Hopefully New Linda Ronstadt Biopic Doesn’t Gloss Over Country Era
Linda Ronstadt has lived one of the most remarkable lives in music history, and it’s been one where she’s always put the music and her integrity first. When she could have recorded vapid pop songs to cash in on her popularity, she instead focused more on singer/songwriter stuff, or ran off and started a Mariachi band.
When everyone expected Ronstadt to zig, she would zag. She drove labels executives and business managers crazy. But she never let her fans down, and she always made sure to to be an artist first and an entertainer second.
There are few better subjects to make into a biopic than the life of Linda Ronstadt, and that’s what’s being done. Last week it was announced that a movie is currently in pre-production about Linda’s life. Her manager John Boylan, and James Keach who produced the 2019 documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice are working on the project as producers.
Selena Gomez has been cast to play Ronstadt, and David O. Russell has been named the director. As both an actor and a singer of Hispanic descent, Gomez seems like a smart pick for the leading role. Linda Ronstadt reportedly signed off personally on the Selena Gomez pick, and the two have hung out together and discussed the upcoming role. David O. Russell is known for directing award-winning films such as Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013).
The screenplay writers for the biopic have yet to be revealed, but one hopes that they don’t just gloss over or speed through Linda Ronstandt’s time in country music at the start of her career. This includes her years in the Stone Poneys, her debut solo album in 1969 Hand Sown…Home Grown, 1970’s Silk Purse that included cover songs of “Lovesick Blues” and “Mental Revenge,” and her 1972 self-titled album where she recorded “Crazy Arms” and “I Fall To Pieces.”
Linda Ronstadt wasn’t just a pop star in country. She paid her dues and accrued true country bonafides before moving on. “When Will I Be Loved” and “Blue Bayou” were #1 and #2 songs in country respectively. She later returned to country in the groundbreaking Trio project with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris in 1987, and then again with Trio II in 1999. The Trio project scored four Top 10 hits itself, including the #1 “To Know Him Is To Love Him.”
Linda Ronstadt won 11 Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. After Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013 (later clarified as the Parkinson’s-like disorder called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy), rumors had her name also being considered for the Country Music Hall of Fame.
With all the success Ronstadt had in pop and rock, this is primarily how she is remembered in popular culture. But a quality biopic will hopefully establish that country is where she started, and where she found the initial support for her career to rise to the top.
January 17, 2024 @ 11:43 am
I think Gomez is good both comedically and dramatically on ‘Only Murders in the Building’, though I’m not sure about her singing; I wonder if, with Linda’s approval, she’ll be allowed to lip-synch to (or possibly have her voice blended with) Ronstadt’s recordings…
January 17, 2024 @ 1:25 pm
I hope so. Selena Gomez is a capable actress, but it’d take years of vocal training to get her even close to being in the same league as Linda Ronstadt vocally. Even Taylor Swift (who is not a great vocalist) is better vocally than Selena Gomez.
January 19, 2024 @ 7:44 am
Tristan McIntosh of The Linda Ronstadt Experience not only looks like Linda but sounds just like her. Great voice. I wonder if the producers looked her way at all?
January 17, 2024 @ 12:00 pm
Linda is the greatest of all time!
January 17, 2024 @ 5:32 pm
Great? Yes. The GOAT, nah. IMHO.
January 17, 2024 @ 1:06 pm
She was so versatile and I saw singing with Johnny Cash stunningly beautiful
January 18, 2024 @ 7:05 pm
Check out the Tennessee prison concert she did with Cash, the prisoners looked like they really enjoyed her performance, and her attire.
January 17, 2024 @ 2:45 pm
Her backing band in the early 70’s kinda sucked though
January 17, 2024 @ 5:32 pm
Ya the Stoned Ponies, later became the Eagles….real sucky….
January 18, 2024 @ 1:37 am
It was a joke. I’m a massive Eagles fan
January 18, 2024 @ 10:19 am
So much of communication is lost in texting/posting.
I Almost knew you had to be.
But then again if your into Swift who knows…
I am still thinking George, a tribute in your name above, or a statement of how your car drives….
Of course, I was nearly wrong twice this week,
The other being a thing with New Riders, Graham Parsons, Zappa and whom ever played lead on Joe’s Garage.
And I play guitar and should have known….
Go figure.
January 17, 2024 @ 5:43 pm
Linda Ronstadt one of the greatest, I saw her in concert, what a fantastic voice. Talent like hers isn’t seen or heard too often. May God bless her.
January 17, 2024 @ 5:46 pm
Very accurate assessment Chris.
I saw Swift at the rodeo in Cheyenne opened for Brad Paisley. She was off key on every song. I really don’t get the hype and hysteria.
I have perfect pitch as anything out of tune, sharp/flat is like nails on a chalk board.
There has always been outstanding Pop music, even Mozart back in the day was Pop music of it’s time. Teeny bubble gum pop aside. Ronstadt is in a league all her own. Salina has that latina cuteness too, she will be awesome with her natural acting chops. She might surprise us vocally. Although I think the safe money is on just Linda’s prowess being an already perfect soundtrack….
