Post by the Scribe on Jun 21, 2021 13:50:12 GMT
Sexism in Music: From Linda Ronstadt to Smoke Season
www.popdust.com/sexism-music-industry-linda-ronstadt-2323678686.html
Popdust spoke to a cavalcade of strong, talented singers, songwriters, musicians and producers about what it's like to work in music (as a woman) in 2017.
Jason Scott
03.25.2017
"They were always trying to put me in the position of being boss.
They felt their masculinity was threatened being sidemen to a girl singer, therefore subservient to me. And if I was the boss lady...I'd put on my boots and get my whip and all that crap," Linda Ronstadt once said in a round-robin interview for Fusion. The year was 1969, and she had just embarked on her solo career, releasing her debut LP Hand Sown...Home Grown--on which she gender flipped Waylon Jennings' "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" into the provocative sanction "Only Mama That'll Walk the Line." "Well I'm a-workin' every day all you wanna do is play. I'm gettin' tired of staying home all night. Well, I'm a-coming unglued from your funny little moods," Ronstadt bellows on the answer song which swiftly became a staple in her shows well into the years which followed. She performed the song during her appearance on The Johnny Cash Show in June of '69, which would ultimately become a pivotal moment: for not just her career but her womanhood.
www.ronstadt-linda.com/intfus2.htm
In her 2013 memoir, "Simple Dreams," she recounts an especially harrowing incident surrounding her appearance on Johnny Cash's show. Late one night, one of the producers phoned her up to give her notes about her performance, offering to come to her hotel room. At first, she rejected the offer--and then he called again. She relented to his visit, thinking he was simply passionate about his work. "I should have followed my first instinct because as soon as he entered my room and closed the door, he removed every stitch of clothing he was wearing. I was embarrassed and frightened," she writes. "He was hardly the Adonis of show business, and there was an element of icky self-loathing to his exhibitionism." [p52]
And that wasn't Ronstadt's first (or last) dangerous encounter.
Ronstadt first fronted the folk-rock indie band Stone Poneys, along with Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards, who would enjoy a Top 20 hit with "Different Drum" (a feminist statement by all accounts) in 1967. Before their career took off, the trio played The Troubadour, a nightclub in West Hollywood, on their open mic night called Hoot Night. Following their performance, they were asked to open a show for singer and musician Odetta, who was often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement." Soon after, a restaurateur came up to Ronstadt at the Troubadour bar and offered a business meeting to discuss her career. They were to hole up in his own restaurant after hours to talk. "I sat across the table from him in the empty restaurant, and he got right to the point," she reflects in her memoir. "He told me that I was still very young, didn't seem to have a dependable source of income, was likely to be facing some difficult times ahead, and he could make life much easier for me. He would pay for a nice apartment, buy my clothes, and give me a generous allowance of spending money. In return, I would be expected to sleep with him." [p37]
Irish playwright, novelist and essayist Oscar Wilde once opined in his 1889 essay "The Decay of Lying" that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." For Ronstadt, that meant continuing to gender flip or reinvent songs originally recorded by men. In 1977, she turned the Rolling Stones hit "Tumbling Dice" into a statement piece about being a female musician in '70s Hollywood. "People try to rape, always think I'm crazy," she asserts on the opening line--the original lyric reads: "Women think I'm tasty, but they're always tryin' to waste me." The difference is startling, but encapsulates the vast differences in how men and women are portrayed in music, the media and society. Women are always "crazy bitches." Men are always strong, independent thinkers. Ronstadt, whose trailblazing career can best be defined by her fearlessness in front of and behind the microphone, shattered the glass ceiling. She was vulnerable and resilient and unwavering in determination to make a name for herself in a predominantly male format. At the height of her career in the '70s, her caramel smooth vocal was the lens through which she consistently deconstructed the male ego.
She would also reimagine Little Feat's "Willin'," an Americana trucker tune about the freedom of the open road. Both rock music and trucking have, historically, been stapled as male-only industries, but she didn't care. She glared her male conspirators down into submission; amidst a flurry of rampant sexism, she would hate herself and struggle with her own sexuality and would quickly gain insight into the lengths at which she must achieve to come out ruling the world. And she would, by leaps and bounds.
If this story sounds eerily familiar, that's because it is today's reality, too. Popdust spoke with several singers, songwriters and musicians about what it has been like working in the music industry today--and surviving as women. The personal anecdotes will disgust you, send creepy crawlies down your spine and make you feel like you need to take a long, hot shower. But these conversations are critical, especially at a time when the leader of the free world is a sexual predator himself.
