Linda Ronstadt - Classic or Dud?

Same for me on "Long, Long Time." That one just absolutely slays me.

Love her version of Love Has No Pride, just an incredible vocal (http://youtu.be/rN8YVVKPNC0). Bonnie Raitt also recorded a great version in the early 70s (http://youtu.be/S2QTdxXmd0k). I love me some Bonnie Raitt but I give the nod to Linda.

lollin @ some of the comments on these vids:

Wow! That black dress, black hair, sultry lips, tight little body, and those trade-mark mesmerizing eyes. Word cannot describe how sexy she was during the early-mid 80's I would have worshiped her back then.... gladly been her slave.....
Lindawatcher 3 weeks ago

lindawatcher jfc that's creepy

rondstalker

er, ronstalker

name: lindawatcher
job: lindawatcher
interests: linda, lindawatching
hobbies: lindawatching

favorites:
Linda's Bedroom Window at Night
Linda's Bedroom Window at Night pt 2

"Linda told me to shave my head today. I'm amazed at the results. After all this time, she really knows me too well."

She played Sun City, so dud.

Snow White in South Africa

Frank Sinatra, whose eyes are apartheid blue

she has my favorite voice ever

weird!
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maau7g6ivy1qzoglfo1_500.jpg

And that's what the late 70's were like.

C-3PO's arms don't even bend properly, he would be a terrible drummer.

That is literally my only problem with that cover.

Suffering from Parkinson's

In a wide-ranging interview with AARP’s music writer Alanna Nash to be published on aarp.org next week, Ronstadt revealed how she discovered that “there was something wrong” with her voice.

“I couldn’t sing,” she told Nash, “and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew it was mechanical. I knew it had to do with the muscles, but I thought it might have also had something to do with the tick disease that I had. And it didn’t occur to me to go to a neurologist. I think I’ve had it for seven or eight years already, because of the symptoms that I’ve had. Then I had a shoulder operation, so I thought that’s why my hands were trembling.

“Parkinson’s is very hard to diagnose, so when I finally went to a neurologist and he said, ‘Oh, you have Parkinson’s disease,’ I was completely shocked. I wouldn’t have suspected that in a million, billion years.

“No one can sing with Parkinson’s disease,” Ronstadt said. “No matter how hard you try.”

This is bringing me way down like a 40 pound soaking wet raincoat of sadness. Even though it's been years and years since I had any interest in what she was doing at the time, knowing that she's sung her last note is AWFUL.

i just found out about this and immediately thought of my friend/choirmate who does linda in a tribute band.

what johnny fever said. :(

I revived a thread last week after the spike in Eagles interest and because she comes off so powerful, stalwart, and fascinating in Hoskyns' Hotel California. A real bummer: if she could do anything extraordinarily well it's sing.

Just saw this on Facebook. Her lingering significance (with Stevie Nicks and Carly Simon) as the definition of female beauty in the '70s is greater than any impact her music had on me, but that is something significant in and of itself.

I know it's from past her prime, and complete schmaltz, but I've probably listened to "Don't Know Much" about 20 times in the last two hours. The final lines of her first verse are my favorite document of her voice.

Man this makes me v sad

poor linda

This is so weird, because just two days ago I asked my wife what was up with Ronstadt and where had she been and did she drop off the face of the earth?

Basically: did I do this to her?! If so, I'm sorry, Linda.

Rosanne Cash said on twitter that Linda told her three years ago she wasn't singing anymore, but didn't reveal to her why not. Wikipedia links to a 2011 interview with Linda's hometown newspaper where she officially announced her retirement.

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

I know someone with Parkinson's, diagnosed about 7 years ago, who can still sing. Which makes me suspect Ronstadt's case may be relatively advanced. Although my friend isn't a professional singer, doesn't put that kind of demand on her voice. Still...

Not that current medications can't be pretty effective: my friend says she still doesn't have many day-to-day problems with her condition; the neurologist has her check in once a year, etc.

Mike Nesmith on fb:

The awful news about Linda losing her voice to Parkinson's is terrible but it can never diminish the legacy she has created for us in the songs she has sung for all of us.

Because of her these songs will live as long as people listen to songs and these songs will always sing with the same power and beauty that she was and is.

Like all great gifts, these songs now sing to her as they once sang with her.

Listen to them. You will hear what she has done. What she has given us.
Her voice is far from stilled. It lives and sings forever down the halls of time.

Linda did more for Different Drum than I ever did -- or ever could have.

She breathed eternal life into it.

A couple thoughts.

Unfortunate. I love the 1st 2 Nelson Riddle albums as well as the Spanish-language ones; even the duet she did with Aaron Neville on some crap Disney movie is remembered well. Such a beautiful tone and she controlled it masterfully (like when she holds a note and only colors the very end of it with a splash of vibrato); and while most vocalists loose most of their chops when they get older, i was really looking forward to seeing some of the ragged edges.

are you confusing "Don't Know Much" and "Somewhere Out There"? The latter is on a Spielberg-Bluth movie.

