The mad, vicious life of Phil & Ronnie Spector
agcbli...@yahoo.com
IN the more than 40 years that she has been famous, Ronnie Spector has
been known as many things: the teenage protégée of her future husband,
mad genius Phil Spector; star of the brilliant '60s girl-group the
Ronettes; abused wife; then, after her divorce in 1974, a rock 'n'
roll casualty.
With the induction of the Ronettes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Monday night, Ronnie Spector's narrative would seem to have reached a
satisfying denouement, validating her artistry and reframing her as a
post-feminist rock icon.
Today, however, Ronnie sees herself as something else entirely: Phil
Spector's greatest victim, still. The way she sees it, Phil has done
more damage to her than to anyone: even, say, the other Ronettes, who
claim that Phil cheated them out of money and proper credit. Or the
Spectors' adopted children, who claim that Phil abused them. Or even
Lana Clarkson, the woman Phil allegedly shot to death three years ago.
(His trial begins March 19, one week after the Ronettes' induction.)
"He wrote the Hall of Fame to tell them not to put me in," she says.
"He did everything he could to stop me. He's bitter that I left him.
He wants everyone to think he's the mastermind. He thought everything
was because of him."
Listening to Ronnie Spector talk is disconcerting for several reasons.
At 63, she speaks with a little-girl patois that's undercut by a thick
New York accent and a pebbly voice. She can, and does, take all
questions unrelated to Phil and makes them related to Phil. She sees
everything through one prism: her rock 'n' roll martyrdom. When asked
whether she expects to be subpoenaed as a witness in Phil's upcoming
murder trial, she says, "You would really have to talk to my lawyers.
I do know that's the reason he did it." (Her publicist forcibly stops
her from elaborating.)
"You're talking about two people who are totally f----d up," says Mark
Ribowksy, author of the Phil Spector bio "He's a Rebel." "They're both
horrible people."
When she first met Phil, Ronnie - then Veronica Bennett - was barely
18, a sheltered girl from Spanish Harlem. She says she grew up wanting
to be like "the sassy black girls flicking their cigarettes on the
street." Back then, she didn't drink or smoke, and though she would
come to epitomize a new strain of rock chick - with her beehive hair,
heavy black eyeliner, short skirts and uncertain ethnicity, she came
across as uncontrollable, as dangerous as the boys. It was all
persona.
"She wasn't really rebellious," says writer Josh Allen Friedman, a
post-Phil ex-boyfriend. "She wasn't allowed to date musicians. She had
her mama looking out for her. At the time I knew her, she didn't have
one record in her apartment."
While still in her teens, Ronnie, along with her sister Estelle and
cousin Nedra Talley, sang in a group called, unfortunately, Ronnie &
the Relatives. They were signed to Don Kirshner's Dimension Records,
which operated out of the Brill Building in Midtown - that is until
Phil, who worked with Kirshner, heard them and quickly co-opted them.
"When Phil heard my voice, he pushed the piano back and said, 'That's
the voice I've been waiting for!'" Ronnie recalls. "And he meant it.
No [other artist] could stay with him very long, because his mind was
so much on me."
"With her, it becomes 'me, me, me, me, me,'" says ex-Ronette Talley.
In that way, Talley says, Ronnie and Phil were well-suited: "Phil's
got some 'me, me, me, me, me' issues," she says dryly.
The Ronettes had their first hit single in 1963, with "Be My Baby,"
which Brian Wilson later called "the greatest pop record ever made."
They toured with the Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Phil, who was
still married when he got involved with Ronnie, was petrified that
she'd prefer Mick or Keith or Paul or John to him.
"When the headlines broke that the girls were screaming over The
Beatles and the guys were screaming over the Ronettes, Phil was on
that plane to London in two days," Ronnie says. "I thought he was
coming over to make us bigger. He came over to stop it."
Phil began further isolating Ronnie from her sister and cousin. "I
didn't understand her with Phil," says Talley, who retired from the
group in 1967, and now lives with her husband in Virginia Beach. "He
was no beauty! I mean, he was a genius. But when you're young, you're
thinking, 'What will my children look like?'" She pauses. "I was
shocked. He wasn't her type."
"He would say, 'You're beautiful; I'm a beast,' " says Ronnie. "I'd
say, 'If the shoe fits ...' " She and Phil relocated to California and
married in 1968. She has said she spent her honeymoon night hiding in
her bathroom with her mother. Soon after that, the gates went up and
the guard dogs were deployed.
