In 2002, the reclusive and legendary record producer Phil Spector gave his first interview in twenty-five years to Mick Brown. The day after it was published an actress named Lana Clarkson was shot dead in Spector's LA castle. This is Brown's odyssey into the strange life and times of Phil Spector. Beginning with that fateful meeting in Spector's home and going on to explore his colourful and extraordinary life and career, including the unfolding of the Clarkson case, this is one of the most bizarre and compelling stories in pop history.

Classic biography of one of the great figures of modern popular music, the inventor of the 'Wall Of Sound', legendary sixties record producer Phil Spector. First published in 1972, this book has been revised and updated to include details of Spector's life over the last 30 years, including the shooting in bizarre circumstances of actress Lana Clarkson at Spector's Los Angeles mansion on February 3, 2003.

In 2009 Phil Spector, the legendary record producer, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson. It was an ignominious climax to a life of staggering highs and scarcely believable lows. Wall of Pain, Dave Thompson's biography of Phil Spector, has now been updated to include important details of the seemingly interminable trial. The architect of the Wall Of Sound, Spector's already iconic status in the music world was enhanced by his work with The Beatles. Writer and producer of countless hits, his innovative genius in the studio revitalised music production in the 1960s and changed the way we listen to music forever. But there was always a dark side to Phil Spector. His success became over-shadowed by his reputation for eccentricity and excess, his fractious personality and fascination with handguns eventually proving a lethal combination. Featuring interviews from those closest to him, including former wife Ronnie Spector, Wall of Pain concludes the painful tale of pop's tortured genius.

New York Times bestselling author Carlton Smith, one of the award-winning journalists who covered the Green River Killer case, examines the rise and fall of a musical legend whose self-destructive personality resulted in murder in Reckless: Millionaire Record Producer Phil Spector and the Violent Death of Lana Clarkson. In the early morning hours of February 3, 2003, police were summoned to the spooky Alhambra, California castle of legendary music producer Phil Spector. There they discovered the body of actress Lana Clarkson, dying in a chair, shot through the mouth. Spector claimed she had killed herself, but was soon charged with murder. The pop music genius, who revolutionized music from the Beatles to the Ramones, was making headlines again. But Spector, notorious for his eccentric behavior, volatile temper, and fascination with guns, pleaded innocent. What really happened on that fateful pre-dawn morning in Spector’s hilltop mansion? As the controversial wunderkind’s life of fame, money, and excess was coming undone, a true Hollywood mystery was about to unfold.

This book presents a wide array of methods applicable for reading data into R, and efficiently manipulating that data. In addition to the built-in functions, a number of readily available packages from CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network) are also covered. All of the methods presented take advantage of the core features of R: vectorization, efficient use of subscripting, and the proper use of the varied functions in R that are provided for common data management tasks. Most experienced R users discover that, especially when working with large data sets, it may be helpful to use other programs, notably databases, in conjunction with R. Accordingly, the use of databases in R is covered in detail, along with methods for extracting data from spreadsheets and datasets created by other programs. Character manipulation, while sometimes overlooked within R, is also covered in detail, allowing problems that are traditionally solved by scripting languages to be carried out entirely within R. For users with experience in other languages, guidelines for the effective use of programming constructs like loops are provided. Since many statistical modeling and graphics functions need their data presented in a data frame, techniques for converting the output of commonly used functions to data frames are provided throughout the book.

To encourage effective self-study and hands-on experimentation, the author accompanies his presentation of every concept with an example, either using data sets that are distributed with S or easily created from them. It should not be necessary to enter any data to recreate the examples in the book.

Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.