The album that destroyed Linda Ronstadt’s voice: “I was very discouraged
Any singer like Linda Ronstadt needs to treat their voice like another instrument in the band most of the time.
It’s one thing to have some fun singing along to her favourite songs among her bandmates, but when it comes time to make a record, something has to lock in that turns her from a typical country singer into the machine that was able to churn out classics like ‘You’re No Good’. So when that magic doesn’t come, it’s reason enough for anyone to go into a panic trying to recapture that magic all over again.
It’s not like Ronstadt was exactly a fan of her own voice on record, though. Despite being one of the biggest names in country rock and practically carving out her own lane for female rock and rollers, she always admitted to having a hard time capturing the sounds she heard in her head on record. The only time she approved of her vocals was in the 1990s, so she had a lot of work to do before she could produce the kind of notes that she wanted to hear.
That said, she did have a lot of records to practice. Heart Like A Wheel is still one of the finest records that the 1970s ever spat out, and while she did end up venturing well past the conventional rock and roll songs, hearing her embrace her inner Rosemary Clooney when working on records like What’s New did help her hone her chops a bit more whenever she walked into the studio.
If you listen to those early records, though, there’s a certain innocence behind her voice that you weren’t going to find anywhere else. Silk Purse may not be considered the highlight of her career by any means, but when you hear her sing a rendition of Carole King’s ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’, you can hear her slowly starting to put the pieces together for what would become her classic sound.
And yet after a couple hits under her belt, Don’t Cry Now always stuck out like a sore thumb to her. She had the best songs that she could have asked for at the time and was singing at the top of her game in many respects, but even with the best players at her disposal, she felt that her voice needed some time to recover after she finally finished the record.
The songs were definitely there, but Ronstadt remembered the moment where her voice was completely gone halfway through working on the album, saying, “I forgot how to sing in the middle of it somehow. I was in a very bad frame of mind during that time. I was very discouraged, and I thought I was a terrible singer, and I was going through that number. My personal life was in shambles at that point. It always is, but especially in shambles then. I was on the road all of the time, and I was just very depressed, you know? It’s really hard to be creative when you’re depressed.”
While artists don’t necessarily need to be in a bad state of mind to make great art, the fact that she managed to sound this good under those circumstances is miraculous. Even though Eagles were already slowly becoming one of the hottest bands in Los Angeles at the time, it’s a testament to Ronstadt’s voice that her version of ‘Desperado’ managed to get on the charts over the original.
But the fact that the album sounds so good goes back to the golden rule that Ronstadt had for all of her records. It’s one thing to sing a song well, but the great songs are the ones that make you believe the singer, and you never doubt Ronstadt for a second throughout every single track on Don’t Cry Now.
