Trivia / Ronnie Spector

• Approval of God:
  • Spector has developed relationships with some of the younger artists who cite her as an influence and has covered their songs.
  • Her performing on Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" could count as this. Money obviously was looking to Spector for inspiration when writing the song and has stated that he would have scrapped it if she had turned down his offer to appear on it with him. He had no intention of recording it with anyone else.
  • Similarly, she showed her approval of The Raveonettes by performing guest vocals on "Ode to LA".
  • Spector approved of Amy Winehouse. She covered Winehouse's songs in concert, developed a relationship with her family and contributed to her biographical documentary Amy. She released a cover of Winehouse's "Back to Black" as a single in tribute when Winehouse died in 2011.
  • She visited Brian Wilson backstage in 2002, where she praised "Don't Worry Baby" and lamented that Phil Spector wouldn't allow The Ronettes to record a version of it. ^note Wilson specifically wrote "Don't Worry Baby" to be an answer song to The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and originally offered it to them before The Beach Boys recorded it themselves. Ronnie has covered it as a solo artist.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • According to Eddie Money, she was his for "Take Me Home Tonight". He was initially unhappy with the original draft of the song, feeling it was too sentimental and cheesy, so he reworked the chorus to instead be a callback to "Be My Baby" and came up with the idea of recruiting Spector to be a guest vocalist. It worked.
  • Steven Van Zandt credits her for saving the E Street Band during the late 1970s, when he recruited her to serve as their vocalist and frontperson in Bruce Springsteen's absence.
• Breakup Breakout: Ronnie Spector has carried the torch of The Ronettes' legacy entirely on her own for 50 years, largely because the other two members left public life completely following the group's breakup.
• Career Resurrection: After spending more than a decade trying to establish a solo career, Spector's career was revitalized in the late 1980s by appearing as a guest vocalist on Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight".
• Colbert Bump:
  • Receiving one of these from Eddie Money sparked the Career Resurrection Ronnie experienced in the late 1980s.
  • David Letterman also deserves credit for helping spark her 1980s resurgence through her multiple appearances on Late Night during the decade. She would also make semi-regular appearances on the subsequent The Late Show with David Letterman through the early 2010s, sometimes as part of The World's Most Dangerous Band/CBS Orchestra.^note She was friends with Letterman's bandleader Paul Shaffer.
  • Amy Winehouse sparked a resurgence of interest in her starting in the late 2000s.
  • Owing so much of his creative inspiration to The Ronettes, Brian Wilson has done his part to help cultivate and polish their legacy over the subsequent decades.
• Creator Backlash: Spector wrote in "Be My Baby" that "Try Some, Buy Some" "stunk" and agreed with the critics who said that her vocals weren't compatible with George Harrison's musicianship. She also mentioned that she never grasped the lyrics or the themes of the song.
• Creator Couple: With Phil Spector when they were together.
• Follow the Leader:
  • To say that Amy Winehouse idolized Ronnie Spector is a major understatement. Not only was Spector Winehouse's main musical influence, but her beehive hairdo, distinct makeup and clothing were all done to mimic Spector's appearance.
  • Brian Wilson developed a legendary obsession with "Be My Baby" starting with the first time he heard it on the radio in 1963. Claiming to have listened to the song thousands of times, emulating its sound became his life's purpose and he is known to listen to it many times in a row on a daily basis. The Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" was meant to be an Answer Song to "Be My Baby".
• Fountain of Expies: Ronnie Spector codified the image of a female pop singer in the 1960s. Her look, style and attitude was widely copied by subsequent acts and many fictional characters in the media. Female singers to this day continue to co-opt Spector's image.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Phil Spector kept much of The Ronettes' recorded material locked away in the vault for decades.
  • "Try Some, Buy Some" went out of print quickly and remained relatively unobtainable aside from a cover version that Harrison performed himself on "Living in the Material World". The single remained out of print for nearly 40 years until it was reissued in 2010.
  • Her debut solo album "Siren" is almost impossible to find, though it has made appearances online as of late.
• Reality Subtext: The subject matter of Ronettes' songs seemed to follow the trajectory of the budding relationship between her and Phil Spector. (First came "Be My Baby", followed by "Baby I Love You", etc.)
• Revival by Commercialization: While "Take Me Home Tonight" revived Ronnie's career, "Be My Baby" being featured in the TV show Moonlighting and the dramatic opening of Dirty Dancing solidified a revitalized public interest in the Ronettes. This also prompted Ronnie to sue Phil Spector for a cut of the royalties as they didn't have a prior agreement regarding the Ronettes' music being licensed to the media since such a thing was mostly nonexistent in the early 1960s. She ultimately prevailed and won a $1.5 million judgement against Phil.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: The Ronettes only released one studio album, performed a limited amount of concerts and broke up four years after they became famous. However, they helped define the sound of the 1960s and are today considered one of the greatest and most influential pop groups of all time. That's the reason why Ronnie commanded so much respect and attention later in life despite ostensibly being a washed-up oldies singer.
• What Could Have Been: Could The Ronettes have been as big as The Supremes if Phil Spector didn't intentionally suppress their career? We will also never know what would have happened had they been better able to utilize their working relationships with some of the biggest groups of the decade, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
  • To that point, she claims in Be My Baby that The Ronettes could have been on the plane with The Beatles when they famously first touched ground in the United States at JFK airport in February 1964, but didn't go because Phil Spector wouldn't allow it...because he wanted to ride on the plane with them and have all the media attention on himself. One could only imagine the massive Colbert Bump they would have gotten had they stepped off the plane behind the Fab Four. She also claims that John Lennon made romantic advances at her and they could have dated, but she turned him down because she was in love with Phil Spector. One could only imagine how differently both their career trajectories could have turned out if they had dated each other instead.