Spector Charged With Murder

Ten months after actress Lana Clarkson was fatally shot at his Los Angeles home, record producer Phil Spector has been charged with her murder. Spector, who has been free on $1 million bail since shortly after the February 3rd shooting, was scheduled to be arraigned on the charge late Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles.

The producer -- renowned for his work with such artists as the Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Beatles -- has denied killing the forty-year-old Clarkson. His attorney Robert Shapiro released a statement Thursday restating Spector's innocence: "We have assembled a team of scientific experts which is among the most respected and prestigious in the world. Based on this team's findings of this horrible human event, any jury will conclude that Phil Spector is not guilty. We will prevail."

After an eight-month investigation, sheriff's deputies turned over "a lot of information" to the district attorney's office last month, according to Lt. Dan Rosenberg of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau. At the time, police officials said they determined that the bullet that killed Clarkson was fired by Spector. He is expected to remain free on bail as he awaits a preliminary hearing, which is expected to take place within several weeks, according to a district attorney's office spokesperson.

Spector and Clarkson reportedly met for the first time on the night of her murder at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, where she was working as a hostess. They then returned to Spector's estate and exited his chauffeur-driven car. The car's driver called police around 5 a.m., claiming that he heard shots fired in the house. Police arrived and found Clarkson lying in the foyer of Spector's mansion with a gunshot wound to her face. A gun was found near the body.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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