Roots of Ronnie Spector

Edward Joseph Money was an American singer and songwriter who had his greatest commercial success in the 1970s and 1980s. Money had eleven Top 40 singles, starting with "Baby Hold On" in 1977 and including the Billboard Top 10 hits "Take Me Home Tonight" (1986) and "Walk on Water" (1988). Critic Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times called him a working-class rocker. In 1987, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Take Me Home Tonight".

Franklin Joseph Lymon was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, dancer and composer best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll doo-wop group the Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid-teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African-American members, Lymon, Jimmy Merchant, and Sherman Garnes; and two Puerto Rican members, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. The Teenagers' first single, 1956's "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", was also their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into decline. In 1968, Lymon was found dead at age 25 from a heroin overdose. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 as a member of the Teenagers. Lymon's life was dramatized in the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall in Love.

Steven Van Zandt, also known as Little Steven or Miami Steve, is an American musician and actor. He is a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, in which he plays guitar and mandolin. He has appeared in several television drama series, including as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos (1999–2007) and as Frank Tagliano/Giovanni "Johnny" Henriksen in Lilyhammer (2012–2014). Van Zandt has his own solo band called Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, intermittently active since the 1980s.

Otis Blackwell was an American songwriter whose work influenced rock and roll. His compositions include "Fever", "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless", "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up", and "Return to Sender", and "Handy Man".

"'It's a Heartache'" is a song recorded by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler. Written by Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe, and co-produced with David Mackay, the single was released in November 1977 by RCA Records. The song topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and numerous European countries, and reached No. 3 in the US and No. 4 in the UK. Worldwide, "It's a Heartache" sold around six million copies.