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.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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