The singer who taught Linda Ronstadt “a hell of a lot”
Managing the balance between competition and cooperation within the world of creativity is incredibly difficult. Linda Ronstadt seemed to find that balance, though.
There are two different kinds of people within the world of music. You have some people who want to work with others and believe the idea of achieving something great is by opening yourself up to the idea of collaboration.
It’s an incredibly sweet sentiment, and a lot of the time it works. There are plenty of great songs that stem from good writing partnerships, and these wouldn’t develop were it not for this willingness to work with others.
Tom Petty had one of these relationships with Mike Campbell, where the two of them developed an almost unspoken bond as songwriters. “Mike really is the best in rock and roll,” said Petty. “I’d be lost without him. I’ve played with Michael since 1970, so I wouldn’t understand playing with anyone else. We write together, and we’ve developed a whole style of playing together.”
The other side to this approach is one of competition, where artists see other musicians and use them as inspiration by wanting to better them. It sounds unhealthy on some levels, but some of the best music ever made has come as a result of a good rivalry. If you want proof, just look at the Beach Boys and The Beatles, or if you’d like a more recent example, Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
“My intent was to always keep, I think from day one, was to always keep the nature of it as a sport,” said Kendrick Lamar when discussing their feud. “I don’t care how mother fuckers look at it as a collaborative effort, you know, that’s cool too, but I love when artists grit their teeth. Like, I still watch battle raps […] This has always been the core definition of who I am, and it’s been that way since day one.”
So, how do you balance the two? There is no right answer, but Linda Ronstadt certainly had a healthy approach to it. She was human, which means she could see other musicians who she thought were better than her, but rather than go up against them, she decided to try to collaborate with these people so that she could learn from them.
One of the most influential times when she did this was in the 1970s, when she was on tour with Neil Young. During a night off in Houston, the two of them went to see Emmylou Harris and Graham Parker, which was a turning point, as she stumbled upon a singer she was desperate to learn from.
“Here was someone doing what I was doing, only, in my opinion, better,” said Ronstadt, “Hearing her finally outweighed the pain of being outdone, and I just thought, ‘Well, here’s the level, and I’d better get up there. I’d better fight for it.’ I sat down with Emmy and sang, and I learned a hell of a lot about singing from her, and I still do.”
Ronstadt said that Harris was “The most inspiring singer to me, bar none. I would rather sing with Emmy than anybody else. She can make me feel the music and the ideas of a song like nobody.”