That's it -- "Don't Know Much" -- beautiful vocal from both.

Good bit on the memoir:

By “all this” she meant not her health, but the book, which was completed before doctors confirmed that she has Parkinson’s. “I never wanted to write a book,” she said. “I never wanted anyone else to write a book. I thought, ‘Let it end when it ends.’ ” She also wasn’t sure she was up to the task. A voracious reader who can quote Henry James verbatim, Ms. Ronstadt has, if anything, too much respect for the written word. But at dinner one night, Mr. Pollan, the journalist and author, urged her to reconsider. She told him: “I don’t have any craft. I don’t have any skill. And he said everybody has at least one good story in them that they can pull out.”

There was another fact to weigh, her dwindling savings. Ms. Ronstadt released many albums but wrote very few songs, so her royalty checks are small. “Writers make all the money,” she said. Her most memorable hits — “You’re No Good,” “Heart Like a Wheel,” “Blue Bayou” — were written by others. “I was making good money when I was touring,” she said. But now “I just can’t do it.”

“I can’t make one note,” she said. “I have a hard time calling the cab at night.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/arts/music/linda-ronstadt-discusses-her-memoir-and-parkinsons.html?ref=arts

ugh

Later, she perched on her front stoop, awaiting the taxi she had summoned via an iPhone app for a quick tour of her neighborhood and her favorite spots on the Presidio, where she still walks, though her limit is now 30 minutes. She suddenly remembered that Ms. Harris was coming to town and had invited her to join her on at least one song. Ms. Ronstadt had to say no, because of the Parkinson’s.

“Every time Emmy comes to town, I wish I could get up on stage with her,” Ms. Ronstadt said. “I know I’d be allowed to, but I can’t do it.” Instead she will sit in the audience “and think the notes I’d be singing” in earlier times.

“I have no choice,” she added, withheld passion at last surging to the surface, just as it does in the songs she made her own. “If there was something I could work on, I’d work on it till I could get it back. If there was a drug I could take to get it back, I would take the drug. I’d take napalm. But I’m never going to sing again.”

So sad. I imagine she doesn't get much in the way of airplay royalties, as most of the formats that would still play her (Oldies, Easy Listening) have gone by the wayside, and she's one of those people that never really got accepted on Classic Rock radio even though I imagine she had alot of AOR success in the 70s. As we know, the places were her audience can find her now, like Pandora and Spotify etc. aren't really helping pay anyone's bills.

then again, as she herself notes in the interview above, she never got airplay royalties worth writing home about because she didn't write her own hits. she would get more from a play on pandora or spotify than from a thousand plays on every radio station in america. which is sad.

Just finished watching the two episodes of Tavis Smiley that she did this week. I just love her.

Riding with Linda through Arizona and Mexico (says most people have a family tree;"We have an anthill"). Reporter says she "softly" sings with the car radio;emails she him, mentions recently breaking into three-part harmony with brother and niece, while they were looking at early photos for use in this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/travel/linda-ronstadts-borderland.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&rref=travel&hpw

"later she emails him"

Did anyone catch her interview at the Commonwealth Club last night? It was charming and notably weird to hear her interviewed by a woman who is her peer in age, but not someone who had musical experience. Her name was Barbara something, I forget. It was kinda cute to hear them giggle about how cute Jackson Browne was. I only heard about half of it -- did anyone hear the end?

brilliant singer who I've tried many times to get into and can't, always just sounds a little too perfect for me

i didn't know about her parkinson's :(

i know that singers can make much less in royalties than writers, but she sold so many millions of albums in the 1970s through the early 1990s that it's hard to believe she's running low on cash. i guess she didn't invest her earnings well?

Yeah I could definitely see her lack of songwriting credits hurting her, but still

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ronstadt#Highest-paid_woman_in_rock

if you make $12 milliion in a single year, you /should/ be able to put enough away for quite a while. maybe she had bad financial advice.

this from the wiki page was pretty funny:

"Rampant eclecticism is my middle name."

—Linda Ronstadt

wouldn't that actually be two middle names? Linda R.E. Ronstadt.

It's hard to explain how big she was in the late seventies. She was Elton John big in the United States: top five album debuts at a time when these things rarely happened, two singles in the top five, every writer lining up to work for her. And although her eighties profile was smaller she still sold millions of records off those Nelson Riddle things. Sad.

yeah and she had that late-1980s comeback album with aaron neville that must have sold a zillion copies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry_Like_a_Rainstorm,_Howl_Like_the_Wind

wiki notes:

In 2009, the album was taken out of print, twenty years after release.

:(