The one song Linda Ronstadt wanted to sing for the rest of her life
Any song that Linda Ronstadt ever sang needed to have a bit of passion behind it for her to give it the green light.
There was never any doubt that she could turn any song into magic, but she had to believe that she could do justice to it before she even sang a note on anything. It had to come from a genuine place, but even if she didn’t write the tune, there were always tracks that would forever be etched on her legacy until the end of time.
But is that really what she wanted? Granted, no one gets into the music business with the intention of being ignored or anything, but Ronstadt knew she could always sing a few tunes so much better than what she ended up with on the final take. She knew ‘Different Drum’ was nowhere close to her standards most of the time, and even if there were tracks that did well throughout her career, she would gladly say that her voice wasn’t as suited for a tune like ‘You’re No Good’.
And it’s hard to argue given where she would take her music a few years later. She wanted to sing the kind of songs that could compete with the likes of Sinatra most of the time, and that didn’t always lend itself to singing tracks that could have been blaring out of a California bar band whenever they came on the radio. Then again, there are always going to be a few times where everything comes together behind the glass.
Ronstadt was always after that one magical take, but she was usually fortunate enough to have people like Warren Zevon and Randy Newman in her songbook as well. Each of them were singer-songwriters that could have easily made their tunes into hits on their own, but whenever she got a hold of their tunes, there was no reason to think that she wasn’t going to knock it out of the park whenever she performed.
Not all of them had the same impact as her hits, but when she walked into the studio to record ‘Heart Like A Wheel’, things felt different. She knew that nothing could get in the way of her nailing every single aspect of the tune, and when she did her version of the tune and took it out on the road, it was as if the melody was tailormade to suit her voice.
It’s not exactly the most complicated tune in the world, but in a sea of other cover tunes in her discography, Ronstadt knew that none of her other hits had the same impact as singing ‘Heart Like A Wheel’, saying, “The only reason I sang ‘Heat Wave’ was because we had a club act, and when you have a club band you have to have fast stuff. I was a ballad singer. I would have been happy for the rest of my life singing ‘Heart Like a Wheel.’ But in the clubs you needed stuff like ‘Heat Wave’ and ‘When Will I Be Loved.’”
And when looking at both sides of her career, ‘Heart Like A Wheel’ is one of the few tunes that can earn its stripes in both genres. It could have worked easily as a break from the more rocking stuff in her catalogue whenever she played The Troubadour, but even when she started to work with Nelson Riddle, there’s a good chance that a melody that simple could have been given the easy-listening treatment as well.
It’s insanely malleable in that respect, and a lot of people forget how much of a lost art that is. Anyone could have found time to make music only in one genre, but any great artist will tell you that the true auteurs in their field don’t have to hide behind the trendy styles to have their music stand on its own.
