Linda Ronstadt: oppinions sought

However, Ms. Ronstadt goes beyond crap music and becomes crap person because she's a grade-A shit-talking hypocrite. Dumb bitch goes and plays Sun City while South Africa was still under the apartheid regime. That makes her evil and she never apologized publicly for doing that. But what makes her a hypocrite is that some years later dumb bitch Ronstadt goes on a TV talk show accusing Howard Stern of being racist against Mexicans (because the flap over the Selena shooting and all of a sudden Ms. Ronstadt "remembers" her Mexican heritage [shame she forgot it before flying off to Sun City]) -- fortunately, Robin Quivers from the Stern show was on at the same time and called Ronstadt out for being the hypocritical bitch that she is.

Fuck her.

I guess Ronstadt sings OK (from a technical POV). So does Celine Dion. So what.

Dave Q: Elton John brought Lenin low; Andrew Ridgley's dancing is the implacable stoneworm in the maoist monolith. This is basic.

mark s -- "Ass" = "Pants."

Since I honestly didn't know that Ms. Ronstadt had apologized for playing at Sun City -- I thought she was unrepetentent -- I retract the part calling her "evil." Though I have to say that I don't understand her so-called defense -- how not playing at Sun City constituted "censorship" in any meaningful sense is totally lost on me. But I'm not retracting the "dumb" part; the crimes of apartheid- era South Africa were certainly well-known at the time Ms. Ronstadt performed there, not to mention that Sun City was located in a bantustan (which settlements had been condemned internationally since they were implemented in the 1970s). To call a person who ignored such overwhelming and well-known, documented evidence of the human rights abuses occurring in South Africa at that time and who offered such an intellectually weak defense for her actions a "dumb bitch" is actually quite mild IMHO. And I also don't really understand how boycotting South Africa was a bad idea, especially since Nelson Mandela himself (and other South African anti-apartheid activists as well as DeKlerk) cited the international boycott as one of the key factors in ending apartheid.

While I can't really say that I'm sorry for calling Ms. Ronstadt a "dumb bitch," I do regret if it caused unnecessary offense and perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully. But I still stand behind what I said about her being a hypocrite -- someone who, like her, played Sun City should be very circumspect before accusing anyone else of racism. In that sense, whether Stern is or isn't racist, or the Selena skit was or wasn't offensive, is irrelevant -- it's an issue of "don't criticize the speck in my eye when there's a plank in yours."

As for bringing the matter up at all: well, when performers do political acts, it's going to be discussed for better or for worse. If you discuss Richard Wagner's music, someone is going to bring up his virulent anti-Semitism; likewise, if you discuss Charlton Heston's acting career, people will talk about his being President of the NRA. Such discussions may or may not have any bearing on the artistic merits of the perfomer's work, but it will nonetheless come up. And if someone wants to bring up George Michael singing in China, that's their prerogative AFAIC.

And none of this answers whether Ms. Ronstadt's music is any good or not. I'll keep quiet about this now (unless it comes up again) and let Rich C. discuss what he likes about Ms. Ronstadt's music.

To everyone else: If you don't like Linda, and a lot of you would like to kill her, here's a clue: NOBODY FORCED YOU FUCKERS TO EVEN SET FOOT HERE!!! I don't give a damn about Linda's South African fiasco. If you do, and think Howard Stern was right, that's fine-- you have a nice day too!

To Messrs. Suchodski and Hanley: FUCK YOU BOTH!!!

The album of lullabyes she made a couple of years back, 'Dedicated To The One I Love' is certifiably the weirdest record ever made my a 'mainstream' arist (poss. exception: Smiley Smile). Main instrumentation is glass harmonica & vocal samples. Total duration is about 25 minutes. General atmosphere is 'David Lynch'-ian. Warm yet spooky. Also of course her version of 'Different drum' is definitive, and she sings a Jimmy Webb song like no-one else can ('Adios' from Cry Like A Rainstorm being a particular fave round here).

