Part Four: The Phil Spector Episodes

Greazy Wil concludes the story of Phil Spector by talking about the murder he definitely committed. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Hey everybody, Robert here. And the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences have announced that three different Cool Zone Media shows have been nominated for awards at the 30th Annual Webby Awards. You can vote on these now if you just Google the name of the podcast and the category. Behind the Bastards has been nominated in the Experimental and Innovation Podcasts category. It Could Happen Here is in the News and Politics Podcasts category. And James Stout's mini-series, Migrating to America: A Dream Worth Dying For, has been nominated in the Podcasts Documentary category. And you can find links to vote for each of these podcasts in the episode description and in the posts on social media for episodes of It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards.

• 0:49Robert Evans?

  Thank you. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where I am presumably on vacation, or at least working on a different series of episodes. And this week, as for the last three episodes, my good pal, Grammy Award-winning Greasy Will is here.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  This guy?

• 1:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, is here to talk to us.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  This guy is here to talk to us about Part IV of Phil Spector, which we made it to Part IV. Are you gonna drink out of the Grammy again? And to be, to be fair, I've been drinking the whole time, but now I feel like this is a celebratory shot, which is out of, we, the celebration shots come out of the Grammy.

• 1:32Robert Evans?

  That's why we split it into two different recording days, folks.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I can get real, because if we'd had to keep going on the first one, wouldn't have made it.

• 1:39Robert Evans?

  I just wanted to keep you alive, yeah.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Which, by the way, I have some words for your viewers.

• 1:44Robert Evans?

  Uh-oh.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Oh, no. After the Grammy, I was, hold on, I had to take the shot first. Uh, hey, guys.

• 1:52Robert Evans?

  They'll love that.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Hey, guys. How about, how about let's not talk about my appearance? You know, these dark circles under my eyes are genetic. Every person in my family who has a drug or alcohol addiction gets them. So this is rude of you to just assume I'm drinking too much.

• 2:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you're being kind of mean.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  It was a podcast. Sorry for having fun, you know?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  He still got the job done.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  The script is great.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I made it through. And then look what you got out of this. You got me saying, dang, dude, I should tell them about Phil Spector because not everybody knows the whole story of Phil Spector. And it's so incredibly interesting, which is where we will pick up after a word from these sponsors or whatever.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:37Robert Evans?

  Some sponsors, yeah.

• 2:40Speaker 03

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• 3:13Robert Evans?

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• 3:44Speaker 05

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• 4:18Speaker 01

  And we're back. I always wanted to say that, it felt right.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  You're so professional right now.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, yeah, I know. I'm actually, I stream every week. I do, I spend a lot of time on the internet. I'm so good at talking to nobody, so it's amazing to have somebody to actually talk back to. Normally, it's just like the comment section on one of my stupid ass videos, which, you know, don't.

• 4:39Robert Evans?

  We'll be your comment section.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  So, Phil Spector, he just had an article written. The, I think this is one of the most insane cause and effects of history that has ever happened. Because Phil Spector, he has this journalist come, and this journalist writes a piece on him for Interview Magazine or some... I wrote it down, but I don't remember, so let's just pretend I said it. So, he writes an article for me, he puts it in this magazine, and it comes out, and Phil breaks his sobriety, loses it, starts drinking menacingly.

• 5:22Robert Evans?

  Sure, of course.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Right, he loses his mind. He's kind of, it's not a positive article. It's positive in the sense that it's like, hey, I'm talking about Phil Spector.

• 5:32Robert Evans?

  This guy's still relevant, yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  But it's negative in the fact that Phil sees all the bad things that this guy says about him. And he starts drinking again, and he finds himself on the night of February 2nd, 2003, at the House of Blues. And this is where he will run into Lana Clarkson. And I feel as though, we do not... I mean, it's hard to give victims as much attention as they deserve, right? It's like, that's a very difficult thing, because the interesting part of this whole thing is that Phil Spector is fucking insane.

• 6:06Robert Evans?

  Sucks ass, yes.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  And this was a fairly normal Los Angeles person living their life. And so, it's like, the bulk of the story lies on Crazy Boy, right? So, I do want to spend just a moment first off to show you Lana Clarkson.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  She's beautiful. She's, this is her at like, almost 40 years old, probably. She is a beautiful woman. She was an actress, she worked in Hollywood. She had many friends, she had a lot of friends. A lot of people remembered her lovingly when she was gone. All right, so this is our story of Lana Clarkson. Lana Clarkson was born on April 5th, 1962, in Long Beach, California. And she grew up in the Southern California endless orbit of Hollywood. You know, it's like, the industry always feels really close to you when you're in Los Angeles. No matter what suburb you're in, it feels like you're, you're not far from the big leagues, right?

• 7:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  From an early age, she gravitated towards performance. And at six feet tall, she had a striking presence that made her hard to ignore. Like many Angelenos, Clarkson absorbed the idea that Hollywood rewarded persistence. And if you stayed visible long enough, something would eventually break your way. And I think that's a very reasonable

• 7:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Los Angeles feel. It's like, you know, there is a lot of, there's a lot of, hey, you could make it at any time here, kind of feels.

• 7:34Robert Evans?

  And it's, it's true in that, like, it is the only way people who aren't born into the industry or whatever succeed.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  But if you are not a nepo, baby.

• 7:43Robert Evans?

  Right. This is the only thing that works, but also it still fails for 90% of people.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  99% I'd venture to guess.

• 7:51Robert Evans?

  I'm being, I'm being crazy optimistic.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Very optimistic.

• 7:54Robert Evans?

  99, yes.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's not, it does not go well for a lot of people, but.

• 7:59Robert Evans?

  No, I mean, yeah, we're sitting here as two of the people in our own fields who like managed to make it through that 99% thing. And it is like, I know that a lot of people who

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:10Robert Evans?

  You know, wound up somewhere else.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I went to school with like 75 people and I know one of them that still has a job in the audio world. And that is just the, I, I know the class before me, the class after me. I know like, I, I know hundreds of people that came in with me and I know none of them still having jobs.

• 8:29Robert Evans?

  It's wonderful to tell people to chase their dreams. You're also, you're, don't lie to them when you do it.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:37Robert Evans?

  You can chase your dreams for a while, you know? Have an exit plan.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Have an exit plan. Just rationalize, rationalize to yourself. Like, here's the thing, right? This is what I tell people about this, which I think is the best advice. If you're the type of person who, when people tell them, "You're never gonna make it," go like, "No, no, no, that's you. I make it. I do it. No one can tell me, 'In fact, I'm gonna do it three times as hard because you said I couldn't,'" then maybe this life is for you. Maybe if you thrive on people telling you no, and you think that that's the coolest thing ever, and you just wanna shove it in their face.

• 9:17Robert Evans?

  I'll show you how smart you are.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  You don't know anything. I'm gonna spite you, third wives, second wives.

• 9:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Alright, so by the early 1980s, she is landing small parts. She's getting some brief exposure in mainstream productions. She's in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She's a little background character in there, you know? Her steadier work came in genre films, where she became recognizable to audiences through fantasy and cult B-movies, such as Barbarian Queen, Barbarian Queen 2, and Death Stalker. Feels very, uh... You might remember me from such works as Barbarian and Barbarian Queen 2.

• 9:57Robert Evans?

  Death Stalker.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  These are super B-movie type things. In later years, we get weird about saying B-movies, as though we're supposed to call them like lesser-grade movies. I don't know what, lesser off-market, I don't know what. It's weird, they're B-movies. I don't know why that suddenly got PC in any way, and I'm ranting about this right now, because it made me mad.

• 10:20Robert Evans?

  I never heard that it was, but okay.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it made me mad, there's a bunch of people... There was a bunch of articles that I read about Lana Clarkson specifically, that were like, "You shouldn't call her a B-movie actress. That's degrading." And I'm like, "That's just..."

• 10:32Robert Evans?

  No, we love B, we call Bruce Campbell a B-movie actor.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 10:38Robert Evans?

  The great Bruce Campbell, anyway.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  So, um, but, uh, so Barbarian Queen was actually produced by Robin Corman, who did the original in the 1960 Little Shop of Horrors. So, it wasn't, they're not like a prestige role, but she's connected, she's doing well.

