My dark days with Phil

As music legend awaits the final appeal of his murder conviction and Al Pacino plays him in a new film, Vikram Jayanti remembers Phil Spector’s tortured struggle between genius and monster

NOW it’s Phil Spector’s story too, about to be twice-told anew, once in his last-chance appeal being considered by a federal court and again by David Mamet in a new film to air later this month.

Both argue that whatever happened to cause the bloody and gaudy 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson — at Spector’s home, a gun owned by the legendary music producer discharged in her mouth — Spector should not have been convicted. Innocence is not the question. The right to a fair trial is.