Psychedelic grunge-rock performer Kate Crash starts the conversation, reflecting on the greater "systemic global problem" and widespread rape culture. "Look at the fact that people didn't care that a sexual predator was running for office and voted for him anyway. Look at how we victim shame," she says. "Look what happened in 'Last Tango to Paris,' a rape scene and no one believed the actress until the director came out and said it--and he wasn't regretful about the experience."
twitter.com/katecrash
Crash is referencing the infamous rape scene in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, which stars Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Director Bernardo Bertolucci revealed in a 2013 TV interview with Dutch program College Tour that he and Brando conspired together and plotted the scene, in which Brando was to pin Schneider down (without her knowledge) and use butter as a lubricant for intercourse. "There was a baguette, and there was butter, and we looked at each other. And without saying anything, we knew what we wanted," Bertolucci said. "But I've been, in a way, horrible to Maria, because I didn't tell her what was going on. Because I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated."
jezebel.com/the-rape-scene-in-last-tango-in-paris-was-not-consensua-1789663754
What Bertolucci achieved was not a release--from his guilty (he flippantly brushes that aside, however)--but a destruction of one woman's dignity in front of millions of viewers (that lives on and on and on in pop culture). Schneider is humiliated over and over and over again. The exploitation of her humanity triggers the deeply-rooted systemic sexism only verified when a man speaks it so. "During the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears," Schneider said in 2007. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci."
www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-469646/I-felt-raped-Brando.html
"If we think about Linda's comments and what just happened to Kesha, we see that the problems are still very deep in regards to believing what a woman says is true, feeling like you have to do things because it's the next step even if it's painful, and how to keep going when people don't treat you with respect," adds Crash.
Kesha's tragedy continued last month when she released email exchanges between Dr. Luke and her manager Monica Cornia. In one particularly troubling message, the pop producer claimed, "A list songwriters and producers are reluctant to give Kesha their songs because of her weight." In another string of emails, he allegedly said, "We were having a discussion on how she can be more disciplined with her diet. there have been many times we have all witnessed her breaking her diet plan. this perticular [sic] time — it happened to be diet coke and turkey while on an all juice fast." And then: "I don't give a s–t what you want. If you were smart you would go in and sing it," in regards to lyric changes to Kesha's hit single "Crazy Kids." This comes a year after a Manhattan judge ruled the singer could not be released from exclusively recording for Sony and Dr. Luke's label.
pagesix.com/2017/02/15/kesha-releases-heartless-emails-as-part-of-latest-dr-luke-lawsuit/
Fighting the Male Ego & Barrage of Sexual Assaults
As devastating as Kesha's journey has been, it is a terrifying constant in the music business. "There are always predators around, and you have to keep an eye out for them," Ronstadt told Salon in 2013. "But again, the guys I traveled with were pretty refined and intelligent. Guys like John Boylan — who traveled with me for years and is in fact traveling with me right now — really helped me put my bands together and really helped me with my records. It's not like there were a bunch of oafs out there having orgies all the time. That just wasn't my world. The other thing about musicians is that really good musicians don't care whether you're male or female, whether you're a goat or a donkey or a camel. They care if you can get into the groove and get into the spirit and play really well. If you can't play well, they don't want you around. If you can, you're always welcome."
www.salon.com/2013/10/07/linda_ronstadt_there_are_always_predators_around_and_you_have_to_keep_an_eye_out_for_them/
In Ronstadt's 1969 Fusion interview, she later detailed an occasion which pitted her against her fellow musicians, Edwards and Kimmel. "It was just weird. What happened first was our manager came up to us at The Troubadour...and said: 'Well, I can get your chick singer recorded, but I don't know about the rest of the group.' And that was the end of it, man. The beginning of the end--which, really, didn't bother me that much cause that group was really more of a learning experience than anything else. I really wasn't into singing that kind of music."
More to the point, she continued: "It's really hard for a single girl to get a band of backing musicians, because there's all that ego problem of being labeled a sideman for a girl singer. I found that I'd get problems with that directly in proportion to how well they played."
On first impression, synth-pop singer Aria Wunderland admires Ronstadt's courage. "When women speak up about their well-warranted frustrations, as Linda did, they're often misunderstood as bitchy, angry, or being a man-hater. We are often afraid to speak candidly," she says. "In my earlier years, I had struggles with bandmates feeling upset about whether or not the angle of the camera showcased them enough. I have also seen them wanting to play their own improvised parts of the song to further [highlight] their individual talent rather than focusing on the song. It didn't quite feel like a comfortable environment for me to let loose and shine in."
twitter.com/ariawunderland
www.popdust.com/sexism-music-industry-linda-ronstadt-2323678686.html
Popdust spoke to a cavalcade of strong, talented singers, songwriters, musicians and producers about what it's like to work in music (as a woman) in 2017.
