Two decades ago, around the time Linda Ronstadt was leaving the Stone Poneys-the California folk-rock band that made a splash in the late 1960s with the song ”Different Drum”-an interviewer for a music magazine asked the young singer about her big goal in life. Rondstadt`s reply: ”To be the world`s greatest Mexican singer.”
Today, Ronstadt recalls that interview and laughs. ”Not long ago, I was visiting my father in Tucson, and he had a copy of the music magazine that ran that story,” says the singer, who left Tucson for Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. ”In that interview, I was talking about this wonderful Mexican singer, Lola Beltran, whom I really idolized.
”These days, I`ve sobered a little in that goal. I realize that I can`t ever become the world`s greatest Mexican singer, because Lola Beltran is the world`s greatest Mexican singer. But I`m glad to see that I`m farther along in realizing my little goal than I was 20 years ago.”
While many of her contemporaries from the late 1960s settled into a sound and stayed with it, Ronstadt has proved to be perennially unpredictable in her musical moves.
At 41, she has-among other things-sung country-rock with the Stone Poneys, recorded a half-dozen or so million-selling contemporary pop albums, played the lead role in productions of Gilbert and Sullivan`s ”Pirates of Penzance,” as well as Puccini`s ”La Boheme” for the New York Shakespeare Festival, and appeared on minimalist composer Philip Glass` album ”Songs from Liquid Days.” She has swung back into the pre-rock era for three million-selling albums featuring jazz/pop standards with arrangements by the late Nelson Riddle, and teamed up with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris to harmonize on a traditional-flavored album of older songs. The Ronstadt-Parton-Harris collaboration, aptly entitled ”Trio,” recently received a Grammy Award nomination for Album of the Year.
But Ronstadt`s most recent album-a nod to her Mexican heritage in the form of ballads and rancheras (cowboy standards) sung entirely in Spanish and dedicated to her Mexican father, Gilbert-caught most of her fans off guard, though the singer herself professes amazement that ”Canciones de Mi Padre
(Songs of My Father)” should come as a big surprise to anyone.
”If people are surprised, they don`t know my past work very well,” she says. ”I recorded in Spanish before, in the 1970s. The song `Blue Bayou` was a hit in Latin America, in Spanish, at the same time it was a hit in English in America. And there was a Spanish song on my `Hasten Down the Wind` album.” Still, it`s a far cry from including a Spanish song on one album or cutting a Spanish version of a hit single for Latin American audiences (a fairly common practice among pop singers), and releasing an album of Spanish- language songs unfamiliar to most of the U.S. pop audience. The album, Ronstadt acknowledges, has garnered little Top 40 radio airplay, though she says Hispanic language stations are playing it.
”We love the album-every single song is a hit,” enthuses Guillermo Prince, program director of WOJO, the Chicago area`s largest Hispanic station, which is currently playing the cut ”Por Un Amor.” Adds Prince, ”She did a fantastic job, and those mariachi who accompany her are the best in the world.”
She isn`t sure who`s buying it, but ”Canciones” is selling-not spectacularly, but steadily. At the moment, as the singer begins a tour that will find her doing the ”Canciones” songs and other Spanish-language material backed by a mariachi band, the album is a respectable No. 43 on Billboard`s pop chart and is poised to move higher. (Chicago is not on the tour schedule now, but a spring or summer date is a possibility.) According to Ronstadt, folks at Elektra/Asylum Records, her longtime label, are
”delighted” with the way things have turned out, although they originally would have preferred an English-language pop album.
”They`ve been very good with me, really,” says Ronstadt. ”They simply stated their preference, which was that they would like something a little safer, which I completely understood. But my position has been that if they can make their money back on the records that I give them-and they have done that and then some-then I`m entitled to take the next roll of the dice, and they should be willing to do it with me.
”They said, `We would rather have an album in English first,` and I said, `I`m sorry, but I`ve been trying to do this for 20 years and I`m doing it now. I`ve got to get it out of my system because I don`t want to put it off.` And they agreed.”