I always like to think of her as a female Art Garfunkel; very single- minded, working in a variety of different musical spheres, big on arrangements, both utterly peerless vocalists. hey! Artie even made an LP of lullabyes too!! harveyx

However, I HAVE been a big fan of Linda's for a long time--and the fact that there are some on this board who like to take pot shots at her just for the sake of doing it drove me to respond in kind. I normally don't use that kind of language on the Web, but I am not going to let a few smart alecks' wise-ass comments go unchallenged.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I want to go on the record as saying that it wouldn't matter to me one way or the other whether Linda should or should have not gone to South Africa; this is supposed to be about her career, not her politics.

I've always thought of her as one of the greatest living female singers alive, and there are plenty of female singers who feel the same way. What a sensational thing it would be to have Linda sing with her spiritual protege Trisha Yearwood!

One man's sensational thing is another man's screaming nightmare. Although at least you wouldn't be able to understand what Trisha was saying. Amusing (to me) story:

Two friends of mine are singing in the chorus for the Boston Pops Fourth of July Esplanade concert. Trisha Yearwood is the featured guest star. There is much ado and clapping as she steps onto the stage and waves to the crowd. She grabs the microphone, the band and orchestra start up, and she sings something completely incomprehensible into the microphone. Friend 1 turns to Friend 2 and says, "What did she just say?" Friend 2 answers, "I think she said, 'A hey-naw haw-naw HEY-NOW!'" Both are incapacitated for the rest of Trisha's performance. Retellings of this story have added a James Brown "HEH!" to the end.

i like her

I love Simple Dreams, especially her hamfisted covers of "Tumbling Dice" and "It's So Easy."

I love her Mexican stuff and that Tucson album she made with Emmylou Harris.

great start to this thread

i love her versions of "dolphins" and "birds"
she sounds like she has complete control over her voice, which is kinda rare in the rock world

<3

Her music is pretty ass, and under normal circumstances we'd leave it at that. (And Elvis Costello's smart-ass cover of "You're No Good" was the perfect riposte, in that vein).
However, Ms. Ronstadt goes beyond crap music and becomes crap person because she's a grade-A shit-talking hypocrite. Dumb bitch goes and plays Sun City while South Africa was still under the apartheid regime. That makes her evil and she never apologized publicly for doing that. But what makes her a hypocrite is that some years later dumb bitch Ronstadt goes on a TV talk show accusing Howard Stern of being racist against Mexicans (because the flap over the Selena shooting and all of a sudden Ms. Ronstadt "remembers" her Mexican heritage [shame she forgot it before flying off to Sun City]) -- fortunately, Robin Quivers from the Stern show was on at the same time and called Ronstadt out for being the hypocritical bitch that she is.

Fuck her.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski

wow!!!!!

http://i.imgur.com/45I9E6Q.png

wait, C3PO?

fwiw she is a great singer but I can never get into her, just something too clean and conservative sounding about everything, too perfect

love her!! i thought she was a magical muppet-woman hybrid when i was a kid.

Whatever happened to Tadeusz? He seems nice.

I had really forgotten the whole Sun City flap, here's a lengthy Rolling Stone piece on it.

https://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artrs83.htm

I spent my earliest years in radio at an MOR station where Linda was a welcome reprieve from Robert Goulet.

good wiki on her, I had forgotten abt that Pirates Of Penzance thing

ew @ olde ILM

man alive, if you remain skeptical, please check out Trio, specifically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjkihwNeCqA

Trio is good, and she's good duetting/singing backup on various things (Neil's "Freedom", for ex.) but I have never been able to sustain any interest in her solo career.

aaaand I love this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I7GkHy5iOA

that is stiff as fuck, you crazy

and it works fabulously

she sounds alive

I don't find the stiffness alienating: she and her Wachtel-led band bring it off. It's never been said, but Bryan Ferry's The Bride Stripped Bare pursues a similar goal and it's just as weird and precise.

