In the autumn of 1977, Linda Ronstadt was at the peak of something difficult to name precisely. Not just fame. Not just commercial success. It was that rare state a handful of artists reach — when a voice and an era converge so completely that every song they touch comes alive in a different way. … Read more
Linda Ronstadt was twenty-three years old and quietly frightened. It was 1969, and she had already released her first solo album, Hand Sown… Home Grown, to no fanfare whatsoever. She had grown up in Tucson, moved to Los Angeles at eighteen, and ridden a Stone Poneys hit called “Different Drum” as far as it could … Read more
By the autumn of 1977, people were arguing about Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou” before they’d even heard it — which tells you something about the cultural weather that year. Roy Orbison had written the song with Joe Melson in 1961, shaped it somewhere on a road trip between Arkansas and Texas, and released it on … Read more
By the time Linda Ronstadt walked into the Sound Factory in Los Angeles in the summer of 1974, she had been at this for seven years — seven years of strong taste, wrong luck, and a voice that nobody quite knew what to do with. She had three solo albums for Capitol Records, each one … Read more