Ask Ronstadt whether she was influenced by the growing Hispanic population in the United States and the success of Hispanic-American rock band Los Lobos (which had a smash hit last year with ”La Bamba,” the first totally non-English song to reach No. 1 on the pop singles chart), and she insists that she didn`t and still doesn`t think about that sort of thing.
”Los Lobos was doing an entirely different kind of music,” she says.
”And the Hispanic culture has always been there. People are looking around now and seeing that there`s a growing Hispanic population and going, `Hmmm, I can buy enchiladas now on the corner,` but to me, who grew up with that, it`s always been there.
”I made this album for my own satisfaction. I wanted to have the pleasure and the privilege of learning those songs-and you almost kill yourself learning to do them, because you have to do it right. Learning the genre was a little difficult. Not that I wasn`t thoroughly steeped in it, but there`s a great deal of difference between listening to something and singing lead. There`s a lot of difference between singing along with something at a family gathering and being responsible for the whole thing.”
Ronstadt, one of four children, grew up speaking Spanish as well as English. Her grandfather on her father`s side was born in Mexico and had a ranch in Northern Mexico before moving to Southern Arizona and settling in Tucson; he and Ronstadt`s grandmother were bilingual but spoke Spanish as their first language. Ronstadt`s father, a retired hardware store owner, also spoke Spanish as a first language.
Her cultural heritage isn`t totally Hispanic (her late mother was of German-Dutch-English descent), but it was the Mexican customs that
predominated when Ronstadt was growing up.
”They were a real part of our life,” she says. ”We ate tamales at Christmas and went to all the major Mexican festivals, and I loved all of it. I`ve always loved traditional Mexican music. My brothers and sister and I used to sit around the living room as kids, singing harmony with my father on traditional songs.
”But there was always so much good music in my family,” she adds.
”People are always saying that some of the music I`ve done is `such a departure` for me. To be honest, the thing that was really a departure for me was rock `n` roll. I was 8 years old by the time they started playing rock on the radio, and in the meantime all of the rest of the music I had heard around me was already firmly ensconced in my little head.
”My mother was into Gilbert and Sullivan; my grandmother played opera all day long. My father sang mostly in Spanish and when he wasn`t singing in Spanish, he was singing those sort of Gershwin things that I recorded with Nelson Riddle. My sister loved country music. And by the time rock came along for me, I was already singing all the other stuff. My taste has always run to rampant eclecticism.
”The idea that you should be limited to one kind of music, or that there are only certain kinds of music that are hip and if you like something else you`re not hip . . . ,” Ronstadt laughs. ”Most musicians are broader-minded than that. It`s the public`s perception that happens to be narrow.
”I think (the idea of certain kinds of music being `hip`) is often focused through publications where the people themselves actually have horrible identity crises,” she adds. ”I think that style was sort of invented by Rolling Stone magazine. They cater to that kind of adolescent identity crisis. But most musicians aren`t limited like that. No matter how self-centered musicians are, the music is always bigger than they are.
”If you`re really interested in the music, it`s going to distract you away from things like whether you`re hip or not. That`s one of the great blessings of music, that it can distract you from things like fashion or your own vanity.”
Twenty years ago, Ronstadt recalls, she tried to interest the Stone Poneys in incorporating some traditional Mexican music into their acoustic sound.
”I thought it would be neat if we could use it the way the Rolling Stones used blues or the Byrds were using bluegrass,” she says. ”But it wasn`t their tradition and they weren`t as interested in it as I was, so we continued with the folk rock and I explored in other directions.”
Ronstadt`s stylistic forays through the years would seem to be, at least partially, the result of musical curiosity and serendipity. Mention phrases like ”career game plan,” ”marketing strategy,” or ”public image” to her, and it`s as if you`re speaking a foreign language.
”I`ve never thought about anything like that for a minute,” Ronstadt maintains cheerfully. ”I haven`t the vaguest idea if people have an image of me. I couldn`t care less. If they do, it`s their problem.
”And I know this sounds funny, but I don`t have any idea who my audience is. The record company occasionally peeks into those matters, but . . . what happens is that I hear a song and I want to sing it. I think, `That`s a good song, and I want to learn it.` I never think about how my records might sell. My albums have a habit of selling regardless of what is on the charts, which I`ve always considered a blessing, because being a slave to the current fad is not my idea of a gratifying musical existence.