Wow---Ronstadt. Ferry: comparative listening never ever occurred to me, but now that you mention it, will have to try that.
I haven't heard the original Trio CDs, and maybe I'm cutting the box some slack because I got it as promos (mp3s), but a lot of it sounded pretty good to me. Although they did that thing of leaving out "I felt like getting high"--Patti Smith left it out too, but I remembered Chuck's reference to her as a "temperance poet" in a Voice Choice, and when I asked him what that was, he said that in some recent shows (not too long after her re-emergence), she'd been reading verses about her friends and loved ones dying from drinking and related, so maybe that's why she cut the line.
Guess it could be why Trio did it, but more annoying was in the booklet they said they called Neil Young to ask him what the song meant and quoted him as saying hell if he knew. If they couldn't figure it out, why should he try to explain it, they still might not get it, or maybe he didn't know. It's a masterpiece as written and originally recorded; their version is okay, even if they were just connecting the dots "weirdly precise" helped).
Oh yeah, is that new LR documentary good? A lot of alleged music docs are too talky for me.

The new doc is fantastic and everyone should see it, especially while it's on the big screen. But if one isn't excited by that "Tumbling Dice" clip (which is in the movie also) LR may not be for you.

Just thinking about what she did in the 1980s, it's nuts. Three country rock/new wave/soul albums - one featuring duets with Aaron Neville, two Great American Songbook albums with Nelson Riddle arrangements, the first Trio album, plus an album of Mexican songs, and the Pirates of Penzance original cast album

first off what andrew l said upthread is right, philip k. dick did write an entire novel which combined gnostic christianity with his explicit sexual fantasies about linda ronstadt (who in the novel has devoted her entire career to singing john dowland songs because philip k. dick) and it's batshit crazy

second off classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ8m7P3ZEAo

I used to subscribe to the orthodoxy that she was some kind of cold calculating antiseptic chops monster vocalist but somehow got over it after a few decades.

I always did love “Different Drum,” which I could cling to like a flotation device, I always liked interviews with her, I learned to factor in that she was not as raw and raucous a vocalist as I might expect or seem to want in a rock context, the same way I learned to appreciate less bluesy jazz singers, and I found another place to hang my hat on Bob Warford’s B-Bender on songs like this, which I keep spamming the board with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FiKHaSRMeg

man alive, if you remain skeptical, please check out Trio, specifically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjkihwNeCqA

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 2, 2019 4:54 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Everything about this is excellent and not much about it makes me want to listen to it again.

If I had to come up with an explanation I’d say she always sounds a little too pleased with how good her voice sounds and that feeling often seems to overshadow the feeling of the song. But ultimately I just don’t feel it.

linda sings emitt rhodes <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za4mzQ3EqvU

linda deep cuts <3 <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CgLWiQk1fk

lol the band is having some problems (look at Bernie Leadon's wtf expression) but Linda is fire here in full barefoot goddess mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iZAHGZmUAs

she had at least a couple other stabs at this but this rare version is the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexcqzuGIxE

Saw the documentary last night. I've seen a couple of CNN documentaries that were interesting because they used nothing but actual footage--no voiceover, no interviews--but this one was much more conventional. Keeps it guard up, so you really don't learn a whole lot about what must have been a pretty wild few years in the late-'70s--a reliance on diet pills is as revealing as this gets--but if you're a fan (I'd call myself a very casual one), you'll love that about a third of the film is clips of Ronstadt performing in close-up. Her South African controversy is dealt with briefly; I didn't think her explanation (in a contemporaneous interview) was indefensible. I read someone somewhere (this thread?) saying that she wasn't all that beautiful, that you could walk onto any campus in the 1970s and find hundreds of young women more striking than her. I seriously doubt that.

Elvis repents!

In very different times, my reaction to having my songs recorded by other singers was downright suspicious, territorial and, at times even a little hostile. To say the least, I lacked grace.

Five years ago, shortly before an encore performance of "Alison", I told the audience at the Hollywood Bowl, that it was Linda Ronstadt's rendition of that song - which was featured on her big hit album "Living In The U.S.A." - that kept petrol in our tour bus at a time when we were sharing double bill with everyone from Talking Heads to Eddie Money for a $1.99¢ ticket.

Linda Ronstadt and I have never met, so the stage seemed the next best place for such an acknowledgement.

