This article originally appeared in the July 2003 issue of Esquire. It contains outdated and potentially offensive descriptions of sex, ethnicity, and class. You can find every Esquire story ever published at Esquire Classic.The moon’s a thin smile on a cloudless spring night in Los Angeles. The chartered Gulfstream, sleek and dark, all bone-white leather, burled walnut, and spotless, mirrored bulkheads sits alone on the tarmac. We leave at 12:01 A.M.; that’s what the e-mail that came this morning said. I know different: This baby goes nowhere until Phil Spector boards.Captain Bayar, fit, fresh faced, and apple-cheeked, happy as a clam, asks if I think we might have long to wait. He’s got the Huck Finn freckled grin and the Billy Budd blue eyes, and the grin doesn’t lose luster and the eyes never blink when I say, Oh, yeah, we might be waiting some. He’s all right with VIP lollygagging: If the client has four grand an hour, young Bayar has the wide-open sky, a topped-off fuel tank, and the whole starry night ahead. Original Esquire magazine spread.Esquire I can handle a wait, too. I’ve been dogging Spector for years, hoping to write his story. In 1999, he did a brief thing with Esquire via e-mail; after that, we kept in touch—e-mails, his post-Hall of Fame induction parties in New York, visits to his home when I was in L.A. Doing the story always was a long shot—he’s nearly as famous for being shy as he is for the… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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Inside the Undoing of Phil Spector
