The rootedness of rock in phallic guitars and loud, bulky drums ignores the way in which feminism itself - asserting a right to one's own body and voice despite the impositions of powerful men - is in line with rock's ethos of autonomy. This space, as Spector describes it, contained only her men, the supposed arbiters of the developing rock and roll sound, explicitly weren't allowed in. But the architecture and quality of her sound, and the way her body and breath worked to produce it, were hers alone. Men (including Phil Spector and sound engineer Larry Levine) told Ronnie when to stop and start, and controlled the way the music, the beats and the depth of the sound interacted with her voice. People talk about how great the echo chamber was in Gold Star, but they never heard the sound in the ladies room."īy finding refuge in the bathroom, she managed to carve out her own space and her own creative process in one of the most famous and demanding recording studios in the world at the time. She spent three days recording her vocals for "Be My Baby," and her shyness as well as her sense of sound quality influenced her preparation: "I'd do all my vocal rehearsals in the studio's ladies room," she says in her memoir, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette (1990), "because I loved the sound I got in there. One of Ronnie Spector's most rock and roll vocal choices was all about taking up space. Her bombastic ways of singing - from rehearsing in the bathroom to making the sound booth a feminine-only space, to allowing her natural accent to ring true - pushed back against producer Phil Spector's Svengali-like control. Their musical transgression centers on Ronnie Spector's voice, which prefigures the more free, less restrained style that (male) rock vocals would take up in the next couple of years - gravel rather than velvet, and untrained rather than classically molded. In addition to producing the album, Phil Spector wrote or co-wrote all but two of the songs. Billboard charts: "Be My Baby" (#2), "Walking in the Rain" (#23), "Baby I Love You" (#24), "Do I Love You?" (#34) and "(The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up" (#39). collected singles from the previous year, including "Be My Baby." Five of its twelve tracks had made it to the U.S. The group's debut album, Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica, was released in 1964, when Veronica "Ronnie" Bennett, her sister Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley were all in their teens. Turning The Tables A New Canon: In Pop Music, Women Belong At The Center Of The Story On the surface, The Ronettes look like teen girls who have been coached to move in unison and smile for the cameras - part of the reason The Ronettes are often classified as a quintessential pop group. The micro-movements in the performance - swaying hips, lightly moving hands - were typical of the kind of directions 1960s girl groups received from their mostly male managers and producers, stemming from the polished synchrony of doo-wop singers. When the camera zooms in, we see her embellishing the lyrics with gestures as she sings them: She points to an unseen audience member on the line " so proud of me" and cocks her head with a quick Monroe-esque pout on " turn their heads." They sway their hips and arms awkwardly to the opening bars of "Be My Baby," and then Ronnie Spector, standing on the left, opens her mouth. In the video, the curtain parts to reveal the three singers dressed in identical long-sleeved pencil dresses, their hair partially swept up in the same half-bouffant that would become part of their signature style. 28, 1963, The Ronettes performed on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Through the way the group constructed its sound and look, The Ronettes embodied proto-rock transgressions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |