|
|
She has either grown up or gone deaf. Besides the usual, 'Hey baby, take it off!' and other postpubescent idiocies, the male chorus at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York, is chanting less subtle bon mots at Linda Ronstadt. With self-restraint to match her fiery voice and comely appearance, she ignores the catcalls and captivates the crowd. On this night, she is clearly the Queen of Queens, the rock chanteuse.
This is not to say that Linda Ronstadt doesn't take excellent advantage of her physical attributes. Her costumes (girl scout uniforms, for example) project a sure-fire kittenish charm. But it is primarily her crisp, gutsy voice, wafting between L.A. country/rock' and Nashville rock/country, that has made Ronstadt America's number-one pop female vocalist. Backstage at Forest Hills, a grinning Ronstadt shoots the breeze with her entourage, casually draping an arm over bassist Kenny Edwards. She nuzzles him lightly, with the barest hint of romance. Linda is relaxed and rosy-cheeked. The last time New Yorkers saw Linda in concert, in mid-1977, she was begging off the stage after four songs, claiming fever and nausea. The disgruntled in the audience charged her with malingering. Not so, says a backstage observer. "She was one sick lady." |
Ronstadt and producer Peter Asher have found musical kinship in the studio and on the road. 
Linda wasn't faking on her last tour: "She was one sick lady," a friend insists. |
|
Her 1978 summer tour, however, had none of the bad karma of old Ronstadt junkets. Linda, tired of being given the business, is now running the business. The personal and professional confusion that marred her early career seems to have dissipated, leaving, in the words of close friend Andrew Gold, "a very happy person." Linda and her retinue of stalwarts (Edwards, Waddy Wachtel, Jon Grolnick, producer Peter Asher) are a close crew, traveling the nation by bus. Says Linda, "It's a friendly way to travel. . . the bus is like a giant roller skate." Andrew Gold describes a similar family feeling when working with Linda in the studio. "I was doing my first album and Linda was doing Hasten Down the Wind. We'd go in and record Linda's album, and then take a dinner break and with the same players from her LP, we'd work on my record. . . it was a simultaneous thing. . . the same people and the same music, everybody hanging out together, almost like living together, all of us, for a time. Whatever happened criss-crossed." |