We Lose Linda Ronstadt’s Voice
“You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff.” —Al Pacino, playing Coach Tony D’Amato in the movie Any Given Sunday.
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This news of Linda Ronstadt losing her voice due to Parkinson’s Disease seems like an especially sinister storyline. What a cruel machination of mother nature to rob a woman of her one defining gift while she still has life and clear cognitive factories to contemplate her fate. This isn’t any voice, or any woman. But Linda Ronstadt is smart and strong, and I’m sure she will come to peace with it.
And we must come to peace with it, but how do we replace the Linda Ronstadt voice? With Miley Cyrus twerking up a wall and dropping immature drug references in her droning dance club songs? With Brittney Spears, and the images of her shaving her head to avoid a positive drug test in a custody battle, and making out with Madonna on the VMA Awards? With Taylor Swift, who arguably can’t even sing? It’s just one voice, but it’s one we can’t replace. None of the voices that lent their talent to defining the American culture as the preeminent showcase for artistry and talent are being replaced as the greats falter and disappear and their contemporaries are relegated to obscurity. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio…indeed.
Linda Ronstadt’s first solo album, Hand Sown…Home Grown, was arguably the first ever alt-country record. Like Gram Parsons, Ronstadt was responsible for showing legions of music fans that country music could be cool. Ronstadt’s 1987 collaboration with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris called Trio resulted in one of country’s most timeless records.
She fell out of favor with some of the core of country fandom when her career moved in a more rock and pop direction. But Linda didn’t strike her widespread, universal appeal by being a genre-bending, attention-thirsty trend chaser, she did it by exploring and satiating the different influences she was exposed to as a child and young adult. She didn’t release a classic Mexican album at the height of her career because that is what the masses were clamoring for. It is because it is what she wanted to do, and lo and behold, the record had more mass appeal than expected despite the language barrier because Linda Ronstadt’s voice was so powerful.
With the way social networking works today, when it comes to celebrity tragedies like Linda Ronstadt losing her voice, we all seem to be more wrapped up in the dissemination of the news than the deep contemplation of what it all actually means. We like to be the first of our friends to see the reports and post it on our respective feeds, we want to have the most poignant quip and get the most retweets and the most shares. It’s like in a moment of supposed empathy, we become somewhat selfish in this new paradigm of experiencing and sharing the grieving process in a public manner, in real time, for people we rarely know on a personal basis, with people we rarely know on a personal basis. It becomes just as much about us as it does the victim or the tragedy.
Then again, we all are victims here. Linda Ronstadt didn’t just lose her voice, we all lost Linda Ronstadt’s voice. And the sounds of life will be one more shade towards grey henceforth.
August 25, 2013 @ 6:53 pm
Beautiful and cutting insight. I’ve been quick to comment my remorse at Linda’s suffering; genuinely perceiving it to be a universal loss, but I simply cannot comprehend the impact to Linda herself, nor would I presume to. I simply feel blessed to have enjoyed the beauty of her gift and her intent to share that. I can only offer my love and blessings to her in exchange, but do so unreservedly.
August 25, 2013 @ 8:48 pm
Wow.
“There”™s really only three female singers in the world: Streisand, Ronstadt and Connie Smith. The rest of us are only pretending.” -Dolly Parton
August 25, 2013 @ 10:15 pm
For what it is worth, I first became familiar with Linda Ronstadt through her three albums she made with Nelson Riddle. My dad was a big Sinatra junkie and Riddle used many of the same arrangements with Ronstadt so I grew up hearing her sing songs from the American Songbook. To this day, that is still how I think of her, not as alt-country or country rock or anything else. She sounds great those albums. It is too bad they have faded into the background a bit.
August 26, 2013 @ 10:36 am
same here I first really listened to her when the first nelson riddle album came out with a ton of publicity and that led me to her work with randy newman . “Texas Girl At The Funeral Of Her Father” is pretty much my favorite non country vocal performance of all time. probably not a lot of Julie Andrews fans on this board but she was the first singer I started following as a kid and I was just as sad when she lost her voice after surgery on her vocal cords.
August 26, 2013 @ 6:58 am
Damn shame. God Bless Linda during this time of dealing with the hand that has been dealt her. Once again proving it is crucial you go see your hero’s while you can ! Sadly, in this situation I did not heed my own advice and regret I never got to hear that amazing voice live.
August 26, 2013 @ 8:47 am
When I was a teenager, Linda was the bomb! Not only musically, but also her beauty. I had Linda Ronstadt posters on my wall, long before I had a Farrah poster. To me, the reason she was so important as a musical force is because she brought to the forefront, writers that may have not gotten widespread attention on the airwaves at that time. People such as Lowell George, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Cliff, JD Souther, on and on. She was a true champion of the song writer. Couple that with one of the most beautiful voices on the planet and how could you have not fallen in love with Linda? I’m so saddened by this news that I really don’t know what to do with the emotions.
August 26, 2013 @ 9:32 am
Lovely tribute, Trig. I was very saddened to hear this news over the weekend — I’ve been a fan of Linda since I was a kid hearing her hits on the radio (such as her late-80s duets with Aaron Neville, “All My Life” and “Don’t Know Much”), plus her 4-disc ‘Box Set’ is one of the very few box sets I own, and her 1999 ‘Western Wall’ collaboration with Emmylou Harris is one of my favorite albums.
The sheer breadth of Linda’s body of work blows my mind; not many people have (or have had) the voice for all that, and hers was one of the best.
August 26, 2013 @ 1:10 pm
Man, Linda Ronstadt was a beauty back in the day! I’m sad to hear that she’s not able to sing anymore. However, maybe she’ll find something else she can do for fun.
August 27, 2013 @ 7:23 am
The loss of Linda’s voice to Parkinson’s is indeed a tragedy, made worse by the presence of women who are mere pole dancers, and one (Taylor Swift) whose voice irritates. But one should remember that Linda has inspired a lot of really good, and several downright great, female artists in her time, including Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, Sheryl Crow, and dozens of others. That’s a large legacy to have, and I think it behooves all of us to keep that legacy in mind, as well as the memory of what Linda herself has done.
August 27, 2013 @ 8:10 am
Sad news. My favorite Ronstadt song is her cover of We Need A Lot More Of Jesus, And a Lot Less Rock n Roll; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqs2P4nV1u8
I also just came across this version of Silver Threads and Golden Needles with emmylou harris and Dolly Parton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwZf0IeSKh4
May 4, 2019 @ 5:15 pm
Klara Soderberg will learn to sing Linda songs if anyone can. Not as anything but homage. I think she cares enough to approach it properly.