Jason Scott
03.25.2017
"They were always trying to put me in the position of being boss.
They felt their masculinity was threatened being sidemen to a girl singer, therefore subservient to me. And if I was the boss lady...I'd put on my boots and get my whip and all that crap," Linda Ronstadt once said in a round-robin interview for Fusion. The year was 1969, and she had just embarked on her solo career, releasing her debut LP Hand Sown...Home Grown--on which she gender flipped Waylon Jennings' "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" into the provocative sanction "Only Mama That'll Walk the Line." "Well I'm a-workin' every day all you wanna do is play. I'm gettin' tired of staying home all night. Well, I'm a-coming unglued from your funny little moods," Ronstadt bellows on the answer song which swiftly became a staple in her shows well into the years which followed. She performed the song during her appearance on The Johnny Cash Show in June of '69, which would ultimately become a pivotal moment: for not just her career but her womanhood.
www.ronstadt-linda.com/intfus2.htm
In her 2013 memoir, "Simple Dreams," she recounts an especially harrowing incident surrounding her appearance on Johnny Cash's show. Late one night, one of the producers phoned her up to give her notes about her performance, offering to come to her hotel room. At first, she rejected the offer--and then he called again. She relented to his visit, thinking he was simply passionate about his work. "I should have followed my first instinct because as soon as he entered my room and closed the door, he removed every stitch of clothing he was wearing. I was embarrassed and frightened," she writes. "He was hardly the Adonis of show business, and there was an element of icky self-loathing to his exhibitionism." [p52]
And that wasn't Ronstadt's first (or last) dangerous encounter.
Ronstadt first fronted the folk-rock indie band Stone Poneys, along with Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards, who would enjoy a Top 20 hit with "Different Drum" (a feminist statement by all accounts) in 1967. Before their career took off, the trio played The Troubadour, a nightclub in West Hollywood, on their open mic night called Hoot Night. Following their performance, they were asked to open a show for singer and musician Odetta, who was often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement." Soon after, a restaurateur came up to Ronstadt at the Troubadour bar and offered a business meeting to discuss her career. They were to hole up in his own restaurant after hours to talk. "I sat across the table from him in the empty restaurant, and he got right to the point," she reflects in her memoir. "He told me that I was still very young, didn't seem to have a dependable source of income, was likely to be facing some difficult times ahead, and he could make life much easier for me. He would pay for a nice apartment, buy my clothes, and give me a generous allowance of spending money. In return, I would be expected to sleep with him." [p37]
Irish playwright, novelist and essayist Oscar Wilde once opined in his 1889 essay "The Decay of Lying" that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." For Ronstadt, that meant continuing to gender flip or reinvent songs originally recorded by men. In 1977, she turned the Rolling Stones hit "Tumbling Dice" into a statement piece about being a female musician in '70s Hollywood. "People try to rape, always think I'm crazy," she asserts on the opening line--the original lyric reads: "Women think I'm tasty, but they're always tryin' to waste me." The difference is startling, but encapsulates the vast differences in how men and women are portrayed in music, the media and society. Women are always "crazy bitches." Men are always strong, independent thinkers. Ronstadt, whose trailblazing career can best be defined by her fearlessness in front of and behind the microphone, shattered the glass ceiling. She was vulnerable and resilient and unwavering in determination to make a name for herself in a predominantly male format. At the height of her career in the '70s, her caramel smooth vocal was the lens through which she consistently deconstructed the male ego.
She would also reimagine Little Feat's "Willin'," an Americana trucker tune about the freedom of the open road. Both rock music and trucking have, historically, been stapled as male-only industries, but she didn't care. She glared her male conspirators down into submission; amidst a flurry of rampant sexism, she would hate herself and struggle with her own sexuality and would quickly gain insight into the lengths at which she must achieve to come out ruling the world. And she would, by leaps and bounds.
If this story sounds eerily familiar, that's because it is today's reality, too. Popdust spoke with several singers, songwriters and musicians about what it has been like working in the music industry today--and surviving as women. The personal anecdotes will disgust you, send creepy crawlies down your spine and make you feel like you need to take a long, hot shower. But these conversations are critical, especially at a time when the leader of the free world is a sexual predator himself.
