“My spiritual home”: how Linda Ronstadt inspired Paul Simon’s ‘Under African Skies’
The idyllic landscape of Paul Simon’s artistry would have always found a comfortable home in Linda Ronstadt. As someone whose unique heritage helped her to establish common ground between folk, country, and rock, Ronstadt reinstated what it meant to inject beauty into genre-blending, inspiring countless others, like Simon, to follow suit.
Beyond her hard-earned moniker as the ‘First Lady of Rock’, Ronstadt has always arrived adorned with a certain viscera, like it’s easy to imagine how she might enhance any track, even with collaborators she has yet to cross paths with. This strong presence wasn’t created by accident and instead came from a place of immense mentorship, learned only by those who once inspired her.
In fact, Ronstadt has always carried herself with a certain grace, even in situations where others might have responded with scepticism or trepidation. To her, bitterness is a pointless mindset, and the only way to earn long-term respect and admiration is to remain dignified with quiet confidence—something she has always had in abundance.
In many ways, Simon and Ronstadt share similar ethos and demeanours. Beyond their evident artistic sensitivity and deep appreciation for places, people, and experiences as sources of creative inspiration, both singers possess the unique quality of songwriting from a place of innate authenticity, like their words are extracts from pages of a diary, translated for others to own as their own.
The most obvious example of this likemindedness echoes in the walls of Simon’s Graceland, which saw the musician masterfully blending his interest in South African traditions with broader aspects of folk and rock, underscored by his own musings and lamentation about his psyche and surroundings. Although Ronstadt was enlisted to deliver backing vocals on ‘Under African Skies’, she also heavily influenced its direction, beginning when Simon requested a specific location to begin its lyrics.
“I was in Tucson visiting my dad,” Ronstadt told The Guardian when asked about how she inspired the song. “Paul called and said he was writing a song for us to sing together, and could I give him some kind of a geographic point, something that was around Tucson? I loved this mission that was built in the early 1700s. It’s a beautiful little building, built by pagans, and on the Indian reservation. It was kind of my spiritual home, so I told him about that.”
Ronstadt had lived in Tuscon for around ten years and explained to Simon how much it had meant to her, personally and artistically. The only things that pushed her out of the city were “politics and global warming,” which influenced her move to San Francisco after Tuscon had become “unbearably hot.” However, it maintained its place in her heart, which Simon then took to form the lyrics to ‘Under African Skies’.
“From Tucson Arizona / Give her the wings to fly through harmony / And she won’t bother you no more,” he sings in the song, allowing Ronstadt’s connection to her hometown to reflect broader themes of identity and self-discovery. These are all themes that define the broader scope of Graceland, with Ronstadt’s essence appearing subtly, enhancing its navigation of searching for belonging.