”The thing is,” Ronstadt sums up, ”if people buy your stuff, that means that you can make your living doing it, and that saves you the trouble of having to get a job at the bank or selling hot dogs or doing whatever else I`m qualified to do, which is not much. It has meant that I`ve been able to devote all my time, all day long, to music, which I just love. Music makes you dream, and while I`m singing or listening to stuff or researching this stuff- which takes an enormous amount of painstaking research-I live in that dream.
”That`s the function of art, to make you dream,” she adds. ”When I`m on stage, singing, and I can make people dream and tell them truths about themselves, that`s inspiring. I don`t even have to address them directly. I`m telling my own story, but somewhere in there there`s a universal story that they can fasten onto. And if that inspires people and it lightens their load- that`s what art is all about. This world is kind of basically an unbearable situation, and art is there to help you with it, to help you pull your load along a little more easily.”
Ronstadt may be ”telling her own story” on stage, but offstage it`s a different story, at least as far as her personal life is concerned. Asked if she`s comfortable with, to use her phrase, the load she`s pulling, she muses, ”I don`t think anybody ever is. The fact is that you keep pulling it. Comfort is a funny word . . . . I don`t think the concept of `comfort` even came into the literature until about the 17th or 18th Century.
”As far as how my music is going, I`m overjoyed. I have never felt like I had a richer vein to tap. I love to sing pop music and I get to do it a lot- I just sang on a Toto album. I got to sing with Dolly and Emmylou, and I can`t imagine it getting any better than that. I`m really proud of the album we did, and the Grammy Award nomination was just the frosting on the cake.
”As far as my personal life goes, that`s something I don`t talk about,” adds Ronstadt, in response to a question about her attitudes toward romantic relationships and family life. ”I just don`t think that`s anybody`s business.”
How does the singer, who has been linked with a number of men (including Jerry Brown, at the time governor of California) but has never married, feel when she sees her name in gossip columns?
”I don`t pay any attention. I just figure that`s somebody else`s problem. I have enough trouble as it is.” Ronstadt laughs. ”A lot of that stuff is made up, anyway. Sure, I`m serious. I won`t talk about it, so they make it up. But the only reason to do interviews, as far as I`m concerned, is to talk about the music. Who cares that someone went to the market that day and bought a loaf of bread? I certainly don`t.”
Still, while Ronstadt writes off such annoyances as ”just something that comes along with the job,” she finds some things harder to ignore than others.
”The idea of stardom is really silly-and vaguely icky,” she notes.
”People have a tendency to think that if they don`t see you performing, you`ve disappeared. Or they seem to think that you don`t exist when they`re not seeing you on their televisions. And then when they do see you in person, it`s like they think they`re watching TV. They make these rather strange remarks to you. They`ll come up to you and say, `Sing this song,` or, they`ll go, `Oh, there`s Linda Ronstadt,` as though you can`t hear them. It`s very, very odd.
”And if you do something different, they`ll say, `You can`t do that, because we`ve never seen you do that.` They have a tendency to look at you from a very self-centered existence.”
Ronstadt`s next ”something different” will, in all likelihood, be an album with New Orleans musician Aaron Neville-”an American popular music record-followed by an album in the Afro-Cuban musical tradition.
”My friend Barry Rogers, a Latin jazz trombone player, has a great passion for Afro-Cuban music, and he played some of it for me and I liked it,” explains Ronstadt. ”I wanted to learn more about it, and Barry`s developing a musical project for me, written in English and Spanish, about a girl who comes from a Cuban heritage and is moving forward in the North American culture but is aware that she`s leaving something very soulful behind.”
For now, however, there`s the ”Canciones” tour to think about, and Ronstadt is particularly concerned about getting one thing straight.
”The main thing about this show is that you won`t have to speak Spanish to know what`s going on in the songs,” she says. ”I`m going to try and explain it so that the language of the culture won`t be a barrier. I want it to be so that someone who comes to this show and only speaks Chinese will be able to understand.”
