Linda Ronstadt never seems to get enough credit as a ground-breaking female performer if you ask me. Her career started as a bandmember in the Stone Poneys, which was a sort of electric Peter, Paul and Mary. Kenny Edwards would later work with her again beginning in the mid-1970’s, while Linda eventually performed background vocals on a song on a 2007 CD by the other bandmember in the Stone Poneys, Bob Kimmel.
Everyone knows their 1967 hit song “Different Drum” – written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees – which appeared on their second album, Evergreen, Volume 2. By then, Linda was singing virtually all of the vocals solo (except on the album’s surprising psychedelic-flavored title track, “Evergreen (Part One)” which was sung by Kenny Edwards), but it wasn’t always like that. Many critics think that their first album, The Stone Poneys is even better; on that album, Linda Ronstadt sang solos on only three songs plus one verse of a fourth.
By the time their third album came out, Kenny Edwards had left the band; and in spite of pressure on Ronstadt from Capitol Records to become a solo act, the Stone Poneys managed to score another fine album, Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poneys and Friends, Volume III. The album included another Michael Nesmith song, “Some of Shelly’s Blues”, plus “Let’s Get Together” and “Stoney End” – several years before those songs became big hits for the Youngbloods and Barbra Streisand, respectively. And Linda Ronstadt was already showing her gift for spotting excellent songwriting by including no less than three songs by Tim Buckley, including “Hobo” (which Buckley called “Morning Glory”), which might be my very favorite Linda Ronstadt song of them all.
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After a few albums of (more or less) pure country, Linda Ronstadt perfected her sound when she connected with one of the top producers of the 1970’s, Peter Asher; he was also Ronstadt’s manager for several years. Peter Asher and Gordon Waller performed as Peter and Gordon, a British duo who enjoyed several years of success, particularly with their #1 hit in 1964, “A World Without Love”. The song was written by Paul McCartney but credited as Lennon/McCartney as was all of his music and that of John Lennon in the British Invasion period.
As a producer, Peter Asher was second to none in the 1970’s; James Taylor was his other main client. Together with his work with Linda Ronstadt, Asher helped create the Southern California Sound of that time period by producing albums for J. D. Souther, Andrew Gold and Bonnie Raitt.
After working on a few tracks on Don’t Cry Now, Peter Asher helmed Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel; it was a #1 album and featured a #1 single, “You’re No Good”.
Linda Ronstadt’s music is normally described as country rock, though she performs in a multitude of styles; as examples, Ronstadt covered numerous Motown songs in this period and recorded a New Wave album in 1980, Mad Love. This has required her to hire a variety of back-up musicians for her albums; several of the backing musicians for some of her recordings evolved into the Eagles.
In her 1977 cover story for Time magazine, she was quoted as saying: “If you find a band that can play rock ’n’ roll, they can’t play a country shuffle to save their lives. I swear to God, if I could find a drummer who could play all that s--t, I would marry him.”
In performance, Linda Ronstadt mostly sings, though she sometimes plays a tambourine; however, I seem to remember seeing her play a guitar once. On her third solo album, Linda Ronstadt, she includes two live performances; and her live concert was the centerpiece of the 1978 film, FM.
Linda Ronstadt’s first songwriting credit was on “Lo Siento Mi Vida” (“I’m Sorry My Love”), which she co-wrote with her father Gilbert Ronstadt and her former bandmate in the Stone Poneys, Kenny Edwards. Ronstadt later recorded several Spanish-language albums, including Canciones de Mi Padre and Frenesí. While I was living in San Francisco in the mid-1990’s, I saw Linda Ronstadt’s name on a poster with numerous Latino performers that advertised an upcoming concert. It was a plain two-color poster in the Latino neighborhood called the Mission District and clearly was not aimed at her traditional fans. In 2011, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Recording Academy (known as the Latin Grammies).
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Over the years, Linda Ronstadt has had the wherewithal and the talent and the drive to try her hand at almost every musical form there is. After an amazing string of hit albums, Linda released an album of standards called What’s New, the first of three albums that she made with legendary conductor and arranger Nelson Riddle. It was the first successful album from the Great American Song Book by a rock performer and paved the way for numerous such albums by male and female rockers alike.
In 2004, Linda Ronstadt quietly released Hummin’ to Myself that was recorded with a jazz combo; it made #2 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart. Linda Ronstadt created an album of lullabies crafted from rock standards in 1996 called Dedicated to the One I Love; remarkably, one of these was the Queen arena classic “We Will Rock You”. Her holiday album, A Merry Little Christmas came out in 2000.
Linda Ronstadt also had a Broadway appearance in a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. On Adieu False Heart, she paired up with Ann Savoy on a Cajun/folk album. One of Linda Ronstadt’s final concerts was as a headlining act at the 2007 Newport Folk Festival.
(October 2013)
