The one tour Linda Ronstadt hated performing: “They made a mistake”
The touring industry is not always for the faint of heart. It can be downright ruthless when someone tries to be the next big thing in town, and when they have the tunes to back it up, it’s enough to have any of the biggest names in music running scared. While Linda Ronstadt was never meant to be an intimidating presence whenever she got behind the microphone, she was never afraid to put some of the higher-ups in their place once she started taking to the road during her prime.
Then again, it was always going to be hard to break out of the California rock scene. The Troubadour in the 1970s was already home to some of the greatest singer-songwriters in the world, so to get noticed, you had to either be on Bob Dylan’s level as a writer or have some sort of gimmick about you that got your foot in the door. In Ronstadt’s case, though, that came from pure power when she started singing.
While her initial plan was to sing loud to hear herself over the rest of her band, that became a trademark part of her sound when making songs like ‘You’re No Good’. When she was still making ends meet in The Stone Poneys, though, their lifestyle travelling through the countryside was never glamorous. They might have had a hit, but that make up for the fact that they were going across the country in a van that would break down going from gig to gig.
Since she was learning the ropes, though, Ronstadt was keeping her ear to the ground for new musicians all the time. It was clear that her instincts were pretty good when she got people like Don Henley and Glenn Frey together in her band, but there were few people coming out of that scene who could compete with Neil Young. Fresh out of CSNY, Young’s run of records in the 1970s is a perfect case study in Americana music, which is strange considering the man is from Canada.
Even though Ronstadt was more than happy to contribute to Young’s albums and even sing with him on a few occasions, the tides started turning back her way when she went on tour with him. Very few artists managed to beat Young in his prime when he had some of the best lineups for Crazy Horse, but Ronstadt remembered the managers realising that they had gravely miscalculated what she could do.
It was becoming clear that Ronstadt was blowing away the audience every night, she knew that she was working with the wrong people, saying, “They obviously made a big mistake. And they figured it out when I started singing. I wish the audience would’ve stayed home, and they would just let me sing. I didn’t relate to my audience.”
Considering Young’s main audience was all about seeing what strange new avenue he would go down, Ronstadt was satisfied playing the kind of country rock she could deliver in her sleep. ‘You’re No Good’ may have livened things up a little bit, but if she wanted to make people sing along when listening to ‘When Will I Be Loved,’ she was going to need to spread her wings a bit more.
Although she has gone down as one of the biggest names in country rock the same way Young has for folk rock, both of them seem to occupy a similar space in the music industry. Both of them have a sound that they became known for, but as their lives unfolded, everyone started to realise the multi-layered artists they were dealing with.
