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The magic touch of Linda RonstadtSinger's hits collected on new CD
By Todd Leopold
(CNN) -- There was no magic formula to the way she picked the songs she sang, Linda Ronstadt says. "It was pretty simple," the singer says in a phone interview from her hometown of Tucson, Arizona, where she lives. "In the best case, it was a song I liked and was dying to sing. It was like a dress I wanted to buy. ... I would die if I didn't sing it." And then there were the tunes she'd put in to pace live shows, because in the clubs she and her band played in the early and mid-'70s, too many slow tunes put people to sleep. "I'd do five or six like [the ballad] 'Heart Like a Wheel,' and people would start to snore, so I'd do [the upbeat] 'That'll Be the Day.' It was also fun for the band," she recalls. "And sometimes, they were hits." Ronstadt talks elegantly about music and life. And her instincts -- not to mention her golden voice -- have served her well. The artist had a string of top 10 hits in the '70s and '80s, including "You're No Good," "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "Blue Bayou," and "Don't Know Much." Some were previously smashes for artists such as Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers; others had been album cuts by the likes of Warren Zevon and the Hollies. Either way, Ronstadt rode her interpretations to becoming one of the top performers of the era. Twenty-one of Ronstadt's hits have been collected on a new CD, "The Very Best of Linda Ronstadt" (Rhino). (Like CNN, Rhino is a unit of AOL Time Warner.) The disc traces her career from country-rock club singer to pop star to music luminary. A mosaic of styles
For much of her career, Ronstadt, 56, has been in the right place at the right time. In the late '60s, she was part of a folk-rock band called the Stone Poneys, which had a hit with the Mike Nesmith song "Different Drum." After going solo, she hooked up with four musicians who became the Eagles, and by the early '70s she was a well-known member of the Southern California rock scene that soon dominated the American charts. In the mid- and late '70s she released a string of best-selling albums, including "Heart Like a Wheel" (1974), "Simple Dreams" (1977) and "Living in the U.S.A." (1978), that established her as the top female solo singer in the country. The albums were produced with a soft-rock high gloss by Peter Asher and generally featured a bunch of top SoCal session musicians, including guitarist Waddy Wachtel and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Gold. In the '80s she turned to Broadway (a lead role in "The Pirates of Penzance"), standards (two albums with Nelson Riddle), and her Latin roots ("Canciones de Mi Padre"). In many cases, she became the prototype for other pop-rock performers, who -- like Ronstadt -- turned to different genres when the Top 40 ceased being so friendly. Throughout it all, she has never lost a feeling of being star struck. She speaks in awe of being on the same stage as Smokey Robinson, her friend Emmylou Harris, and other legends. "It's never not been a thrill," she says. "It always brings me to my knees." Working with such a wide array of artists also "made my singing better," says Ronstadt. "I needed to be with musicians to reinforce me." The Riddle records, for example, came about because of Ronstadt's experience with "Penzance." The Gilbert & Sullivan songs were high in her register, and she recalls "missing the other part of my voice." "So I wanted to learn what came before, and that was standards," she says. She made a list of songs she wanted to sing, realized she needed to sing them with a large group, and that led to Riddle, one of the finest arrangers in pop music history. "It was just step by step," she says. "But it always starts with a song." 'I've been extraordinarily lucky'
Which comes naturally to Ronstadt, who remembers a house full of music when she was growing up, both from records and radio. It is a love she is trying to pass on to her own children, an 11-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son -- though the radio part is more difficult to come by. "American radio from the '30s through the '60s was just fabulous. There was such a diversity," Ronstadt says, recalling days listening to XZRF, an AM station that sent its country and gospel sounds from just across the Mexican border. Then there were the clear-channel stations elsewhere in America, which came in on cloudless nights with rock 'n' roll, R&B and crazy DJ patter. Ronstadt took it all in. "It was great. I was up [listening] at 4 a.m.," she says. Now, she says, with AM radio devoted to talk and FM tightly scripted, her radio diet is limited to NPR. The kids will not get their education from television, either; Ronstadt does not own a set. TV contributes to our celebrity-obsessed culture, she believes, and she is not buying into it. "I think people should live their own lives," she asserts. She is perfectly content to live a relaxed existence in Tucson, away from the buses and wake-up calls of the touring life. Besides, she did that already, she says, and there is much she does not miss. "It's so strange. You're trapped in motels and airports ... and your powers of observation are taken away," she says of the "metal tubes" she practically lived in. "You're treated like zoo animals -- people stared at us a lot. ... At some point, it's not any fun." So what is fun for Ronstadt now? Raising her children, for one. And singing what she likes. She'd like to take on more choral singing -- "old, old stuff. Twelfth century," she says. She also likes the idea of living-room concerts, which have become a small trend in the business. "That way you get a more direct response. Music needs to exist as part of the whole," she says. "It's the camaraderie." So do not be surprised if you hear about Ronstadt playing in someone's house, picking out songs to vary the pace and just because she likes to sing them. It is the way she started, and there is no reason to change now. "I've been extraordinarily lucky," she says. "I can do what I want."
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