• 10:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Robin Corman, yeah, that's not nobody, yeah.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, um... They gave her a foothold in the industry and a loyal cult following, too. She's like a early comic book, you know, Comic Con type thing, you know? Like, she'll show up to those things and all the nerds are like, barbarian queen. She does kinda, she's typecast, right? She's a six-foot-tall, beautiful blonde woman. She is very much typecast as either the, like, the warrior queen or the bimbo, right? She's like, she's in those two categories. And, you know, when you start reaching your 40s, that's a tough one because you're not physically the same as you were when you were in your 20s doing, you know, action movies, swinging swords around and everything.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  And also, you know, it's like, as the bimbo role, it's like, you're starting to look older, right? Of course. And I'm not trying to be derogatory. It's just the industry we live in, it's an honest thing that we have, you know? It's Hollywood. So, as the years pass, though, she leans into the identity and she's attending comic and genre conventions where she signs autographs. And she stays connected to her fans. She has a website in the early 2000s, which is something, you know, like, you're connecting, that's, you're the heartbeat of nerds if you had a website in the early 2000s.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  But, you know, Hollywood has a way of quietly moving on from people. And as the direct-to-video boom of the 80s faded, so did many of the roles that had sustained her. Her career didn't collapse so much as just narrow, you know? It's a slow erosion of opportunity. And everybody in LA was going, it goes through it, you know? It's like, there's just less roles for the older woman than there is for the young, buxom beauty or whatever, you know?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  In the early 2000s, while at a house party, she's dancing in her high heels and she slips and falls, breaking both of her wrists.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:49Robert Evans?

  Ooh.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  The accident derailed her acting career because, of course, you're not going to auditions with two broken wrists or whatever. And

• 12:59Robert Evans?

  They're doing much.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  And, and, you know, she's starting to see her career kind of slip away. You, you can't in the, in the world, in this world, in the, all the entertainment, you can't take a break. Robert, you know that you work.

• 13:11Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Seven hundred days a year. Yeah, you are working like you are a, a, a busy bee over there doing episodes all the time, which is why I'm here.

• 13:20Robert Evans?

  You gotta hustle, otherwise the pod save guys will eat you alive.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yes, and you have an amazing productive, uh, output, but it is, you know, i- if you were to force to take a long break, you know, it could damage your career because people move on, you know, that's just the fact of what happens. Um.

• 13:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  So she begins pivoting to comedy. She starts writing her own stand-up act and like, she's trying to do other things like get out of her typecast.

• 13:47Robert Evans?

  Um.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Um, around 2002, while Clarkson was still pursuing acting, she takes a job at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. She gets a job working in the foundation room upstairs, which is where musicians and industry figures and celebrities are all kind of hanging. It's the VIP room of the Hollywood Sunset Strip. Like, so you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's a good place to be still being connected, right?

• 14:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Like many who took those jobs, she understood that proximity could still mean possibility, and she hoped that meeting the right person might reopen doors that had quietly closed. Uh, it was the kind of compromise that Hollywood encourages you to like stay close enough to the spotlight so you can kind of, you know, be in proximity of good things happening. If you've spent any time in any entertaining industry at all, like you get what's going on, like some, sometimes the phone just stops ringing and you gotta start hustling in different ways.

• 14:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  On the night of February 2nd, uh, Clarkson was working there and, uh, she's still holding on to the idea that her story in Hollywood isn't finished. She's 40 years old, but she's still hopeful, still recognizable in certain circles, and still navigating that fragile space between past visibility and future chance. The night she met Phil Spector, uh, that would, you know, ring her into infamy for the rest of her life, but obviously for the worst reason.

• 15:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Lana's story is the story of a billion people, right? It's like, we've seen so many of these. You know, they flicker for a little bit, but they, you know, it's hard. This is a hard city. There is not a lot of room to have a billion Robert Downey Jr.'s, right? We need, like, people will come and go. That's how it is. It's hard. It's harder for a woman, probably. You know, like, this town chews people up and spits her out, so. But she's still hopeful. She is writing on her blogs really hopeful things all the time. I'm excited about this. I wanted to, there's no, there's no air of sadness around what is going on. And this is important because she's about to end up dead.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And there's going to be a lot of doubt cast upon her mental state at this time. But seemingly, she's a very happy person, still believes in, like, the best will come for her.

• 16:09Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  When Clarkson first encountered Specter, she reportedly mistook him for a woman. Keep in mind, she's six foot tall, he's five foot four. He's wearing big wigs and, like, dressing all crazy. Like, he's got platform heels and shit.

• 16:24Robert Evans?

  Why is he wearing, oh, because he wants to be taller? Yeah, of course she mistakes him. Yes, that makes sense, yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  He looks like an old woman in Hollywood, right?

• 16:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  By this time, he's, like, he's wearing elaborate wigs and eccentric clothing. And his theatrical presentation kind of become a part of his public persona. Right. He walked, he walks right into the foundation room. No hesitation, just, like, walks straight in there. And this is a high-class VIP area. So Lana Clarkson, being the hostess of the foundation room, is like, hey, oh! Hey, ma'am! Mrs. Lady! You know? She's, like, trying to stop him from walking because she doesn't know who he is. And he gives her the old... Don't you know who I am? I'm not a missus, like.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I'm Phil fucking Spector. Now, keep in mind, it's fucking 2003.

• 17:18Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, nobody cares.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  His last hit was in the 70s. It's been a minute, right? Two whole generations have come and gone of people no longer listening to his music regularly. So it's like, nobody knows who he is. Um, and you know, and this is a very classic LA. You don't know who I am? You don't know who I am? I can't believe you don't know who I am.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Has happened to anybody who encountered somebody who was even slightly famous in Los Angeles that you did recognize.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Besides, I wanted to tell this side story because it was one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me in the industry. I had a guy say that to me. You don't know who I am?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  And I said, I said, no, and I know tons of people, so that is so embarrassing for you.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  And they were like, and they were like, what's your name? You're never gonna work in this town again. And I was like, my name's Greasy Will, man. Write it down, take a picture, I don't give a fuck.

• 18:12Robert Evans?

  What are you gonna do?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  You know? And I was like, I hear that so often, it means nothing. It's lost all meaning to me. And he turns out, so it turns out, the next day, he calls my last boss, the boss that I had at the time, working at the studio. He calls her and she says, and this is a quote from her, direct quote, Candace Stewart, she's the homie. She said, you know that guy's killed people before. You should probably, you should probably not anger him.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  And I was like.

• 18:44Robert Evans?

  It can't have been, but were you beefing with Suge Knight?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  No, no context of or anything, just you know that guy's killed people, right?

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Not how, not why, not where.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  All right, so, um, Lana's manager, uh, steps into the situation. You know, the, he, Phil loses his mind. Manager steps in, so sorry, Mr. Spector, we got your table for you. Let's put you down, like, we got everything. And Lana is super embarrassed, she's super apologetic, like, she's pretty new to the job still. She hasn't been working there long and, uh, and, you know, she's trying, she's doing this to meet people. And now she's just angered of what she perceives to be a very powerful person in Hollywood.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  But, but again, it's like. Early 2000s, how was she supposed to know who Phil Spector is?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So she's trying to make up for it. She does her best to try and like, give him extra attention. Oh, Mr. Spector and Phil seems to really enjoy getting this like, oh, now you care about who I am feeling, you know? It's like, you know, he seems to really feel empowered by the whole thing. The waitress, if you remember, he goes, he went to Dantana's with another date, a high school friend. Then he takes her home because she's like, I don't, I don't want to get lit anymore. And he was like, alright. So he takes her home and then he comes back, starts drinking with the waitress, right? Then he takes the waitress to the House of Blues. And then at the House of Blues, the waitress is like,

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I don't want to drink anymore. I need to go home. I gotta work tomorrow, right? It's, it's like late, it's near closing time. He comes in like very close to closing time. And it's late, it's like almost 2 AM and um, she's like, I'm trying to go home. So Phil's like, go, go have my driver take you home, get the fuck out of here. I don't want to be seen with somebody not drinking. He's, he's like making fun of her. He's like mad that she won't, she orders a water. He's like, nobody drinks water around me. Are you crazy?

• 20:42Robert Evans?

  She doesn't want to party, yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  You don't want to party, you know? So um, so he sends her home and then he starts trying to put his moves on Lana Clarkson, right? She's now, she's in a position of very serious power imbalance, you know? This is, this is very Weinstein-esque power imbalance. Where now she, not only is she, you know, trying to make things up to him, but he's also feeling the joy of being in that situation and pushing things even further. He's like, have it, sit down, have a drink with me. And she's like, I, I can't, my boss says no. He's like, tell your boss that I'll leave if, if you don't sit down and have a drink. Like, you know, like he's, he's going off on this shit.

