You'll never be in doubt, that's what it's all about

French fashion model turned New Romantic chanteuse Ronny, acolyte of Steve Strange, was a striking figure even among the most stylish of the "Blitz Kids". Then, as quickly as she arrived, she disappeared from view. So who was this mysterious woman who captivated me so, and where did she go?

I have been doing some research...

According to Discogs:

Club entrepreneur Rusty Egan met Ronny in the Paris club Privelege and co-produced with Midge Ure her first releases. Vangelis, Georg Kajanus and Peter Godwin also produced for her.

Quoted in an article in Electronics & Music Maker magazine in July 1982 (as transcribed by Mu:Zines magazines archive), she said:

"I was in Paris dancing and modelling, but getting fed up with the whole thing and decided just to stop everything and go into something else - I wanted to explore my voice and link this with the use of electronic music. Apart from Jean-Michel Jarre in France, I could hear this music coming from England. I wasn't attracted to the current French disco sounds and later signed over here with Polydor as a solo artist...

...I like to think of a song as a little movie in itself. It's very hard to put across in three or four minutes what you want to express. Often people never hear the lyrics clearly or get the atmosphere behind it - they just hear something to dance to and move to. I would like to go further than that."

Warren Cann of Ultravox and Visage, in an interview for the now-demised Electrogarden site [retrieved via The Wayback Machine on Archive.org]:

"We were friends for years and I never did know her last name, it honestly never occurred to me to ask her. She was an unfathomably gorgeous French woman who'd once been a "Bluebell" dancer in Paris at Le Lido. She gave up modelling to come to London to make it as a singer.

I met her backstage at one of our gigs when Midge, who'd been producing some tracks for her, introduced us. Ronny wasn't a "pop" artist so much as a pop chanteuse, a torch singer. Her voice, while not virtuosic in the conventional sense, was utterly compelling and expressive. She could read a phone book and you'd swoon. She made Sade sound like Tweety.

Hans Zimmer and I did some gigs for her and she appears briefly on the Helden album "Spies." Chalk it up to bad luck, bad timing, or the vagaries of the music business, but it just never worked out for her and, after a number of years getting nowhere, she gave up music and moved back to France."

According to a thread post in an Ultravox discussion forum by Graeme Oxby, erstwhile manager of Howard Devoto's band Magazine and collaborator with Steve Strange on various attempts to revive Visage as an entity:

"Steve Strange bumped into Ronny years later and she was working behind the make-up counter of a department store in Paris. I think Steve bought some eye shadow but don't quote me lol!"

Unsurprisingly, the maestro Rusty Egan is still in touch with the lady, according to this comment he made on a post on The Wave of Things blog - and (unlike Mr Cann above) refers to her by her full name in his social media posts...

...Miss Ronny Vuniconnu - one of the true "Shapers of the 80s" - we salute you!

Ronny - Blue Cabaret

Ronny - To Have And Have Not

Both those numbers are indeed superb - as is her wildly camp duet with Steve Strange on Lady is a Tramp, as featured here in 2019 - but, way back around this time forty years ago, it was this (her debut) song that absolutely bowled me over! The moment I heard it [probably played by someone like John Peel or Annie Nightingale on Radio 1], I had to rush out to Woolworths to buy the single, and played it absolutely to death on my radiogram...

Ronny - If You Want Me to Stay

If you want me to stay
I'll be around someday
To be available for you to see
But I'm about to go
And baby then you'll know
For me to stay here
I've got to be me

You'll never be in doubt
That's what it's all about
You can't take me for granted and smile
I can't believe I'm gone
Forget pushing me back home
I promised I'll be gone for a while

And when you see me again
I bet that you have been
The kind of person
That you really are now

I got to get things straight
How could I ever be late
When you're my woman takin' up my time
How could I ever allow
I guess I wondered how
I get romantic with you just for fun

I'll be good
Although I wish I could
But you'll still gonna be my No.1

[French lyrics]

If you want me to stay
I'll be around someday
To be available for you to see
But I'm about to go
And baby then you'll know
For me to stay here
I've got to be me

You'll never be in doubt
That's what it's all about
You can't take me for granted and smile
I can't believe I'm gone
Forget pushing me back home
But I promise I'll be back in a while

Memories, memories... I was seventeen.

Sigh.

[click any photo to embiggen]

She loves the theatre but never comes late

An icon of mine, the undisputed maestro of the New Romantic era, Steve Strange would have been 60 today!

Born just up the road from moi in South Wales, the former Mr Harrington was obsessed with art and fashion from a young age. Via the punk explosion, he met Glenn Matlock and Malcolm McLaren, so it was probably inevitable he would end up heading for the bright lights of London - and within a short time, he was "the face" of his own club (Blitz, with Rusty Egan), was selected (by the man himself) to appear in David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video, and with his hastily-assembled band Visage [and that video, of course] had a worldwide hit that influenced myriad bands who followed.

By way of a tribute, I have found something even I never heard/saw before - and it's faboo!

Ronny feat. Steve Strange - The Lady is A Tramp

Rodgers and Hart would approve, I'm sure.

Stephen John Harrington (28th May 1959 – 12th February 2015)