R.I.P.: Ronnie Spector, Ultimate Girl-Group Icon

Ronnie Spector 1964, with Estelle Bennett, Nedra Talley

Ronnie Spector, the lead singer of the Ronettes, the 1960s vocal trio that gave a passionate, bad-girl edge to pop’s girl-group sound with hits like “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You,” died on Wednesday. She was 78, reports The NYTimes.

She died after “a brief battle with cancer,” according to a statement from her family, which gave no further details.

With high-piled hair, tight outfits and seductive looks, the three young women of the Ronettes — Ronnie, born Veronica Bennett; her sister, Estelle; and their cousin Nedra Talley — transformed the virginal model that had defined female pop groups since the 1940s.

The Ronettes racked up a string of hits through 1965, including “The Best Part of Breakin’ Up” and “Walking in the Rain,” and for a time they were ubiquitous stars. They were part of the Beatles’ 1966 American tour, and Estelle Bennett, Spector’s older sister, dated both George Harrison and Mick Jagger.

The Ronettes disbanded in 1967, and Spector married producer Phil Spector the next year. In her memoir, she wrote that he had essentially held her prisoner during their relationship, surrounding her with guard dogs and taking away her shoes, among other erratic and psychologically abusive behavior.

“I’d get drunk so I could go to rehab, just to get out of the house,” Ms. Spector told The New York Times in a 2000 interview.

In the late 1980s, the Ronettes sued Mr. Spector for royalties, arguing that they had been paid less than $15,000 when they signed with Mr. Spector’s Philles Records in 1963 and that they never saw another payment. The court battle would last 15 years.

During the trial, Ms. Spector said that her husband had stifled her singing career and threatened her into signing a 1974 divorce settlement that forfeited all future record profits. “He told me, ‘I’ll kill you,’ and said, ‘I’ll have a hit man kill you,’” she testified.

The group won an award of $2.6 million in 2000, but the decision was overturned on appeal two years later, and their families later said they wound up earning substantially less.

Veronica Yvette Bennett was born in New York on Aug. 10, 1943, and grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

By her teens she was singing with her sister and cousin, inspired by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Estelle, who had a job at Macy’s and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, helped devise the group’s look of beehive hair, tight dresses and heavy makeup.

Throughout the 1970s, in an attempt to rebuild her career without her ex-husband, Spector collaborated with Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. But she didn’t find major success again until 1986, when her duet with Eddie Money, “Take Me Home Tonight,” reached No. 4 on the Billboard singles chart and earned a Grammy nomination.

Spector later released music as a solo artist, including for the underground independent label Kill Rock Stars, and staged a biographical one-woman show, “Beyond the Beehive,” in 2012.