ray Porter
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Length
17 hours 35 minutes
Language
English
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.
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 an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator and fifteen-year veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including Almost Famous, ER, and Frasier.
Featured in these playlists...
Reviews
“An intimate portrait…Brown’s passionate analysis of Spector’s body of work elevate what could have been a gossipy tell-all to a gripping anecdotal portrait of a musical genius crippled by lifelong emotional problems.”
“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.”
“A rare and wonderful mix of dogged research and vivid storytelling. Virtually every page carries a tale of farce or horror, or, more often than not, both.”
“A fascinating, detailed look at the life and career of one of the biggest names in music. It’s a study not just of Spector’s mental problems but of how he was able to use his obsessions to create some of the most memorable and influential music in history…It’s a great portrait of where genius and madness meet.”
“Stacked with incredible anecdotes, Brown’s entertaining and nuanced portrait lifts the fog of myth and outright falsehood (including Spector’s own) that has obscured the celebrity producer through the years.”
“Brown chronicles the producer’s eccentricities, insecurities, perfectionism, and brilliant talent to engrossing effect…Essential for all libraries.”
“One of the most compelling, memorable rock-’n’-roll biographies in recent memory. Brown’s passionate, über-detailed study of pop’s scariest visionary is just about as good as a music bio can get.”
“Porter’s reading of Brown’s biography does a solid job of hitting the high notes, maintaining an even tone and reading with understated panache.”
“[Phil Spector’s] story is spectacularly captured in Ray Porter’s narration of this detailed biography…Porter delivers this portrait in an authoritative anchorman’s voice, making the more bizarre and chilling passages even more so…[Spector’s] life rises and falls as dramatically as his music.”
Expand reviews