Was that a coincidence?

Leading female pop singers of the early sixties had a private and professional relationship with men who weren't exactly good at eating cherries: not as equal partners, of course, but as "creatures", property, tortured objects - Tina Turner (with Ike), Diana Ross (with Motown boss Berry Gordy) and Ronnie Spector with her husband Phil, the builder of the Wall of Sound, that sound layer upon sound layer piling up the production method that made pop music sound bigger than life with a lavish amount of instruments and majestic reverb, and thus only on top of it actual format brought.

The human organ of an idea

Edo Reents

Editor in the features section.

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And Ronnie Spector, the lead singer of the trio and girl group prototype The Ronettes, was the human organ for Phil Spector's idea, from which not so many records emerged, but which is still effective today. So, less because of her anything but voluminous, tremolo-affine voice, but because she sang the most famous and perhaps also the best wall-of-sound song, she is one of the most important interpreters of that time: "Be My Baby" (1963). This less than two-and-a-half minute piece of music history, written by Phil Spector with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, is probably the closest thing to what Phil Spector might have had in mind. It would be worth investigating separately what part Jack Nitzsche has at least in this one song; at least he arranged itthen worked with the Rolling Stones and Neil Young and contributed the music to "One flew over the cuckoo's nest".

Collegial complications

The rest of the material from the Ronettes debut, which actually led to "baby" and / or "love" in every second track, fell off only very slightly: "Baby I Love You" and "Do I Love You" were also such miniatures. Melodramas, which the Ronettes performed with their typical mixture of seriousness and innocence, strangely distant and which had a significant influence on Debbie Harry's band Blondie. Ronnie Spector stood out from the Ronettes, which also included her sister and her cousin, just like Diana Ross from the Supremes, with all the collegial complications. But instead of building her up as a solo star after her end, as Berry Gordy did with Diana Ross, Phil Spector, who was already completely mad at the time, made her life hell until the divorce in 1974, locked her on the Hollywood estate and let her the first,Handing out a ridiculously meager alimony payment of $ 1,300 in 5-cent coins anyway. The attempt at liberation by the Beatles, who are friends of the Ronettes, only threw singles off. If you listen to her four high-energy records, which have been released since 1980, with great authority, you don't even want to know what kind of artist she, the many up-and-coming singers who value unconventionality, became a role model under more favorable living conditions could have been. Well, one year after Phil Spector (FAZ January 19, 2021), Veronica Yvette Bennett, who came from New York, died at the age of 78.The attempt at liberation by the Beatles, who are friends of the Ronettes, only threw singles off. If you listen to her four high-energy records, which have been released since 1980, with great authority, you don't even want to know what kind of artist she, the many up-and-coming singers who value unconventionality, became a role model under more favorable living conditions could have been. Well, one year after Phil Spector (FAZ January 19, 2021), Veronica Yvette Bennett, who came from New York, died at the age of 78.The attempt at liberation by the Beatles, who are friends of the Ronettes, only threw singles off. If you listen to her four high-energy records, which have been released since 1980, with great authority, you don't even want to know what kind of artist she, the many up-and-coming singers who value unconventionality, became a role model under more favorable living conditions could have been. Well, one year after Phil Spector (FAZ January 19, 2021), Veronica Yvette Bennett, who came from New York, died at the age of 78.became a role model, could have become under more favorable living conditions. Well, one year after Phil Spector (FAZ January 19, 2021), Veronica Yvette Bennett, who came from New York, died at the age of 78.became a role model, could have become under more favorable living conditions. Well, one year after Phil Spector (FAZ January 19, 2021), Veronica Yvette Bennett, who came from New York, died at the age of 78.