“A true prodigy”: the best backing band Linda Ronstadt ever had on record
While Linda Ronstadt was never particularly well known for her musical achievements, her sublime voice was what helped her gain notoriety on a worldwide scale.
Having started her career working with a band, albeit only for a brief period, things would have been easy for her to commit to her craft and not worry about whether the musicians providing the accompaniment would be the right fit for the songs she was singing. The Stone Poneys weren’t exactly successful, but knowing that you’ve got a band behind you that you can rely on to deliver songs for you to sing is undoubtedly a positive.
However, the fact that it all ended just as rapidly as it started would suggest that she was never entirely comfortable with what her bandmates were providing, and that she needed to explore other avenues and sing alongside a different group of people who were more in tune with her artistic ambitions.
With her decision to become a solo artist, one of her biggest tasks became the act of putting together an appropriate group for each of her records, and this ultimately gave her the freedom to hand-pick some of the best session players whom she could dictate and encourage to perform in a certain way.
By the 1980s, she’d already had plenty of hits and achieved global success, but during this period, she felt as though she was in need of a change of direction that reflected the current trend of acts shifting towards a new wave and slightly rockier sound, which was a shift that was even becoming prevalent in the pop world.
With that, she sought to assemble a group of musicians for her tenth studio album, Mad Love, that felt appropriate, and in that, she ended up hiring a group of musicians who provided her with some of the most astounding moments in her recording career.
In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, she admitted that her cover of Little Anthony & the Imperials’ 1964 hit ‘Hurt So Bad’ provided her with one of the most memorable moments in her career because of how sublime the musicianship was. “Danny Kortchmar’s solo on ‘Hurt So Bad’ is my favourite electric guitar solo on any of my records ever,” she proclaimed, before admitting she rarely ever returns to the album. “He’s a really fine guitar player, especially when he has some structure to play around.”
Ronstadt went on to sing the praises of the rest of her band. “I had Billy Payne from Little Feat on keyboards, Dan Dugmore, and Wendy Waldman,” she added. “Wendy’s such a good singer. I go on YouTube all the time and just listen to her stuff. She was a true prodigy. When she was 17, she was writing songs like ‘Waiting for the Rain’ and ‘Mad, Mad Me’. I just thought she was tremendous. She continues to write good songs and hits, too.”
It’s clear that Ronstadt was blessed with a truly sublime band around this time, and one that helped her reinvent herself for a new era, getting her nominated for a Grammy Award in the process, and at the same time, she’d already found herself achieving at the highest level, so it makes sense that she was able to corral some of the most talented performers for her records.
