Ready for another trial

Phil Spector’s circle of confidants has shrunk in recent years, but Wednesday, after the district attorney’s office pledged to retry the recording industry icon in the slaying of actress and nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson, people close to the producer said that he had embraced the hung jury as a positive sign and was ready to defend himself once again if necessary.

“I spoke to him not 45 minutes ago, and he was very happy and he is ready to handle whatever comes next,” longtime friend David Kessel said Wednesday afternoon. Kessel said the 67-year-old Spector, in a moment of relief, told him he was looking forward to munching on a celebratory hot dog at Pink’s on La Brea Avenue.

“It was a human moment. I mean it’s not real sensational, but it shows he’s a human guy and that place is where we have had many lunches,” said Kessel, who used to be a member of Spector’s elite crew of session musicians and still proudly calls himself a member of “Team Spector.”

Another of Spector’s friends, musician Paul Body, said that it had been hard for many of the record mogul’s supporters to watch the trial coverage and the many unflattering ways in which Spector had been portrayed.

“Nobody knows what happened up there at the house -- it just pains me to see him go through all this and hear what people say,” said Body, whose friendship with Spector dates to the late 1980s. “I think he looks the way he looks now because of the trial. It’s a lot to go through. . . . At least a mistrial is better than a guilty verdict.”

Spector’s success story won him many friends over the course of a career that led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- the musical pioneer worked with the likes of John Lennon, Tina Turner and the Righteous Brothers and became wealthy from royalty checks for his many signature American pop hits. But through the years the producer’s well-documented volatility and tantrums cost him some of those acquaintances as well.

One of them was Hal Blaine, the drummer who played on many of Spector’s biggest hits and was himself inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Blaine’s point of view is skewed by the fact that his daughter, Michele, was a personal assistant to Spector but, after Clarkson’s death in 2004, parted ways with Spector amid a bitter dispute.

On Wednesday, Blaine wondered whether the parade of expensive attorneys who represented Spector since his arrest had depleted Spector’s fortune. There are also the looming legal bills of perhaps a second criminal trial and an expected civil lawsuit from Clarkson’s family.

Win or lose, the continuing legal odyssey probably will cost Spector millions more.

“If he lives through it, he will be broke by the time it’s over,” Blaine said. “Watching him during the trial, I don’t know that he has the ability to start this whole process over again. I wonder if the guy will ever have a happy day again in his life.”

But plenty of Spector’s longtime friends hope that the beleaguered industry icon will indeed have many happy days left. One is Bob Merlis, a long-respected music industry publicist who worked for many years at Warner Bros. Records and now owns an independent firm.

“It’s a fact of life that we are all going to have to live with . . . that he was tried on murder charges and there was not a verdict,” Merlis said. “I still communicate with him and I can tell you he is spirited still in his legal defense and involved in his legal situation -- he is deeply, deeply analytical on the court issues and has a grasp of them -- but this has been quite an ordeal. This trial is something I would wish on my worst enemy, but it is not something I would wish on a friend like Phil.

“No matter how many times ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ plays on the radio” -- it is said to be the song with the most U.S. airplay in the 20th century -- “there has to be a point where more money goes out than in,” Merlis said.

Marky Ramone, a member of the Ramones, one of the many acts that worked with Spector in his more prominent years, was a supporter during the trial and also speculated Wednesday that there would be leaner financial days ahead for Spector.

“I think if he loses a civil trial, he will have to sell off the publishing rights and the mansion and live a less ostentatious lifestyle. As for the criminal case, I think the D.A. should swallow his pride and move on to something else. I don’t think there will be any new evidence, so I don’t think there should be a second trial.”

But Kessel, one of Spector’s confidants dating to the glory days of the 1960s, said he knew “the tank is not empty” and “the money to defend him will not run out.”

Kessel declined to be more specific, saying that as one of the people on the trial’s witness list he felt uncomfortable going into too many details about his defendant friend, who is free on bail.

Merlis said that Spector, who has been largely a curio figure in the music industry since the early 1980s, seemed to be “on the cusp of a comeback” just before Clarkson’s death. That’s why, Merlis said, he deeply hopes that Spector can reach a point where “creatively he can return and have great records.”

“But if not, he certainly has been involved with a lot of music that will last an eternity.”

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geoff.boucher@latimes.com