The pioneering musician who convinced Linda Ronstadt to play rock: “Make it up as we went along”
Typically, it doesn’t take Linda Ronstadt much convincing to try new things – mostly because of the fact that she can turn her hand to pretty much anything, and instantly transform it into something great. Making the leap to rock music was just another string in that bow.
Indeed, this was really the starting point of Ronstadt’s musical journey, as the spirit of the 1960s in California swept her up along with all the other young, budding starlets who were hoping to make their way in this new, promising world. Hailing from a homegrown landscape of societal inventions and Mexican music, rock and roll was certainly a very different calling – but just like everyone else of that era, Ronstadt would have been cursed to ignore it.
As such, when she made the decision to leave her native Arizona and head for the shining sights of Los Angeles, it was a choice that would truly cement the fate of the rest of her life, even though she was still merely a teenager at the time. But going round all the city’s venues and seeing the brightest rock lights of the time transpired to be far more than a hobby – it became an ambition and vocation for Ronstadt, and there was one particular man at the helm of that dream.
Recalling her memories of that gleaming era in a 2000 interview with Mojo, she explained: “The Whisky A Go-Go was the psychedelic bands’ place. The Troubador was a cabaret. And the Ash Grove was a very traditional folk music place.” But it was when stepping into one specific venue to see a special band play that everything changed for Ronstadt.
“We went to The Trip on Sunset Strip to see The Byrds,” she explained, before adding, “I’d known Chris Hillman from folk music as a mandolin player. So I thought, if he can play folk rock, I can play folk rock. I didn’t know how it would be, so we would have to make it up as we went along.”
That pretty much became the mantra of everything that Ronstadt would ever do over the course of the rest of her career, but Hillman would remain as the unerring presence in her head through all of that, proving that the seemingly unachievable was somehow always possible. As a pioneer of the folk rock genre as a whole, he and the rest of The Byrds are to thank for laying the groundwork of a lot of what we know and love now. Yet for Ronstadt, it symbolised a springboard.
With the very genesis of her early life and upbringing having been rooted in the idea of innovation and making new strides forward, you could hardly consider it surprising, in retrospect, that Ronstadt would choose to go down a route so creative, effervescent, and peripatetic. In this sense, Hillman is obviously just one of a myriad of influences to have brushed her along the way – but he will always remain the most constant, for inspiring her to jump into the sonic unknown in the first place.
Of course, there are many artists who would gladly line up to tell you how much Ronstadt’s spirit of its own kind has steered them forward on their individual journeys, which is exactly the testament to the type of artist she is. The difference is her ability to look back and so clearly cite the musicians who paved the way for her, though – and it’s evident that Hillman is one of the biggest of them all.
