Revenge is a dish best served cold -- and with a pointed fuckin' still-angry-at-you-bastardfucker lyric. And Ronnie got her chance when her former husband Phil Spector was facing a murder charge.
Ronnie Spector, the voice of the classic girl group the Ronettes of the Sixties which Phil produced, married the mad boss and spent years as a virtual prisoner in his mansion. She escaped and told her story of physical and emotional abuse in her book Be My Baby, How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts and Madness, but for many years couldn't and wouldn't perform the songs which made her famous because of their association with Phil.
In 2006 she released another typically fair-to-middling album, Last of the Rock Stars, which was littered with autobiographical subtexts, and on it included this cover of Kina's Girl from the Gutter with suitably changed lyrics directed at Phil who was then in prison awaiting trial.
Phil has since been found guilty -- and the "girl from the ghetto" has her song out there in the world forever in which she says, "I hope your cell is filled with magazines, and on every page you see a big picture of me, and under every picture the caption reads, 'not bad for a girl from the ghetto' . . . girl from Spanish Harlem . . . things are looking up for me now, I won't be held down."
As she says, "seems like karma is making it round. Yeah".
For more one-off great or unusual songs see From the Vaults.
Added: 18 Apr 10
Video
Post a commentShare this article
Use ShareThis to post this article on Facebook, Digg, Twitter and more or send it to a friend by email
Buy it
> Last of the Rock Stars
(roll over button for pricing/availability)
Related pages
This page has been tagged for these topics, click a topic to see other pages tagged for it:
from the vaults |
keith richards |
mink de ville |
phil spector |
ramones |
ronnie spector |
<< From the Vaults index < Chicago Transit Authority: I'm a Man (1969) | The Louvin Brothers: The Christian Life (1959) >
Post Comment
We welcome comments on this article, provided they have something to contribute. Please note that all links will be created using the nofollow attribute. This is a spam free zone. HTML is stripped from comments, but BBCode is allowed.