Thursday is talent night at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood. Young girl after young girl (and some not so young) makes her way to the small stage. clutches the mike, takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and sings: "Desperado," "Love Has No Pride," "Blue Bayou," "When Will I Be Loved," "You're No Good." They all sing her songs precisely - every lick, each tiny inflection - just the way she does. These girls have hooked their dreams onto her music. And it's likely the same thing is happening at talent nights and hootenannies from Seattle to Boston.

Linda Ronstadt is probably the most successful woman singer of the Seventies. Cash Box named her the top female pop singer of the decade; she may be the most popular ever. Her concerts sell out within hours of being announced and she has had four records go platinum. To many, Ronstadt epitomizes not just the Southern California sound but the Seventies as well. Her music, as the decade, is random and eclectic. Ronstadt is an interpreter. Rarely does she write her own songs or play an instrument. She merely sings. And her voice, technically soprano. seems capable of anything.

She has sung almost every form of music except, perhaps. hard-core disco - and succeeded. She reaches way back for standards such as "Old Paint" and "I Never Will Marry" and sings them with innocence. She lunges ahead into the risky territory of punk and knocks out a haunting version of Elvis Costello's "Alison." She belts out love songs like "Loose Again" and "Down So Low" with the authority of someone who has seen and done it all. She sings Mexican, Motown, reggae - and the girl can rock 'n' roll. And when she sings a country tune such as "I Can't Help It (if I'm Still in Love with You)," there is no doubt that Ronstadt has something for everyone.

She was born in Tucson, one of four children, in 1946. Her English-Dutch-German mother (whose father invented such things as the electric stove, rubber ice trays, the grease gun) grew up in Michigan. Her Mexican-English-German father, who runs a successful hardware store, is from an old Arizona ranching family. At four, Ronstadt's father, who loved to sing, pronounced his daughter a soprano, and that was it. From that moment, Linda wanted to be a singer. She became addicted to the radio, memorizing every song she heard Music dominated her life.

She attended Catholic schools and her penchant for flouting tradition (a trait she picked up from her maternal grandmother) surfaced early on. She teased the young priests, exasperated the nuns and wore black pants under her white debutante dress when she made her formal bow to society. Ronstadt managed to stick it out for one semester at the University of Arizona before hitting the road in 1964. Her worried father slipped his daughter $30 and told her never to let anyone take her picture without her clothes - probably the only advice Ronstadt has ever heeded.

Arriving in L.A., she hooked up with Bob Kimmel and Kenny Edwards and formed the Stone Poneys, which was basically a folk/country band that played local gigs at places such as the Troubadour and the Palomino. The group eventually signed with Capitol Records and released three albums. The band had one hit, 'Different Drum." In 1969, Ronstadt struck out on her own and released her first solo album, "Hand Sown, Home Grown." Her second album. "Silk Purse," was released in 1970 and included her first hit, "Long, Long Time"; it also earned her her first Grammy nomination.

In 1971, she released her third solo album, "Linda Ronstadt," and formed a new band. which included Glenn Frey and Don Henley, who later formed a band of their own, The Eagles. In 1973, "Don't Cry Now"' was released. By that time, Ronstadt had a cult following, pulling her fans not only from the country ranks but from pop and rock as well.

But it was in 1971, when she teamed up with Peter Asher, who became her manager and producer, that Ronstadt took off. She released "Heart Like a Wheel." The single from that album, "You're No Good." sprinted up the charts to number one. Her cover of Hank Williams' "I Can't Help It (if i'm Still in Love with You)," also from "Heart Like a Wheel," won Ronstadt her first Grammy award for best female country vocal.

"Prisoner in Disguise" came next and was followed, in 1976, by "Hasten Down the Wind" and "Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits." and Ronstadt won another Grammy, this time for best female pop vocal performance. The Playboy Music Poll named her the top female singer in both pop and country categories.

There was no stopping her. The next year, she released "Simple Dreams," which some critics still call her best work. The album produced five hit singles, including her all.time biggest single, "Blue Bayou." "Simple Dreams" was also Ronstadt's best-selling album-over 3,500,000 copies in less than a year in the United States alone. And PLAYBOY again named her the top female singer in both pop and country categories.

"Living in the U.S.A." hit the stores in 1978 with an initial shipment of more than 2,000,000 copies. That album further demonstrated Ronstadt's versatility and growth. She sang the Hammerstein/ Romberg tune "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," covered Smokey Robinson's "Ooo, Baby, Baby." Chuck Berry's "Back in the U.S.A.," as well as Warren Zevon's "Mohammed's Radio" and Elvis Costello's "Alison." By that time, she had appeared on the covers of many major periodicals, from Redbook to Rolling Stone to Time. Her fans couldn't get enough information about her.

Ronstadt has broken new ground and remains unpredictable. One minute she appears barefoot, the next she appears on roller skates (setting off a national craze), the next in Ralph Lauren boots. She wears a white-silk dress to the Bottom Line and blue jeans to Nancy Kissinger's Carter Inauguration party. She is rich (in 1978, she made an estimated $12,000,000). She is independent. She has talked openly of drugs, sex, love, men. She is rumored to have bad romances with such men as J.D. Souther, Albert Brooks, Mick Jagger, Steve Martin, Bill Murray and, most recently, California governor Jerry Brown.

PLAYBOY asked free-lance writer Jean Vallely to talk with Ronstadt about her music and her life. Here is Vallely's report:

"I first met Linda Ronstadt in 1976 at Lucy's, a Mexican restaurant in L.A. when I interviewed her for a Time cover story. Over the next four years, we became friends. To sit down with Ronstadt and actually interview her again was fascinating. She has, quite simply, grown up. She is no longer the silly girl, willing to say anything for effect. She no longer wants to appear flaky. Linda Ronstadt wants to be taken seriously, as a woman and as an artist. To be sure, there is still a naughty streak that runs down her back the size of the San Diego Freeway, but she has it under control. As she does her life. As she does her music. I met with Ronstadt seven times, at her Malibu beach-front home.

"Her life is frenetic. One day the interview was interrupted as we all (Linda, her assistant, her bodyguard and I) searched for the papers to the new Mercedes diesel station wagon that Linda had just bought - mostly for her three dogs. Another time, she was in the midst of planning a $1000-a-couple benefit dinner for Brown's Presidential bid. And through it all, she was in touch with her decorators, who were in the process of remodeling her seven-bedroom mansion in Brentwood. All the interviews took place either in the glass section of her house that juts out onto the sand, which she calls the teahouse, or at the kitchen table (except for the two Sundays when Brown was there, working out on the deck, when we slipped upstairs to her bedroom). We drank a lot of Tab. Those sessions were at once intense and enjoyable. Ronstadt is generous, witty, articulate, smart and a whole lot of fun to be around ...and she sings like a dream."

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