Years before the music producer shot and killed Lana Clarkson at his home in 2003 — for which he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison, where he died — Spector pulled a gun on the “If I Could Turn Back Time” singer when she confronted him for releasing music she recorded without her permission.
He knew “he couldn’t pull that shit with me,” Cher told Yahoo Entertainment of the 1974 incident.
Cher had known Spector for years, having first met him in 1962 when she was 16. She detailed in her new book — Cher: The Memoir, Part One — that after leaving Sonny Bono, she was hoping to take her solo music to a new level and she reconnected with the “Wall of Sound” creator. At the time, Spector was producing John Lennon’s Rock ‘N’ Roll — a cover album with songs from the late ’50s and early ’60s — and asked Cher and Harry Nilsson to sing background on it.
When they got to the studio, the former Beatle was storming out after a disagreement with Spector. Not wanting to waste thei time, Spector asked Cher and Nilsson to lay down vocals for a Martha and the Vandellas song called “A Love Like Yours” that Lennon could listen to later and learn from. It wasn’t supposed to be released because Cher and Nilsson were under contract with different record companies.
Fast forward a few weeks when Cher got a call from her label saying Spector illegally released the recording in Europe, which was a violation of her contract. Her friend drove her to Spector’s L.A. home to confront him. She said she greeted him with a hug but asked what he was thinking because it was clearly in violation of her contract. She said Spector became agitated and told her that he could do whatever he wanted.
Cher claimed Spector then picked up a revolver she hadn’t noticed on a pool table and twirled it on his fingers. Furious, she said she unleashed a verbal tirade on him, warning him not to mess with her or her music again. She said Spector apologized and she got the heck out of there. In the car, she recalled the troubling scene to her friend but felt he did it for show, not to hurt her.
Asked if she had ever told that story before putting it in her book, Cher said, “Well, to friends, but not to people. What would I do — just go around telling that story?”
The reason he stood down, in her mind, was “because I knew him when he was young and when he was kind of crazy,” she said. “I think he was 21 or 22 and I was close to him in the strangest kind of way because I didn’t take shit from him. I just didn’t.”
Cher met Spector, who was a self-made millionaire by age 21, for the first time through an early boyfriend, Nino Tempo, a singer and musician who worked for Spector at Gold Star Studios. From day one, when they were first introduced in 1962, she didn’t take his crap.
“I met him with his best friend [Tempo] and the first thing he said to me [in French] was: ‘Would you go to bed with me?’” she recalled.
Cher said Spector didn’t think she’d understand his uncouth proposition or have an answer, but she shot back — also in French — “Yes, for money.’ And from then on, we had this really strange relationship.”
Their lives intersected again soon after when Cher started dating Bono that same year. He worked on Spector’s production team and would bring Cher to the studio with him and she never put up with Spector’s nonsense.
“Sonny used to get so upset because he’d say, ‘Please, please, don’t do this. He’s my boss,’” Cher said. “But it didn’t stop me.”
Spector ultimately gave Cher her first musical break. When singer Darlene Love missed a recording session in 1963 when her car broke down, Spector asked Cher to fill in as a background singer. It was her first time stepping up to a mic, and while she almost fainted, she became a regular backup singer for him after that. She went on to become a Grammy, Emmy and Oscar winner.
In February 2003, Clarkson — a model and actress with bit parts in Scarface and Fast Times at Ridgemont High — was fatally shot at Spector’s home.
A nightclub hostess at the House of Blues in L.A., she met the producer and agreed to go to his mansion in the L.A. suburb of Alhambra for a drink. An hour later, at 5 a.m., Spector’s limo driver said he heard a gunshot and saw Spector exit the house holding a gun. Spector allegedly told the driver: “I think I just shot her.” Clarkson’s body was found in the foyer of Spector’s home.
Spector later told authorities it was accidental suicide, but he was charged with second-degree murder. He went on trial twice — there was a hung jury in 2007 — and was found guilty in 2009. Both trials included testimony from other women who claimed he threatened them with guns, including veteran music talent coordinator Dianne Ogden, who said he chased her around his house with an Uzi. She ran for her life, to her car, and never saw him again.
Spector maintained his innocence in Clarkson’s death until he died in 2021.
Spector was also accused of abuse by his second wife, singer Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes. She wrote in her 1990 memoir that Spector kept a gold coffin in their basement and told her he would kill her if she tried to leave him. She claimed he kept her locked away in their mansion, subjecting her to psychological abuse, but she escaped barefoot in 1972 with the help of her mother.
“I knew that if I didn’t leave at that time, I was going to die there,” she wrote.
