Phil Spector wants the sort of respect that Bob Dylan received nearly 40 years ago when Princeton presented him with an honorary doctorate.
“I am concerned with the fact that I have not been made a doctor at any college and Bill Cosby has, even Dylan has,” he says in the BBC documentary, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector.” “I think I’ve offered more to the American culture and music…or at least as much as they…and a lot of the people that have given them, Mrs. Bush and people like that.”
Steve Clarke reports from London that the knighting of Beatles’ producer George Martin  is something that clearly irritates Spector, who in the film compares his work to that of Leonardo da Vinci.
He rails against the Beatles saying the tapes he was given for “Let It Be” were “garbage” and that the recording of “The Long and Winding Road” featured an uncommitted vocal performance by Paul McCartney and Lennon playing bum notes on bass guitar.
Referencing Lennon who, according to Spector, described him as a genius who is a go-between for other geniuses, the producer said Brian Wilson had spent more than four decades attempting to discover how he concocted the wall of sound.
“I’d like to have a nickel for every joint he smoked trying to figure out how I got the ‘Be My Baby’ sound…He is demented about it,” Spector said.
It bows on BBC2 on Saturday and will be shown at next month’s Intl. Documentary Festival in Amsterdam. In L.A. the jury has been selected for  his retrial in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.