Ronnie Spector life and biography

Veronica Yvette "Ronnie" Spector was an American rock and roll and popular music vocalist, and was the lead singer of the 1960s hit-making girl group, The Ronettes, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. She was known as the "original bad girl of rock and roll."

Backed by future husband Phil Spector's wildly romantic production, Veronica "Ronnie" Bennett's knife-blade belting with the Ronettes became a defining voice of the early Sixties, and it filtered down to everyone from Patti Smith to Joan Jett to the E Street Band. Steve Van Zandt grew up listening to hits such as "Be My Baby," but the true power of Ronnie Spector's singing only reached him later. "It was when Marty Scorsese screened a movie he had just done, called Mean Streets, for me and Bruce," Van Zandt says. "I was, like, 'Whoa!' " Scorsese's use of "Be My Baby" perfectly captures the innocence and erotic promise of Spector's voice. Van Zandt would later produce Spector. "I was a little too reverent," he says, looking back. "I didn't want to put anything around her voice. I just wanted to hear her."

Her autobiography, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, co-authored with Vince Waldron, was published in 1989. In 2004, Onyx Books republished the book in a revised and updated mass-market paperback edition in the United States.

She lives in Connecticut with her second husband, Jonathan Greenfield, and their two sons, Austin Drew and Jason Charles. She has been performing Ronnie Spector's Christmas Party annually since the late 1980s around the United States and for the last ten years in New York City at B. B. King's Blues Club and Grill.

Ronnie's recent album Last of the Rock Stars (Bad Girl Sounds) was released domestically in 2009 featuring contributions from members of the Raconteurs, Nick Zinner of the 'Yeah Yeah Yeahs', the Raveonettes, Patti Smith and Keith Richards. Ronnie herself has co-produced two of the songs.

A new Christmas EP, "Ronnie Spector's Best Christmas Ever" was released on Bad Girl Sounds in November 2010 featuring five new Christmas songs.

In 2011, after the death of Amy Winehouse, Ronnie Spector released her version of Amy's hit 'Back to Black' as a tribute and for the benefit of the Daytop Village addiction treatment centers.

Spector died at her home in Danbury on January 12, 2022, after a short bout with cancer, at the age of 78.


Here's The Ronettes and solo album discography:

-The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, 1961
-The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica, 1965
-Siren, 1980
-The Ronettes Greatest Hits - Volume 1, 1981
-The Ronettes Greatest Hits - Volume 2, 1981
-Unfinished Business, 1987
-The Best of The Ronettes, 1992
-She Talks to Rainbows EP, 1999
-Something's Gonna Happen, 2003
-Last of the Rock Stars, 2006

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