I recently went to see "The Sound Of My Voice" at the Film Forum in NYC on an afternoon double-bill with the new documentary about Miles Davis. While the Miles film was filled with his wonderful music and startlingly vivid photographs and footage, the film mostly told me things I already knew, while the Linda Ronstadt movie was a completely surprising, clear-sighted and unsentimental look at her career, revealing an intelligence, self-awareness and sense of humour that was not always apparent in some of her male contemporaries from the early '70s

I used to joke that musicians invited some terrible curse by taking on my songs and how, having recorded one of my songs, Linda decided to push her luck by recording three more on her album "Mad Love" and the next thing she was singing Gilbert & Sullivan.

Of course, as someone who has spent their career doing the exact opposite of what has been expected of me, this was really a joke that was told against myself.

Nevertheless, I can't imagine a G&S operetta was actually the top of the record company wish list for one of their top recording superstars even if the piece ended up being a spectacular success.

The film tells us that Linda Ronstadt had to persuade her label boss at the WEA record group to bankroll her album with Nelson Riddle in a way that I was never obliged to wrangle with Warner Brothers, regarding the funding of "The Juliet Letters" but then my pop and rock and roll records weren't selling triple platinum, so they had less to lose.

I can't think of an artist of her commercial status who would have even proposed such a collaboration with Nelson Riddle let alone two albums of Mexican folk songs but the documentary shows these records to be a testament to artistic curiosity and daring.

It was a 2019 performance of one of those traditional songs, filmed in Linda's front room, flanked by her cousins that brought me to uncontrollable tears, so much so that I had to slip out of the theatre before the lights came up after the final credits.

My father's Parkinson's related decline saw his senses gradually eroded, until even his sense of taste for a dram was lost but even after his speech was reduced to a hoarse whisper, he was able to still negotiate a challenging tune like "The Way You Look Tonight".

Linda's commentary is frank about the impact of her illness on her ability to control her voice and sing to her own satisfaction but in that precious moment she appears undimmed in the way she could access the emotion of song, in the company of those family voices.

This version of "Party Girl" is a clip from a performance around the release of "Mad Love" - a memento of my less generous youth in so many ways but I urge you to see this wonderful documentary, whether or not you regard yourself a fan of the singer or her musical choices. Perhaps there are human qualities that endure beyond the fashionable poses we may have once affected.

With much respect. Elvis Costello

From his FB page.

That's fantastic--will have to post that on Facebook.

At the State Dept. dinner for the Kennedy Center honorees Mike Pompeo wondered aloud when he would be “loved”. Then Linda Ronstadt got up to get laurels, looked the fucker right in the eye and said “maybe when you stop enabling Donald Trump”. Icon.

— sam greisman (@SAMGREIS) December 8, 2019

Just saw it. Trying to confirm its truth.

Mike Pompeo was an evil shit well before trump entered the picture

The documentary was okay to very good. Like clemenza said, I liked the live clips. I wasn't the audience for it: my parents were, who called last night to let me know they had seen the CNN broadcast twice; for them, an education.

I saw it earlier this week and loved it, but have also been a fan since I was a kid.

I dont mind that it wasn’t hard-hitting, honestly I was just glad to see her get more credit for her creative choices & as an artist in general; it seemed like she was often dismissed as just a pretty jukebox bc she didnt write her own material. I loved seeing her perform the mariachi songs, i wasn’t as familiar with that part of her career. And Penzance! ISuch an incredible voice.

I grew up with "Somewhere Out There," the Neville collaborations, and Canciones de Mi Padre and especially Frenesí -- I appreciated the doc lingering on them.

Seeing her in 1976 or slightly later was one of my first concerts. Enjoyed but wasn't wowed is my vague recollection. I want to watch the doc.

That closing scene of the doc with her nephew and cousin is so touching. Other live footage over the years in this is good too.

Not in the doc- I forgot she covered “Girl’s talk,”

The look in her eyes while she was singing along with them broke me up...like she consciousy knows how she wants to sound but her body is betraying her. I love that she did it on camera though