Spector and the Beatles split

In his time, Harvey Philip Spector has been accused of many things. None as serious, of course, as the murder charge the legendary record producer currently faces in Los Angeles, or even the extraordinary treatment he meted out to Veronica Bennett (aka Ronnie, lead singer of his 1960s protégées The Ronettes) during their ill-fated marriage, such as the time he locked her in their Hollywood mansion.

Notorious for having pulled guns during studio sessions on collaborators as diverse as Leonard Cohen and Dee Dee Ramone, the reclusive, autocratic auteur has rendered adjectives like "troubled" and "turbulent" wholly inadequate. Or, as John Lennon once put it: "The least you could call him is eccentric, and that's coming from someone who's barmy."

Now Spector is about to face another accusation, though compared with his current travails it is unlikely to be his primary concern. The imminent release of a new and remixed version of Let It Be, The Beatles' last and most controversial album, which Spector finished, mixed, edited and overdubbed after the band had effectively disowned it, is bound to prompt the question: "Was it Phil Spector, as opposed to the muchmaligned Yoko Ono, who really broke up The Beatles?"

Consider the case for the prosecution. During the first half of the Sixties, Phil Spector had not only been the most successful record producer in America, but the most prominent. Indeed, he could be said to have virtually invented the notion of record production as a glamour profession.

Manufacturing a parade of attractive but subservient black girl groups, notably The Ronettes and The Crystals, and using them to front a small army of session musicians, he created a succession of "little symphonies for the kids" thanks to his patented "Wall Of Sound". Despite the occasional misstep - The Crystals' He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) was banned by US radio - he racked up an astonishing run of hits which foundered when one of his finest productions, Ike and Tina Turner's epic River Deep - Mountain High failed to ignite US charts.

Broken-hearted, he retired to his LA mansion for a marathon sulk until his friend Allen Klein, who was managing three of the four Beatles, networked him up with John Lennon. The Beatles were, at this point, approaching the end of their long and winding road. Their Let It Be rockumentary project had generated miles of film and audiotape of the band attempting, and failing, to record a new album.

As the film went into post-production, the group abandoned the tapes and started from scratch with a new album, Abbey Road. Nevertheless, a film soundtrack was still contractually required. The original tapes, mixed by engineer Glyn Johns, clearly reflected the lamentable state of the band's collective morale.

McCartney, at odds with the others over the involvement of Allen Klein, started work on a solo album. Obliged to complete Let It Be, Lennon and Harrison handed the tapes over to Spector for a salvage operation. Thick layers of orchestration were slathered over several tracks to conceal the cracks. Three Beatles were happy with the result. One wasn't.

"I, personally, thought [overdubbing orchestras] was a really good idea," claimed George Harrison. "He was given the shittiest load of badly recorded shit," said Lennon, "and he made something out of it. He did a great job."

Ringo Starr also concurred: "I like what Phil did - he's mad as a hatter but when it came to music he knew what he was doing."

But Paul McCartney - who hadn't even been consulted - was aggrieved, particularly over what he saw as the vandalising of one of his favourite new songs. "I heard the Spector version again recently, and it sounded terrible. The fact that people were putting stuff on our records that one of us did not know about was wrong."

In lieu of formal credits, the album carried a back-sleeve blurb citing "the warmth and the freshness of a live performance: as reproduced for disc by Phil Spector".

Glyn Johns and The Beatles' long-term producer George Martin merely received a vague "thanks to" acknowledgement. They were not best pleased. "EMI came to me," recalled Martin, "and said, 'You made this record originally but we can't have your name on it.' I asked them why not and they said, 'Well, you didn't produce the final thing.' I said, 'I produced the original. What you should do is have a credit saying: Produced by George Martin, over-produced by Phil Spector.'"

Spector effectively ended up with a second career as inhouse producer for two ex-Beatles, working on several albums for Lennon, including Plastic Ono Band and Imagine; and Harrison's All Things Must Pass.

It was of course The Beatles who finally broke up The Beatles. Phil Spector cannot justifiably be accused of anything more than having inadvertently served as an accessory after the fact. Unfortunately, he doesn't qualify for time off for good behaviour.