“Just brilliant”: Linda Ronstadt names one of the best rock musicians ever
Toeing the line between a living rock star and a functional human being is never an easy tightrope to walk. Some may try to be as down to Earth as possible, but there is also the occasional artist who claims that their problems are miles more important than anything their fans want and should be treated like royalty wherever they go. Although Linda Ronstadt was proud to sing for anyone who would hear her, she considered some rock stars to be the greatest the genre has to offer.
Looking back on how Ronstadt was brought up, half of her best tunes were about living the lives of everyday people. When every country-tinged song that she sang dealt with getting one’s heart broken or working in dead-end jobs, it would never be easy to strut around coated in diamonds or anything.
And that’s not what real rock stars were about. If you look at someone like Keith Richards, for example, he might be set for life financially, but he’s still concerned with living up to that rock and roll pirate persona that people know him for rather than being known as the almighty king of the riffs.
Compared to every other rock star, though, hardly anyone has reached the relatability of Neil Young. While he does have a reputation for being a little bit temperamental occasionally, his integrity for his craft always mattered more than what the label wanted or even what the fans wanted. He could have made a million different versions of ‘Cinnamon Girl’, but he would probably be a lot less satisfied with what he was creating as a result.
When Ronstadt worked with him, she ended up getting an education on how his mind worked. Young was willing to do the work to get the right take no matter what, and that normally meant staying up to the wee hours of the morning either working on a guitar part or getting into the right headspace so that everything sounds monumental when it comes out of the speakers.
Despite working with country legends like Dolly Parton and rockers like the Eagles, Ronstadt still considered Young to be in the hallowed halls of rock royalty, saying, “Neil Young is another one – I still think he’s one of the best guys that ever came out of rock’n’roll, he’s just brilliant.” But that kind of craftsmanship is only good if it works over time, and Young has made sure to keep up that track record going forward.
Looking through his discography, he has never backed down from doing whatever he wanted, whether that meant working with a skiffle band to put together Everybody’s Rockin’ or going in wildly different directions on Landing on Water. Not everything resonated with audiences the same way, but he was equally capable of turning things around on something like Harvest Moon.
So, while many artists claim to find the right sound and stick with it throughout their careers, Young proves there truly are no rules for this line of work. It was just about doing what you felt was right, and if you were proud of it, that was all that mattered.
