In 1976, Ronstadt reached the Top 3 of Billboard’s Album Chart and won her second career Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her third consecutive platinum album Hasten Down The Wind. Here’s one of my faves (well, they’re all my faves, tbh), Warren Zevon’s “Hasten Down the Wind. 1977, on the cover of the Grammy winning album design and 3x platinum certified studio disc, Simple Dreams. She said something really interesting about how the record companies back then (and probably now, too), kept insisting that all their artists sing happy songs (based on focus groups they’d done)… ignoring the power of a sad song or a ballad to release those melancholy feelings and actually make you feel much better than a “happy” song.Īnyways, I listened to her music all the way home… music that stands the test of time… just like David’s. The way she fought her record company and management to branch out and try different genres - from Gilbert & Sullivan operetta to the American Songbook standards to classic Mexican mariachi music to the harmonies she did with Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris - all done brilliantly…I know, I bought them all. The way she touches your heart with the way she sings each song. The way she told the MC backstage, before coming out, “I can’t believe all these people are here to see me and I’m not even singing.” The way she talked about being “a huge fan” of other musicians and deliberately chose not to be jealous of them but to try and get to work with them. The way she was born into a musical family and sang in both Spanish and English from an early age.
The reason I’m even sharing this is that so many of the things she talked about reminded me of… well, you know who. But she gave a wonderful talk - complete with photos and videos and rare audio clips - to a packed house at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall.Īs soon as she walked out, a deep man’s voice yelled out, “WE LOVE YOU, LINDA!” He totally spoke for all of us there. And again, I can only speak of the Hasten Down The Wind reissue and about those 2 copies I heard, both numbered in the low 2000s. Like the best moments of the preceding nine, though, the best moments of Hasten Down the Wind will be with us a long, long time. Linda’s 70 now and suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, so sadly she can no longer sing. I'm not saying that the MoFi Hasten Down The Wind is anything that glaring - it's more like the likelihood that when you hear an original LP, you'll realize the lack of transparency and immediacy in the MoFi reissue. But it is, despite its flaws, a fine album that begs closer inspection than, I fear, many of us are willing to give to Linda Ronstadt's art.
Her songs were the soundtrack for my teen years and I bought every LP, learned every word to every song and would belt them out in my room, to the chagrin of my brother and two sisters. So, I got to see one of my all-time musical heroes give a talk last night… the one, the only, Ms.
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