"I wanted my career so badly," Ronnie says. "It was like, 'OK, you
don't want me to go outside?' " So she didn't.
Ronnie and her cousin both believe that Phil was paralyzed by his
insecurities.
"He had 'Little Man Syndrome,'" says Talley.
"He was so upset over his hair!" says Ronnie. "When we had dinner,
everything was really dim, because he had bad hair. Toupees." She
pauses. "Boy oh boy - it got so hard to do anything because of his
hair. If he couldn't get his hair right, he'd say, 'I don't feel
good.'"
Hair issues gave way to darker concerns. Ronnie wasn't permitted to
leave the house alone, ever. According to her, she would be summoned
to Phil's side while he was recording with other artists - just to sit
on the stool next to him, not moving. "He would say, 'You're my
inspiration,'" she recalls. She would be punished like a little girl,
often sent to bed hungry.
"It was a sick love," she says. "He even said, 'I have a glass casket
in the basement, for Ronnie. So I can look at her anytime I want.' But
I was in love with the guy, so I didn't think that was too bad."
By then, the Spectors were the parents of three boys, all adopted
(though Phil presented the first as his biological child): Donte, then
twin brothers Gary and Louis. "Phil knew I loved all kids," Ronnie
says today. "He knew that."
"She couldn't care less about the twins," counters biographer
Ribowsky. "She didn't want them. They were trophy children. Both of
'em couldn't have cared less about Donte. Total neglect. "
At that point, the children were not necessarily Ronnie's foremost
concern: "I knew I was going to die there," says Ronnie. She called
her mother, who flew to California. "She took one look at him, one
look at me, and said, 'I'm getting you out of here.' We stayed up
three days and three nights plotting our escape. He had two dogs at
the front gates. A dog by the car. I was trapped. My mother said,
'Don't wear any shoes,' and asked Phil if she could take me for a
walk. He looked down, saw I didn't have any shoes on, and said OK."
"That is true," says Talley, who has not spoken to her cousin in 15
years. "From what I remember, they left without shoes."
Spector wanted custody of the boys. According to Talley and biographer
Ribowsky, Phil began checking Ronnie into mental institutions as legal
strategy. "He would stress her to the point where she would go to
'hospitals' for the weekend," says Talley. "I'd say, 'Don't do this;
he's gonna play it to his advantage.' But she couldn't see it."
Ronnie lost custody until 1980, when Donte, then 10, ran away to a
local police station. Phil continued to enjoin the Ronettes legally,
seeking to cut them off from royalties, trying to prevent them from
performing their songs live (he controlled the publishing). She began
a post-Ronettes downward spiral.
"I would've been 21 or 22 when I met her," says writer Friedman, who
recalls a "radiant, bubbly" Spector walking into songwriter Doc Pomus'
apartment one night in the late '70s. They began an intense affair
that lasted four months.
"She was both wonderful and terrible - Godzilla disguised as Gidget,"
Friedman says. "She was in a very heavy drinking period. She was doing
oldies gigs with Eddie Fisher - which was depressing for her, because
she was so young. I remember one horrible night, walking her two
blocks in the rain to the venue, and her cursing me the whole way
because she's the star of the show - which she wasn't - and she's
walking up to the back of the venue with me, and she's got these
backup singers with expensive boyfriends stepping out of Corvettes.
She was yelling, 'When Phil was your age, he was writing hits for me!
And what the f--- are you doing for me? Holding an umbrella over my
head!' "
Friedman says that Ronnie and Phil were, surprisingly, still talking
to each other during this period: "Anytime he'd call, she'd go into a
trance," he says. "But anytime she had something going, he'd f--- it
up. I don't know why."
He has no recollection of her ever seeing or talking to Donte: "When a
court takes custody of the son from the mother and gives him to Phil
Spector - what does that say about the mother? He's certifiably
insane."
Their affair ended, he says, suddenly and horribly: "She threw me out
in a drunken rage - she threw me and the maid out at the same time.
She was screaming, slammed the door and locked it. So I turned to the
maid - this poor old black woman who came in a few times a week to
clean up and put fresh flowers on the table. Turns out, the maid is
the mother. Ronnie would never talk to her, and only refer to her as
'the maid': 'Oh, the maid's here.'"