January 17, 2024 @ 5:48 pm
I think she had one of the most beautiful voices of any female singer ever! And she could sing pop, rock, country, big band standards, jazz, opera, you name it. Sadly like Julie Andrews, that gift of an exceptional voice was taken from her. I was blessed to hear that voice live in 1990 when she toured with the Neville Brothers. Yet again, the beauty of recorded music is we can always hear that wonderful voice every day. Hope its a good movie.
January 17, 2024 @ 6:59 pm
Her duet with Aaron Neville back in 90 was awesome. Still play “That’s all I need to know” as beautiful song still today. Her health going south broke my heart for her.????????
January 19, 2024 @ 1:38 am
Rookie mistake. Sarcasm in print is almost impossible to pull off.
January 17, 2024 @ 6:32 pm
I for one don’t think that the C&W aspect of Linda’s career is going to get ignored, mostly because Linda, even in her declining state of memory, still remembers those times when her older sister would put on stacks of Hank Williams records (especially “I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You”, which Linda would record in 1974), and the folk music movement of the late 1950’s that introduced (or reintroduced) traditional mountain music (and Bluegrass) to urban folk audiences.
It is important to remember, however, and this aspect was highlighted in the book “Western Edge”, that Linda, because she also grew up around other kinds of music (Mexican rancheras; opera; American standards; and, yes, Rock and Roll), never had an overt twang in her voice that would readily identify her as necessarily straight country. And her belting style wasn’t exactly what you would have found in most female country singers of the 1960’s.
Still, I think it can be said that, without the individual impact (not to mention the TRIO recordings with Dolly and Emmylou) she had on the country music charts, there likely would not have been either the female country music boom of the 1990’s that gave the world Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, and Patty Loveless, or the Americana movement that gave us artists like Tift Merritt, Caitlin Rose, and Margo Price. All of them have gone out of their way (Trisha especially) to acknowledge just how influential she was in their lives; and it remains true, even as Linda now has to struggle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.
January 18, 2024 @ 11:35 pm
Her memory is declining? In all her interviews she’s as sharp as a tac! I hope Linda has not been having memory problems as well. Do you know something that we don’t know?
January 19, 2024 @ 11:30 am
Sometimes her memory isn’t what it was, but it’s probably both a product of all the decades she spent doing concerts (they all blur into one), and the fact that PSP does cause loss of memory among other things. But yes, she is still quite articulate given what she has to deal with when it comes to her health
February 2, 2024 @ 4:00 pm
A symptom of her condition (supranuclear palsy) is cognitive decline. Doesn’t appear to have affected her much yet but it’s progressive and untreatable.
January 17, 2024 @ 6:35 pm
I still remember loving Different Drum when it came out, I was 7. She sang it beautifully at 21, and it even sounded great on a transistor radio. Yes kids, in the 60’s, we listened to the Top 40 hits on small devices that weren’t sonically perfect because that’s all we had. (“Ok Boomer”…lol) I know now Mike Nesmith wrote it, but they wouldn’t let The Monkees play it. As I’m writing this, I’m thinking, she was probably the first female artist I liked, and ended up liking her forever. I hope this biopic is good.
January 18, 2024 @ 6:34 am
So thrilled about this project. No disrespect to Ms. Gomez, who is a talented young lady with an uncanny resemblance to a young Linda, but it would be a grave error not to use Ms. Ronstadt’s original recordings. Personally, I hope the film does justice to Linda’s early life as she has said that all the music she covered in her life, she had heard before the age of ten. More than anything, I hope this film will introduce new generations not only to Ms. Ronstadt’s body of work but to all the music, musicians and singers she introduced to me. Given Ms. Ronstadt’s deteriorating health, I pray she sees this film come to fruition and that she is pleased with the effort.
January 19, 2024 @ 8:16 am
Going to be hard for selena gomez, linda is a perfectionist in all her music going to be hard to mimic one of our greats. Love you linda guide her well…
January 19, 2024 @ 5:34 pm
What’s going to be interesting is if this movie becomes a hit. Taylor Swift has wanted to portray Joni Mitchell in a biopic, but Joni squelched it. Now, if her BFF Selena becomes a big star portraying Linda (with Linda’s blessing, mind you), it’s really going to frost old TS.
February 3, 2024 @ 5:47 pm
I think the difference is that Joni, for better or worse, is savagely protective of her own image to the point of narcissism, and she didn’t much relish at all the idea of bring portrayed on the screen by a comparative “kid”. Selena, on the other hand, actually went up to see Linda at Linda’s home in San Francisco for a couple of hours last fall to talk with Linda and get her blessing for the project, which she did.
I don’t envy Selena’s task in taking on this role. Linda never had many easily identifiable stage mannerisms, and in fact was incredibly shy about performing at all onstage in front of thousands. It’s going to be hard to make that work in cinematic and dramatic terms; but if Selena’s diligent enough (and I think she is), anything is possible.
As for Taylor’s reaction to Selena being cast in this film, I don’t think there will be any “bad blood”, in fact, far from it.
