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Today's New York Post includes a handful of choice excerpts from Tearing Down the Wall of Sound, a forthcoming biography of Phil Spector in which the producer disses every recording artist of the last fifty years.
- Michael Jackson is "the most depressing, heinous thing," Spector said. "Starting out life as a black man and ending up as a white woman. What's that all about? But the King [of Pop]? He's no King . . "
- On Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys leader and songwriting legend who battled mental illness for years, Spector declared, "I don't feel sorry for Brian Wilson. I never thought he was that talented to begin with . . . I'd be more impressed if somebody with a brain idolized me."
- Oasis, the British band fronted by Liam and Noel Gallagher, are "jerks."
- On Tina Turner: "I made her famous, and she resents that . . . But give it up, for God's sake . . . Why say, '[Bleep] you.' Just leave me alone."
- Bruce Springsteen, who borrowed the "Wall of Sound" technique for his breakthrough hit "Born to Run" in the 1970s, "should have paid me royalties . . . Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery until it becomes plagiarism." Spector also said the Boss' career is stale: "He's protected himself with three new songs and 25 old ones."