It's about me; I'm the girl from the ghetto. It was originally "Girl from the Gutter", and I thought: "I'm not from the gutter. I may have been from the ghetto, but not the gutter," so I changed it. Elvis Presley sang "ghetto" and that was okay. But I stick to my hits, mostly, in the show. When I go to see old shows where people don't play their hits, I'm so disappointed. You have to please your audience. When I hear that applause, it's like I'm having an orgasm.

[Amy Winehouse] was too shy to meet me, but she was so sweet to me. I read articles where she said, "I love girl groups, especially The Ronettes." I think she liked us because we were different. I had a black and Cherokee mom and a white father, and that was different. And we were pretty. We didn't have wigs like the other girl groups, it was our real hair. We gave Dusty Springfield a beehive--she would come in and say, "Can I have a blast of Aquanet [hairspray]?" All that hair is mine today. As you get older your hair thins a little, so you get extensions in the back.

[We made money] when we were performing live. As a matter of fact, we got paid more than any other act for our show. We did the Brooklyn Paramount, the Apollo for a week . . . We made money from personal appearances, not record royalties. We were the most popular girl group ever for bar mitzvahs--people wanted The Ronettes.

[John Lennon] loved my voice and the way I performed and [Phil Spector] was the opposite--he didn't like guys in the audience screaming at me. Maybe I would've been better off marrying John Lennon or Keith Richards. I always fantasize about that. I would cry myself to sleep at night because Phil wouldn't let me perform. My [second] husband and I have been married for 31 years and together for 34. He helped me reclaim my life.

I talk about Phil Spector, but I say good things about him, too. I did love him. I just tell the truth. It's the difference between ripping someone's head off and telling the damn truth, and I tell the damn truth. Before Phil got involved, we were already going over better than some of the other acts, and I had my style way before Phil came along. He did one thing--he gave us hit records.

The "bad girl" came from when The Ronettes would walk out onstage and we didn't have a hit record yet and all the other groups did--Marvin Gaye, The Crystals. We didn't have a hit record, but we had attitude. When the three Ronettes walked onstage, people went nuts because we were different. We wore tight dresses when everyone else wore those flared dresses, we had long hair when people had short hair; it was like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones wearing suits--that's what made them different. The Stones got the long-hair idea from us, when they supported us on tour in the UK in 1964. I love having attitude onstage, and the "bad girl" thing still runs through my entire show.

Nobody calls me Veronica unless I go to California. A few people there only knew me as Veronica, such as my ex-husband's [Phil Spector] secretary--I was out there [recently] and she left me a card saying, "Hello, Veronica!" But my relatives called me Ronnie. I used to read the Betty and Veronica comics, and Veronica was called Ronnie, so I wanted to be Ronnie, too. It's a cute name.

I think I was [the godmother of punk]. In the '70s it started, and I'd go to [Manhattan music venue] CBGB and see Blondie and the Ramones, and they were calling me up onstage. I didn't know punk, but they knew me. Everybody knew me, but I didn't know anybody--Patti Smith and all those people who were punkers. I didn't get it. It was like Amy Winehouse, they wanted to be like me.

I used to wish I could get my hands on [Amy Winehouse] and show her how to do a proper beehive. She came to one of my shows. I was singing "Back to Black" and there was a tear in her eye.

You would have to ask Phil Spector [about the glass coffin in the basement]. He told my mother he had it, but I never went down to the basement. Do you think I'd go down there and look at my own coffin?