• 21:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And he clearly has never gotten used to not having that much power.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah, for sure. He still enjoys it. Like, for some people, it gets to that point, they're like, bro, it's not even like fun anymore. I only want to like, I just want to be left alone, you know? But for him, he clearly still is like, yes.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  So. Yeah, you know, I'm sure Lana let on that she was an actress, probably during the conversations. Cause that's what you do, right? You've seen this situation a thousand times in Hollywood. Cause that's networking. That's what would you believe networking is anyway? So, uh, he's telling, you know, her, "Come back to my place. Come back to my place. It's almost closing time. We gotta get out of here. Let's come back to my place in Alhambra. We'll talk about things. I'll show you some stuff." Phil notoriously loved taking people to his house and showing them his like five seconds in Easy Rider all the time and being like, "Not cinema, baby."

• 22:18Speaker 01

  So I'm sure he was like, "You know I was in Easy Rider, right?"

• 22:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Alhambra is not close.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  So, um, so the, the distance between the House of Blues and Alhambra is far.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. That's not close. That's far.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Far, right? It's like, yeah, this is, and this is important to this conversation because at two o'clock in the morning, you don't leave your safety network with an extremely intoxicated man, no matter who it is, unless you're not feeling a bit like, "I gotta take a chance on this. Like, this might be an opportunity for me." You know, and this is, this is very, this is just power balance, you know? It's just what it is. It's how, it's how Hollywood operated for a long, long time. And it's only now starting to get even the tiniest bit better. Follow me for no more inside stories of the horrible things that happen in this town.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Alright, so, um, she's thirty, thirty miles away. You know, they're gonna get into his car and drive to Alhambra. She has to be, according to everybody, she has to be really coerced. She does not wanna do this. But Phil keeps being like, "Yeah, come on, come on, come on. Let's do it. Let's do it," right? But also, keep in mind, that Phil is shithoused right now.

• 23:37Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Like, he is a tiny man. He's maybe a hundred and forty pounds, maybe like a la- a hundred and thirty pounds. Like, he's five foot, barely nothing, you know, like, and he's been drinking Navy Grog's all night. If you've never had a Navy Grog, it's mostly alcohol. It's almost all alcohol.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  That made my stomach hurt just thinking about a Navy Grog.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's horrible. But also.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Vile.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yes. And, but it's a lot. It's a lot of alcohol. And, uh, and he's been drinking them all night, right? He's slurring his words. And, and, you know, even when he's not slurring, he's pretty not like, when he's not drunk, he's like pretty not understandable to begin with.

• 24:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  And I wanna show, because, uh, so I wanna show this, uh, I need you to understand, this is what he's like when he's sober. This is an interview he gave, and this is the types of things he says and how he sounds when he is sober.

• 24:33Robert Evans?

  Excellent.

• 24:35Speaker 06

  Did you ever realize that Mickey Mouse was a black man? Mickey Mouse was the first black movie star before Shirley Temple, discovered by Walt Disney. First black star to win an Academy Award. He was black, he wasn't white. And he was in black movies, he was in movies. He was a black movie star. And that was before, during segregation. All the people were going to see him, and he didn't talk with an accent. And it was Walt Disney's voice. And nobody pays any attention to that. He broke the color line before anybody did.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 25:16Robert Evans?

  I, I have a lot of notes on that.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah? Do you, Robert? Please, tell me, tell me about the notes you might have.

• 25:22Robert Evans?

  It sounds like he's saying he was the first black movie star before Shirley Temple.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right.

• 25:28Robert Evans?

  Which kinda sounds like he's saying Shirley Temple was a black movie star, she was not.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  She was, not black, right? But, alright, so, here's, alright, so,

• 25:37Robert Evans?

  That's one issue.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  So I think, I think, I think that Phil is making a joke. Because later in her life, Shirley Temple took the name, Shirley Temple, she made her man named Charles Black and took the name Shirley Temple Black.

• 25:50Robert Evans?

  Oh my god.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  And I think-

• 25:51Robert Evans?

  That's the joke?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I think he's making a joke, right?

• 25:55Robert Evans?

  Okay, okay.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  But-

• 25:56Robert Evans?

  Well, and, you know, cause there's, there's this whole thing where like Mickey Mouse, I think there's an argument to be made, is kind of like his character is based in part on designs from like minstrel shows.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right, his black face, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:09Robert Evans?

  I thought maybe that was the argument he was making, but okay, no, that makes more sense.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Even weirder.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Oh my god. So he is like, that's what he sounds like sober. Right? So you can imagine this dude 12 Navy grogs deep at 2:30 in the morning is lit.

• 26:25Robert Evans?

  Illegible. It's like trying to, it's like trying to decipher ancient Assyrian. Yes.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  All of, all of his, all of the, the, the security footage shows him leaving the club stumbling, right? He gets in his car, he calls Lana over. She finally is like, okay, fine. They arrive at his house around 3 a.m. after closing down the House of Blues and Phil and Lana go inside and are inside for about two hours when outside Phil's limo driver Adriano de Souza hears a loud noise. He gets out of his car and sees Phil walking out the front door of his house holding a revolver. He says to Adriano, "I think I've killed somebody." You, you should listen to the 911 tapes. I did not get them because I'm a hack and a fraud. Just like, you know, it's, it's a lot of work and remembering shit is hard. But you should listen to the 911 tapes because Adriano gets on there and he says, "I think

• 27:16Speaker 01

  my boss killed somebody." And they're like, "What makes you think that?" He's like, "He's fucking said it."

• 27:21Robert Evans?

  Well, he said he killed somebody. Also, by the way, quick piece of advice for those of you who are gonna kill somebody, don't say you killed somebody.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Don't say you killed somebody. Not, not a brilliant move. Not exactly what I consider to be the most intelligent way to get out of a crime.

• 27:34Robert Evans?

  It's just one simple change you can make to your murders to have better, better responses to them, folks. That's all I'm saying.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, literally. Yeah.

• 27:44Robert Evans?

  It's just one little change when you kill someone.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Little, little legal advice here. Bastard's legal advice. I should have made that, that song.

• 27:51Robert Evans?

  Not a lawyer, but I bet a lawyer will agree with me. Don't say you murdered someone.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  I'm gonna make you a jingle for like the next one that's like, "Not actually legal advice."

• 28:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That'll be great. I give a lot out.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Adriano is, just a little backstory on him. He is a, an immigrant. He's a, I believe, Brazilian immigrant. And he, he speaks English.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Extremely well for somebody who is a Brazilian immigrant. He definitely has an accent without a doubt. But this will be called into, into, you know, the, the testimony for a lot of these. There will be a lot of questions about how much he understands English during this time. But if you listen to the, the 911 tapes, he clearly has a good grasp of, of English. He, he tries to call his, you know, Michelle Blaine, his Phil's manager or whatever, but she doesn't answer. And she says later, it's like, the only night she's ever left her phone in the car, which is really, really funny to me. Because I actually picture that she was like, just like for one night, like, I'm not answering Phil's fucking phone calls. This guy's crazy. Cause she does say, he's always calling her in the middle.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  All of his assistants, like, yeah, Phil calls me in the middle of the night just to like, be like, what are you doing? You know, like, so I'm sure she was like, I left my phone in the car. But aside, right?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  The cops show up and they don't really know what's going on. They just, there's a gun, somebody's been killed. So they show up and Phil, first they pull up and Phil is inside his house, just pacing back and forth. And they do a standard tactical approach, which makes perfect fucking sense. And Phil comes outside and he's just rambling incoherently. They're like, sir, get down on the ground. And he's like, oh, fucking, I didn't do anything. You know, like, he's just like rambling. He's visibly intoxicated. He's really trashed, right? But then he starts being like, hey, guys, you gotta check this out.

• 29:48Robert Evans?

  What?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  This woman, you know, like, he like, he starts playing like the worst dumb angle that I've ever seen. Where it was like, hey, you guys gotta check, you guys wanna see this dead body?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And he keeps trying to stick his hands in his pockets. And at this point, the cops have no idea what's going on. They keep being like, take your hands out of your pocket, take your hands out of your pocket.

• 30:09Robert Evans?

  Never put your hands in pocket. And yeah, sorry.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, for cops. Yes, for sure. Hey, these are my hands. They're here. Look at them. Look at them police video, you know?

• 30:20Robert Evans?

  He doesn't have to do that. Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  He won't do it. He keeps sticking his hands and, uh, in his pockets and they shoot him with a taser. And I don't know.

• 30:27Robert Evans?

  Okay, I guess he doesn't get to do that.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  I don't know if the taser bounced off of him and he just got an unlucky like shot of the taser. Or if Phil is just like in Hulk mode at that point or whatever. They just say the taser is ineffective in all the sources, right? So I don't know if he just is like, you think that hurts?

