Phil Spector is dead. 81 years old, natural causes. Not in prison, where he has been for the last eleven or so years, but in a nearby hospital. Hopefully alone.

There are going to be a lot of remembrances today talking about how he was a pioneering music producer, how he created the wall of sound, how he is responsible for some of the best music ever made. These things are true. What is also true is that he was a murderer and an abuser and just an all around rotten person in a startling variety of ways.

People will talk about his talent. And yes, he may have had talent, but he destroyed talent as well. When he married Ronnie Spector (neé Bennett) of The Ronettes — one of the great talents of her generation — he pulled her right off the stage at the height of her career and kept her locked in his mansion, with bars on the windows, monitoring intercoms, surrounded by barbed wire and guard dogs and ten-foot electric gates. Literally. She didn't see so much as a movie the entire time they were together. He surprised her with adopted children to force her to stay. He also bought a large golden coffin and told her that if she tried to escape, he would kill her and put her dead body on display in it, telling her mother it was "so I can keep an eye on her after she's dead.". He hid her shoes so that she could not escape, and when she finally did escape, with the help of her mother, it was in bare feet.

"I knew that if I didn't leave I was going to die there," she said.