The two artists that made Linda Ronstadt love music
Linda Ronstadt was never comfortable being in one spot for her whole career.
Despite being known as a country-rock goddess, seeing her embrace Mexican music and old standards made everything more interesting when she released a new album. But none of them could match the music that made her feel that sense of euphoria when she was a kid.
For as much as people thought she was committing a terrible career move by making entire albums in Spanish, Ronstadt was no stranger to that kind of music. Her father had played it all the time as a child, so before she even listened to mainstream popular music, she was already beginning to hear some of the finest Mexican players from south of the border.
But when she first struck out on her own, you would have sworn that she had been making country music since the day she was born. She had the ability to yodel her way through songs like ‘Love Sick Blues’ with no trouble at all, and while she eventually had some help from members of Eagles, there was never a point where she felt like she couldn’t wrap her voice around any other genre of music if it didn’t have a good backbeat behind it.
Outside of getting a groove, Ronstadt never forgot about the power of a great song. She had fawned over the work of people like Nelson Riddle throughout her career, but whereas those arrangements had made for incredible music, Brian Wilson brought that same fire to rock and roll. He knew The Beach Boys could be more than a surf band, and when Pet Sounds came out, Wilson showed the vulnerable side of himself that most people didn’t think could be done in a pop song.
But what Wilson was doing was only a reflection of what he saw in some of his favourite acts. It was impossible not to soak up some influence from other American acts at the time, and listening to Motown alongside The Beach Boys, Ronstadt practically fell in love with the idea of playing music for a living.
According to her, both The Beach Boys and The Drifters were the two artists that made her love everything about making music, saying, “I remember if it hadn’t been for the Beach Boys, I wouldn’t have been able to turn on my radio in high school. They are totally musical and totally a product of California. I just loved that. And I also know that if it hadn’t been for the Drifters, my life would have been poorer. We had the Drifters singing ‘Up on the Roof’ and Brian Wilson singing ‘In My Room’; two totally different ways of expressing exactly the same sentiment.”
But even if they are saying the same thing, the importance behind both songs that Ronstadt took to heart was being able to express a song in her own way. She knew it was no use singing something if she didn’t bring her spin to it, so when singing songs like ‘You’re No Good’ or ‘When Will I Be Loved’, you could tell that she meant every word she said.
That may have been the start of Ronstadt’s career, but over the next few years, she realised that there was a lot more ground to cover. She wasn’t going to be typecast into one style for the rest of her life, and throughout her career, up until her retirement, she took pride in being able to do anything she wanted.
