The album that finally made Bonnie Raitt a pop star: “You’re going to the Grammys”
Bonnie Raitt is widely cited as one of the most important stars in music history, someone who opened doors and showed others the way, a voice for everyone else to follow.
Linda Ronstadt once said she was the one person to do so, especially when it came to being a role model for other women in the industry and getting up on stage and doing the exact goddamn opposite of what people expected. In fact, it was her defiance that made her a star, something that set her apart and made others, like Ronstadt, want to follow in her footsteps.
As she told Playboy in 1980, “Bonnie Raitt was the first girl to get up onstage and play the guitar and have the guys say, ‘Hey, she doesn’t play like a girl.’ And she didn’t try to copy the opposite attitude and play real macho. Bonnie simply plays her instrument as if it were an extension of her arm, and she succeeds gloriously. And I think there is a whole wave of little girls out there who not only will be able to play that guitar but will sing and have a real impact.”
For others, like David Crosby, it was all about the voice. Unlike most that came before or after, Raitt came with no tricks or gimmicks; she simply sang how she felt, showing that, sometimes, magic in music can come from the deepest and most organic places from deep within. As Crosby put it, “she tells the tale, and her heart is in it”.
However, Raitt was also unique in other ways. For instance, she earned her breakthrough much later in her career, after having already accrued quite a story. Raitt’s journey is one marked by immense ups and downs, whichever way you look at it, from addiction to commercial success. About the latter, Raitt hadn’t scored many achievements at all until it came to working on her tenth record, Nick of Time.
As the title suggests, this record came at just the right time, after Raitt had just been dropped by her label, Warner Bros, due to her previous records, The Glow and Green Light having not performing very well. Raitt experienced a series of challenges afterwards, including an intensified battle with addiction, an accident that left her out of action for two months, and an offer from Prince to join his label that ultimately fell through.
Even then, it took a few other setbacks before she eventually got signed to Capitol Records and set to work on Nick of Time, knowing full well that the stakes were high. It was the first time that Raitt worked with producer Don Was and engineer Ed Cherney, so it could have gone either way – and yet, they unintentionally struck gold, operating somewhere between creative desperation and eager disorganisation.
They had no idea it would end up being Raitt’s breakthrough record, just that it was probably her last go of it before the opportunities came through even fewer and far between. At one point, when Raitt’s A&R, Tim Devine, started singing its praises in the studio, Raitt found the over-enthusiasm disingenuous and was in half a mind to tell him to shove it. And yet, his hunch ended up being spot on.
As she recalled, “He came down to the studio and said something like, ‘Better get a tuxedo, you’re going to the Grammys!’ I wanted to punch him. I thought, ‘OK, man, just say it’s good. Just say you dug it. But forget the hyperbole.” In fact, it wasn’t something they thought about until it actually won Album of the Year – even Cherney recalled them being gobsmacked that people thought it was that good.
For Raitt, it was more than just a good record. It was the stars aligning, and she had the right team to make it happen. She even said it herself once, about how it’s often about “getting out of the way” of yourself and “letting a moment happen”. It might have been belated, but it was no less fated.
