“I was vindicated”: The metal band Linda Ronstadt predicted the future of
When talking about the most important artists of the 1970s, Linda Ronstadt certainly deserves a spot in the heavens for her singing talent. Aside from casually bringing together Eagles in her first solo band, she was one of the best interpreters of whatever music she could get her hands on, whether that was kicking back with a ballad, blowing the doors off their hinges with a rocker, or even trying her hand at singing on Broadway. If there was one genre that she probably didn’t have a firm grasp on, though, it was going to be a hard sell for her to embrace her inner metalhead.
Because, really, the audience that Ronstadt attracts doesn’t really have that many Black Sabbath albums in their record collection. This is a singer who walked in the footsteps of people like Rosemary Clooney, so it wasn’t out of the question for fans of her voice to take one listen to a Judas Priest record and call for it to be banned for being an assault on the human eardrum.
That doesn’t mean that there can’t be a little bit of overlap, either. Both Ronstadt and metal music all originated from blues, and even a band like Van Halen thought enough of her version of ‘You’re No Good’ to cover it years later, so there were a few amateur inroads for her to have an impact on metal bands. But towards the end of the 1980s, that was the furthest thing from her mind.
She had graduated from singing records of standards to wanting to sing Mexican music totally in Spanish, so unless her backing band contained members of Sepultura, there was hardly a reason to think that she was going to become the next Lita Ford or anything. But she did know that music could be a bit more sophisticated if they added a few more orchestral arrangements behind everything.
Ronstadt was always a fan of arrangers like Nelson Riddle, so when she wanted her music to be more refined, she felt the only way for her to liven up her songs was to bring in classical musicians to add some spice to everything. This was much more natural for people like Bing Crosby, but Ronstadt felt vindicated for bringing together rock instruments and classical orchestras after Metallica did their own version.
“My son was a devoted metal shredder and while listening him break down a Metallica song, I mentioned that I thought their stadium-size guitar textures resembled a symphony.”
Linda Ronstadt
There had already been plenty of bands using classical instruments in their music, but Metallica’s choice to perform with an orchestra was something Ronstadt always felt proud of, saying, “My son was a devoted metal shredder and while listening him break down a Metallica song, I mentioned that I thought their stadium-size guitar textures resembled a symphony. He gave me a look of teenage scorn. I was vindicated when Metallica brought out an album made with the San Francisco Symphony.”
It’s hard to think that James Hetfield or Lars Ulrich were thinking along the lines of Ronstadt’s music when making S&M, but it’s not like she was wrong in her assumption. Deep Purple had already done an album with a symphony, but given how many moving parts go into a Metallica song, the symphony only gave them more to work with, like when ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ becomes a long vehicle for that descending bass riff.
Songs like ‘Heart Like a Wheel’ and ‘Sad But True’ might be as far away on the music spectrum as possible, but it was never about the style. Because as long as there’s a great tune at the heart of everything, any artist can put whatever arrangement around their tunes as they want and make it work.
