The one singer Linda Ronstadt couldn’t stand listening to: “Just white noise to me”
Linda Ronstadt couldn’t have asked for a better musical family to grow up in when she first moved to California.
She was already used to singing whatever she wanted when she was a kid, but getting to learn the ropes of rock and roll alongside Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and JD Souther was all that she could have asked for when trying to be the perfect singer. But even though some genres worked a lot better with her voice than others, there are more than a few singers that she would gladly turn off the minute that they opened their mouths.
But it’s not like being a world-class vocalist was mandatory in rock and roll by any stretch. Bob Dylan is one of the greatest rock stars who ever lived, and yet his sandpaper voice isn’t going to win any awards, and even when Ronstadt was working with people like Neil Young, his voice could be more than a little bit rough around the edges whenever he started singing on ‘Heart of Gold’. Even if those discrepancies give them character, Ronstadt still wanted to be thought of as a great technical vocalist.
Which probably explains why she ended up working on Broadway and eventually went into the easy listening world. She wasn’t going to be reaching for the same high notes that Freddie Mercury hit or anything, but with the help of people like Nelson Riddle, she started to understand how she could use her voice in a different context. Not everything needed to be full force all the time, but in rock and roll, half the fun is seeing a singer push themselves to the absolute brink whenever they get to the microphone.
And it’s not like Ronstadt didn’t have her fair share of favourite singers in that field. Janis Joplin is still one of the finest female voices to come out of rock and roll, and there are even a few times when Mick Jagger could push himself with The Stones, but if they were the textbook example of rock and roll singing, AC/DC was where Ronstadt drew the line in her record collection.
A lot of the guitar work is certainly great, but compared to every other rock star she heard in her prime, this was the opposite of what she signed up for, saying, “I used to think [heavy metal] was the end of the civilization. Maybe it still is, but I’ve become a big, huge fan of [AC/DC’s] ‘Back in Black’ because of that rhythm section. The singer is just white noise to me, but that’s as good a rhythm section as has ever evolved out of rock and roll, for pure groove playing.”
Then again, can we really call AC/DC a heavy metal group? They do have the roaring guitars that a lot of metal groups had from around the same time, but it’s not like Brian Johnson is trying to reach for the same high notes Rob Halford was. If anything, this was a throwback to the days when rock and roll first started to take over the world, and no matter which voice you heard on one of their records, it felt like the same excitement that Little Richard captured back in the day.
It might be an acquired taste for some, but there’s also a lot of technique behind that kind of singing as well. Johnson might not have the best diction in rock history or focus on running scales or anything, but a song like ‘Hells Bells’ takes a lot of stamina for anyone to get through, let alone that has been belting their way through two hours of music every single night.
So while AC/DC might not be the first thing that Ronstadt is looking forward to listening to, it’s more than a great rhythm section that keeps fans coming back for more. AC/DC were true pioneers of rock and roll, and even if their music was a bit on the simplistic side, they are living proof of what could be done when all anyone had was a song in their heart and the right amount of power chords.
