The “real musicians” Linda Ronstadt would love to sing like
Anyone standing onstage for as long as Linda Ronstadt was is bound to get a little bit of imposter syndrome now and again.
It’s one thing to get the validation of the fans, but if you think that your voice isn’t at 100%, all of that applause doesn’t seem to matter half the time. And while Ronstadt did have a few of the best singers in the world helping her during the start of her career, she would have gladly traded her position at the front to work with more than a few of her favourite musicians.
Because when you think about it, being a lead singer already puts a burden on someone’s shoulder that they don’t really need. It’s one thing to be insecure about singing in the same way that a guitarist might be a bit on-edge to recreate a guitar lick perfectly, but when that spotlight hits centre stage, it would have practically been expected for any singer to want to fall to pieces the minute that they sing the first line.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s not like Ronstadt was the biggest fan of her own voice to begin with. She took a lot better care of what she sang later in her career, but her gigs working with Stone Poneys were far from the best moments of her career. She knew that she wanted to go down in history like artists like Rosemary Clooney, and that meant going through many different genres until she found the sound she wanted to hear out of herself.
Did it always make the biggest splash? No, but Ronstadt would have gladly kept going on that path if she felt like she could make good music. Rock and roll was never specifically her forte, and while she was a showstopping vocalist whenever she went out to sing tunes like ‘You’re No Good’, it was impossible for her to look at a frontman like Mick Jagger and think that she could have that sense of swagger.
She never wanted to be that kind of showman in any sense of the word. It’s nice to have the validation of being at the lip of the stage, but when looking at her personal favourite singers out of the rock and roll world, Ronstadt had a great deal of respect for what the backup vocalists like Merry Clayton had been doing.
Although most people don’t remember their names, Ronstadt felt that she would gladly trade places with the backup singers if she wanted to, saying, “I’ve never been happy with myself as a singer. I never thought I was very good. I think I’m a better harmony singer than I am a lead singer. I love to watch Clydie King and Merry Clayton and Shirley Matthews sing backup. Those girls to me are real musicians. They’re just like the lead guitar player or the bass player or the drummer. They stand up on stage and just riff away.”
But not every backup singer has to be completely invisible. As Ronstadt said, they are practically lead instruments that can take a solo in the same way a guitar can, and while that means more than a few times where they steal the show, is anyone really complaining when Clayton delivered one of the best vocals in history on The Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ or Sandy Denny’s fantastic siren song in the middle of Led Zeppelin’s ‘The Battle of Evermore’?
They were all there to serve the song, but that’s also part of why Ronstadt needed to have that kind of job in her life. Being a frontman comes with a lot of showmanship expectations, and even if Ronstadt could do everything she could to light a fire under any audience she played to, standing in the back of the stage and coming up front was what separated the musicians from the outright entertainers.
