The singer Linda Ronstadt was forever grateful to hear: “We don’t have her anymore”
In a world full of musical technicians, Linda Ronstadt prided herself on being the consummate performer whenever she sang.
Anyone could have overdubbed different parts of her songs when it came time to make classics, but throughout most of her run throughout the 1970s, what you’re hearing is one of the greatest singers of all time giving the kind of performance that wouldn’t have felt out of place on a stage. She wanted to keep her music natural in that respect, but that didn’t mean that she had to have that much fun listening to her own voice over her greatest heroes.
Compared to all of the greatest rock and roll singers of that decade, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone harder on their own voice than Ronstadt was. She had the gift that most female singers yearn for whenever she belted out ‘Heart Like A Wheel’, and yet, when listening to her voice in isolation, she had the kind of insecurity that would have made her cringe most of the time when listening to tunes like ‘You’re No Good’.
For the rest of us, it sounded like absolute genius, but the sound was part of the reason why Ronstadt wanted to move outside her wheelhouse. She wasn’t cut out for rock and roll like the rest of the world, and while listening to the back half of her career, she made a habit out of taking on any new adventure that she could, whether that was going to Broadway or leaving behind any sense of popular music to make a standards album years before they were ever popular.
If that was already a gamble, then having her sing in Spanish was practically musical poison for any of her PR people. This was not the way that most pop singers went about their careers, but if you look at what Ronstadt was listening to as a little kid, it made all the sense in the world for her to change on a dime. She grew up around this music, and hearing people like Maria Callas was an education all on its own.
You’re not going to exactly hear the makings of Ronstadt’s voice in the way Callas sings, but there are subtle inflexions that she definitely brought with her to rock and roll. As far as she was concerned, no one else sang with that much taste, and the fact that she got to witness that voice from the other side of a speaker was more than enough to last a lifetime.
So while Ronstadt herself doesn’t like the idea of recording as much as the usual rock and roll vocalist, she knew it was worth it if it meant hearing what Callas could do, saying, “I love to listen to Maria Callas and I’m glad we have her recordings because we don’t have her anymore and I can’t run out and hear her live. But mainly I prefer a less illustrious live performance.” And it’s hard to really fault her when looking at what she could do back in the day.
While the Heart Like A Wheel album is still considered one of the landmarks of country rock, the fact that she could stand right in front of her audience and sing songs like ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ hit even harder in the moment. She could really inhabit a song whenever she got onstage, and that’s the kind of thing that no one can fake when all they have in front of them is a microphone and a wall of glass.
Because when playing live, Ronstadt needs that extra jolt, and while Callas was one of the few singers that could do no wrong in her books, it was much better for her to have a real connection with the audience. There are many ways for people to make iconic tracks, but even in an age where you could make a hit song in Pro Tools, Ronstadt preferred to sing completely free and let the results speak for themselves.
