“The choice is easy”: The songwriter Linda Ronstadt would choose over any other
“All musicians, if they say they’re doing it for the audience, they’re probably bullshitting,” Linda Ronstadt once said. “Music is a biological necessity. It’s a way that we all have of processing our feelings.”
Music, for Ronstadt, has always been a selfish act, but in a way that’s not entirely about the ego. It might sound paradoxical, but that’s just the way she’s always operated. She rarely thinks about how things might land, or what others think, because if it hits home with her, that’s all that matters. And it’s also one of the reasons why she earned the title the ‘First Lady of Rock’.
But it’s also one of the reasons why she doesn’t really identify with such labels, nor does she see anything all that magical about her own music. In fact, she despises listening to her own stuff, because she once said she doesn’t think there’s anything that good about it, or that worthwhile when it comes to her vocals. Which, as a listener and a fan, seems completely absurd.
But it also makes sense when you look at the ways she expresses her appreciation for her own heroes, sometimes keeping a distance from them as if she wouldn’t know how to act around them. One of the best examples of this is when she performed in the early 1980s with Nelson Riddle arranging her orchestra.
“I’ve heard a rumour,” she quipped, “that Frank Sinatra’s been doing my tunes.” Ronstadt was already a lifelong admirer of the crooning jazz singer, once saying he was the sole reason contemporary pop music was the way it was. And so, after the show, you can imagine her utter fright upon hearing that he was also in the audience that night, laughing along to her casual remark like any other member of the audience.
“If I’d known he was here, I’d have left,” she later said, reflecting on how she’d also learned that he’d left four songs in for no good reason at all. Why? That’s anyone’s guess – but the point is, singing in front of her heroes, or at the very least, being perceived by them as the main event, is her ultimate nightmare. But that also taps into another complex relationship Ronstadt has always displayed when it comes to those she loves and how she views herself.
That kind of inability to marry your true feelings with the perception of others was ingrained into scenes like the Troubador. It seemed like at that club you were either a loud-mouthed leader with fragile insecurity or a quiet observer more comfortable than most.
All she ever wanted to do was be a singer. She didn’t care much for writing her own songs if it meant she could get up there and belt it out. But that’s also where that innate selfishness comes from. Or self-assuredness, as it were. Because Ronstadt might not have confidence in the traditional way, in the Troubadour way, but she does when it comes to knowing her own heart, which is also what comes through when looking at her other heroes. Specifically, the ones she’d place higher than anybody else, even if they’re not on-trend anymore, or considered by some as a relic of a time long left by the wayside.
When she discussed jazz composer George Gershwin with Vogue in the 1980s, this much was obvious. “If someone brought me a new Elvis Costello song and I put it side by side with something by George Gershwin, there’d be no contest,” she said. “To me, the choice is easy. For a singer who’s arrived at a point where you’d like to have a little more sophisticated sentiment, Gershwin is what comes out of your mouth.”
