From 2019: Linda Ronstadt, who left an indelible mark on the classic-rock era, reflects on her career: “It was best when I forgot about everything and just thought about the music,” she said.
It’s been ten years since Linda Ronstadt, once the most highly paid woman in rock and roll, sang her last concert. In 2013, the world found out why: Parkinson’s disease had rendered her unable to sing, ending athat had left an indelible mark on the classic-rock era and earned her ten Grammy Awards.
Well, it’s a little frustrating when my family comes over from Arizona, because we would all sing together. That way we don’t have to talk about politics. It makes for harmonious—I don’t mean the pun—relations. But I can’t do that anymore, so I just invite the ones who are Democrats.I can hear the song. I can hear what I would be doing with it. I can hear the accompaniment. Sometimes I don’t remember the words, so I have to look them up. It’s not usually my songs I’m singing.
Well, I was trying to figure out how to sing! And trying to be heard over the electric instruments. I had no idea that I sang as loud as I did. I always thought I wasn’t singing loud enough, because in the early days there were no monitors. You couldn’t hear yourself. I spent time out in the desert when I was still healthy, working with a group of Samaritans who go to find people that are lost. You run into the Minute Men or the Border Patrol every five seconds. The border is fully militarized.
Oh, I never could figure out what to wear. I grew up wearing Levi’s and a T-shirt or a sweater and cowboy boots or sneakers. And that’s what I left home with, and that’s what I wound up with. In the summer we’d cut the legs off the Levi’s and they were Levi’s shorts. When I got myYou say that you and Janis Joplin couldn’t figure out how to fit in—you didn’t know whether to be earth mothers or whatever.
When Woodstock happened, I was in New York. I remember getting all the reports from people like Henry Diltz and Crosby, Stills & Nash. They’d come back with stories of everybody being in the mud. It sounded like a good thing to have survived, but I’m glad I didn’t go up there. Overflowing toilets and no food is not my idea of a fun time. I was playing some club—probably the Bitter End.
I never talked onstage for about fifteen years. But there were certain causes that we as a musical community united against, and one of them was nuclear power. We did a lot of No Nukes concerts—James Taylor, me, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt—and if it was a particular cause that I was in favor of. I did what I could to help, but I don’t think my focus was particularly political. If somebody asked, I was perfectly happy to give my opinion.
Your relationship with Jerry Brown is covered in the documentary and in your book, but not your relationships with some other prominent people, like Jim Carrey and George Lucas. Is there a reason for that?What did Jerry Brown contribute to your musical process? No, I don’t! I have to say that when I look at my whole career, over all, what counted the most was whether you showed up and played the music. I saw it happen with Emmylou, and I saw it happen with Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell was threatening to everybody. She could play better. She could sing better. She looked better. She could just do it all. But it’s true, there was a certain amount of chauvinism.
Throughout the eighties, you experimented wildly with genre, everything from Puccini to the Great American Songbook to Mexican. I’m sure your record label was surprised when you said, “I want to make an album of Mexican folk music.”
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