Queen Bee(hive)

The first song most of the world heard by the RONETTES was "BE MY BABY," which means the first time most of the world heard RONNIE SPECTOR's voice was after two bars of the most iconic drum beat in the history of rock and roll followed by two bars of bass, percussion and multiple pianos joining in to build a wall of orchestral sound that, by the time the song was done two and a half minutes later, would be big enough to envelop and smother the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and probably the just-completed Pan Am Building, too. Ronnie Spector's job, the first time almost anyone heard her, was to cut through the drums and pianos and castanets and strings and canyon-like echo and everything else, to climb on top of that massive wall and that Christmas tree and that skyscraper and convince you and everyone else in the world to pay attention to *her*, to be her baby, her one and only baby, and to offer her a kiss, which she would return with three of her own.

Long story short: She did. And you and the world did. Those thrilling, all but unprecedented two and a half minutes of teenage desire and joy, which sound something like a Christmas tree with a New York accent plugged into a thousand amplifiers, have reverberated through 60 years of rock, pop and R&B. They course through the BEATLES and ROLLING STONES, among many suitors who literally wanted to be her baby, through the RAMONES and AMY WINEHOUSE, who basically wanted to be her, through BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, who wanted to be the wall of sound and her at the same time, through every girl group of every generation since, through so much and so many more. Ronnie Spector succumbed to cancer Wednesday, at age 78, but her DNA remains inescapably with us.

PHIL SPECTOR, the Ronettes' visionary producer and Ronnie's future abusive husband, tends to get most of the credit for the revolution they and their early '60s peers spearheaded. But there's an argument to be made that it was the Ronettes themselves who brought the rock and the roll to the party. HILARIE ASHTON makes the case in an essay for NPR Music that examines the "proto-rock transgressions" of their vocal and visual choices, from the way they dressed and danced to the timbre of Spector's voice—"gravel rather than velvet, and untrained rather than classically molded." Spector frequently talked in interviews about the Ronettes' decision to wear "tight dresses, slits up the side, hair in the ozone," in intentional contrast to other girl groups of the day. They were the Rolling Stones to everyone else's Beatles. They were street. The CRYSTALS' Spector-produced single "HE'S A REBEL" could have been about them.

Their run of hits was breathtaking, and breathtakingly short. They released only one proper album. That part wasn't by choice. The horrifying abuse of Ronnie's marriage to pathologically jealous Phil, who forced her to stop recording and touring and imprisoned her inside his Hollywood house for several years—he continued to sabotage her career long after she escaped—has been well chronicled. She recounts the basic story in this 2018 PEOPLE feature about her survivor's journey. She said repeatedly over the years, with almost flamboyant understatement, he was "a brilliant producer but a lousy husband."

With the half century she had left, she enjoyed a quieter, happier life marked with more than one bout of revival and rediscovery. In the 1970s, with the help of Bruce Springsteen's E STREET BAND, she recorded the definitive version of BILLY JOEL's "SAY GOODBYE TO HOLLYWOOD," which he'd written as a homage to her. In the '80s, she had her biggest post-Ronettes hit, the glorious EDDIE MONEY collaboration "TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT," which was also, not coincidentally, a homage to her. And in the '90s, with the help of producer JOEY RAMONE, there was this astonishing JOHNNY THUNDERS cover, in which the '60s rock goddess stole a piece of herself back from the '70s punk gods who'd stolen it from her.

She loved being onstage and she performed incessantly, carrying her history proudly everywhere she played. I love this anecdote about her one-woman show BEYOND THE BEEHIVE, which she performed in the early 2010s. Her ex-husband was by then in prison, where he'd spend the remainder of his life for the murder of actress LANA CLARKSON. "Even from prison," JOHN SEABROOK noted in the New Yorker, "he is refusing to let her sing her two biggest hits in 'Beehive,' 'Be My Baby' and 'Baby I Love You,' because he co-wrote them (about her), and, though she is entitled to sing them in a concert, he can block their use in a theatrical venue."

"So, at the end of the performance," Ronnie Spector told Seabrook, "I bow, say, 'Show’s over, folks, but stay for the concert,' and then I come back out and do those two songs. Take that, Phil!'"

If that isn't the DNA of rock and roll right there, I don't know what is. Rest in peace, queen.

Rest in Peace Also

BRUCE ANDERSON, guitarist for avant/art/rock/noise band MX-80 SOUND... DALE CLEVENGER, French horn virtuoso who spent 47 years in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra... Jazz vibraphonist KHAN JAMAL... VINCE FONTAINE, guitarist for Canadian First Nations rock group Eagle & Hawk... Nashville songwriter ANN TILEY.