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PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
Susan Hooper
Detours and Tangents
RESILIENCE
Applause for Linda Ronstadt
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/detours-and-tangents/201910/applause-linda-ronstadt
She no longer sings, but Linda Ronstadt is still very much worth listening to.
Posted October 27, 2019 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Linda Ronstadt provided the sound track for the most mournful days of my youth.
I discovered her belatedly, in my mid-twenties, by which time she was already a huge star, selling out stadium shows and producing chart-topping singles.
I was in graduate school, house-sitting a friend’s apartment and recovering from an unrequited love affair. Flipping through my friend’s LPs, I found a Linda Ronstadt album with her soulful 1970 hit, “Long Long Time.” I put it on the stereo and was immediately enthralled.
Ronstadt was singing precisely what I was feeling. I memorized the lyrics and began singing the song to myself, finding solace in the voice she had given to my pain.
A new film explores the singer's extraordinary life.Source: Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.
I didn’t rush out and buy Ronstadt’s albums; as a cash-strapped student, I traveled light and couldn’t afford to add a stereo and a crate of records to my few possessions.
But her soaring, powerful soprano on hit after hit played in the background as I negotiated my twenties, easing my pain or, as in her early hit, “Different Drum,” reminding me that sometimes moving on alone was the best way to go.
I never attended Ronstadt’s stadium shows; I’m intimidated by huge crowds and walls of sound. But I have my own fond memory of Ronstadt performing live. I saw her in New York’s Central Park in 1980, in an open-air production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
I distinctly remember Ronstadt making her entrance in a long, white, Victorian-era summer gown, with a white bonnet framing her heart-shaped face. She sang “Poor Wandering One” to her co-star Rex Smith in a performance guaranteed to melt the heart of Smith’s character and everyone in the audience, male and female.
Anyone hearing her for the first time would never have guessed Ronstadt was a pop icon with a set of pipes that could mesmerize a rowdy stadium crowd. Her silvery soprano seemed lighter than the summer air and created specifically to hit the highest notes in this frothy confection of a tune.
The Pirates of Penzance marked Ronstadt’s first public steps away from the pop and folk-rock worlds she had dominated since the late 1960s. A few years later, she took another detour, recording standards from the 1930s and 1940s with the help of legendary arranger-conductor Nelson Riddle.
She formed a trio with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, recording two albums of country and traditional tunes. She crafted two Spanish albums of Mexican songs she had learned from her Mexican-American father and other relatives growing up in Arizona. And she teamed with R&B legend Aaron Neville on her 1989 album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind.
In all, she recorded more than 30 albums. She won 10 Grammys (with 26 nominations), and in 2014 she received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
A moving new documentary—Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice—pays tribute to Ronstadt and her extraordinary career, which spanned four decades until problems with her voice forced her to retire from singing in 2009.
In 2013, Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease—a progressive neurological illness. She explained in interviews then that Parkinson’s was the cause of her vocal problems.
The documentary shows forcefully why Ronstadt would have been a wonderful role model for the twenty-something me—and for much more than her way with a ballad.
She was a consummate musician, passionately focused on her work. She found a way to negotiate the hyper-masculine world of rock and roll without losing her integrity or alienating male musicians, whom she both headlined with and needed in her back-up band.
She formed close, permanent bonds with other female musicians—choosing collaboration over competition, to the benefit of her fans and the musical community.
She never lacked for male companions, including California Governor Jerry Brown, but she also never married. She has lived her life on her own terms.
She refused to be stereotyped: She made musical choices her record labels criticized, and then she delivered mega-hits, no matter what she sang.
The largely unstated thread running through the documentary is Ronstadt’s fierce, restless intelligence—an attribute evident in her 2013 memoir, Simple Dreams. In a 2016 television interview, Dolly Parton described Ronstadt as a “brilliant, brilliant girl.”
The most poignant scenes in The Sound of My Voice are those of Ronstadt today. She sits, barely moving, speaking firmly but in a soft voice not much above a whisper. When she raises her hands, they tremble—another Parkinson’s symptom.
The contrast with the clips of the much younger Ronstadt in joyous motion—singing, dancing or playing the tambourine on stage in numerous concert venues—could not be more stark.
And yet, as her manager, Peter Asher, says in the film, “I can imagine that not being able to sing, for Linda, is awful. But nobody could handle change or adjustment in a more thoughtful way than Linda.”
And Ronstadt herself says, “I’m grateful for the time I had. I got to live my dreams, and I’m happy about it.”
Ronstadt turned 73 in July. With her music, she spoke to a generation of fans who are now in their 60s and 70s. These days, as she negotiates the constraints of Parkinson’s disease, Ronstadt continues to have a voice and a perspective worth hearing.
In this film, and in several television, radio, and print interviews since her diagnosis, Ronstadt is candid about the limitations she faces.
She speaks of the need for common sense and acceptance to get through her days. She does not mention courage or resilience, but she appears to have those qualities in abundance, too. She also has a sly wit and a self-deprecating sense of humor.
And she is, as Asher says, thoughtful—about the questions that face so many of her older fans as they confront their own health challenges and mortality.
“Another person with Parkinson’s said, ‘It’s not life after death that’s the question,’ ” Ronstadt says in the film. “ ‘It’s life before death. How are you going to do it?’ ”
© 2019 by Susan Hooper
Susan Hooper, a freelance writer, is a former newspaper reporter and government press secretary.
