Spector Trial Watch: Producer's History With Guns

When we last checked in on the Phil Spector murder trial, the producer had been called "demonic" by a former assistant, who also said the defendant chased her with an Uzi and threatened to shoot her if she didn't have sex with him. Today we learned that "If you leave me, I'll shoot you" is the pick-up line of choice for Spector, at least according to two witnesses who testified Wednesday. Melissa Grosvenor, an ex-girlfriend, said that Spector refused to let her leave his faux-castle one night after dinner in the early 1990s. She said Spector paced, gun in hand, while "cursing and talking crazy." Grosvenor escaped the next morning, but Spector later left this message: "I've got machine guns and I know where you live." The next witness, music industry photographer Stephanie Jennings, told the court about a wild night in New York after the 1994 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions. Spector allegedly barricaded Jennings in her hotel room, and with gun in hand, said she "wasn't going anywhere." Team Spector countered by pointing out via cross-examination that Jennings continued dating Spector after the events in question. We'll keep you updated as the trial continues.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

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.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter