“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” a “Defeat Lap” for the Legendary Producer

The "accusatory spoken word aria" that is "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector."

In another solid and very welcome break from the post VH1 rock doc style sheet, the music segments aren’t clips but whole renderings of songs like The Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” and Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep – Mountain High” performed in their entirety. That last segment, live in the mid-’70s with the full Ike & Tina Turner Revue trimmings, is particularly stunning and a must-see for any aspiring maraca player.

This refreshingly un-ADD approach to pop-music, true crime, and cultural history is somewhat marred by laughably pompous subtitle quotes from rock critic Mick Brown’s book “Tearing Down The Wall of Sound.” Quick quiz: which ubiquitous Spector production is, according to Brown, “a masterpiece of chiaroscuro, of searing emotional light and darkness, of pain and catharsis”?

Give up? Okay, which career-changing Wall Of Sound chestnut represents “the simulacrum of all Spector’s grandiosity, his overarching ambition”? If you answered “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” for the former and “River Deep – Mountain High” for the latter, you are correct and share, with Brown, a critical wavelength on Spector’s work that completely eludes me.

The message that does get through time and again in “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector” is that the producer and songwriter’s work was a complex combination of fear, spite, love and fierce intelligence, and that his chosen solitude, horrendous relationships with women and no-holds-barred approach to criticism and competition cost him dearly.

A mid-film digression in which Spector compares Brian Wilson’s production of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film “Psycho” and his own recordings to the director’s comparatively less edit-intensive 1940 film “Rebecca” is a vivid illustration of a kind of hard-won cultural sponge creative sensibility that nears extinction as the internet ramps up access to potential influence and downplays accuracy, context and the joy of discovery.

Spector’s explanation about the infamous afro-wig trial photo (“it was a tribute to Albert Einstein and Beethoven”), like much of “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” highlights the noose that tabloid media dangles in front of any public personality who cultivates the image of an unapologetic and confrontational eccentric.

Bruce Bennett is our guest critic for the month of June.

“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector” is now playing in New York.

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