“Much too hard”: The classic 1983 Linda Ronstadt album that was nearly scrapped
While it’s often tough for an artist to toe the line between sticking to what they know and branching out to keep things exciting, by the 1980s, Linda Ronstadt had reached a point where simply being the most prominent female solo voice in rock wasn’t enough to keep her in high spirits.
Looking to expand her horizons significantly, Ronstadt decided in 1982, when she began work on what would become her twelfth album, What’s New, that she was going to take a dramatically new approach inspired by jazz vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra. Of course, up until this point, she had exclusively been performing the songs of others, and this would not change, but an alteration in style meant that she would have to look to recruit new personnel who could help her achieve this vision.
Her decision to bring arranger Nelson Riddle on board was a wise decision, given his prior experience working with artists like Sinatra on his album, Only The Lonely, and given that Ronstadt was eager to create something in the same vein as this, having his expertise would hopefully elevate her concept to another level. However, the problem was that her manager and producer, Peter Asher, had little to no experience in this world, and it would take some convincing for him to fully get on board with the concept.
“Peter was not very familiar with this kind of music,” Ronstadt later claimed in a 1984 interview with Musician. “It was my idea to get Nelson Riddle to do the arrangements. Nelson was one of the few guys who really, legitimately interpreted jazz to an orchestra without losing its flavour and its authenticity. He knew how to do that without turning things into sugar water.”
However, despite her belief that bringing Riddle on board would help both her and Asher wrap their heads around the different approach to making an album, Ronstadt quickly realised that they had perhaps bitten off far more than they could chew with the idea. Making an album in this style with someone who had bags of experience took them out of the creative driving seat, with Riddle essentially dictating every decision in the process.
“After we recorded the first three songs with Nelson,” Ronstadt said, realising that things weren’t working the way she’d anticipated. “I didn’t think they were good enough. Then Peter said, ‘Forget it. This is really not going to happen. This is much too hard.’”
As a result, What’s New would be placed on the shelf while she finished work on the more familiar-sounding country rock album, Get Closer, which was released in late 1982. However, it didn’t stop her from chasing the idea of returning to What’s New, and with some additional encouragement courtesy of friends and other musicians, she would eventually get the project over the line early on in 1983.
“That gave Peter and me the confidence to go back and try again,” Ronstadt noted, stating that the encouraging words of her peers got her back on track.
The record itself didn’t need to be altered dramatically and ended up being relatively close to her initial imagined idea, but taking that moment to go back and work on something familiar was clearly necessary for her to be able to push herself into this new sonic territory.
