Phil Spector, the eccentric and revolutionary music producer who transformed rock music with his “Wall of Sound” method and who later was convicted of murder, has died. He was 81.

California state prison officials said he died Saturday of natural causes at a hospital. 

Spector was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. After a trial in 2009, he was sentenced to 19 years to life. 

Clarkson, star of “Barbarian Queen” and other B-movies, was found shot to death in the foyer of Spector’s mansion in the hills overlooking Alhambra, a modest suburban town on the edge of Los Angeles. 

Until the actress’ death, which Spector maintained was an “accidental suicide,” few residents even knew the mansion belonged to the reclusive producer, who spent his remaining years in a prison hospital east of Stockton. 

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Decades before, Spector had been hailed as a visionary for channeling Wagnerian ambition into the three-minute song, creating the “Wall of Sound” that merged spirited vocal harmonies with lavish orchestral arrangements to produce such pop monuments as “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Be My Baby” and “He’s a Rebel.” 

He was the rare self-conscious artist in rock’s early years and cultivated an image of mystery and power with his dark shades and impassive expression. 

Tom Wolfe declared him the “first tycoon of teen.” Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson openly replicated his grandiose recording techniques and wide-eyed romanticism, and John Lennon called him “the greatest record producer ever.” 

The secret to his sound: an overdubbed onslaught of instruments, vocals and sound effects that changed the way pop records were recorded. He called the result, “Little symphonies for the kids.” 

 

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Can the ‘Great Green Wall’ carry out Sankara’s ecological, pan-African dream?

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Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s folk-hero president, once marshalled a nation to halt the spread of the Sahara. Decades after his brutal death, a pan-African project of epic scale and ambition is aiming to reverse the creeping desertification that threatens to engulf a vast region, accelerating climate change, migration and conflict.

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Burkina Faso, a landlocked country lashed by the hot and dusty winds of the Sahara, was once a land of lush forests, high grass and impetuous rivers, Captain Thomas Sankara, its revolutionary leader, was fond of saying.

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“Back then, it was the roots of our trees and grass that bound together the soil’s fertiles humus, withstanding the force of torrents and floods,” said the “African Che” in a landmark speech detailing his plans to reforest the country.

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“Today, all the rain that falls on Burkina Faso runs away to other countries, to the sea,” Sankara added in his 1985 address. “We will hold it back through our struggle.”

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The man who renamed the former French colony of Haute-Volta as Burkina Faso — meaning the “Land of the Honest”, or “Upright” — was ahead of his time in recognising climate change and desertification as the single biggest threat to the wellbeing of its people.

“The desert is at our gates, it’s already upon us, ready to engulf us,” he warned. In order to turn back the tide, Sankara launched a massive tree-planting drive to “regreen” the country, halt soil erosion and foster sustainable agriculture. His “fight against the desert” was both “ideological” and “existential”, a means to empower the impoverished nation and guarantee its survival.

“Step by step, tree by tree, we will create this great park of 10 million trees,” he promised. “Even if it takes 10 million years.”

Just two years later, aged 37, Sankara was mowed down by soldiers in a military coup. But his vision of a “wall of trees” holding back the encroaching desert has taken root in a pan-African project of breathtaking scale, a cross-continental barrier stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

Halting the desert

An African-led project, the Great Green Wall aims to buttress the fragile ecosystems of countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara. Its advocates say it will restore huge swathes of degraded land, capture carbon emissions, create millions of green jobs, stem mass migration and reduce conflict in a hotbed of jihadist militancy.

On Monday, the ambitious but underfunded initiative received a much-needed shot in the arm with donors at a conference in Paris pledging more than $14 billion to speed up the Wall.

“We are now standing shoulder to shoulder with the entire African continent,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the One Planet Summit.

“The future of the Sahel region depends on the Great Green Wall,” added Akinwumi Adesina, the head of the African Bank for Development. “Without it, the Sahel region as we know it may disappear.”

A train station swallowed by the encroaching desert in Sudan. © Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah, Reuters

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Sankara was long dead when the Great Green Wall was launched in 2007, but the project is in many ways his brainchild, argues Sylvestre Bangré Ouédraogo, a former environment minister who grew up in the same town as the revolutionary leader.

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“Sankara began building Burkina Faso’s own barrier against the desert and worked hard to inspire other countries,” he says. “He would warn them, ‘Today the desert is creeping into Burkina Faso, but tomorrow it will be Ivory Coast’s turn and then Liberia’s’.”

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The centrepiece of Sankara’s barrier was a vast reforestation drive that required every household, village, school and business to plant saplings and tend to tree nurseries. Both Burkinabes and foreigners were expected to plant trees on special occasions, such as weddings. At times the president would personally roll up in his trademark Renault 5 — the cheapest car of the day (he famously banned ministers from using luxury cars) — to ensure they did.

Ouédraogo, who served as head of environmental affairs in the Ouagadougou area during Sankara’s time, recalls frantic preparations to ensure venues were always decked in green whenever the president was due: “When he arrived and saw plants on the stage he was happy; when there were none he frowned and summoned us to do better.”

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Sankara declared drastic curbs to tree-felling and livestock grazing, the main drivers of deforestation. He even considered marshalling the air force to “bomb” the country with tree seeds in the hope some would sprout. “You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness,” he would say when challenged over his unorthodox practices.

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Thomas Sankara celebrates the second anniversary of Burkina Faso’s revolution on August 4, 1985, with a suitably green backdrop. © Daniel Laine, AFP

“Some of his methods were, let’s say, ‘empirical’, but there is no disputing the vision and ambition,” Ouédraogo says. “He never missed an opportunity to stress that however poor Burkina Faso may be, it had a purpose and a mission. Sadly, he did not have a chance to carry it out.”

Sankara’s pioneering environmentalism was not entirely abandoned after his death, but the impetus and urgency vanished.

“He w