Phil Spector Moved To California Facility For Prison Sentence

"Wall of Sound" producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector will serve his 19 years-to-life prison sentence at the California Substance Abuse and Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, CNN reports. While Spector doesn't actual have a substance abuse problem that requires treatment, the facility is often used for "inmates with safety concerns, such as celebrities, gang dropouts or those whose crimes make them a target of other prisoners," a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections said.

Spector was sentenced last month after being found guilty in the retrial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, who died of a gunshot wound in Spector's mansion in 2003. The facility, where Robert Downey Jr. served time for a probation violation in 1999, features jail cells that are slightly more spacious to accommodate prisoners that require wheelchairs. Neighboring Corcoran State Prison houses Charlie Manson.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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