Did you know that Ronnie Spector's marriage to music producer Phil Spector was so toxic
that she literally had to devise a plan to escape him?
So what did the plan entail?
Keep watching to find out.
Ronnie Spector, originally born Veronica Bennett, grew up in Spanish Harlem in the 1940s and
1950s, just as the Harlem Renaissance was ushering in the civil rights movement.
Spector's father was Irish-American and her mother was African American and Cherokee.
In her memoir, Be My Baby, Spector spoke of how she never really fit in with other races
as a child, writing:
"I still didn't feel like I fit in with any one group.
The blacks never really accepted me as one of them.
The white kids knew I wasn't white.
And the Spanish kids didn't talk to me because I didn't speak Spanish."
Spector would spend time with her family, developing a close relationship with her sister
Estelle, cousin Nedra, and mother Beatrice.
She would gravitate towards music, which bonded her with her family, and her unique racial
mix would help set her apart.
Additionally, music was booming at a place not far from where Spector's mother worked
— a place called the Apollo Theater, which was "strictly off-limits" when she was a kid.
Ronnie Spector was inspired to pursue music after listening to Frankie Lymon, an African
American singer from Harlem who was only a year older than Spector.
She fell in love with his voice and would sing along to his records with her family.
Spector told The Herald:
"I'm like eight or nine years old and I'm singing Frankie Lymon songs and all my cousins
are backing me up with all the doo wop stuff and that's my first memory of saying 'I can
sing.'"
According to her memoir, Spector would eventually meet Lymon after her mom happened to run into
him at the diner where she worked.
Lymon was invited to Spector's 13th birthday party but never showed up.
It crushed her.
Only a few weeks later, Lymon would show up at Spector's front door with alcohol on his
breath.
Spector was deeply hurt by the experience of seeing Lymon in such a state.
And it made her feel like she didn't know who her teen idol truly was.
However, she still loved the music he sang and focused on making her dreams into a reality
as she, Estelle, and Nedra would form The Ronettes.
The musical trio would eventually perform at the place her mother warned her about,
The Apollo Theater, as their career would rise in popularity.
Ronnie Spector, along with the Ronettes, befriended and toured with many artists in the mid-1960s,
including the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and John Lennon.
One of Spector's closest friends during this period was Jimi Hendrix.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Spector spoke about how she and Jimi would hang out
at the recording studio, sing songs together, and hang out whenever they were able.
Hendrix loved Spector's voice.
He even once told her:
"Boy, your voice sounds like a guitar."
Hendrix would eventually invite Spector over to his recording studio and have her sing
along to one of the songs he was working on.
Hendrix would do all he could to make excuses to see Spector, even leaving the tapes from
their recording session in her car so she had to come back.
Spector told Rolling Stone:
"The good people die...
like Jimi Hendrix, I knew him really well then all of a sudden he's gone.
Gone.
It bothers me that a lot of the rock & roll people that I loved, that I hung out with,
are gone."
In the mid-1960s, as the Ronettes rose in popularity, they caught the attention of Phil
Spector, who was a record producer known for his famous "wall of sound" technique.
Ronnie and Phil would soon become smitten with each other and fall in love.
Phil would take the Ronettes' career to new heights, producing such classics as "Be My
Baby" and "Walking in the Rain."
He would also be the reason for their breakup.
On April 14, 1968, the two married and lived at Phil's Los Angeles mansion.
Their marriage turned dark as Phil Spector's mental state changed due to his declining
career.
Ronnie wrote in her memoir about how Phil would isolate her from everyone and everything
she loved.
He installed intercoms in every room so he knew where she was, made her drive with a
life-size doll that looked just like him, and threatened to have her killed if she left,
among many other insane demands.
Phil also made Ronnie give up what she loved most: singing.
Ronnie said in a Rolling Stone interview.
"For seven years, I didn't go anywhere.
I never saw a movie.
I never did anything in California because everything was brought to me."
"It was a happy marriage for about a year until I realized I was in a maximum security
lockup."
Life for Ronnie Spector was getting worse as the years went on.
She became more and more depressed and was driven to alcoholism to cope.
Her life was passing her by as she remained under her husband's control.
Even worse, she wasn't able to express herself and enjoy her passion for singing.
"I found myself in a prison.
I couldn't get out."
It wasn't until 1972 that her mother, Beatrice, was able to get through to her and launch
a plan for her to escape.
Only then could Ronnie reclaim her life.
Spector told People:
"She said, 'I'm your mother and I'm telling you, we gotta get out of here.
Or you, my little girl, are going to be gone.'"
Spector and her mother took three days to plan how she'd leave the mansion, according
to an interview on SiriusXM.
Ronnie said in the interview:
"I would tell any woman, if you are in a bad relationship, you have to find someone — like
my mother.
If it's not your mother, your best friend.
One person has to help you."
According to Rolling Stone, Ronnie’s escape was a hasty affair, with the singer fleeing
the mansion barefoot.
After Ronnie Spector escaped from Phil Spector, she moved back home to New York.
In 1974, the couple divorced and Spector was able to move on with her life.
In 1976, Billy Joel had written a song called "Say Goodbye to Hollywood," which was heavily
inspired by The Ronettes' song "Be My Baby."
