The one band Linda Ronstadt regretted not touring with: “It was a shame”
Linda Ronstadt never knew what little time she had left to perform in her prime.
She always made some of her best work whenever she had a crowd in front of her, and even if she was repulsed by a lot of her records during her country rock regime, there were many times when her songs became the gold standard for anyone willing to break into the country pop world. Her voice was everything that people wanted to hear when she first began, but she felt that she would have done a few things differently had she had the chance to do everything over again.
First off, chances are she would have wanted to get vocal lessons from the moment she got signed. She was always willing to have fun performing with anyone that she could, but when she started working on Broadway and delivering the greatest songs in the American Songbook, chances are she was going to have a few questionable moments when going back to her old records, like on Heart Like A Wheel.
But that’s half the reason why some of those songs ended up working so well. She was one of the most natural singers in California at the time, and even if she didn’t have the greatest technique of everyone playing the Troubadour, you couldn’t deny the size and scope of her voice whenever she performed tunes like ‘You’re No Good’ or ‘When Will I Be Loved’. Then again, there was a difference between her singing solo and having the right voices behind her.
No one would have paid attention to any other background vocalist by her side, but Ronstadt had lucked out when she had the future members of the Eagles behind her. Don Henley and Glenn Frey had everything that a vocal team could have asked for, but when she started to make a name for herself on her own, chances are she was getting more than a little bit sick of having to sing by herself all the time.
All of her friends had other voices to bounce off of, and when the age of the supergroup started, Ronstadt figured she could throw her hat into the ring. She had moved far away from country for the last few years and had spent time making Mexican records, but when she teamed up with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris for the Trio album, you would have sworn that she hadn’t lost a step from the first moment she started harmonising.
The whole album felt like a female-led Crosby, Stills, and Nash record, but the biggest regret was that Ronstadt never got to tour the record, saying, “I always thought it was a shame that we never toured together because we would’ve refined what we were doing on the bus singing together, and that would’ve made a big difference. Doing it night after night, we would’ve gotten really tight.” But getting those three legends’ schedules to line up would have been impossible.
While Ronstadt was ready for anything, the biggest question mark would probably have come from Parton. She is still a reigning legend of country music, but the whole reason why she remains one of the biggest names in music is that she never stops. So even if the trio managed to crank out a few live shows and actually hone their craft, they would have had to operate around what Parton was doing half the time they played.
It’s a shame that the band will never get the chance to make another record or play a show again now that Ronstadt has permanently retired from music, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still some merit in those Trio songs. If anything, the record is the kind of fascinating listen in the same way that the Traveling Wilburys records were. They weren’t ever going to see the stage, but it was still a damn good time listening to them.
