The one career move Linda Ronstadt will always regret: “I wish that I had more time”
The thing that’s kept Linda Ronstadt always so effervescent is her constant refusal to ever stay standing still. That’s the true beauty of music to her – the explorations of style and genre and new sonic outputs that keep everyone, including herself, guessing, and the ability to capture entirely new audiences in the process. It’s a motto that a lot of artists could certainly learn from.
Of course, this is not to say that Ronstandt’s entire career has been a sweet bed of roses and reinvention. There could be the style she ended up hating but was commercially lauded, a particular song that she didn’t feel particularly resonated with her in hindsight, or the people and places she’s seen that she’d maybe rather forget. Through it all, she has maintained an admirable sense of optimism and positive sonic outlook – but it doesn’t stop the memory of one specific moment making her wince with regret.
To be fair to Ronstadt, it’s hardly as if every single one of her sonic ventures could be given the absolute rightful time and space they deserve. She’s been on the go for some six decades, after all, and has most definitely packed a lot into that time, but it still doesn’t stop her pining over one aspect of her career that could have been. It had nothing to do with huge amounts of fame or fortune, high status, or acclaim, but Ronstadt’s affinity to one section of music and society that she lent her voice to when it truly needed the profile.
In a 2020 interview with PBS, when asked about any regrets she holds across her life and career, the singer replied: “I wish that I had more time to work on the Mexican music. I would spend a lot of time learning how to play the jarana.” Ronstadt’s statement seems almost oxymoronic – she did pay great homage to the sounds of Mexico, not least in her 1987 album Canciones de Mi Padre, so why exactly did she feel her contribution wasn’t enough?
Hours spent pining over the jarana – the Mexican guitar equivalent – aside, in Ronstadt’s musical odes to the country, she was also largely paying tribute to her family history and earliest influences, which evidently had a significant effect on her sonic psyche for the rest of her time. Hailing from Mexican grandparents in the American border state of Arizona, the grounding and culture of the country was a potent factor in her upbringing, with all its colour and life and music setting her on a creative path she would never be able to shake.
In this sense, although to an outsider’s perspective Ronstadt has paid her dues, it’s understandable why she feels she owes her musical brand to her Mexican heritage, as she quite simply wouldn’t be here without it. But it’s also a marker of her peripatetic spirit that somehow, legions of albums and accolades have not been enough to do this justice, and never getting in her way of aspiring for more.
If the rest of the world was like Linda Ronstadt – well, there’s no telling what type of society that would create. The streets would be teeming with shedloads more of unbridled creativity, for starters, but it would also grant us the capability to be far more reverent and aware of each other’s stories; where we each come from, and where we want to go. It sounds a pretty blissful life – and one that she most definitely has achieved.