January 18, 2024 @ 9:18 am
Notable that the Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame embraces and inducts artists who were not rock & roll at all, but influenced the genre, like Robert Johnson Woody Guthrie and recently Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. But it’s like pulling teeth to get the Country H-o-F to induct artists with legit country credentials, including even #1 country hits, but who are more associated with other genres. I.e, Ronstadt, John Denver–and Ray Charles, who finally did get in after years of efforts. Even Kenny Rogers, who for several years was the biggest country artist on the planet, was a struggle to get into the Country H-o-F.
January 18, 2024 @ 11:09 am
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has frequently allowed too many people in (although not people like Warren Zevon and others who actually fit), while the Country Music Hall of Fame has had the opposite problem. Linda Ronstadt is amazing and deserves any accolade she receives, but I’m not advocating for her to be an inducted into the CMHOF as long as there is a massive backlog of artists who devoted their entire careers to country music and only a handful of inductees per year. I predict that she will be inducted, nevertheless, if this movie is a hit and revives interest in her music. I’d also note Elvis and the Everly Brothers as a few other inductees whose primary commercial success was outside of the country genre.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does have an early influences category, which was initially for the country, blues, folk and pop artists who influenced the creation of the Rock and Roll genre. But they seemed to have ran out of people or stopped looking hard enough, so in recent years it has devolved. Now Wanda Jackson, Link Wray and Kraftwerk have all been inducted as early influences. To be clear, all three are very deserving of any recognition they receive. All three were also rock artists, full stop, not early influences.
That being said, I wouldn’t mind eventually having a rotating category in the CMHOF for people outside of the genre who either had influence on later country performers or who used their fame to help expose new audiences to country music. All three of the early country rock artists featured on the front page of Saving Country Music right now would qualify.
January 18, 2024 @ 7:57 pm
The voice of an angel!
January 20, 2024 @ 1:46 pm
Although l cringe at a few of her pop hits and the sterile 70’s production, she is one of the most versatile and talented vocalists ever. I am sure that the movie will touch on her country side, though my favorite part of her career was when she did Canciones de Mi Padre. What emotion plus vocal ability and control! I also appreciate her candor, humor, intelligence, and self analysis of her music.
January 21, 2024 @ 4:54 am
Got her start in country, yes! And I feel it will pay homage to that but that won’t be the premises of the movie. I feel as though she got huge recognition and major support starting a mariachi band and I think that will be a main focus of the movie, other than it being about her. For her to bridge a gap between two different genres is pretty dang cool.
January 22, 2024 @ 7:51 am
There is at least one amusing and colorful story (possibly an “urban legend”) about Linda when she made her first appearance on Johnny Cash’s TV show, which was also her first direct exposure to the country music audience. During the taping of that show at the Ryman in April 1969 (hers was the third to be aired, two months later), Linda appeared in that famous Betsy Johnson dress, coming onstage bare-footed and, it it said (and pardon the phraseology here), bare-assed. In other words, she wasn’t wearing any panties…until June interfered and told her point-blank that Linda would have to if she was going to sing with her husband.
This does point out that Linda was then and would forever a remain non-conformist, and why, even with her love of country music, she could never have been a member of the Grand Ole Opry, let alone ever a “straight country” artist. She proved over her decades-long career that there were a lot of things she could do well…but doing what she was told wasn’t among them. Does that make her something of an “outlaw” or a “bad ass”? Maybe; it all depends on how you define those terms. There’s no question that she was a hippie back then in 1969, and that she rattled the Nashville establishment. And yet, that’s one of the things that so many female artists who were and are influenced by her have loved about her.
January 22, 2024 @ 3:49 pm
The video of the performance (of “I Never Will Marry”) is on YouTube and I have to say, there HAS to be a reason she’s sitting down.
January 22, 2024 @ 5:17 pm
Yes, and the reason she is sitting down there is that J.C. had a lot of sit-down performances on his shows, not just this one; and by the time taping got under way, Linda had agreed to wear panties just this one time. She did apologize to June a bit later on, and she appeared on Johnny’s show three more times (March 1970; October 1970; February 1971).
But it did show that Linda was going to be a force to be reckoned with in decades to come. In fact, the very first song she ever on that 1969 appearance of hers was “The Only Mama That’ll Walk The Line”, a gender-changed rendition of Waylon Jennings’ “The Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line” from the previous year, and with Linda’s voice having a growling, guttural quality to it.
January 23, 2024 @ 7:10 pm
Her country sensibilities run deep. Her rendition of “Tracks of My Tears” is a breathtaking country treatment of an R & B classic. Her interpretive gifts of covering anything and making it her own are phenomenal. She has done it all.
I think Selena Gomez will be wonderful.
February 2, 2024 @ 4:02 pm
The Stone Poney’s were considered folk.
February 2, 2024 @ 4:49 pm
Yes, they were considered something of a Los Angeles version of Peter, Paul, and Mary, with occasional light psychedelic and folk/country inflections. Linda really didn’t consider herself ready to be a solo singer at all at the outset; but her voice was too big to ignore once “Different Drum” had become such a big hit at the end of 1967 and the start of 1968, and she was still only 21 years old.