• 30:46Robert Evans?

  I've known a couple of people that happened to. I've known someone who ripped the leads out. So it does happen from time to time.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  I knew a guy who ripped the leads out and then broke two cop dog's legs and was charged for attempted murder. So no surprise there, right? And he was on a Herculean amount of alcohol at the time.

• 31:04Robert Evans?

  That makes sense.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Maybe a little meth, who's saying, you know?

• 31:08Robert Evans?

  At that point, yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:10Robert Evans?

  So who else is on a little bit of meth well?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  A Herculean amount, probably, according to my research.

• 31:18Robert Evans?

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• 31:20Speaker 01

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• 32:23Speaker 06

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• 33:05Speaker 06

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• 33:20Speaker 01

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• 33:25Speaker 06

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• 33:38Robert Evans?

  And we're back.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  We're the most back and we are, um, Phil has just walked out of his, uh, house with a dead Lana Clarkson in, in the foyer of his house, in the foyer. I'm gonna say-

• 33:50Robert Evans?

  Foyer, thank you.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say foyer. You know, I wanna, I wanna class it up a little bit.

• 33:54Robert Evans?

  I'll go with foyer, just to really throw a loop.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Foyer.

• 33:58Robert Evans?

  Four year, yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, solid. People are gonna love that pronunciation. There won't be a subreddit about that.

• 34:05Robert Evans?

  No.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  All right. So, um, so they're mad. He, they tried to shoot him with a taser. Phil won't go down.

• 34:12Robert Evans?

  Didn't work, didn't take.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And so the, the, the front cop has one of those big, like 40 pound shields and they just rush him with this shield. Keep again, your mind again. That is like a third of Phil Speck's body weight easily. So they fuck him up.

• 34:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that does not surprise me. Yeah, I bet that shield weighed more than needed.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Inside the house, the cops find Lana Clarkson slumped over in a chair with, um, by the front entrance. There's a gun by her left foot and blood splatter all over her shirt and her skirt. There's an open drawer beside her. And um, an empty leather holster matching the gun that is at her feet.

• 34:51Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  On the floor are her front teeth, which have been knocked out of her mouth by the muzzle of the gun.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  At first look-

• 34:59Robert Evans?

  Exactly the way you wouldn't shoot yourself.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yes, but at first look-

• 35:04Robert Evans?

  Realistically, yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  It does appear as though Lana Clarkson has possibly killed herself.

• 35:08Robert Evans?

  Sure, certainly, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  But of course, Phil can't shut the fuck up.

• 35:13Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Which-

• 35:14Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Naturally, you know? So he starts-

• 35:17Robert Evans?

  Classic Phil Spector.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  He's, he's, he's, I mean, and one cop has the presence of mind to start of, of, of an audio recorder, sets it aside. And he's like, "Would you believe it?" Like, "She just, her head just did that," you know, like, just, "Nothing, I didn't do anything. I can't believe this woman came into my house like this." Right? He's like, losing his mind, he's talking all sorts of shit. Um, but like, cops are like, "Okay, well, we're, I mean, we're gonna at least take you to jail, collect some evidence, do the due diligence." Even though believable enough of a story, but we'll, we'll get to why it falls apart pretty, it gets pretty flimsy.

• 35:54Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  He's taken to jail, he's talking like, most of the time, and then suddenly, uh, he said, and he says stuff like, "Oh, she kissed the gun." You know, like, he says like, weird stuff like that, but his stories are just like, intertwined, it's like he's, he's inventing the narrative as this is happening, as he's being questioned, as they're like, talking to him. He's inventing the narrative and just seeing what makes sense, you know, what people react to. It seems like he's a bit of like a choose your own adventure game over here. And he's just like, "If the cop's eyebrows go up, turn to page 97," you know? So, um, but eventually, he does start sobering up and realizes he should shut the fuck up. Uh, which he does, and, uh, the next day, he get, he bails himself out on a $1 million bond. Of course, he has that money, so.

• 36:40Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Uh, Michelle Blaine, his assistant, and Phil, they hole up in a hotel because the police are searching his house and conducting a thorough investigation. Immediately, the cop on the scene, the cop, the detective that's assigned to the case, he immediately realizes that this is gonna be under intense scrutiny. So he, unlike many of the other court cases that are famous for this time, we're talking OJ Simpson just happened, Robert Blake just happened. Lot of botched fucking police work in these cases.

• 37:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Intentionally or not, who knows? OJ's son probably killed him. Anyway, uh, so.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Uh, so he recognizes, I better do things by the book, I better do things right, right? So he starts suspecting Phil and he starts collecting serious evidence. And, uh, the evidence collected points that, you know, it's probably nefarious at least, right? Uh, but there's some conflicting pieces of evidence. First, Lana does have gunshot residue on her hands, but Phil does not.

• 37:45Robert Evans?

  Oh, okay.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  So Phil somehow, in this situation, has not gotten gunshot residue on him.

• 37:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, which is possible, but yeah, that definitely is like a, an argument that his defense attorney is going to be able to use, for sure.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yes, there is blood all over Lana's shirt. This is, I mean, i- i- if anybody's ever seen this type of injury, or, or, this is a bloody event. The, the, the way it, you know, the, the, the head basically compresses everything and it expels back out the mouth, which is why also her, her teeth were knocked out, right? So she has a tremendous amount of blood on her, uh, on her chest and on her legs, but it stops at a very specific point, right? Um, Phil's saliva is on her drink glass, as well as hers, suggesting that they did kiss. And it's also on her breast. So there is some sexual contact that has occurred in some manner, without a doubt.

• 38:46Robert Evans?

  Um, right.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Phil does not have blood splatter on himself, or at least not in the suggested amount had he been in that situation.

• 38:55Robert Evans?

  Um, right.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Upstairs, the police find the white jacket that Phil was wearing when he was last seen at the House of Blues. And although it has blood on it, the specs are tiny. This is not like indicative of what you would expect for someone who has just killed somebody that way, right? It's like that he is, he is conspicuously absent of any evidence that points to it. And you know, like with stuff like that, blood, you know, forensic, we've done our conversations on forensic evidence and everything being kind of a made up CSI bullshit thing. But there is a certain expectation for certain things, like the amount of blood that should be on you and the gunshot residue that should be on you, had you been the one pulling the trigger.

• 39:40Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  So they find this, this white jacket. And then they also find the gun that's on the floor by her foot. It has no blood on it and no prints. And upstairs in a bathroom, they find a cloth diaper that has blood all over it. You know, like the, like true, like baby, like old school baby. They reference this a lot. I've never used a cloth diaper to clean my guns, but apparently that's like the jam or was in the early 2000s. I don't know. They talk, they talk about it as though I'm supposed to just know that that's what was going on.

• 40:12Robert Evans?

  I'm sure you could, like, I can see why it would work and it's probably cheap. Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And as someone who loves guns, I'd never even thought about that. And I have a baby, so I don't know, man.

• 40:21Robert Evans?

  I've never had a, but I've never had access to, I've never seen a fucking fabric baby diaper.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, anyway, so they mentioned it a lot. It's a big deal, but I don't, I don't really get why the diaper part of it was so significant. But they, they, but it is that it is covered in blood and he is clearly prob, evidence points to the fact that he probably used this to clean off the gun because obviously the gun should have fingerprints and blood on it and has neither.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  What I consider the most damning evidence is that Lana was found in the chair at Phil's front door with her purse slung over her shoulder. It seems very indicative that she was trying to leave, right? They're in a big 22 room mansion and she's by the front door with her purse over her shoulder. It seems like she is trying to get out of this house.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  There's, uh, there's some, you know, like I said, some really conflicting stuff. There's, there's blood like everywhere except on Phil and there is gunshot residue again, not on Phil.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Everything in Phil's house is red. By the way, this is just a side note that I found really, everything in his house. When you look at the crime scene photos, they're all red. Everything's red everywhere. And I'm like, God damn, it's been such a pain in the ass trying to find evidence inside this house. It's just like red everywhere. It's crazy.

• 41:46Robert Evans?

