How do you remember someone when you’ve never met them? By their reputation, their achievements, by the most important things they’ve done in their lives, by the things that defined them as a person.

I never met Phil Spector. ‘Rolling Stone’ thinks I should remember him like this:

I can’t stomach that. To me, the implication is: he’d have been a hero if only the jury hadn’t convicted him for murdering whatshername.

Her name was Lana Clarkson. He murdered her in 2003. He was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years. He died of COVID-19 in the prison hospital at the age of 80 with seven years of his sentence still to serve.

Here’s how I will remember him: