Has Linda Ronstadt Been Forgotten?

Forgotten? Nope. I love her Spanish album, "Canciones de Mi Padre."

 

I think the statute of limitations has passed on this, so I'll tell this story: I worked on several of the music videos for What's New, supervised by producer/manager Peter Asher. Linda actually came into the session to see the monitor and immediately collapsed in a chair and whined, "oh, god! I look so fat!" Asher soothed her, assured her that all of this would be fixed in post (and we were in post at the time). After a few niceties and checking a few other shots and things, she left.

The moment she was out the door, Asher turned to me and said, "alright -- skinny her up a bit, OK?" I tweaked the vertical sizing mode to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the picture, making everything in the frame more oval rather than round. Sure enough, she now looked like she had dropped 25 pounds. Asher nodded and said, "OK, let's use that setting. We may go a little more on the close-ups." And that's the way those particular music video clips were done.

I can think of several other major TV series where images of the actors' faces were squeezed in a similar way, to make them look a little thinner. (One was a recent long-running cop show with a very cantankerous, insecure lead actor who was always convinced he looked fat on camera.)

 

Linda who????

But seriously, it is good to know that Get Closer will get a good mastering by MoFi. It seems to have been OOP for a while.

Surprisingly I just listened to a rerun of her appearance some years ago on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. I didn't know she had ever appeared on the show. I still don't think she's the right person to be singing the Great American Songbook, but I like her country rock, rock, and Pirates of Penzance material.

I assume she will do some interviews to promote her book, so maybe that will remind those who have forgotten.

 

She's never been forgotten by me! But not too many artists can stay at their artistic or commercial peaks for long. She had a tremendous run through from the early seventies on through the eighties. My feeling is she got to dabbling in so many vastly different music forms that it hurt her commercially. And without the radio hits, people didn't know what a "Linda Ronstadt record" was anymore.

 

I always preferred her more country ish Capitol albums than her Asylum pop hit records. However I'm glad she made Warren Zevon a lot of money...that he pissed away

 

From everything I've ever read about her, this seems to be the best answer. She certainly did whatever she wanted with her career. She did say, she was happier being near her family in Tucson, raising her kids, than she had been in California.

 

The last thing I remember her doing was being on the tonight show and getting in that fight with Robin Quivers.

 

Asher tells this story about you in his traveling one man show ;-)

 

She seemed like she was always just passing through, doing her greatness and moving onto family. It seems natural for her IMO.

 

You don't have to parrot him, and chances are that he probably doesn't expect you too, either.

 

I saw her last year in San Francisco at the Great American Music hall. She was sitting next to the sound board guy watching the Ry Cooder Show. it's a small club and she was diggin the music.

 

I remember her.

 

Like "I am positive that Linda seems to have been forgotten"

 

Yeah, not quite a scoop. I heard Asher tell the same story.

Ronstadt doesn't have the profile she had in the '70s, but she's hardly become a hermit. Her memoirs will be published in September, and she's devoted more time to activism than to music in the past few years.

 

Linda is definitely one of the greats in all of music and hasn't been forgotten by me.

 

I'm still trying to figure out why her two Nelson Riddle collaborations didn't help her career the way the Songbook albums revived Rod Stewart's, she was first and sounds much more natural and convincing with this material.

 

I couldn't forget the cover of her "Hasten Down The Wind" album if I tried. And I don't want to try.

 

They were big but about 10-15 years earlier than Rod

 

Thanks for sharing a very cool in-person moment. Thats as good as any snapshot picture.

 

For good or bad, I feel that Linda paved the way for rock/pop artists to cover standards...

 

I guess if you're a fan, you're in for a treat. Linda and Emmylou Harris did an album together in 1999 called "Western Wall: The Tuscan Sessions". I saw them both at the Ryman in Nashville supporting that album. Great show with Linda acting a little strange about staying in the spotlight as her turn to sing was coming around. She would step back into the shadows to a small waist-high chair. There were a couple of times where she was a second late getting back and I could tell Emmylou (the ultimate professional) was looking over "bothered". Anyway, it was a great show and a very good album. Check it out.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Wall-The-Tucson-Sessions/dp/B00000JZBQ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364607837&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=the tuscan sessions emmylou harris

I hate to brag, but if you get seats at the Ryman where they pull out the steps in front of the stage, you can actually hear the un-amplified voices of the singers in front of you. The amps that night were above the stage so I got to hear Linda's "real" voice singing to me for awhile. It was great!

 

She's very popular in the Goodwill and charity stores. Right up there with John Denver and Evie.

 

I think it depends on what stations on radio you listen to.

 

Yes but it's been 11 years since the first Songbook CD and Rod's as popular as he's ever been, even if his audience now is of a different ''middle aged women'' and older demographic.

 

Care to name the cop show?