“It doesn’t glimmer”: The band Linda Ronstadt considered a cheap Mick Jagger imitation
Mick Jagger was a big punk fan, and everyone was baffled by it. “Jagger believes punk is today, is now,” Richards said in 1977, as confused as everyone else. It seemed that anyone who witnessed the Stones on stage was left unsure how or why the frontman could feel such a kinship to the new dawn of heavier bands. Linda Ronstadt was among the bewildered masses.
Despite being a queen of the scene, Ronstadt in 1978 had only seen the Stones once by that point. She was one of the most beloved figures and voices in the more folk-leaning rock scene, but her taste expanded far beyond that, including the classic British rockers.
She was impressed by Jagger, if a little intimidated. She admitted back then that his powerful stage presence left her questioning her own, making her feel a kind of stage fright after the fact after witnessing the ultimate lead singer at work, swaggering around the stage and commanding attention.
It wasn’t the kind of music she made, but she was inspired all the same – a statement that rings true for so much of Ronstadt’s taste. Because, like Jagger, she was open to it all. For a lot of the 1960s and ‘70s crowd, the arrival of punk was a scary thing, rolling in like a terrifying cloud over the sunshining rock and roll scene they’d once known. It was something altogether more violent and angsty, and so many rejected it outright.
Ronstadt’s attitude lined up with Jagger’s, though; she was open to giving new sounds a go. “Well, I like the New Wave stuff,” she said. It even sent her travelling to New York when she added, “That couldn’t possibly land in LA, because nobody moves that intensely. So, of course, it would have to come to New York, because New York is in a similar situation economically. I mean, it’s a similar sort of sociological greenhouse, so to speak, for developing this style of music.”
But while Jagger gave punk a go and loved it, finding something thrilling and exciting there, Ronstadt did not, as she stated, “The punk stuff is not very musical nor very multifaceted.”
Where Jagger found something new, Ronstadt seemed to only see a chip off Jagger’s block. In her eyes, these new acts were merely copying his energy, or stealing a bit of it and dressing it up differently. “It seemed to me, when I saw the Ramones, for instance, that they had taken one facet of what Mick Jagger does, which is a kind of stance, maybe one move and maybe one little chip off of an emotional statement, and it was sort of limited to that,” she said, picking out the iconic New York troupe as an example of that.
It’s a comparison that the Ramones would have hated, but it is perhaps why Jagger was so open to it, perhaps feeling complimented that his energy was proving so inspiring. But for Ronstadt, punk’s imitation couldn’t truly capture the Stones’ power. She said, “Mick Jagger has such a tremendous overview that is so many-faceted that it makes it sound so much more. But if you just take a chunk of it, it doesn’t glimmer as much.”
That glimmer is essential. It’s not just that Jagger and Richards called themselves the Glimmer Twins, with that sparkling representing their songwriting and collaboration, but glimmer suggests that there is light and dark involved in making something twinkle – Ronstadt didn’t see that in punk.
