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Insanely jealous of the hordes of adoring young men the Ronettes drew wherever they went, producer Phil Spector would marry the all girl group’s lead singer Ronnie, and then imprison her in his California mansion. The man famed for his ‘wall of sound’ would only allow her leave from their matrimonial home once a month, “to go get my feminine stuff, if you catch my drift.” If she was gone longer than 20 minutes he’d send a bodyguard.

He’d scream at her so violently, that she eventually became mute: “The last year of my marriage I didn’t talk at all. Because if I said anything he’d yell at me, so why say anything? I was a scared little girl from Spanish Harlem living in this mansion with five servants, not knowing what to do with any of it. I cried every night I was married.” Of all the privations he subjected her to, not singing was the hardest: “I’d think, ‘Why aren’t I on that stage, where’s the audience?’ I was craving it.” Her voice crumpling with emotion, she goes through it every night onstage. _“I get emotional, I can’t help it.”

Today, she’s lucky to be alive, let alone still singing onstage. Her ex- husband’s wayward behaviour with firearms finally led to his incarceration for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. If it was shocking to read that he’d finally done it, then more the surprise that it hadn’t happened years earlier.