The frontman Linda Ronstadt called a musical “teacher”
Not every band leader wakes up one morning knowing how to work a crowd. It can take years for anyone to eventually feel comfortable playing in front of thousands of people, and it can take even longer before things start feeling like second nature whenever the first song begins.
Linda Ronstadt may have never claimed to have been the most electric performer ever to touch a microphone, but she always knew to look out for when someone had moves she could learn from.
But when looking at her own performances, Ronstadt usually let the music do the talking whenever she performed. She needed to make sure that nothing got in the way of her massive voice, and whether she was going through an era of singing standards, singing in a completely different language, or going back to her roots as a country-rocker, nothing stood in the way of her adding some strength to her vocals.
And despite being among fellow country legends on the Trio album, Ronstadt’s voice was always perfect to sing any of their songs. Emmylou Harris was always a fantastic songwriter with the most beautifully delicate voice, and it’s hard to find nearly anything wrong with any tune that Dolly Parton has her hands on, but Ronstadt usually ended up walking away with some of the finest performances on the record. It may have been through strength, but she knew a thing or two about entertainment as well.
After all, no one could have gone through the amount of times she played at the Troubadour without knowing how to work the crowd, but even after she made it big, she remembered always wanting to learn from other people at the lip of the stage. It was easy to focus squarely on people like Janis Joplin, but when watching The Rolling Stones up close, Ronstadt knew that learning a few moves from Mick Jagger was worth it.
She was already disappointed seeing the band once, but with a full view of the stage, she knew that Jagger had the electricity most people would kill for, saying, “I’ve seen Mick Jagger really only once. I went to an Anaheim concert but I couldn’t see any of it ‘cause everyone stood up.I never got to see the show, so I flew to Tucson just to go. I loved it and got so many great ideas. He’s a teacher.”
Then again, you’d have to wonder how much of Jagger’s dance moves were taken from some of the legends that came before him. There’s no doubt that he’s cut out his own lane as a frontman, but looking at how he interacted with people like Tina Turner, there were probably a few instances when Jagger was doing his homework watching how ‘The Queen of Rock and Roll’ worked a crowd as well.
While Ronstadt was never going to do her version of ‘The Rooster’ pose or strut around the stage like Jagger could, the influence she took from him had more to do with the delivery. No one could be mild-mannered when stepping up to the microphone, so it was important to make the audience feel like your heart is breaking during a ballad or put as much energy as possible into the rock and roll tunes.
Ronstadt might have been able to use Jagger as a model, but like any good rock and roller, it was more about how she brought her own identity into her tunes. She could have studied some of the best that rock had to offer, but if there’s one rule that shines above everything else, it was that everyone should be allowed to be themselves.