Steve Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's E Street band had gotten in contact with Spector and
recommended she cover the song.
These would be the first steps Spector would take towards taking back her life and doing
what she'd loved since she was a little girl.
Spector told Rolling Stone:
"I didn't do any shows for seven years and was so isolated.
[...] When I went to play at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey in the Seventies,
there's Bruce up onstage and Billy Joel sitting next to me.
These people idolized me and I was saying, 'Me?'"
While Spector tried to get her solo career off the ground, she still had many personal
issues to deal with.
Springsteen originally planned to write an entire album with Spector singing, but she
couldn't commit at the time.
Spector may not have been able to record her solo album just yet, but she did take the
first steps to return to her passion and saw how much her work meant to others.
On February 11, 2009, Ronnie Spector's sister and bandmate, Estelle Bennett, passed away.
Her sister's death left Ronnie devastated.
Spector's current husband, Jonathan Greenfield, told Billboard:
"Estelle was Ronnie's sidekick in the Ronettes.
She was very much into fashion and worked with Ronnie on the whole look and style of
the Ronettes."
Bennett, the eldest of the group, worked at Macy's and went to the Fashion Institute of
Technology.
During her healthy days, she was known as gentle, quiet, and intelligent.
After the Ronettes broke up, Bennett's life drifted into turmoil.
She would wander the streets, telling people that she and the Ronettes were to perform
at a jazz club.
She gradually began to suffer from anorexia and schizophrenia, and she was sometimes homeless.
In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Nedra Talley-Ross had this to say about her
former bandmate:
"Estelle had such an extraordinary life.
To have the fame, and all that she had at an early age, and for it all to come to an
end abruptly.
Not everybody can let that go and then go on with life."
During her marriage to Phil, Ronnie Spector's mental state declined, and she often turned
to alcohol to cope.
Spector had spent her whole life trying to avoid getting hooked on drugs or becoming
an alcoholic.
In her memoir, Spector wrote about how her childhood idol Frankie Lymon had shattered
her expectations and broke her heart after arriving at her house with alcohol on his
breath.
Incidentally, at age 25, Lymon would pass away from a heroin overdose.
Spector's painful experiences with alcohol went back even further, to the days when her
father would come home drunk.
When she was little, Spector writes, her father had struggled to become a professional jazz
musician, so he would drink to deal with the failure.
During her days with Phil Spector, one of the things Ronnie loved most about alcohol
was that it made her sleep, and when she slept, she was away from her imprisonment.
Eventually, she would pry herself from the clutches of alcoholism and would focus on
her music.
Spector told Rolling Stone:
"It started in the Sixties with my ex.
Later, when I moved home to New York from L.A., all I thought about was getting my career
back on track.
I said, 'That's it — no more drinking,' and I haven't had a drink in maybe 33 years."
Just as Frankie Lymon was an inspiration for her, Ronnie Spector was an inspiration for
Amy Winehouse.
"I don't really care enough about what people think of me to conform to anything."
And it was Winehouse who made Spector realize how important her music was.
Spector said in an interview with Rolling Stone:
"Amy Winehouse was so great for me, because she made me feel like what I did mattered.
The hair, the eye makeup.
I recorded 'Back to Black' three years before she died."
Spector admired Winehouse from afar, never formally meeting the singer but learning about
her through the media.
Sadly, Winehouse passed away in 2011 from alcohol poisoning.
However, Ronnie Spector would eventually become close to Winehouse's mother.
She would start coming to Spector's shows and the two bonded over music, life, and Amy
Winehouse.
In her interview with Rolling Stone, Ronnie Spector reflected:
"Her mother comes to every show I do in the U.K.
She wrote a book about Amy and gave me a copy.
She wrote an inscription that was so sweet and personal about how I was her daughter's
inspiration.
It just made me feel so great."
In the 1980s, Ronnie Spector met Jonathan Greenfield, whom she married.
Greenfield was her manager and they lived in Connecticut with two children.
Spector returned to the charts in 1986 when she sang on Eddie Money's hit "Take Me Home
Tonight," which interpolated the chorus of "Be My Baby."
In 2007, Spector, along with her sister and cousin, were inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame by Keith Richards.
Spector was honored, telling The Herald,
"I feel grown up when I'm singing now.
I don't feel like a little girl."
In 2016, Spector released English Heart, where she covered songs from the Beatles, the Zombies,
the Bee Gees, and others.
In September 2020, it was announced that Zendaya will play Ronnie Spector in an upcoming movie
about her life.
The A24 biopic will be based on Spector's memoir, Be My Baby, and will depict her life
from when she was a child in Spanish Harlem to her rise to fame in the Ronettes.
Spector has lived a life that will be fascinating to watch on the silver screen.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, when asked if she'd retire, Ronnie Spector said:
"The way people whistle at me?
At this age?
I love it.
I will never retire from rock & roll.
Rock & roll will have to retire me."
Ronnie Spector recorded music well into her 70s, and was active until just a few years
before her death.
Ronnie Spector died of cancer on January 12, 2022.
She was 78.
If you or someone you know is struggling with domestic abuse, please call or chat online
with the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.