Linda Ronstadt, The #24 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Two

 

(Continued from Part One)

Ronstadt appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in March of '75, the first of six covers she would be featured on.  The article describes Linda's struggle to succeed in rock & roll and what it was like to be a woman in what then was a musical style that favored male performers.  The title song is another worthy track.

In 1975, Ronstadt went on tour with the Eagles and Jackson Browne.  She appeared on The Mike Douglas Show and The Johnny Cash Show, among others.

 

Later in the year, Linda released the album Prisoner in Disguise.  The album reached the Top Five and sold over one million copies.  She released the Neil Young song "Love Is A Rose" as the opening single.  

 

The song was doing well when Asylum noticed that "Heat Wave", Linda's remake of the hit by Martha and the Vandellas, was receiving quite a bit of airplay as the "B" side.  By this time, Andrew Gold ("Thank You For Being A Friend" and "Lonely Boy") played all the instruments on this song.  Asylum pulled the "Love Is A Rose" 45 and issued "Heat Wave" instead, with the latter hitting #5.

 Ronstadt lived up to her name as the "remake queen" with her cover of the Miracles and Johnny Rivers hit "Tracks Of My Tears", which ranked #4 among adults and #25 overall.

 

We also want to feature Linda's version of "Roll Um Easy", written by Lowell George and recorded by Little Feat in 1973.

 Ronstadt released the album Hasten Down the Wind in 1976, a #3 album.  Her remake of the Buddy Holly song "That'll Be The Day" hit #2 in Canada and #11 in the United States. 

 

Linda continued her amazing ability to spot potential in a song and her decision to record it offered tremendous exposure for aspiring songwriters.  She included three songs by Karla Bonoff on her album but one stands out.  On "Someone To Lay Down Beside Me", Ronstadt goes from a whisper to a passionate cry and back that leaves the listener begging for more as the last note fades.  With a peak of #42, it is another of The Top Unknown/Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*.

Linda collaborated with her father to write "Lo siento mi vida", included on the album.  It was a homage to him and Ronstadt's Mexican roots that she would explore further with her 1988 album Canciones de Mi Padre.

Linda won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her work on the album, and when it earned her a third consecutive Platinum album, Ronstadt became the first female artist to achieve that feat.  But she was far from finished.

Linda released her Greatest Hits package later in the year, which has now topped seven million in sales.  Ronstadt appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone and Time, respectively, in 1976 and 1977.  She sang the U.S. National Anthem at the 1977 World Series in Los Angeles.

 

The 1977 album Simple Dreams became Ronstadt's most successful studio album, reaching #1 for five weeks in the U.S. and also hitting #1 in Canada and Australia.  It sold over 3.5 million copies that year alone, giving her a record fourth consecutive Platinum LP's.  "Blue Bayou", written and originally recorded by Roy Orbison, went Platinum and was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

 Simple Dreams was nominated for Record of the Year.  Ronstadt again covered Buddy Holly with the smash "It's So Easy".  It rose to the Top Five while "Blue Bayou" was at #3, making Linda the first female recording artist to place two songs in the Top 10 simultaneously (and both were in the Top 5 simultaneously), joining the Beatles as the only other act to achieve the feat at the time.

 

She then released a song written by Warren Zevon--"Poor Poor Pitiful Me", which did very well in Canada among adults (#9) but stalled everywhere else.

 

Linda also worked her magic on the Rolling Stones song "Tumbling Dice", which is included on the soundtrack for the movie FM, which Ronstadt appeared in.  On July 21, 1978, she joined the group onstage in Tucson to sing the song.  

Be sure to catch Part Three on Inside The Rock Era!