Susan Hooper
Detours and Tangents
RESILIENCE
Applause for Linda Ronstadt
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/detours-and-tangents/201910/applause-linda-ronstadt
She no longer sings, but Linda Ronstadt is still very much worth listening to.
Posted October 27, 2019 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Linda Ronstadt provided the sound track for the most mournful days of my youth.
I discovered her belatedly, in my mid-twenties, by which time she was already a huge star, selling out stadium shows and producing chart-topping singles.
I was in graduate school, house-sitting a friend’s apartment and recovering from an unrequited love affair. Flipping through my friend’s LPs, I found a Linda Ronstadt album with her soulful 1970 hit, “Long Long Time.” I put it on the stereo and was immediately enthralled.
Ronstadt was singing precisely what I was feeling. I memorized the lyrics and began singing the song to myself, finding solace in the voice she had given to my pain.
A new film explores the singer's extraordinary life.Source: Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.
I didn’t rush out and buy Ronstadt’s albums; as a cash-strapped student, I traveled light and couldn’t afford to add a stereo and a crate of records to my few possessions.
But her soaring, powerful soprano on hit after hit played in the background as I negotiated my twenties, easing my pain or, as in her early hit, “Different Drum,” reminding me that sometimes moving on alone was the best way to go.
I never attended Ronstadt’s stadium shows; I’m intimidated by huge crowds and walls of sound. But I have my own fond memory of Ronstadt performing live. I saw her in New York’s Central Park in 1980, in an open-air production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
I distinctly remember Ronstadt making her entrance in a long, white, Victorian-era summer gown, with a white bonnet framing her heart-shaped face. She sang “Poor Wandering One” to her co-star Rex Smith in a performance guaranteed to melt the heart of Smith’s character and everyone in the audience, male and female.
Anyone hearing her for the first time would never have guessed Ronstadt was a pop icon with a set of pipes that could mesmerize a rowdy stadium crowd. Her silvery soprano seemed lighter than the summer air and created specifically to hit the highest notes in this frothy confection of a tune.
The Pirates of Penzance marked Ronstadt’s first public steps away from the pop and folk-rock worlds she had dominated since the late 1960s. A few years later, she took another detour, recording standards from the 1930s and 1940s with the help of legendary arranger-conductor Nelson Riddle.
She formed a trio with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, recording two albums of country and traditional tunes. She crafted two Spanish albums of Mexican songs she had learned from her Mexican-American father and other relatives growing up in Arizona. And she teamed with R&B legend Aaron Neville on her 1989 album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind.
In all, she recorded more than 30 albums. She won 10 Grammys (with 26 nominations), and in 2014 she received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
A moving new documentary—Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice—pays tribute to Ronstadt and her extraordinary career, which spanned four decades until problems with her voice forced her to retire from singing in 2009.
In 2013, Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease—a progressive neurological illness. She explained in interviews then that Parkinson’s was the cause of her vocal problems.
The documentary shows forcefully why Ronstadt would have been a wonderful role model for the twenty-something me—and for much more than her way with a ballad.
She was a consummate musician, passionately focused on her work. She found a way to negotiate the hyper-masculine world of rock and roll without losing her integrity or alienating male musicians, whom she both headlined with and needed in her back-up band.
She formed close, permanent bonds with other female musicians—choosing collaboration over competition, to the benefit of her fans and the musical community.
She never lacked for male companions, including California Governor Jerry Brown, but she also never married. She has lived her life on her own terms.
She refused to be stereotyped: She made musical choices her record labels criticized, and then she delivered mega-hits, no matter what she sang.
The largely unstated thread running through the documentary is Ronstadt’s fierce, restless intelligence—an attribute evident in her 2013 memoir, Simple Dreams. In a 2016 television interview, Dolly Parton described Ronstadt as a “brilliant, brilliant girl.”
The most poignant scenes in The Sound of My Voice are those of Ronstadt today. She sits, barely moving, speaking firmly but in a soft voice not much above a whisper. When she raises her hands, they tremble—another Parkinson’s symptom.
The contrast with the clips of the much younger Ronstadt in joyous motion—singing, dancing or playing the tambourine on stage in numerous concert venues—could not be more stark.
And yet, as her manager, Peter Asher, says in the film, “I can imagine that not being able to sing, for Linda, is awful. But nobody could handle change or adjustment in a more thoughtful way than Linda.”
And Ronstadt herself says, “I’m grateful for the time I had. I got to live my dreams, and I’m happy about it.”
Ronstadt turned 73 in July. With her music, she spoke to a generation of fans who are now in their 60s and 70s. These days, as she negotiates the constraints of Parkinson’s disease, Ronstadt continues to have a voice and a perspective worth hearing.
In this film, and in several television, radio, and print interviews since her diagnosis, Ronstadt is candid about the limitations she faces.
She speaks of the need for common sense and acceptance to get through her days. She does not mention courage or resilience, but she appears to have those qualities in abundance, too. She also has a sly wit and a self-deprecating sense of humor.
And she is, as Asher says, thoughtful—about the questions that face so many of her older fans as they confront their own health challenges and mortality.
“Another person with Parkinson’s said, ‘It’s not life after death that’s the question,’ ” Ronstadt says in the film. “ ‘It’s life before death. How are you going to do it?’ ”
© 2019 by Susan Hooper
Susan Hooper, a freelance writer, is a former newspaper reporter and government press secretary.