  Seeking blood spatter in that house? Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  So, um, they also find Vicodin and alcohol in Lana's blood. The bullet went in her mouth and pierced her spinal cord and likely killed her almost instantly. They find a bruise on her tongue, uh, which is a very unlikely thing if she had put the gun in her mouth herself. You know, it's like, that's not an injury you have if it hasn't been forcibly put in your mouth. The cops build their case and it's not until November of 2003 that they finally charged Phil formally with murder. So a good solid six months goes by before they, you know, but they're doing their job appropriately. You can't half ass these charges. You have to make sure that coming into this, you are absolutely ready for it.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Right? Um, so something I never see in any of the documentaries about this is it's not until March 2007 that they begin the trial for Phil. The entire time he's walking around a free man. So she's killed in, in February of 2003. He does not go on trial until March of 2007. Right? He has years of just walking around free, knowing what he's done and everything that's going on, you know? So he just, you know, he's just chilling. During this time, he does his best to besmirch Lana at every opportunity. Like he starts beginning his like public narrative and his lawyers are basically like, Phil, you need to stay the fuck off of the goddamn

• 43:16Speaker 01

  like TV. And he's like, you guys don't know what I'm doing. I'm, I'm making a case. I'm gonna get there. Right?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  He um, he begins claiming that she killed herself and that he was the victim in the situation. It's like, he literally is like, "This happened to me! This happened to me, can you believe it? Like, she killed herself and this happened to me and I'm the innocent victim."

• 43:37Robert Evans?

  I had to deal with it, yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Yes, uh, he was angered by his lawyers in 2006 because they couldn't get his case thrown out. So he begins this like, series of home videos that he posts on the, what is still very much, the new internet, right? This is like, the early 2000s. He's making his own website and posting these videos on it. His, his um, assistant, Michelle Blaine, she, she helps him make these videos, right? Um, and it's, they're the most unhinged videos. Sophie, could you show the um, I forget what it's called.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Self-interview?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one. Sophie, could you show that for us?

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, I can't.

• 44:20Speaker 06

  I have anything to do with her death. She may have accidentally taken her own life. She may have purposely taken her own life. She may have been eating the gun with her dancing. She may have been doing anything. I don't know why, when, how, or where, in what circumstance, she may have taken her own life. Whether she planned to or not.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Motherfucker, are you freestyling right now? Are you? His lawyer just sitting over there like, "Are you freestyling, motherfucker? Get on script."

• 44:49Robert Evans?

  His lawyer's just pounding tums, pounding tums.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I always think, I think about, I, did you see this recent thing with the billionaire dude? I forget his name, but the billionaire dude where his lawyer's like, "If you don't shut the fuck up right now, I'm gonna kill you."

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Robert Evans?

  That's a good defensive attorney.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yes, that guy's a professional, that's why he needs a big mouth check.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  He's like, "If you give more than a five-word answer, I'm gonna fucking kill you."

• 45:15Speaker 01

  This motherfucker is out here wearing puka shells and Hawaiian shirts being like, "I don't know why she did it, she was kissing the gun."

• 45:21Robert Evans?

  Maybe she had a gun in her mouth and was dancing, I don't know.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Um, Michelle, his assistant, she says, this is where she really starts to like, the facade of Phil breaks down for her and she, she starts being like, I don't know if I'm like, cut out for being around this shit. And she tries to quit and Phil, she brings her son with her to quit because she's afraid of Phil. Her son's like giant. Phil's saying he's gonna kill her. Phil's like screaming at the top of her lungs while she's walking out. She says that Phil sexually harassed her. Claimed that she, she claims that Phil told her, hey, we should get married. So that you don't have to testify, you know, because if you were married, you can't be, you can't testify, you know? And she's like, I don't know anything, motherfucker, like.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Does she sue?

• 46:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, why are we starting this now?

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Does she sue the shit out of this motherfucker? Please tell me she sues the shit out of this motherf-

• 46:11Speaker 01

  She does sue him. She has to sue him. Uh, because he, he promises her money. He promises her all sorts of stuff. Uh, and, and he does not come through on his promises. So it does end up like all this like film stuff. She gets her names all over it and shit. It looks really bad for her. It probably does fuck up her career for a little while, but Hollywood, baby, it's probably fine.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  So she, um, she does leave. She files a lawsuit against him, claims what she, I think she does make a little bit of, get a little bit of it back, but I'm sure it most of it got lost to lawyers. Blood sucking fucking lawyers.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  So, um, so the court case, right? The prosecutors, they, they go out and they're like, hey, anybody had a gun pressed to their head by Phil Spector? And fortunately, fortunately, John Lennon is dead. So, uh, he got a gun pressed right against his head. So he got, uh, he's done for.

• 47:05Robert Evans?

  He can't speak.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I don't think he did. I think he got shot in the chest. But anyway, I'm sorry. I just, I needed that. Um, so, but they do find, they find many, many people. Uh, one of them, I'm gonna go through-

• 47:16Robert Evans?

  There's like, there's like a football stadium full of people who had guns pulled on them by Phil Spector.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  It, it was not a challenge to find people that, that it was. It was, it was really not like, so Joan Rivers testifies. Joan Rivers, the comedian Joan Rivers that we all know and loved and everything. I think she's-

• 47:35Speaker 02

  She is.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  If not, she's dead in spirit to me.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  She's dead.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  So in the, in the mid 1970s, she says she, she's at Specter's home and he, uh, she tries to leave and he won't let her. He points a gun at her head, tells her, don't fucking go anywhere. You're staying right here. Forces people at gunpoint to stay. This is the picture that they want to paint. This is what they're trying to say. Phil gets mad when people wanna go home. He doesn't like it. Um, so, uh, so Joan Rivers, she, she testifies. BJ Cook, another singer, claims that around the mid 1970s, testified that Specter threatened her with a gun during an argument while she was visiting him. Uh, she, she wasn't allowed to leave until he could calm down. Pam Shaw or Pam Jackson, depending on who, uh, reports it.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  She testified Specter pulled a gun during an argument and blocked her from leaving her residence. Kathleen Sullivan in the 1980s testified that Specter threatened her with a firearm during a confrontation at his home.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  She's a person.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  They, like, I think that, I think the end tally was like 12 people that they found that were o- open to like, yeah, Phil Spector threatened me with a gun trying to leave his house. It's always that narrative. Especially since, you know, Lana is found with her purse on her shoulder. She's trying to leave the house. This is when Phil Spector loses his mind is when you try and go home.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:59Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  So, so Specter during the trial is insane. He's, he's crazy. It's, it's, this is why, first off, um, this is why every time my pubes get a little unruly, I tell my girlfriend that I'm putting Phil Spector on trial, right? Because, uh, oh, here, let me pull this, let me pull this photo up. This is amazing. This is Phil Spector.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Broke, Robert.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  This is Phil Spector's hairdos during the trial, right? He changes his hair every fucking trial, right?

• 49:32Robert Evans?

  Oh, my God.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  This brings us to what I, this is like one of my favorite moments.

• 49:38Robert Evans?

  How we got it back. Right. Okay.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  One of my favorite moments in early Hollywood history. This is his booking photo, by the way.

• 49:45Robert Evans?

  We gotta talk about these hairstyles.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:47Robert Evans?

  We gotta describe these to the audience first.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Hold on, before we do that real quick, I would just wanna pivot and show you Phil Spector's, one of my favorite moments in internet history, right? Is during this time, because there was a thread, where they kept continuously photoshopping bigger and bigger hair.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  On Phil Spector. It's in here, it's in here. Yeah, here it is. So the internet thought this was hilarious, and they just keep photoshopping bigger and bigger hair.

• 50:17Robert Evans?

  Until he's got like the Death Star version of an Afro on his head. Yeah, beautiful.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  So he is, I mean, he is making a spectacle of this trial. Let's go to the hair real quick, you talk about the hair.

• 50:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  So he's wearing different wigs all the time.

• 50:30Robert Evans?

  First off, what's fascinating about this to me is that the first three look like mugshots. They look like he has just committed, and one of them, he has no wig and he's balding, and he looks like he got off the Con Air flight.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  That is his mugshot, by the way.

• 50:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That is, I mean, that is his literal mugshot.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:49Robert Evans?

  The other one does look like a mugshot, but he has a wig on, but he's looking up at the camera with eyes so wide. It looks like he's just seen a hand grenade go off.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  So I wanna point out, so I'm pretty sure that the second one is his actual night of the incident booking photo, and then the first one is his booking at the time of prison photo.

• 51:13Robert Evans?

  That makes sense.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  So it does, they are probably mugshot, and he does look fucking crazy.

• 51:18Robert Evans?

  Spectacular.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  The third one, he looks like Beetlejuice, which is amazing.

• 51:23Robert Evans?

  He looks like Beetlejuice. The top right one, he looks like, uh...

• 51:27Speaker 01

  He just got done with his boy band audition?

• 51:30Robert Evans?

  I was gonna say, he looks like Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder as Simple Jack. Like, that's how he looks in the top right one.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:37Robert Evans?

