Spector settles

A small punctuation point in a long, sad story: Phil Spector has settled a wrongful death suit brought against him by the mother of Lana Clarkson.

Should have gone to Spect-haters (sorry)

It can't be often that TMZ reacts to a story in the Financial Times, but it's all over David Mamet's interview with the pink 'un.

Mamet is working on a biopic about Phil Spector, and he told the paper he doesn't think Spector is a killer:

"I don't think [Spector] is guilty. I definitely think there is reasonable doubt ... they should never have sent him away ... If he'd just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him."

I'm not sure that Mamet really understands the way "regular citizens" with shot people in their hallways are treated by police - generally they get less room for doubt than Spector did.

Anyway, TMZ reports that friends of Lana Clarkson, the woman he shot in the face, are unhappy:

Clarkson's friends have banded together -- and have fired off a letter to the director, claiming his comments were "mind-boggling and wrong in so many ways."

According to the letter, obtained by TMZ, the group's main concern is that "the loathsome, lying, gun-abusing convicted murderer of our friend Lana Clarkson will be portrayed with some kind of sympathy."

Lana's friends want to remind Mamet -- whose upcoming film stars Al Pacino and Bette Midler -- that Spector was CONVICTED by a jury of his peers ... and plead, "Please refrain from rewriting history for 'creative license.'"

"Jury of his peers" isn't quite right - they had trouble barking up a dozen hair-addled crazy music geniuses, especially as Arthur Brown was already busy that week.

You can understand Clarkson's friends being upset, but there's a slightly alarming suggestion in their letter than once a jury has handed down its verdict, then you can no longer discuss the facts of the case. There's a lot of people who should never have been in prison who have been sent there by a jury of their peers. If Mamet believes he has a case, he should at least be allowed to explore it.

We've had lots of letters

Well, one, actually, but it's a quite interesting one, from Andrea Pearson. Who she? She's with The Climb, whose song about Lana Clarkson somehow turned up on the ContactMusic site during the jury deliberations in the Phil Spector trial, and from there to here. Andrea offered her band's side of the story:

I genuinely did write the song with the best of intentions - what can I say? I'm a geek! I've written songs about Kurt Cobain's life, Marti Pellow's drug addiction, and Channel 4's Derren Brown! (PLEASE don't ever quote me on that!) Not that you'd know that any of those songs are about those people. The Lana song was a bit different. I called it just "Lana", and when it came to making a demo EP, I thought it'd make a change to actually point out the song was about a real person, so named it "Who Shot Lana Clarkson". It was actually a play on Who Killed Laura Palmer (from Twin Peaks) or Who Shot J.R (or even Mr Burns from The Simpsons). Although it's been sent out as a demo, I never thought for one second that Lana's family and friends would hear it. I just hoped at the time (autumn 2005) that some nice label would say "hey, this demo's ok, so let's give this band lots of money and help them record their songs professionally, because at the moment the demo sounds a bit ropey"!

As for my "long mediation on the guilt or otherwise of Phil Spector" the quotes were just taken from a private email that I wrote to one of Lana's friends - I'm hardly going to say I think the guy should walk away free! I swear I didn't know it was going to get quoted in a press piece. If I had, I'd have said that I actually think Phil Spector was a musical genuis (in his time), and that it was probably all a very nasty accident, but he should still be held accountable. I'm certain (from all I've read) that it wasn't suicide, and that she'd still be alive today if he hadn't insisted she'd gone home with him. I wrote the song because the story was tragic, not because I thought other people would find it interesting.

Anywhooo, I feel better for getting that off my chest. Maybe I have a "desperate need to be thought of as good-ish"! My band's about to get accused of being "too nice" on a reality-talent-show because we didn't argue with the judges and don't dress like rock stars. (All the other bands in the competition looked like they were out of a Wella advert.) Unfortunately that's the nicest thing they could say about us, as the rest of their comments were, um, really harsh! (Bad sound on stage, wasn't our fault, I swear!)

Unlike ContactMusic, we did check with Andrea before publishing this, by the way. It's interesting to get the context behind this story - especially the way it appears to have ended up on the internet in the first place - and the motivation looks a lot less cynical when put back into context.

You can make up your own mind - and hear more of the band's music - on the band's Soundclick page.

Here we go again, then

The judge in the Phil Spector trial might be ruing his firm line on not accepting a manslaughter verdict from the jury; with them unable to decide on murder, he's had to declare a mistrial and is now thinking what to do. He'll announce his decision on October 3rd.

As you survey the circus, it's worth remembering that Lana Clarkson is still dead.

Flogging sales off a dead woman

We're sure that The Climb really did write a song about Lana Clarkson with the best of intentions, and not to try and get a bit of cheap publicity. We do wonder, though, if ContactMusic thought through the likely implications of publishing Climb singer Andrea Barber's long mediation on the guilt or otherwise of Phil Spector at a time when the case is still being considered by a jury.

Mysterious man from UNCLE sought

There's been some muttering about how Lana Clarkson and Phil Spector had apparently never met before she was found dead in his house - as if it's somehow wrong to murder someone on the first date - but there isn't that much distance between them as it might seem.

The Oracle at the University of Virginia points out that they've got a co-star in common - David "Sapphire and Steel" McCallum, who did the Big TNT Show with Spector and the Haunting of Morella with Clarkson.

McCallum, of course, also once stuck out an album of apparently straight-faced playboy pop.

Spector at the feast

Well, to be fair to Phil, if we'd been forced to sit in a small soundproof room listening to Starsailor over and over, we'd probably fly into a murderous rage as well. We're guessing his unfortunate houseguest must have made the mistake of saying "Actually, I agree with Paul - Let It Be does sound better without the strings..."

Meanwhile, at King's Reach Tower, a sidebar is being prepared: "Didn't Marvin Gaye shoot someone?" "Nah, he was murdered" "What about Lennon?" "Has any pop person actually shot anyone before?"

Alanisly, Kim Howells was in the Commons yesterday talking about guns and music - he obviously focused more on the dangers of gangsta rap than the wall of sound. Apparently, people who suggest that his belief that the lyrics are bad is misplaced are just liberals, he says. There was poverty in the 1920s and 1930s and people didn't go round making records about guns, he said. Angela Eagle piped up that a lot of rap didn't mention guns at all, you know - we've always liked Angela, especially since she started listing rap acts like she was Clement Freud on Just A Minute - Grandmaster Flash, Ms Dynamite (now, of course, The Acceptable Face of Singing Black People), Missy Elliot.

Oddly, 1Xtra's News TX seems to have missed the story entirely.