Linda Ronstadt’s seventies output — a series of albums starting with 1974’s Heart Like a Wheel that made her the biggest female rock star in the world — is uneven as hell but over the years I’ve come to love Simple Dreams, bits of Hasten Down The Wind, and a few singles that aren’t studied Motown covers like “Heat Wave.” Eighties kids knew her for baloney like “Somewhere Out There” (with James Ingram) and plushly produced trash like “Don’t Know Much” (with an Aaron Neville performance as sweet as anything from his heyday). I’m even rather fond of her massage parlor-worthy version of Kate and Anne McGarrigle’s “Heartbeats Accelerating.”
A serious onset of Parkinson’s has forced her to retire forever from singing. She already felt retired, far enough away from us to evaluate the Nelson Riddle albums, the ones exploring her Latin American roots (I heard Frenesi at home in college). I admire her clarity as a singer, her peripatetic interests. The latter is one of the virtues of not being a singer-songwriter; expectations don’t cling to her. During her seventies peak she redeemed the idea of the performer who didn’t pretend to write songs (ignore her two middling efforts on HDTW). John Rockwell’s essay for Greil Marcus’ Stranded is essential reading; it’s especially good on Ronstadt’s genuine interest in creating a sense of community for female singer-songwriters in the repellant world of post-sixties machismo.
And she could rock. I’m struck by the Waddy Wachtel-anchored band of the Simple Dreams period played tense, rhythmically thick rock and roll for Bryan Ferry’s uptight The Bride Stripped Bare.
Humanizing The Vacuum 