Psychedelic grunge-rock performer Kate Crash starts the conversation, reflecting on the greater "systemic global problem" and widespread rape culture. "Look at the fact that people didn't care that a sexual predator was running for office and voted for him anyway. Look at how we victim shame," she says. "Look what happened in 'Last Tango to Paris,' a rape scene and no one believed the actress until the director came out and said it--and he wasn't regretful about the experience."
twitter.com/katecrash
Crash is referencing the infamous rape scene in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, which stars Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Director Bernardo Bertolucci revealed in a 2013 TV interview with Dutch program College Tour that he and Brando conspired together and plotted the scene, in which Brando was to pin Schneider down (without her knowledge) and use butter as a lubricant for intercourse. "There was a baguette, and there was butter, and we looked at each other. And without saying anything, we knew what we wanted," Bertolucci said. "But I've been, in a way, horrible to Maria, because I didn't tell her what was going on. Because I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated."
jezebel.com/the-rape-scene-in-last-tango-in-paris-was-not-consensua-1789663754
What Bertolucci achieved was not a release--from his guilty (he flippantly brushes that aside, however)--but a destruction of one woman's dignity in front of millions of viewers (that lives on and on and on in pop culture). Schneider is humiliated over and over and over again. The exploitation of her humanity triggers the deeply-rooted systemic sexism only verified when a man speaks it so. "During the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears," Schneider said in 2007. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci."
www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-469646/I-felt-raped-Brando.html
"If we think about Linda's comments and what just happened to Kesha, we see that the problems are still very deep in regards to believing what a woman says is true, feeling like you have to do things because it's the next step even if it's painful, and how to keep going when people don't treat you with respect," adds Crash.
Kesha's tragedy continued last month when she released email exchanges between Dr. Luke and her manager Monica Cornia. In one particularly troubling message, the pop producer claimed, "A list songwriters and producers are reluctant to give Kesha their songs because of her weight." In another string of emails, he allegedly said, "We were having a discussion on how she can be more disciplined with her diet. there have been many times we have all witnessed her breaking her diet plan. this perticular [sic] time — it happened to be diet coke and turkey while on an all juice fast." And then: "I don't give a s–t what you want. If you were smart you would go in and sing it," in regards to lyric changes to Kesha's hit single "Crazy Kids." This comes a year after a Manhattan judge ruled the singer could not be released from exclusively recording for Sony and Dr. Luke's label.
pagesix.com/2017/02/15/kesha-releases-heartless-emails-as-part-of-latest-dr-luke-lawsuit/
Fighting the Male Ego & Barrage of Sexual Assaults
As devastating as Kesha's journey has been, it is a terrifying constant in the music business. "There are always predators around, and you have to keep an eye out for them," Ronstadt told Salon in 2013. "But again, the guys I traveled with were pretty refined and intelligent. Guys like John Boylan — who traveled with me for years and is in fact traveling with me right now — really helped me put my bands together and really helped me with my records. It's not like there were a bunch of oafs out there having orgies all the time. That just wasn't my world. The other thing about musicians is that really good musicians don't care whether you're male or female, whether you're a goat or a donkey or a camel. They care if you can get into the groove and get into the spirit and play really well. If you can't play well, they don't want you around. If you can, you're always welcome."
www.salon.com/2013/10/07/linda_ronstadt_there_are_always_predators_around_and_you_have_to_keep_an_eye_out_for_them/
In Ronstadt's 1969 Fusion interview, she later detailed an occasion which pitted her against her fellow musicians, Edwards and Kimmel. "It was just weird. What happened first was our manager came up to us at The Troubadour...and said: 'Well, I can get your chick singer recorded, but I don't know about the rest of the group.' And that was the end of it, man. The beginning of the end--which, really, didn't bother me that much cause that group was really more of a learning experience than anything else. I really wasn't into singing that kind of music."
More to the point, she continued: "It's really hard for a single girl to get a band of backing musicians, because there's all that ego problem of being labeled a sideman for a girl singer. I found that I'd get problems with that directly in proportion to how well they played."
On first impression, synth-pop singer Aria Wunderland admires Ronstadt's courage. "When women speak up about their well-warranted frustrations, as Linda did, they're often misunderstood as bitchy, angry, or being a man-hater. We are often afraid to speak candidly," she says. "In my earlier years, I had struggles with bandmates feeling upset about whether or not the angle of the camera showcased them enough. I have also seen them wanting to play their own improvised parts of the song to further [highlight] their individual talent rather than focusing on the song. It didn't quite feel like a comfortable environment for me to let loose and shine in."
twitter.com/ariawunderland