  And then the bottom one, it looks like he's, it looks like someone gave the super ooze that made the Teen Eight Ninja Turtles to Joe Dirt's mullet. Like, that's how he looks in the last photo. All right, that's what I've got.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, it's amazing, dude. He's showing, he's making a total spectacle out of this whole thing.

• 51:56Robert Evans?

  They're all very different, yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is, he's absolutely like, this is the joke, and, and he doesn't take any of it serious in any way, shape, or form. He's constantly arguing with his prosecution, or with his defenders. He's, he's like, he, he, his lawyers quit time after time after time. Uh, for the record, I want to put, this is, another thing, real quick, I'll, I'll go to, is, uh, over here, there's also a picture here. This is Al Pacino playing Phil Spector in a later movie, which, by the way, is so stupid and amazing. I highly recommend you watch it. Al Pacino as Phil Spector, you think, you think, like, oh, no, he's going over the top, but then you see the old videos of Phil Spector, like, he's underplaying Phil Spector.

• 52:40Robert Evans?

  Nearly pulling a gun off it enough.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he, he's underplaying Phil Spector, without a doubt. It is a really stupid, bad court doc, documentary-type style movie, but it is, it's really good. I, I totally recommend watching it. It's funny as hell. Al Pacino as Phil Spector is amazing. It's so good. Um, "Throughout the proceedings, Spector remained free on bail, continuing to live outside prison while trial unfolded. His courtroom appearances became media spectacles fueled by increasingly bizarre wig choices," which I just showed you. Uh, towering curls, unnatural things, like, he, they became symbolic of a man attempting to control public perception, even as his legal defense has fallen apart. Sophie, this is for you, Sophie.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Uh, Phil, for his part, he does acknowledge that the froze a little overwhelming, right? But he claims it wasn't out of respect, disrespect for the trial, but rather that he was paying respect to Ben Wallace and Albert Einstein, which, of course, is fucking insane.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Einstein! I fear, I fear Ben Wallace and Albert Einstein, my, my dream man.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Sophie, will you, will you play the video of Phil describing, describing this? This is, this is amazing.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  It's incredible. Robert doesn't know who Ben Wallace is.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  You will shortly.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  I had another question about the photograph that's all over the internet of you with the Afro. And what I thought was, I think he has a sense of humor. So, what was with you with that? That was a tribute to Ben Wallace, the Detroit Pistons forward. It took me four and a half hours to get my hair that way. I woke up at four, four, four o'clock in the morning. I worked late o'clock with Rachelle to get my hair that straight up in the air, like that. She perm'd it, she did everything to it. And Ben Wallace is a forward, who's the most valuable defensive player of the year. He used to be with the Detroit Pistons, the year they won, two years ago. He wore his hair like that.

• 54:43Speaker 06

  And it was a tribute to Albert Einstein and Beethoven. It was done in jest, but I was wearing my hair like Albert Einstein in those days. I was wearing my hair like Dylan. And nobody was making fun of Dylan. I spent a lot of time on it in tribute to Ben Wallace and tribute to Albert Einstein. But it's photographed far beyond my wildest dreams. But I had been wearing my hair that way for about eight months to a year, and it never photographed, like, pictures. That day, it got a little extreme. It got a little extreme. But photographed, for some reason, in one photograph. Only in one photograph.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  The fact that he even knows who Ben Wallace is, that is so crazy to me.

• 55:30Robert Evans?

  He starts with Ben Wallace, the one, this one guy who was at the time significantly, like, famous and relevant. Famous, yeah, enough, yeah, relevant. And then it's like, but also it was about these other guys who are a lot less relevant right now, that I'm just gonna name it, making it increasingly unlikely that I'm telling the truth. Yes. And he's like, and also Mozart. Like, okay, brother.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Is this like, right, is this like right after the Pistons win in 2004?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  I, I, I would assume so. He does, like, he does like sports, like, he goes to, like, he's, he's seen often at, like, games and shit like that.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  I know, I saw him at a Laker game when I was a kid. I know, I saw that fucker, yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  He also, I don't know if you noticed it, but he hilariously, like, never admits to wearing a wig. Like, in that thing, he said, "I woke up and I was, I had, I worked on it for five hours and everything." And they're like, "So I watched this documentary, I forget which one it was, but they actually interview his wig guy."

• 56:30Speaker 01

  He's like, he's like, "No, man, I fucking make his wigs for him, man, I make him wigs." He comes in, he's very particular about his wigs, he comes in all the time, but he like, he will never, ever admit that he's wearing a wig. There's a reporter that interviews him, and they say that, while they were interviewing him, they're like, "Yeah, so what about your wigs?" And he's like, "What wigs? What wigs? I don't wear wigs. What are you talking about? I did, this is my natural hair." And he goes and he gets a fuckload of, like, photographs, like, an armful of photographs, and comes back and dumps them in his lap and is like, "See? See? These are all me with my hair. This is real hair."

• 57:00Robert Evans?

  Normal people keep this many photos to prove that their hair is real. This is a normal thing.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  This is a normal thing to do. I don't know what you're talking about. You know who won't wear wigs to their murder trial?

• 57:12Robert Evans?

  That's right, the Washington State Highway Patrol, because they don't get charged with murder when they kill people.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, see?

• 57:18Robert Evans?

  There we go.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Good for them.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 57:22Speaker 04

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• 58:27Speaker 06

  I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Hamid, Alex Carr, Fei-Fei Li, Palmer Lucky. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial,

• 59:11Speaker 06

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• 59:17Robert Evans?

  This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity.

• 59:22Speaker 06

  Listen to The Builders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  And we are back. So the defense did their best to slander Lana. They portray her as a failed B-movie actress who was down on her luck and depressed. They pushed the theory that she was a star fucker, essentially, and that, oh, she only went with Phil in the hopes that, you know, she could take advantage of a celebrity. And when that didn't work out, in the middle of the night, she killed herself out of a fit of depression. They brought in her friend, who is this shitty woman. Her name is Pumpkin Pie, for the record. That's her name, that's all she's ever referred to as.

• 1:00:12Robert Evans?

  Pumpkin Pie.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Yes, and she is the least believable witness that you've ever seen. Like, her testimony is fucking bonkers. It's like, everything's like, she texted, she texted me that morning and she was depressed. She's always depressed, she hated her life. Um, she says that Lana always said she was gonna kill herself if she didn't get this role, or, you know, like, like, things that I, some things that like, I believe, right? Like, but like, but like, in the way that we all have a sense of humor, like, dude, I'll fucking off myself if I don't get this role, you know?

• 1:00:43Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  I should definitely get this one.

• 1:00:46Robert Evans?

  Not in an actionable way.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yes, um, yeah, a- and, uh, they, they do everything to portray her as a washed up failure. Uh, they even played her sketch comedy reel, which admittedly was not very good. It was, it wasn't good, right? Uh, and the defense, they, like, the, uh, the, like, Phil's wife laughs during she snickers, you know, like, while they're playing it. They make it out to be a laughable situation, but this kinda backfires on them in the sense that it actually humanized her really hard. Juror number nine, uh, from the, from the trial says, "The reel had the opposite effect and humanized her," this isn't a quote, I'm just reading it. "The reel had the opposite effect and humanized her even more to the jury.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  But despite that, the jury could not come to an agreement and they were deadlocked at 10-2 and the judge declared a mistrial." So, Phil Spector goes free.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Horrible.

• 1:01:42Robert Evans?

  Justice is done.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  So, yeah, thank you, and the end. No, no, we get justice, we get justice, my friends, okay?

• 1:01:51Robert Evans?

  That's the one thing I know about the Phil story, yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  So, uh, I, I, real quick, I just wanna bring up Rochelle Spector. I mentioned her a few times already. Rochelle Spector was Spector's third wife. She met him initially in the 90s, uh, but they didn't get married in 2006, probably 'cause she was like underage, I think, when she met him. Uh, and also, yeah, gross, Phil, but, you know, at least he does wait, you know? Like, we're from an era of gentlemen Jimmy Page, David Bowie, George Harrison. Let's not be- Forgetting that our idols were all horrible, horrible sexual deviants.

• 1:02:25Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Um, but, but Phil always did seem to wait till they were proper adults, so good, good for him, no matter how weird it was.

• 1:02:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's something you can say.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  But they do get married in 2006 while Spector's waiting on trial, and then, uh, she's decades younger than Phil, and unlike his previous partners entered his life when his music career was long over and his reputation had already become what it was as, you know, murdering, reclusive, eccentric. So there's very serious, very serious questions about her motivations.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, girl, what?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  For doing such a thing. Yes. Her motivations absolutely seem to be because she knows bro's about to go to jail and she only has to hold out for a few more years and then she gets in possession of his.