That was the last time Friedman ever saw Ronnie or spoke to her. "She
was a talented, gifted woman whose sense of values were a mess," he
says. "Phil was a brilliant, funny guy, and about as mentally ill as
anybody could be without being in an institution. She wasn't that far
behind. Why he would still have a hold over her today ... it's really
pathetic. I'm sorry to hear she still talks about him. Some people are
beyond the realm of psychiatric help."
Over the next 20 years, Ronnie and Phil have remained in each other's
lives, in the most unhealthy, counterintuitive ways possible. The
Ronettes sued Phil for back royalties; Phil countersued; the Ronettes
eventually won. After Phil was arrested in connection with the death
of Lana Clarkson in 2003, Ronnie defended him to the press, insisting
that Phil wasn't that homicidal - he may have threatened to kill
Ronnie, but he wasn't going to do it personally. He was going to hire
hit men.
According to Ribowksy, Ronnie refused to speak to the police in
connection with their investigation; the LAPD, in turn, was convinced
Phil paid her off.
In the years since the Spectors' 1974 divorce, Ronnie had a minor
comeback in the mid-'80s, echoing her famous "Be My Baby" refrain on
the Eddie Money hit "Take Me Home Tonight." She got married again, to
a man named Jonathan Greenfield, who serves as Ronnie's manager. They
had two children of their own, twin boys. Today she can be found doing
a medley of her old hits at Foxwoods. "She's tried to cash in on the
old sex-kitten act, but she's been a wreck of a person for a long time
now," Ribowsky says. "The booze and the cigarettes destroyed her
voice."
To this day, Ronnie has little to do with her adopted children with
Phil. Talley, her cousin, says that Ronnie is unable to cope with
unpleasant things.
"Ronnie has cut herself off," Talley says. "When a cousin dies, I'm
the one who's there. Ronnie can't handle it. When her mother got sick,
I flew to New York." When Ronnie's mother died, Nedra says, "We never
knew where she was buried. There was never a funeral."
As for what became of Ronnie's adopted children with Phil, the eldest,
Donte, was last reported to be HIV-positive, homeless and living in a
car blocks away from Phil's mansion in Beverly Hills. He and his
brother Gary have both spoken on the record about the physical and
sexual abuse they claim to have suffered at Phil's hands.
"I met Gary," Ribowsky says. "He grew up in a mansion, but they locked
the door to his bedroom on him. He had to go to the bathroom in a pot.
You can't make this stuff up."
Ronnie claims to have a good relationship with her adopted sons -
especially Donte, "the half-breed like me." She pauses. "Four years
ago, Donte's saying, 'Mom, I have AIDS.' I don't know if that's true -
he may be trying to distract me from what I'm doing."
She says she heard from Gary last Mother's Day, but that call didn't
go so well either. "He called me saying, 'Mom, Dad's the celebrity.'"
She was outraged. "I'm like, 'I'm the celebrity!' " She says they have
caused her so much anguish she can't deal with them anymore: "I had to
let my husband Jonathan deal with the kids so I could deal with my own
life," she says.
Which, for her, reaches its culmination when Keith Richards inducts
the Ronettes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ("I wanted Keith!
They wanted Cher," Ronnie says). Talley will be seeing her cousin for
the first time in 15 years this Saturday, when the Ronettes rehearse.
"It should be interesting," Talley says, laughing. "Welcome to my
world!"
Ronnie, however, is thinking only of her legacy, which she now regards
as secure. "I was at a private party [for inductees] the other night,
and they gave me a chocolate disc with my name on it, and it was the
best party I ever had. The guy from the Village People hugged me -
that's my reward. It was all about me." She pauses. "I'm so, so happy
to be getting my due. And it is due to me."
Roofshadow
"PUSSS...@aol.com" <agcbli...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ronnie, however, is thinking only of her legacy, which she now regards
> as secure. "I was at a private party [for inductees] the other night,
> and they gave me a chocolate disc with my name on it, and it was the
> best party I ever had. The guy from the Village People hugged me -
> that's my reward. It was all about me." She pauses. "I'm so, so happy
> to be getting my due. And it is due to me."
She sounds like a truly loathsome person - she and Phil Spector deserved
each other.
--
Roofshadow
AUK FNG
wes...@laway.net
Yeah. "Judge, he be beatin' on me!" Typical nigger speak. Ronnie, have
a little bit of class, although I know it's asking to much of you. You
were nowhere great a singer as say, Miss Ross.
But I do think he's guilty. He shot her. Should be an interesting
trial.