The lesser-known musician who inspired Linda Ronstadt’s greatest song: “She was the main influence”
Unlike most who filtered out of the Troubadour, Linda Ronstadt became inspired by her own heritage while also knowing she’d already heard everything she’d ever love before reaching the age of ten. As she once said, “I never try to do any kind of music that I hadn’t heard at home by the age of ten. Mexican country music was always in my background and really informed my rock ’n’ roll singing style more than anything.”
This was a mindset she carried close throughout the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a gateway to both leadership and humility as she set her own path and established her own pace. In her world, there were two sets of creatives in the burgeoning scene: those who stomped their feet, clapped their hands and made a noise louder than the rest, and those who observed from the sidelines, just as talented but with voices drowned out by the volume of their peers.
For the most part, there was nothing wrong with either camp, but it allowed people like Ronstadt to observe the characters of those who fell into either, often peering out like she herself pervaded the shadows until her talent and achievements became a beacon no one, not even those wrapped up in their own egotistical bubble, could miss. “It’s a place where performers can be very comfortable and do their best, and other people can see them,” she once said of the burgeoning scene.
Part of what probably drew Ronstadt to her, beyond the obvious appeal of her music, was that sometimes she seemed like a walking contradiction. For instance, she could offer a helping hand and be a figure of complete mentorship for those who needed it the most (like the early days of the Eagles’ formation) while also delivering unexpected hot takes every now and then, like how much Jim Morrison hindered The Doors.
She’s also one of the most beautiful voices in all of music history, and yet hates to listen to her own stuff (“I tend to be horrified”). But perhaps this is less of a paradox and more facets of a nuanced personality that never entertained any certain attitude or demeanour just because it was the right or the expected thing to do, something that ventures far back, deep into her love for how much she could mix her heritage with her love for rock and country.
One of her best hits (arguably the best), ‘Blue Bayou’, might have taken a Roy Orbison classic and pinned it into something ethereal, but she mainly channelled the magnetism of her beloved Mexican singer Lola Beltrán to pull it off, telling her story with her voice alone. “She was the main influence,” Ronstadt once admitted. “Mexican music does that sort of belting thing and then goes into falsetto like I did at the end of the song. I liked ‘Blue Bayou’ so much as a Mexican song that I had my dad write Spanish lyrics for it.”
Not only was this another example of Ronstadt’s ability to factor in something relatively niche and obscure and make it work for mainstream audiences, it also proved her knack for doing whatever she wanted, nurturing her own interests, as if the process starts there, in the confines of her mind and what she enjoys, the rest following second. But ultimately, that’s also why it worked, because she understood that as long as she made the music she wanted to make, the right people would find it.