• 1:03:07Robert Evans?

  She's in a good situation here. She's smart.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  She's not in, no, I, take, take, sorry, pause. That was not a good situation. He's on trial for murder. She could, that is a dangerous game. It's not worth the check. What are you doing? What are you doing?

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Somebody has a moral compass and a, and a, and a aversion to danger.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Diversion to the guy.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  I'm over here thinking, I'd have done that, you know? I'd have married Phil Spector at this point. It seems like a, it seems like a proper risk.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely not. And he looks like shit. Anyways.

• 1:03:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but the money.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  She, so she's always like in the media, talking to the, the, the media and shit. Uh, she's behind him all the time. She speaks to reporters on his, on his behalf, insisting on his innocence. Um, she also gets repeatedly warned by the judge during these trials to, to shut the fuck up or they're gonna throw her out because she'll be like, something will happen and she'll be like, that's not true. You know, like, just, just being disruptive and stupid.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Embarrassing ass woman.

• 1:04:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Um, in 2009, Spector was retried for the murder of Lana Clarkson, and this time it lacked the spectacle of the first trial. After the first trial, the, the cameras aren't as interested. People don't really give a shit anymore.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  It's like, that was a big deal then, but it's not a big deal now. No one cares. Uh, his team went from several high-profile lawyers down to just one. Uh, but the prosecution stuck with their premise. Phil Spector has a long history of gun violence and a fear of abandonment that ended in him using his gun as a threat. And when Lana Clarkson rebuked him and tried to leave, he became enraged and killed her. This time, the jury did come back in agreement. Phil Spector had killed Lonnie Clarkson. Phil was convicted of second degree murder, and he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:05:01Robert Evans?

  Cool.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Justice. Yay.

• 1:05:03Robert Evans?

  Hey, it happens sometimes.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes it happens. Now, briefly, I do want to talk about what I actually think is the most likely scenario. I've spent a lot of time digging into this and like, I've developed my own theory, which is a bit, I mean, maybe it makes some people mad, but I, we always want to put the victim in a positive light, but I don't think she would have gone from Alhambra to Hollywood if she wasn't desperate and looking to take advantage of this situation, right? I don't think that, like, you know, so 40 is old in Hollywood years, absolutely. And I think the momentum loss and everything made her desperate to really make something happen, right?

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Which, we know, like, you know, desperate is the situation where people will fly or fall, and in this situation, she just became the victim of a shitty situation, right? I think she went with Phil, hoping she could use him to get an opportunity, but I don't think she had any intention of sleeping with him. I think when Phil tried to get sexual with her, she was like, no, this is my limit. I am not interested in this in any way.

• 1:06:16Robert Evans?

  Waving a gun around, you seem like you have a temper. A lot of reasons not to want to get with Phil Spector.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yes, but I do not want to negate, like, the conversation that should be had is like, he was ridiculously drunk. He is absolutely like, like, blind drunk at this point, right? And he's probably sexually assaulting her. That is very definitely a likely situation. But I think she got frustrated and was like, all right, I'm out of here. You promised me one drink. I've had my one drink. It's time to go. And she put on her purse, and I think Phil, like he has done many, many times before, pulled out his gun, sat on her lap, and forced it into her mouth and said, like, I'm gonna kill you. If you fucking leave and I truly believe honestly that it was an accidental that he killed her accidentally.

• 1:07:04Robert Evans?

  Negligently, but yeah.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  I think it was yes negligently is what I would consider absolutely.

• 1:07:09Robert Evans?

  Totally possible, yeah.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  If you look at all the accounts, every single account that I read about Phil Spector waving a gun around and threatening people. To a T, they all said, I didn't really think Phil was gonna kill me. I think he was just drunk and and being dumb. Right? I think he had, I think he had done it so many times in his life. And I think that he had been, and I think that this one time he was too drunk and he pulled that trigger. And and and he negligently killed her and I, because the earliest things he say it was an accident. I didn't, I didn't mean to, there wasn't, there was one supposed to happen, you know, like those are the first things that he says. And I truly believe that that is probably what happened. I think that he is just a bad gun owner.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Who murdered somebody who it's still murder. It doesn't change the fact that he killed her.

• 1:07:58Robert Evans?

  It's he and it doesn't change the the punishment that he deserves. It's just like, yeah, I can buy that shirt.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  I just, I personally believe, you know, and and also, uh, it doesn't change also, you know, like Phil Spector is a horrible person. His his legacy leading up to this is one of being an absolute piece of dog shit.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  A menace to society, yeah.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is a menace throughout his entire life.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  You wrote something in in your script that you did not read that I think is relevant to you, which is that you wrote that earlier in the day that she had bought multiple pairs of shoes. Which I think is very important to mention.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  She absolutely was not killing herself.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Like despite the, you know, like you don't buy a bunch of shoes and then be like, ah, tonight's the night, you know, it's like.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  That's not really.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  You don't make future plans if you're gonna off yourself and she had future plans. She talked about her future plans. It does not in any way point towards her being suicidal.

• 1:08:55Robert Evans?

  The evidence is much more suggestive of Phil either killing her, as you said, fucking up, doing the thing he does all the time. It's easily likely to kill someone.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  I think the explanation for the lack of gun residue on his hands was probably that her hands. Were surrounding his hands while he had a gun held to her face or possibly all the way in her mouth.

• 1:09:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, maybe she's fighting him because it's terrifying and the gun pulls the trigger. Right? Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  I think that that is the most valid explanation. He also absolutely cleaned up afterwards. There's no prints on the gun. There's no blood on the gun. He absolutely cleaned the gun afterwards in order to try and obfuscate some of this situation.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  And then, and then spent years and years trying to ruin this woman's reputation.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, he goes to jail in 2009. He spends six fucking years free after he kills this woman.

• 1:09:45Robert Evans?

  That's nuts.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Six years. America. Yeah. This is the country I lost my leg for. Sort of half lost my, I lost the feeling in my leg. I lost the feeling in my leg. That counts. Um, yeah, so, uh, this, it sucks. Uh, he spends the remainder of his life incarcerated. He, he spends decades, you know, prior to this emotion, constructing these walls. And then he gets imprisoned by the walls that, you know, we construct as society. That's my, ooh, look at that moment, right? We all feel smarter now. Uh, in December of 2020, Phil contracted COVID while in prison. And in January of 2021, he died of complications from COVID.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  I didn't mean to laugh, but.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  He calls his daughter and it's like, and to tell her, because she, he loses contact, but he calls her to tell her, I didn't die on my birthday. Look at me, you know?

• 1:10:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  That's his, that's his big, you know, thing. His daughter, again, till the end of his life, she, and still today, Nicole, she, she proclaims his innocence. And she stands by him. She says, wonderful father. She loves him.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  What's, what's, what's?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  His other kids fucking hate him. Show up during the trial and they're like, fuck this dude. He did shitty things, but his daughter.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  I just wonder what wig he was buried with.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Actually, Sophie, if you wouldn't mind pulling up. Oh, actually, it's me this time. Uh, me this time.

• 1:11:11Robert Evans?

  Oh, no.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  I will pull up. We do have a picture of Phil Spector, the last picture before he dies. It looks like this somewhere. Here it is, bam. There he is. Phil Spector in all of his glory.

• 1:11:25Robert Evans?

  He does look like an extra from the Santa Claus.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  No wig, crooked teeth, hearing aids in because he's probably going deaf at this point. Uh, it is a stark contrast of everything about him. He dies, you know, pretty much deaf. No hair. It's all the things that he fought his entire life. And here he is at the end of his life. Go fuck yourself, Phil. That's how you go out. Now, because, because that is a bit, it's a bit of a happy ending. I'm not gonna pretend it's not a happy ending, right? No, he's dead. Because I like to leave us on in even happier ending. Because we go through a lot, don't we, here at Bastards fandom? We, we go through a lot, right? It's just, it's, you know, I, I, I listened to the Himmler episodes. I, I, it was hard, man. Or the, uh, Varenti Beria episodes.

• 1:12:13Robert Evans?

  Oh, Varenti, yeah, good old Beria.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy. Uh, this shit's sad, you know? Uh, so I wanna leave you with a happy ending.

• 1:12:22Robert Evans?

