MatR: Ronnie Spector and The E Street Band: Walking in the Rain

“I went in the booth, closed my eyes and boom! I said, “Shall I do it again?’ And they said, ‘No, that was it.’ Back in the ’60s, you hadn’t the technology, so you had to do each song, or vocal, over and over. But this was one take. So it means more to me than just the lyrics. It was the fact I had my eyes closed, I stepped up to the mic and it just melted out of me.”

 

— Ronnie Spector, Uncut (April 2016)

It sure did.

Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, and Phil Spector wrote “Walking in the Rain” while Ronnie Spector was doing her share of rain-walking on tour in the U.K., where she fell in love with the rain and fog.

When she returned home to record what would prove to be The Ronettes’ last hit single ever (it peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100), Ronnie nailed it in a single take.

“Walking in the Rain” featured a gorgeous, effects-laden production that could easily have overpowered a lesser singer. But Ronnie Spector was no lesser singer, and the background thunderclaps only served to heighten her powerful vocals rather than dampen them.

The song went on to win a Grammy (for Best Sound Effects), and Rolling Stone enshrined it as one of their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

That terrific clip above was from 1973. Almost a decade had already gone by since that last big hit single crested on the charts, and within a year, Ronnie left her abusive husband, who did his best to prevent his ex-wife from ever again attaining mainstream success.

Enter Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt.

Actually, first enter John Lennon, who ran into Ronnie in New York one day and insisted on introducing her to Jimmy Iovine, who in turn invited Ronnie to join him for a Southside Johnny studio session. That’s where Ronnie met Bruce and Stevie.

Bruce was so taken with Ronnie that he insisted that she sing “You Mean So Much to Me” with Southside on his album. That was the start of both a long friendship and professional relationship. The E Street Band (led by Stevie) would back Ronnie on her “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” single (with Steven’s “Baby, Please Don’t Go” for the b-side), and Ronnie herself would grace Bruce’s stage several times, as recently as December 2016.

Her most memorable E Street stage appearance may have been the evening of November 4, 1976, when she fronted the E Street Band for a mini-set of Ronettes classics, including her beautiful, soaring take on “Walking in the Rain,” her first of five performances of that song with Bruce and the band over the coming months.

“What Bruce and Steven did (along with Johnny),” Ronnie told Mojo, “ was give me an opportunity to get out and sing on the road with a rock band and that was important to me then. My ex-husband was trying to break me and working with those guys saved me. They looked out for me, they wanted me to know I meant something to them and to music.”

They weren’t alone. Ronnie Spector passed away this evening (as I write this) after losing her battle with cancer. If there’s an Internet in the afterlife, perhaps she’ll see the tributes pouring in from around the globe and realize how much she meant to a world touched by her inimitable voice.

Ronnie Spector
August 10, 1943 – January 12, 2022

Walking in the Rain
First performed: November 4, 1976 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: May 13, 1977 (Red Bank, NJ)