There are two ways that Phil Spector, legendary rock producer and eccentric genius, could have lived up to his reputation. He could have linked up with some hot new band and produced a great album. Or he could have done what he allegedly just did.

Spector was charged this week with the shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson, whom he’d apparently met on Sunday night just hours before the incident occurred. And while the story was tragic, it wasn’t too great a shock for anyone who’s followed the ups and downs of Spector’s career. A prolific artist in the ’60s, Spector was more lately known as the Hunter S. Thompson of rock. He was a participant in John Lennon’s 1974 " lost weekend, " overseeing the drunken sessions for Lennon’s Rock & Roll album. He famously pulled a gun on the Ramones during sessions for 1980’s End of the Century, making them play the first chord of " Rock ’n’ Roll High School " for eight hours. Though rumors often spread about Spector hooking up with a modern artist — Céline Dion, Starsailor, and the Vines, a diverse list indeed — he never pulled it back together in the studio.

Now that Spector has enlisted O.J. Simpson’s former attorney Robert Shapiro to represent him, there are likely plenty of voyeuristic news stories to come — it’s only a matter of time before someone digs up the infamous single he produced for the Crystals, " He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss). " But Spector’s considerable accomplishments are already getting lost in the shuffle: one oft-quoted report (originally from UK newspaper the Guardian) says that Spector produced Elvis Presley, which wasn’t the case. The records he did produce (especially the Ronettes’ " Be My Baby, " the Righteous Brothers’ " You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, " and Ike and Tina Turner’s " River Deep, Mountain High " ) were some of rock’s most emotional. His disciples include everyone from Brian Wilson to the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt. With a strong affinity for female singers, he designed the massive " wall of sound " that sounded like heaven on AM radio. But Spector’s personal life was never said to match the glories of his music; singer Ronnie Spector often described her marriage to him as a kind of captivity.

The weirdest sideline, however, is a story that appeared on the BBC’s entertainment-news site last weekend (and has since been pulled). The news was that the Beatles’ final released album, Let It Be, is about to be reissued with Spector’s contributions erased. Originally called Get Back and conceived as a back-to-basics album, it was nearly a casualty of the Beatles’ break-up. A year after the abandoned sessions, the tapes were turned over to Spector, who nearly ruined them with string and brass overdubs — it was the first major botch of his and the Beatles’ careers. (Spector would later redeem himself with George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.) In the BBC report, both surviving Beatles were unusually critical of Spector’s contributions, and engineer Glyn Johns said the new release would let us hear the tapes " before Phil Spector puked all over them. " The story was released just days before the shooting, and you have to wonder what Spector’s erratic mind was making of that.