  I love a happy ending.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  After escaping Phil Spector in 1972, Ronnie Spector, or as she would later go by her maiden name Ronnie Bennett again, entered what she later described not as a triumphant comeback, but a long grinding fight to reclaim her life, identity, and voice. The divorce left her financially constrained and legally silenced, while Phil retaining control over much of her catalog and publishing. For years, Ronnie struggled with alcoholism and instability, problems she openly acknowledged and as scars from her captivity. Like, this is what she went through and this is why she is like that, right? But she never fully disappeared. Throughout the 70s and 80s, she continued recording and performing sporadically, collaborating with artists like Eddie Money, Joey Ramone, and slowly rebuilding her sense of self outside Phil's shadow.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Survival, not stardom, was the priority. Hold on a second.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Fuck, I forgot to mention the Ramones. He pulled a gun on the Ramones and didn't let them leave the studio. I don't know how I missed that one. That's a big... So, the Ramones are recording, uh, Rock and Roll High School, and Phil is brought in to record them, and he pulls a gun on the whole band and says, "You're not leaving till you get the song right." Right?

• 1:13:31Robert Evans?

  Ah, Jesus.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Some members of the band later deny it, but Joey Ramone said it happened, so it's like the... But, yes. So Joey Ramone, definitely, they probably in the studio were like, "Hey, so Phil, crazy, right? Fuck." That guy, that guy was a nut, right? You know, I'm sure they had some, some, some memories that they shared. Um, in the 1990s and 2000s, Ronnie experienced a long overdue reprisal. As rock history began to properly credit girl groups and female vocalists, her influence became undeniable. "Be My Baby" was canonized as one of the most important pop recordings ever made, and Ronnie herself was recognized not just as Phil Spector's muse, but as a single irreplaceable voice.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  She reunited with the Ronettes for selective performances, and released new music on her own terms, and became a beloved figure among younger musicians, who saw her both as a pioneer and a survivor.

• 1:14:26Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Her 1990 memoir, "Be My Baby," was especially important, breaking decades of silence and reframing her story as one of endurance rather than victimhood.

• 1:14:36Robert Evans?

  Ah, that's good.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  I will tell you, this book she wrote is tremendous. She deserves every ounce of credit for being a survivor that she is, because she looks at all this stuff the same way I look at, like, surviving the Iraq War, you know, where it's like, like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but I'm gonna make jokes out of it instead of, like, letting it destroy me. She, she absolutely has such a strength and such a sense of humor about all the things that happened to her. Even the coffin, she's like, "I guess he thought that was gonna scare me, but gross 5'4", you know? Like, let's not, let's not kid ourselves. It wasn't like he was gonna physically put me in there.

• 1:15:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  When Phil Spector was convicted and in prison, Ronnie did not gloat. Uh, she simply said, "Justice has been done." When she died in 2022, she was remembered not as someone who survived a monster, but as an artist whose voice changed popularly. And she did get to outlive Phil Spector. She got to see him die and lived a happy year and a half, two years damn near, with, without him in, in the world. So, good on her. Thankfully, she found happiness and success despite going through this whole thing.

• 1:15:52Robert Evans?

  And she got to see him die. Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  And that, my friend, Robert, is your two-week vacation.

• 1:15:59Robert Evans?

  Thank you.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  All summed up the story of Phil Spector. He is without, what do you think? Wait, where, uh, Kent, do you, let, uh, let's first ask this. Uh, what was, what was the most insane thing you think of all, of all of this?

• 1:16:15Robert Evans?

  The sheer number of very famous people he pulled guns on. Just think about how much clout you have to have to pull a gun on like the Ramones.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  John Lennon?

• 1:16:25Robert Evans?

  The John Lennon. And everyone would be like, don't, don't say anything about it. Like Leonard, hey, man, I know you wrote Hallelujah, but you gotta keep your fucking mouth shut here. Like, just say hallelujah, he didn't pull the trigger, am I right, man?

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Sophie, what do you think? What do, what's the craziest thing of this whole thing?

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  I don't know, that Mickey Mouse video.

• 1:16:44Robert Evans?

  That part was nuts, yeah?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  He just, he offered that willingly. He didn't, nobody prodded him. They were like, who do you think was the first? Shirley Temple and Mickey Mouse.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  It's so funny, man. There's so many parts about this guy. And here's why it's so interesting to me, right? Is because as a musician, as a producer, as a person who's worked in the music industry, I've met this guy a hundred times at least already. I've met this guy so many times. I've absolutely seen people who I guarantee in, in 30 years or whatever, I'm gonna be sitting at home and the news is gonna come on and I'll be like. Yeah, I saw that coming. Yeah, I saw that coming. That was absolutely gonna happen. I predicted this for sure. You know, can't wait for the tell-all court interview.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I mean, that's the thing that I really enjoy about this story is, is the, you know, it is, it is generally just the story of a shitty, shitty, shitty person. There's a lot of those in Hollywood. But I, I like to separate, like, this is one of, like, for example, right? When Michael Jackson, when, when a lot of the, the, the, the most recent things have come out, I kind of made a choice, like, I feel like, man, I, I don't need to listen to your music anymore. Like, it, I, it, all the classics are there, but I just don't, I don't, I'm not gonna get mad if anybody else does. But I definitely, I'm, I'm, I'm drawing a line between that was, that was wrong, and I don't like it. Lost prophets, I don't listen to lost prophets anymore.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  But Phil Spector had such an undeniable hold on so many important artists and so many songs, that it's just like, to erase that would be erasing a core part of my being that existed before Phil Spector killed Lana Clarkson in 2003. You know, like, all of those songs existed in my life before then, and, and, and it really is like, it's, it's difficult. It's, it's a difficult thing. And, and, and also, you know, I like to take some tiny bit of solace in the fact that, like, I, I can tell other people how, how horrible and shitty he was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was the shittiest person. He made some bangers.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  He did some amazing things that, that are, like, just not, have not been replicated in the music industry. And, undeniably, a huge sonic inspiration for me. Like, I literally consider myself to be the stereo Phil Spector. Like, this dude, uh, he's, he was divorced three times. Nailed it, Phil, you know? Uh, I, no, but musically, musically, really, uh, he, he, he does, he does so much. I truly believe in what he does, like, the way that he crafted the music that he did. It's, it's how I like to use the studio as part of the process of making music, to have these creative moments. And I'm largely inspired by him and The Beatles.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  In doing that, and so it is hard to remove that. So my justification is that I'm just out here telling you guys how shitty it was. So it alleviates my conscience.

• 1:19:57Robert Evans?

  Well, there's worse ways to alleviate your conscience. Phil Spector found a few of them.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Man, so, uh, thank you so much for letting me do this. This was so much fun. Uh, if you're interested in the music from the episodes, I'm gonna give that to Sophie so she can post it. I'm also going, I'm gonna give even like the stems and the sessions. So if you're a musician and you want to remix some of this stuff to make your own little home bastards.

• 1:20:23Robert Evans?

  Weird versions of our socks.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  You can grab those from Sophie. I'll put them on my stuff too. Uh, also, I'm fighting the music industry from the inside. I actually, I did all the label thing, obviously. I have a Grammy and I've done the whole label thing. But I decided to, to be the change I want to see in the music industry. And so I am starting my own label. I am working very hard at pushing my own identity in this. That is different from the exploitive AI-driven ownership of publishing bullshit that the industry has become. And I really am trying. So if you care about that at all, guilt trip for all of you listeners.

• 1:21:01Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Come and check out my new artist. Her name is Violet Lux. I'm going to release the song concurrent with this, with these episodes. So that you can, you can hear my very first artist that I'm signing to the label. It is, it's entirely Phil Spector inspired type stuff. I'm wall of sounding with the music. But if you like 90s grunge rock, if you like, uh, Alice in Chains, if you like Mazzy Star, if you like Nirvana, if you like Smashing Pumpkins, this is gonna be right up your alley. So come check it out. Um, the vinyl will be coming out too, so check that out as well. Uh, and, and yeah, I got a podcast and other shit. So I, I thank you for letting me do this, man. This has been so much fun. Uh, I love telling my friends, this is like what we do when we're just hanging out. It's like explaining shitty people to each other.

• 1:21:47Robert Evans?

  Phil Spector in particular.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  So it's, it's fun to get to do this on the, the stage that you have become. And I'm so proud of you, man. It's awesome to see you doing so well with all this. And fuck all you nerds on the subreddit who talk shit on Sophie. I swear to God, I'll hunt you down like that Jay and Silent Bob movie and beat the shit out of you.

• 1:22:05Robert Evans?

  That's right. That's what we do.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  This has been a podcast. That's how I end my podcast.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Bye. It is over.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/AtBehindTheBastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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